Today marks Governor Abigail Spanberger's 100th day in office. Her accomplishments include:
—Passing paid family and medical leave
—Raising the minimum wage to $15
—Reducing prescription drug costs
—Supporting development of affordable housing
—Guaranteeing access to contraception
—Creating a free tax-filing program
—Making corporate wage theft a felony
—Strengthening bans on ghost guns
—Ending tax breaks for Confederate groups
April 27, 2026
Trump fires all members of the National Science Board
The Guardian - Trump just fired all 24 members of the National Science Board. Every single one. By email. No warning. No reason given. The board has existed since 1950.
The National Science Board is the independent body that oversees the National Science Foundation, the agency that distributes $9 billion in research grants every year.
Its members are scientists and engineers from universities and industry. They serve six-year staggered terms specifically so they cross presidential administrations and stay independent of whoever is in power.
On Friday, every single one of them got the same boilerplate email from Mary Sprowls of the Presidential Personnel Office: "On behalf of President Donald J Trump, I am writing to inform you that your position as a member of the National Science Board is terminated, effective immediately. Thank you for your service."
....The NSF funds the basic science behind MRIs. Cellphones. LASIK eye surgery. GPS. The internet itself. The Antarctic research stations. The deep-space telescopes. The research vessels mapping the ocean floor. Every breakthrough that made America the world's leader in science for the better part of a century traces back through grants this agency made and this board approved.
The board chair, Victor McCrary, was actively advising Congress on Trump's proposed 55% cut to NSF's budget. The board was helping fight back. So Trump fired the board.
....Keivan Stassun, a physicist at Vanderbilt, said NSF's leadership had already stopped responding to board oversight requests months ago. "We would ask them, 'