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Cora could actually become a Phillies candidate for 2027.

“I think I’m the one person I would trust with that vow,” Locket said about saying “I do” to herself.

The players arrive fundamentally bereft, yet even spring training is wasted on trying to impress by swinging hard and throwing harder. 

CCP Moves To Tighten Oversight Of Gig Workers

Authored by Michael Zhuang via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Beijing is moving to tighten its grip on tens of millions of gig workers—an increasingly vital but volatile segment of China’s labor force—prompting warnings from analysts that the effort could deepen social tensions rather than contain them.

Delivery workers from Chinese shopping platform Meituan gather for a briefing before they start their shift near a mall in Beijing on Aug. 21, 2025. Wang Zhao/AFP via Getty Images

On April 26, China’s top leadership bodies, the General Office of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the State Council, released new guidelines via Chinese state media Xinhua News Agency, calling for stronger management of what the CCP describes as the country’s “new employment groups.”

The directive, while only now made public, is dated Oct. 29 last year. It calls for increased adherence to Xi Jinping’s political doctrine and urges workers to “listen to and follow the Party.”

Using vague language, it also mentions plans for “a working mechanism characterized by top-to-bottom coordination” by the year 2027, with further objectives coming within another three to five years, including that “ideological and political guidance will be more forceful.”

The move comes as Beijing seeks to assert tighter control over the fast-growing gig workforce that now numbers about 84 million people—roughly one-fifth of China’s employed population—according to a February analysis in “Qiushi,” a CCP propaganda magazine.

Vast, Hard-to-Control Workforce

China defines “new employment groups” as workers that are engaged in flexible, platform-based jobs tied to the digital economy. They include food delivery riders, couriers, ride-hailing drivers, e-commerce workers, and livestream hosts, many of whom are young job seekers drawn by low barriers to entry but who face long hours, unstable incomes, and limited labor protections.

The category overlaps with China’s broader concept of flexible employment, which includes part-time workers and the self-employed. By 2025, officials estimated that more than 200 million people fell into that broader grouping, according to state media Xinhua News Agency.

Despite their size, these workers often lack access to social benefits and operate outside traditional labor structures, making them difficult to organize and, from the CCP’s perspective, difficult to control, according to U.S.-based China current affairs commentator Wang He.

Wang told The Epoch Times the new directive reflects mounting concern within the CCP about the political risks posed by this group. He said the policy is about extending state control.

“The CCP sees this [as a segment of the workforce] that cannot be allowed to drift beyond Party oversight,” he said. “The priority is political control.”

Wang said that in recent years, China has already expanded surveillance systems and grassroots governance networks. The latest policy signals an effort to integrate gig workers more fully into that framework, while reinforcing the Party’s authority over both society and the government.

“This group is young, mobile, and highly connected through the internet,” he said. “Their ability to voice grievances is stronger than many other groups.”

Signs of Discontent

Incidents over the past year have underscored those concerns.

In December, hundreds of delivery riders in Changsha, China, gathered to protest restrictions on access to a residential compound. Videos circulating online showed one participant dressed in a yellow cape, prompting a heavy police response.

More recently, from late March to early April, delivery workers in Chongqing, China, staged a multi-day strike, protesting falling pay rates and what they described as exploitative platform practices.

Such episodes, while localized, have raised alarms among some experts about the potential for broader unrest.

Xu Zhen, a senior professional in China’s capital markets, told The Epoch Times that disputes involving delivery workers have increasingly become flashpoints for social instability.

“The CCP is trying to consolidate various tools of social control, through Party branches in platform companies and even intervention in algorithms,” he said. “But it’s not clear these measures will work.”

The official guidelines also promised better services and legal protections for gig workers, including efforts to solve “practical difficulties” and “enhance ideological and political work.”

Critics say such language is often more rhetorical than substantive.

Wang said the promise to protect rights and provide services is largely a façade.

In practice, many gig workers struggle to access social insurance or other benefits, leaving them effectively marginalized within China’s labor system, according to Wang. Local governments, already under fiscal strain, may lack the resources—or the incentive—to expand support.

Expanding Party Reach

The policy also reflects a broader institutional shift.

In 2023, Beijing established a new Central Social Work Department tasked with strengthening social stability and expanding CCP influence across a wide range of sectors, from industry associations to private enterprises and grassroots organizations.

Earlier this month, the CCP also announced a campaign via Chinese state media People’s Daily targeting industry associations, again stressing the need for stronger party leadership.

Taken together, Wang said the measures point to a deepening emphasis on control amid economic uncertainty and rising social pressures, raising questions about whether tighter oversight will ensure stability or fuel further discontent.

Ning Haizhong and Luo Ya contributed to this report. 

Tyler Durden Thu, 04/30/2026 - 19:15

Aaron Judge has some stiff competition early on for the 2026 American League MVP award. 

Jay Taveras, 27, was charged with manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide and leaving the scene of an accident in the early-morning crash that killed Thomas Dunlea, 58, in late December of 2021, according to authorities.

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While this latest injury ate up nearly half his season, Edstrom was also a healthy scratch in the final 11 games. 

Sales of the iPhone, still the company’s best-selling product nearly 20 years after its introduction, were $56.99 billion.

In New York Magazine, Mahmoud Khalil delivers a masterclass in self-pity while detailing the plight of merely existing in the Big Apple.

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“The theft ring was as brazen as it was effective,” NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said at a Thursday press conference.

Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie (D-Bronx) confirmed “95%” of an anti-ICE immigration package has been agreed upon between Hochul and state legislators as part of ongoing state budget talks – including New York's first statewide sanctuary law restricting how law enforcement can interact with immigration authorities.

What Is the Trump Administration Really Trying To Do With The Latest Comey Indictment?

On Tuesday, a federal grand jury in the Eastern District of North Carolina handed down a two-count indictment against the former FBI director James Comey, charging him with threatening the life of President Donald Trump and transmitting that threat across state lines.

The basis for the charges: an Instagram post from May 2025 in which Comey shared a photo captioned "Cool shell formation on my beach walk." The shells on the sand spelled out "86 47." Each count carries a maximum of ten years in federal prison.

Comey deleted the post the same day it went up and issued an immediate clarification on social media. "I didn't realize some folks associate those numbers with violence," he wrote. "It never occurred to me, but I oppose violence of any kind, so I took the post down." He later told interviewers that he and his wife had simply spotted the formation during a stroll along a North Carolina beach and read it as a quirky, possibly restaurant-themed joke. Despite the dubious explanation, from the moment the post became controversial, legal analysts were skeptical that a case against him was possible.

There still appears to be bipartisan agreement on this point.

"It's a seashell case, nine, ten months old, and it will never go anywhere," Joe Scarborough said on MSNOW's Morning Joe. "It will have the opposite impact, and they'll get laughed out of court." 

Constitutional scholar Jonathan Turley, one of Trump's more reliable legal allies, agreed the case has little legal merit, despite the indictment.

"To convict Comey, the Justice Department will have to show that his adolescent picture was a 'true threat' under 18 U.S.C. § 871 and § 875(c). It is not." He went further, invoking the founding era: "This nation was founded in rage. The Boston Tea Party was rage. In forming this more perfect union, we created the world's greatest protection of free speech in history." Not exactly a ringing endorsement of the prosecution's theory.

First Amendment protections for political speech are remarkably broad. Under Brandenburg v. Ohio, the Supreme Court held that the government cannot punish inflammatory speech unless it is "directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action" - a standard that has shielded provocateurs far more combustible than a retired FBI director posting a picture of seashells.

Former CNN analyst Chris Cillizza has his own theory about what is really behind this latest indictment. According to Cillizza, Trump is less concerned about whether Comey goes to jail than he is with just making Comey's life miserable.

“It's impossible to separate both of those indictments, the one in September and the one today, from Donald Trump's absolutely repeatedly expressed belief that the Department of Justice exists to target and punish his political enemies,” Cillizza mused. “Now, again, whether they would actually be guilty in a court of law, we shall see, but to punish these people. So we saw Comey indicted in September 2025, since dropped. We saw Letitia James, another big political enemy in Donald Trump's mind of his, also indicted, charges dropped. We've seen John Bolton, the, a major Trump critic, indicted, and now we see Comey indicted again.”

Donald Trump doesn't really care if Jim Comey goes to jail.

He just wants to make Comey's life miserable for as long as possible. pic.twitter.com/7wsHW32kGp

— Chris Cillizza (@ChrisCillizza) April 28, 2026

Cillizza gets some things wrong here. The Letitia James and the previous Comey case were tossed by a Clinton-appointed judge who claimed that the Justice Department illegally appointed the prosecutor who brought the charges at President Donald Trump's urging. They were not tossed on the merits.

Is Trump trying to make life difficult for his enemies? Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche pushed back on this suggestion on CBS Tuesday, insisting the administration had been investigating the matter for nearly a year and that a grand jury - not the White House - returned the indictment. "Of course not, absolutely, positively not," Blanche said when asked whether Trump directed the charges. The indictment itself argues that a "reasonable recipient who is familiar with the circumstances" would interpret the shell arrangement as a serious expression of an intent to do harm to President Trump. That framing will be tested the moment a federal judge reads the First Amendment.

There is a certain irony lodged in all of this. Trump spent years - genuinely - defending himself from what he called a weaponized justice system. The Russia investigation, the two bogus impeachments, the civil fraud trial in New York, the classified documents case, the January 6 prosecution: whatever one thinks of any individual charge, the cumulative weight of it was real and politically motivated in ways that even Trump's critics occasionally acknowledged. 

But out of those assaults, the president emerged convinced that the DOJ had become a political instrument and that the only way to respond was to go after those who abused their power in the first place.

The trouble is that a seashell photograph does not make for a compelling demonstration of that principle. There are documented, substantive cases to be made against Comey - his handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation, his unauthorized leaking of memos to the press, and his role in initiating the surveillance of a sitting president's campaign. Those are the cases that would survive scrutiny, attract serious legal arguments, and perhaps hold up before a jury. Instead, the administration is going to federal court over a photo of seashells. 

Blanche said Tuesday, "If anybody in this country thinks … that it is okay for anybody to threaten the president of the United States … then we have a bigger problem than I even imagined." That may be true. But first you have to prove the threat was real - and that argument, and experts on both sides aren't seeing how this meets that standard.

Tyler Durden Thu, 04/30/2026 - 18:50

The 55-year-old ace litigator plans to set the record straight about her controversial ties with Jeffrey Epstein, On The Money has learned.

Rep. John Garamendi (D-Calif.) claimed that President Trump has gotten the US "stuck in the quagmire" with Operation Epic Fury in Iran.

“I’m not giving them anything,” Trump said.