April 15, 2026
More newspapers seeking non-profit help
Independent, UK - The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette announced Tuesday it had prevented an imminent shutdown because a nonprofit journalism operation had agreed to buy the struggling newspaper. It's the latest example of a news outlet turning to the nonprofit sector to avoid closing as advertising and circulation revenues continue to drop.... A few other prominent newspapers that have made similar moves.
Trump Executive Order Could Debank Millions of Americans
Newsweek - A Trump administration executive order that would require banks to collect citizenship information from customers is in "process," U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Monday, as experts warn it could leave millions of Americans without access to a bank account.
In an interview at the Semafor World Economy’s inaugural Treasury Secretary Dinner at the Library of Congress, Bessent said he didn't think the order would be "unreasonable."
"Why don’t we have information on who’s in our banking system? I have a place in the U.K.; they want to know who lives in every apartment—and how do we know that it’s not part of a foreign terrorist organization?" he said.
Trump Executive Order Could Debank Millions of Americans
Newsweek - A Trump administration executive order that would require banks to collect citizenship information from customers is in "process," U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Monday, as experts warn it could leave millions of Americans without access to a bank account.
In an interview at the Semafor World Economy’s inaugural Treasury Secretary Dinner at the Library of Congress, Bessent said he didn't think the order would be "unreasonable."
"Why don’t we have information on who’s in our banking system? I have a place in the U.K.; they want to know who lives in every apartment—and how do we know that it’s not part of a foreign terrorist organization?" he said.
White House spokesman Kush Desai has previously said: "Any reporting about potential policymaking that has not been officially announced by the White House is baseless speculation."
Elections
Independent, UK - A massive U.S. Postal Service union has launched a national television advertising campaign advocating for voting by mail, entering a politically charged debate fueled by skepticism from President Donald Trump and others regarding mail-in ballots.The 30-second advertisement features a diverse group of voters, including a busy farmer and a flight attendant, explaining their reasons for casting ballots via mail.
Sponsored by the 200,000-member American Postal Workers Union (APWU), the campaign, announced on Tuesday, is set to begin airing this week in Ohio. The state holds historical significance as the location where Union Army soldiers cast the first mail ballots during the Civil War in 1864. The campaign will subsequently expand to other states.
The ad concludes with the message: "Vote by mail — keep it, protect it, expand it." This initiative comes just two weeks after President Trump signed an executive order aiming to establish a nationwide list of verified eligible voters and subsequently prohibit postal workers from sending absentee ballots to individuals not on each state’s approved roster. President Trump’s order was swiftly met with lawsuits and opposition from postal workers.
States with the hottest March on record
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| An Accuweather map of the states with the hottest March on record. | Photo courtesy of Accuweather |
How much taxpayers are paying for the Trump military and its war
Common Dreams - In a new report for the Institute for Policy Studies, we broke down last year’s typical tax bill and what each household actually spent, on average, for different programs and priorities in 2025.
We learned, for example, that the average taxpayer paid $4,049 for weapons and war last year—a huge sum in a time of rising costs of living and stagnant wages. That’s far, far more than any other program funded by income tax dollars. Medicaid, the next highest item on our income tax receipt, ran a little under $2,500—and that funds healthcare for 1 in 5 Americans. School lunches and other nutrition programs, by comparison, ran just $124. The Postal Service? $19. (Big programs like Social Security and Medicare have their own dedicated funding streams, and aren’t as significant for your income taxes.)
More than half of the Pentagon’s sum went to private, for-profit military contractors—the top CEOs of which now make over $25 million a year on average. Put another way, you spent about 50 days working and paying taxes last year just to feed the war machine—and 23 days working to pay those Pentagon contractors and their millionaire CEOs.
Health
Axios - State efforts to regulate pharmacy benefit managers are colliding with federal law, reviving a power struggle over who can police the companies that manage drug benefits for most Americans. Why it matters: The states are trying to rein in the middlemen that negotiate drug prices and pay pharmacies, but they're running into a federal law that has the final say over employer health plans. More
Middle East
The Hill - China is breaking from its mostly quiet stance on the Iran war amid the U.S. blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, placing a strain on relations just weeks ahead of a planned meeting between President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Xi railed against the breaking of the international rule of law Tuesday during a reception in Beijing with Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, an outspoken critic of the war himself, saying their two countries should work together to “oppose the world’s retrogression to the law of the jungle.”
“Maintaining the authority of international rule of law means not using it when it suits us and abandoning it when it doesn’t,” Xi said during a meeting with the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, also on Tuesday.
