Today’s Big Story

The JFK Files

The government released a tranche of documents tied to the infamous assassination

Donald Trump delivered on one of his campaign pledges for the conspiratorial-minded, signing an executive order in January to release the remaining classified files related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963, in Dallas. Polls have long shown that a majority of Americans do not believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in Kennedy’s death. (Trump’s order also requires the release of documents related to the Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. assassinations, though those documents have not yet been released.)

A tranche of files were made available late on Tuesday—the latest in a string of disclosures since the 1990s that have tweaked how the nation and its historians view Kennedy’s killing. According to the Washington Post, the vast majority of the National Archives’ 6 million pages of records related to the murder has already been declassified, according to the agency’s website. The newest batch of records can be found on the agency’s webpage under the headline, JFK Assassination Records - 2025 Documents Release. The page features a table listing more than 1,100 entries of hyperlinked PDF files.

A Post analysis showed that, based on their document identification numbers, none of the files released Tuesday are new. But many of the redactions have been unmasked. And just know that while you peruse the pages, the U.S. Justice Department has ordered some of its lawyers who handle sensitive national-security matters to do the same. Apparently, Trump’s promise to release the files set off an all-night scramble by DOJ's National Security Division.

So what do the files say? Well, historians were quick to point out that they would need time to assess the flood of documents to understand if they were significantly different from previous releases. But so far, nothing in the documents has changed the long-held findings that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in assassinating Kennedy. Jefferson Morley, vice president of the Mary Ferrell Foundation, a repository for files related to the assassination, told the Associated Press that the release is “an encouraging start.” He said much of the “rampant over-classification of trivial information has been eliminated” from the documents.

Oswald was a former Marine who defected to the Soviet Union before returning home to Texas. Files in the new release included a memo from the CIA’s St. Petersburg station from November 1991 saying that earlier that month, a CIA official befriended a U.S. professor there who told the official about a friend who worked for the KGB. The memo said the KGB official had reviewed “five thick volumes” of files on Oswald and was “confident that Oswald was at no time an agent controlled by the KGB.”

Ukraine-Russia Peace Talks Continue

But Putin’s demands are so bold, it’s hard to believe he’s entirely serious

President Donald Trump held a high-stakes call with Vladimir Putin on Tuesday as the United States seeks a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine. Trump began by asking for a 30-day ceasefire on land, sea and air, which Ukraine has already signed up to, as an initial measure on which to build.

And while the White House claimed peace has “never been closer,” what the U.S. president got from Putin were questions, half-offers and limited concessions—and, what The Guardian called “an extraordinary demand from the Russian leader to weaken Ukraine that would make a mockery of any peace agreement.” The “key condition” for resolving the conflict, the Kremlin said in a statement after the call, should be “the complete cessation of foreign military aid and the provision of intelligence information to Kyiv”.

The Russian leader declined (for now) to agree to a broader 30-day halt in fighting. Instead, Putin agreed for the first time to a limited cease-fire that would stop strikes on energy infrastructure, as long as Ukraine does the same. Hours after the call, U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff touted the progress the White House believes it has made in negotiations with Russia and said talks are set to begin Sunday in Saudi Arabia.

Tariffs Take Their Toll

U.S. tariff increases slow global economy, boost inflation, while Americans struggle to spend

On Tuesday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the Trump administration plans to confront countries around the world with a reciprocal tariff “number” on April 2, a figure that will reflect what the White House considers the cost of foreign trade barriers. He added that the administration would then carry out negotiations with those countries with the aim of lowering those barriers or putting the reciprocal tariff into place.

Bessent’s comments shed new light on a mysterious and sweeping trade action that President Trump announced last month. But already, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has announced that higher American tariffs on imports are set to slow economic growth and push inflation higher around the world—and further increases are threatening an even more severe downturn. The OECD said the U.S. economy will now likely grow by 2.2% this year and 1.6% next. It previously forecast growth of 2.4% and 2.1%.

Meanwhile, the BBC reports that a wide range of Americans are struggling with the current economic state. From higher prices for daily goods to investments taking a massive hit because of the recent stock market sell-off, consumers are anxious … so they’re spending less. Retail sales also fell last month, while firms from Walmart to Delta Air Lines have warned of slackening demand. Meanwhile, job growth has slowed and the stock market is now trading at its lowest levels since before the November 2024 election.

‘Space Junk’ Is Clogging the Atmosphere

And it’s going to make weather forecasts and internet access much worse

Did you know that in the past five years, more satellites have been launched into Earth’s atmosphere than the preceding 60 years combined? To serve an expanding space economy, around 7,500 active satellites orbit the planet and about 50 on average are taking to the skies every week. Sounds impressive, but now, scientists believe that climate change is set to increase the number of old satellites that will turn into floating obstacles.

Some of those satellites have already burned up in the atmosphere or fallen back to Earth, often into the ocean, but more than 13,000 are still up there. About a fifth are inactive, simply orbiting as space junk. Over the last couple of decades, hundreds of these dead satellites have collided to create millions of pieces of shrapnel. Like we did with our oceans, the skies above us are at risk of being polluted.

And a new study from MIT found that climate change will make this floating junkyard even worse—causing ripple effects across everything from weather tracking to broadband internet to national defense. The researchers examined how greenhouse gases are impacting Earth’s upper atmosphere and, in turn, the objects orbiting within it. They found that, as emissions increase, they’re actually altering the natural process that allows satellites to fall out of orbit and burn up, resulting in a kind of space junk pileup.

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