Latest / The Daily Sarcast / May 25th, 2026: Waymo, The Ballroom And My Birthday

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May 25th, 2026: Waymo, The Ballroom And My Birthday · The Daily Sarcast

• 0:00
  Today's episode is sponsored by Forgetting What Day It Is When You Work On The Most Random Days.
• 0:06
  It makes you confused why everyone is out drinking until you realize it's Sunday.
• 0:11
  Original Hooters has always been a family-friendly restaurant,
• 0:14
  so this isn't a major shift, but rather a reclamation of who we've always been.
• 0:19
  The CEO of Hooters trying to make it family-friendly again.
• 0:23
  Insert theme song here. This is the Daily Starcast. I give you the news, it may be a laugh.
• 0:28
  I'm Lindsay Vernick and today is May 25th, 2026.
• 0:32
  Happy Memorial Day. I hope that you're having a nice rainy weekend.
• 0:37
  It really sucks that it always has to be this shitty every Memorial Day,
• 0:41
  but it is what it is, I guess, right?
• 0:44
  So in real news, Waymo is temporarily suspending all their rides on freeways
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  because apparently the self-driving cars were struggling with things like construction
• 0:53
  zones and flooded roads.
• 0:55
  That is something human drivers also struggle with. Have you ever seen a BMW
• 0:59
  approach an orange traffic cone?
• 1:01
  It's like watching a deer encounter fire for the first time.
• 1:05
  Waymo says the cars will still operate on normal streets, just not highways
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  for now while they update their software, which is probably smart because freeway
• 1:14
  driving is when America gets most aggressive.
• 1:16
  The company recently had issues after one of their cars drove into flood water
• 1:20
  in Atlanta, which means the robots are now discovering what every driver eventually learns.
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  Roads become absolute chaos the second there's three inches of rain.
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  And I do love how corporate their statement was. They said, they're committed
• 1:33
  to being good neighbors.
• 1:35
  That's exactly what I want to hear from my transportation. Not safe,
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  not functional, just being a good neighbor.
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  But honestly, if a robot car gets confused by construction, it already might
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  be adapting to humanity perfectly, because nobody understands construction zones.
• 1:53
  Not drivers, not even the GPS.
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  Not even the men holding the stop signs. Sometimes it just looks like road workers
• 2:01
  are just freestyle jazz improvising with cones.
• 2:04
  After a shooting near a White House checkpoint this weekend,
• 2:07
  Trump immediately took to Truth Social to explain why the incident proves America
• 2:11
  desperately needs his new ballroom. I mean, duh.
• 2:15
  Most people hear a security threat near the White House and think, that's terrible.
• 2:20
  Trump heard it and went, now this is why we need crown molding.
• 2:24
  Trump is currently asking Congress for a billion dollars in security additions
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  to the White House complex, including
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  a massive ballroom he wants to build where the East Wing used to be.
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  Because obviously we need this for national security.
• 2:37
  And the wording of his statement was very much unbelievable.
• 2:40
  He basically said this incident proves future presidents need the safest and
• 2:45
  most secure space ever built.
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  For me, what's so surprising about that statement is that he actually admitted
• 2:51
  that there will be future presidents in this country.
• 2:54
  But like, sir, are you trying to build a government facility or the VIP section at Live Miami?
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  Also, according to reports, the suspect had previously tried to enter White
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  House grounds, claiming to be Jesus Christ and wanting to be arrested.
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  It literally sounds like a deleted scene from Veep. I mean, it all does.
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  The whole thing has very strange energy because it started as a serious security
• 3:18
  story and somehow ended with Trump doing Shark Tank for a ballroom.
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  And for that reason, I'm asking Congress for $1 billion. dollars.
• 3:27
  Tens of thousands of people in Southern California were evacuated this weekend
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  after they were warned a giant chemical tank at an aerospace facility could
• 3:34
  either explode or leak toxic chemicals at any given moment.
• 3:38
  In California, every week out there, it's either wildfires, mudslides,
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  earthquakes, or a sentence like, authorities are monitoring 7,000 gallons of
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  highly volatile mystery liquid.
• 3:48
  This tank contains methyl methacrylate, which doesn't really sound like a chemical
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  and more like the name of a woman who owns three Pilates studios in Santa Monica.
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  They're saying that the tank is basically unstable and could fill at any time,
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  although firefighters think they may have found a crack that's relieving pressure,
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  which is the exact kind of update that sounds comforting until you realize they're
• 4:11
  talking about a giant flammable tank and not someone's overinflated tire.
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  Also, the phrase positive intel to make educated decisions is such a funny government
• 4:21
  way of saying, we currently do not know if this thing is about to explode.
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  FEMA is not involved, which is never a sentence you want to hear connected to a storage tank.
• 4:30
  Once FEMA enters the group chat, the vibes are already catastrophic.
• 4:34
  Honestly, aerospace facilities always sound one bad Thursday away from accidentally
• 4:39
  creating a new supervillain origin story.
• 4:42
  And Lindsay life. This past weekend, I was supposed to have my birthday party,
• 4:47
  but in true Gemini fashion, I woke up and canceled it and totally changed the whole day around.
• 4:55
  And thing of this week is citizenship lists. So now Trump is trying to create
• 5:00
  state-by-state citizenship lists to determine who can vote,
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  which kind of sounds like the opening scene of a dystopian Hulu series that
• 5:09
  gets canceled after one season.
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  The idea is to use federal databases like passports, social security records,
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  and naturalization records to figure out who is a citizen.
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  Except there's one tiny issue.
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  Even Trump's own administration admitted the list would probably be unreliable.
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  Which is kind of important. You kind of want the citizenship database to know who the citizens are.
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  That kind of feels like step one, right? Our government doesn't actually have
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  one master citizenship document.
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  Only about half of Americans even have passports.
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  Social security cards aren't proof of citizenship because non-citizens can have them too.
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  Naturalized citizens don't have U.S. birth certificates.
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  Basically, the system is held together with paperclips, old filing cabinets,
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  and one woman named Denise who worked at the county clerk's office since 1987.
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  Lawyers are warning this could create privacy issues because the government
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  isn't really supposed to pass your personal information around like a group
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  project that nobody wants to do.
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  The Justice Department literally admitted in court, which I quote,
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  no list is ever going to be perfect, which is an insane sentence to hear about
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  something connected to voting rights.
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  This entire thing is based on solving voter fraud among non-citizens,
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  which studies continue to show is extremely rare.
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  So we're potentially creating giant citizenship spreadsheets over a problem
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  that statistically happens less often than seeing a salad ordered at a Knicks game.
• 6:41
  Cooking tip of the day. When in doubt, Trader Joe's frozen meals saved the day.
• 6:46
  Feedback, comments, questions, a nice Jewish boy looking for a date,
• 6:49
  email me at lindsay at thedailystarcast.com.
• 6:52
  Thanks so much for listening. Talk to you guys tomorrow.