The comments are the most direct that the Chinese leader has offered about the U.S.-Iran war since it began at the end of February. China is a major importer of Iranian oil, which the U.S. is seeking to cut off with the blockade that began on Monday.
NPR - President Trump announced that U.S. talks with Iran might resume within the next two days. This comes as Israel conducts negotiations for other Middle East wars. In Washington, D.C., yesterday, Israel and Lebanon held historic direct diplomatic talks — the first of this kind since 1993. Lebanon wants a ceasefire, but Israel won't agree until the Iranian-backed Lebanese militia Hezbollah disarms. Israel and Hezbollah continued to trade fire during the talks. Both sides agreed to more talks in a few weeks in Washington.
The U.S. is currently one week into a two-week ceasefire. The chances of a resolution are complicated by the fact that Iran wants the peace deal to include an end to the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, NPR’s Daniel Estrin tells Up First. Today, the U.S. military’s Central Command announced its completion of the blockade of Iranian ports in the Strait of Hormuz. The U.S. says about 90% of Iran’s economy relies on international trade by sea, and now that pathway is completely cut off. Estrin says a question remains as to whether this form of economic pressure on Iran is enough to bridge the very wide gaps between the U.S. and Iran.
The International Monetary Fund warns that the global economy is at risk of a recession amid the ongoing conflict in Iran. The IMF singled out the United Kingdom as one of the hardest-hit economies because it imports so much gas and oil, says NPR’s Fatima Al-Kassab. U.K. households will already be $500 worse off this year due to the war, according to the think tank The Resolution Foundation. Some analysts say that even if peace is achieved tomorrow, the shock to the system could take weeks or even months to recover from
The Guardian - Donald Trump has said that US-Iranian peace talks could resume in Islamabad over the next two days. The US president was speaking on Tuesday to a New York Post reporter who had gone to Islamabad for the first round of ceasefire talks over the weekend. She said Trump called her back, saying: “You should stay there, really, because something could be happening over the next two days, and we’re more inclined to go there.” He also said Pakistan’s army chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir, was doing a “great job” in arranging the talks.
A few issues for forthcoming elections
Hartmann Report - Tax cuts and loopholes for billionaires and big corporations that, in aggregate since 1981, add up to more than our total national debt of $38 trillion (in other words, Republicans borrowed $38 trillion in our names that our kids will repay and gave all of it to the morbidly rich).
-- Reagan’s 1983 suspension of enforcement of the anti-trust laws that has caused every industry in America to become a form of monopoly dominated by five or fewer massive corporations, gutting competition and raising prices.
— Five on-the-take Republicans on the Supreme Court ruling that corporations are persons and money is the same thing as “free speech,” handing our elections over to the highest bidders.
— Virtually every legacy federal regulatory agency being run by industry insiders working on a revolving-door basis.
— Members of Congress and the corrupt Trump regime engaging in insider trading with impunity.
— A GOP-aligned military-industrial complex that’s essentially taken over Pentagon procurement.
— An anti-labor Labor Department; an anti-education Education department; an anti-civil rights Civil Rights enforcement agency; an anti-environment Environmental Protection Agency; etc…
— Trump’s mysterious pardons that always seem to go to people who’ve given him millions of dollars (after Giuliani claimed he and Trump were selling pardons for two million each and splitting the money).
— The wholesale gutting of the Internal Revenue Service enforcement budget and staffing so that wealthy tax cheats and multinational corporations can evade taxes with near-impunity, shifting the burden onto working people.
— The systematic sabotage and privatization of public institutions — from the US Postal Service to public schools to prisons — so Republican-connected corporations can profit off services that used to be part of the commons and kick some of that money back to the GOP.
— The explosion of dark money after Citizens United, allowing billionaires and corporate fronts to secretly pour unlimited cash into elections with zero accountability.
— The weaponization of the Federal Communications Commission to loosen media ownership rules while threatening outlets that don’t sing Trump’s praises, accelerating consolidation so a handful of right-leaning billionaires dominate what Americans see and hear.
— Red-state-level voter suppression laws — strict ID requirements, purges of voter rolls, and reduced polling access — that entrench GOP power by making it harder for poor, young, female, and minority voters to participate.
— The Republican refusal to allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices for years, a policy written by and for Big Pharma that forces Americans to pay the highest prescription costs in the developed world.
— The systematic dismantling of campaign finance enforcement, turning the Federal Election Commission into a deadlocked, do-nothing body incapable of policing even blatant violations.
— The use of tax havens and trade policy to encourage offshoring American jobs while bigshot executives reap record profits and bonuses, hollowing out the American middle class.
— The Republican normalization of lobbyists literally writing legislation via groups like the Koch-funded ALEC, ensuring laws are crafted to benefit industries and billionaires rather than the public.
— The quiet rewriting of environmental and labor rules to favor polluting industries, often by GOP appointees with direct financial stakes in the companies they’re supposed to regulate.
— The strategic packing of the federal judiciary with hardcore rightwing/neofascist judges, often vetted by groups like the Federalist Society, ensuring decades of rulings that favor corporate and billionaire power, weaken labor and consumer protections, and shield the GOP’s corruption from any sort of meaningful accountability.
Jerome Powell
NY Times - President Trump vowed to fire Jerome H. Powell if he opted to stay on at the Federal Reserve after his term as chair ends, doubling down on a criminal investigation into the central bank that is threatening to delay the confirmation of Mr. Powell’s successor. Mr. Powell’s tenure as chair ends on May 15, but both the law and past precedent suggest that he can serve on a temporary basis until Mr. Trump’s pick to replace him, Kevin M. Warsh, is confirmed by the Senate. Mr. Powell can also stay on at the central bank as a governor until 2028. Read more ›
Cooperatives
Doug O'Brien, Real Clear Health - Cooperatives offer rural communities something direct and proven that the market alone has failed to deliver: Locally rooted, democratically governed health infrastructure that aligns health care delivery, workforce stability, and cost control directly and personally tailored to meet community needs rather than shareholder returns. When applied across the health ecosystem—home care, purchasing, and clinical services along with the ability to reach millions with healthcare messages—co-ops don’t just patch holes. They can transform how rural health works.
In rural communities, health care often does not begin in hospitals. It usually begins in homes—supporting older adults, people with disabilities, families managing chronic illness and behavior/diet changes that can prevent many healthcare needs. Yet home care workers are among the most undervalued in the health system, facing low wages and unstable hours, with little voice in their industry.
Home care cooperatives flip that model. As worker-owned enterprises, they give caregivers ownership, living wages, training, and a say in how care is delivered. The results are powerful: lower turnover, higher quality care, and stronger relationships between caregivers and patients. The difference is significant: turnover in the home care industry is as high as 80%; meanwhile, home care cooperatives report turnover rates between 15 and 30%.
Labor unions
The Guardian - Leaders of some of the largest unions in the US have unveiled a drive to jumpstart the country’s ailing labor movement and combat growing wealth inequality under Donald Trump.To make it easier for workers to join a union, and strengthen the hand of new unions negotiating with powerful businesses, a string of prominent organizers joined together to launch Union Now, a non-profit designed to increase labor union density.
“This is really about trying to put power in the hands of people,” said Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, the largest flight attendants union in the US, and one of the leaders of the push. She suggested the time had come for workers to start thinking – in some ways – more like the companies that employ them. “There’s 70% of workers who want a union, and 10% have them,” said Nelson. “If it were a company, they would figure out how to get the product into the hands of the 70% who wanted it.”
Oil & gas
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| Prices for gasoline at an Exxon filling station on Capitol Hill, Washington, DC, last week. Photograph: Douliery Olivier/ABACA/Shutterstock |
New data centers
Bangor Daily News - Maine's legislature easily approved what would be the nation's first statewide moratorium on building large new data centers.
- It signals a growing backlash to the projects that, fairly or unfairly, are tethered to concerns about rising power bills. While roughly a dozen other states are weighing moratoria, Maine may not be a bellwether.
- [T]his is unlikely to have a contagion effect on legislation beyond the Northeast, where high retail electricity prices have historically deterred hyperscalers," analysts with investment advisory and research firm Capstone said in a note.
- Gov. Janet Mills (D), who faces a tough June primary in her Senate campaign, has not said whether she will sign the bill.
April 14, 2026
Court cases
Koby Don Williams, a supervisor with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, was charged with attempted online enticement of a minor after engaging in an undercover operation where he believed he was communicating with a thirteen-year-old girl named “Rebecca.” In reality, “Rebecca” was a persona created by law enforcement. Williams exchanged nearly 100 texts and several phone calls, during which “Rebecca” repeatedly stated her age. Williams negotiated sexual acts and payment, offered to travel with “Rebecca,” and ultimately arranged a meeting, bringing cash, alcohol, and genericn Viagra. When arrested, Williams claimed he was conducting a human trafficking investigation.
The United States District Court for the Eastern District of Washington presided over Williams’s trial. Williams’s primary defense was that he never believed “Rebecca” was a minor, asserting that he thought he was communicating with an adult Read opinion.
7-Eleven reportedly closing 600 stores
Independent, UK - 7-Eleven will reportedly close more than 600 stores across North America this year as the company ramps up a multi-year restructuring of its business. The move follows a period of steady downsizing for the retail giant. Convenience Store Dive reports 7-Eleven has shuttered a combined 700 locations through 2024 and 2025.
....According to its fourth-quarter earning report, the company is moving away from the small, traditional shops of the past, TheStreet reported. Instead, it appears to be betting on larger stores that focus heavily on fresh food and a wider variety of drinks. Not every location on the list is disappearing though. Some will be turned into “wholesale fuel stores,” a specific category that the company keeps separate from its official retail store count.
Money
Bloomberg - Soaring electricity bills are triggering voter fury ahead of November’s midterm elections. The build-out of artificial intelligence data centers, along with tariffs and upgrades to an aging grid, is helping propel power prices higher—just as the war adds a surge in gasoline prices to affordability concerns
Middle East
Bloomberg - The US and Iran are considering further negotiations to extend a two-week ceasefire, as Donald Trump presses ahead with his naval blockade in the Strait of Hormuz. The aim is to hold fresh discussions before the current truce expires next week. Futures gained and oil fell on the news. Meanwhile, a US-sanctioned tanker is testing the blockade. And China broke its silence on the war with President Xi Jinping telling the visiting Spanish prime minister that “the international order is crumbling into disarray.”
NBC News - Diplomats from Israel and Lebanon are set to meet today for rare high-level talks after more than a month of conflict and a week after the U.S. and Iran agreed to a ceasefire. Tehran-backed Hezbollah fired rockets at Israel after the joint attack on Iran, and Israel has retaliated with attacks across Lebanon that have killed more than 2,000 people. The U.S. is mediating what are the first high-level talks between the two countries since 1993. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the U.S. ambassador to Lebanon will take part, a State Department official said. Hezbollah has urged Lebanon to pull out of the talks.
Mairav Zonszein, NY Times - In the days leading up to the two-week cease-fire between the United States and Iran, Israeli officials worried that the war might soon be over. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly ordered more strikes on Iran, as if trying to get in as much damage as possible before President Trump forced Israel to stop. No matter that Israel and the U.S. had been pounding Iran relentlessly for five weeks and Israel’s air force said it had nearly exhausted its vital targets against Iranian military and nuclear industries. Israel had already begun striking steel factories and petrochemical plants.
Then, on the day the cease-fire came into shaky effect — and most civilians across the region began to breathe a sigh of relief — Israel proceeded to launch one of the deadliest strikes on Lebanon ever, including in the heart of densely populated Beirut, without any warning. The operation, which the Israel Defense Forces say attacked Hezbollah command centers, hit 100 targets in 10 minutes, killed over 350 people and wounded well over 1,000, many of them civilians.
In most countries that have been at war, cease-fires are a welcome development, or, at the very least, something to which leaders aspire. But for Israel’s maximalist leaders, cease-fires are too often seen as getting in the way of efforts to finish the job. And even when Israel enters cease-fires, it continues to fire unilaterally — as with Gaza and Lebanon. War is increasingly the state’s go-to response to geopolitical challenges — not just the strategy but the norm. After the cease-fire with Iran was imposed upon Mr. Netanyahu, he issued a statement insisting that the job was not yet done. He then reiterated those comments in a speech on Saturday night: “The battle is not yet over.” When Mr. Trump forced a cease-fire in Gaza back in October, the Israeli prime minister said similar things declaring that Israel would eventually achieve its goals there — “the easy way” or “the hard way.”
For Israel’s leadership, if war is the status quo, the job is never done, and you can never lose, because you are always still in the fight.
JD Vance
Hayes Brown, MS NOW - To say that the last week was “bad” for Vice President JD Vance would be an understatement. To say that it was “a trash fire that seriously threatens to undermine Vance’s political future” would be slightly more accurate. Over the past seven days, the vice president has suffered setbacks on three continents, found himself in the middle of a fight between his boss (secular) and his boss (religious) and became the scapegoat for failing to end a war he reportedly never even wanted.
The American vice presidency has rarely been the best of gigs. The role was an afterthought for the Founders, and it shows in the hodge-podge of responsibilities that it has accrued over the years. But rarely has a vice president been hit harder by the disjointed, catch-all vibe the job brings with it than Vance over the last several days.
The most direct blow to Vance came Saturday in Pakistan. The vice president traveled from Washington for talks with Iranian diplomats and the stated goal of ending the war Trump launched. Spoiler: The talks did not end the war that Trump launched.
Polls
Newsweek - In the latest survey, Donald Trump’s approval cratered to 25%, down from 38%, among 18- to 24-year-old voters.
2028 US presidential primaries
Democratic
Kamala Harris 24%
Gavin Newsom 12%
Pete Buttigieg 9%
AOC 9%
——
Republican
JD Vance 36%
Marco Rubio 13%
Donald Trump Jr 13%
Ron DeSantis 6%
Democratic
Kamala Harris 24%
Gavin Newsom 12%
Pete Buttigieg 9%
AOC 9%
——
Republican
JD Vance 36%
Marco Rubio 13%
Donald Trump Jr 13%
Ron DeSantis 6%2028 Democratic Primary - Election Time
Kamala Harris 19.7% (+0.8)
Gavin Newsom 19.1%
Pete Buttigieg 13.9%
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez 12.7%
Mark Kelly 6.7% 
Independent, UK - On the cable channel's News Central program Monday, chief data analyst Harry Enten presented polling data from March showing that Trump is nearly 50 points less popular than the Pope among the American public. "You know, maybe President Trump is jealous of Pope Leo XIV, because it is a blowout. It is a blowout!" Enten said in his trademark excitable style. He pointed to an NBC News poll last month showing that the Pope had +34 point net favorability rating with Americans, compared to Trump's -12.
Health
Axios - Patients and clinicians are overturning more health insurer denials of medical services, mounting successful appeals more than half of the time last year, an analysis of 51,000 cases in New York state found. Why it matters: Improper claim denials can cut off access to critical care and lead to more medical debt.
....he percentage of insurer decisions overturned by external reviews in New York has increased steadily from 38% in 2019 to 52.5% in 2025, researchers wrote in JAMA Internal Medicine.
The rates varied by treatments and diagnoses, with nearly 8 in 10 appeals for home health care and 61% of appeals for substance use or addiction services overturned.
Bloomberg - Millions of people in the US are expected to lose their health coverage in coming years because of shrinking funding for federal programs. But few states would suffer a bigger blow than Florida, where hospitals are bracing for a large decline in revenue and some are having to cash out investments to cover health-care premiums.
Maine Morning Star - Alabama, Maine and Virginia recently adopted policies that make it easier for physician assistants to practice and serve more patients. Alabama became the 24th state to adopt the PA Licensure Compact, an agreement between states that authorizes these clinicians to practice across state lines. The compact can help remove administrative barriers for physician assistants, making it easier for them to fill gaps in rural and underserved communities that don’t have enough primary care medical professionals, advocates say.
Alabama has about 1,400 physician assistants. The legislation, sponsored by Republican state Rep. Paul Lee, received unanimous support in both the House and Senate.
Ten states — Alaska, Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, New Hampshire, New York, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island — have pending legislation that would allow them to join the compact, according to the American Academy of Physician Associates.
Netanyahu Reveals Trump Regime Reports to Him Every Day on Iran
New Republic - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday that the Trump administration reports to him every day about the ongoing war in Iran. In a meeting with Israel’s Cabinet ministers, Netanyahu said, “I spoke yesterday with Vice President JD Vance. He called me from his plane on his way back from Islamabad. He reported to me in detail, as this administration does every day, about the development of the negotiations. In this case, the explosion in the negotiations.”
Netanyahu went on to claim that the U.S. broke off the negotiations because Iran didn’t immediately reopen the Strait of Hormuz and wouldn’t commit to getting rid of all of its enriched uranium.
“The explosion came from the American side, which could not tolerate Iran’s blatant violation of the agreement to enter the negotiations. The agreement was that they would cease fire, and the Iranians would immediately open the gates. They did not do that. The Americans could not accept that,” Netanyahu continued.
The idea that the White House reports to Netanyahu daily is not likely to go over well with the growing number of Americans (including Republicans) who see the war in Iran as driven by Israel. Trump’s poll numbers are taking quite a beating over the Iran war, and after ceasefire talks failed over the weekend, those numbers are not likely to improve soon.
April 13, 2026
Donald Trump
Independent UK - President Donald Trump revealed new details about the Ultimate Fighting Championship cage match — complete with a custom-built outdoor octagon — slated to take place at the White House on his 80th birthday this summer.
“I’ve been involved with a lot of big events,” the president told reporters gathered outside the Oval Office Monday. “I’ve never had an event that’s had more interest than the UFC fight that we have right at the front door.”
“They’re gonna start building about a 4,500-seat arena,” he said, while gesturing toward the South Lawn. A much larger overflow area will be staged on the Ellipse, a 52-acre park just south of the White House grounds, he said.
“We’re gonna have maybe 100,000 — 50,000 to 100,000 people — I guess,” Trump said. “They’re building tremendous stages, and they’re gonna have massive screens of the fight.”
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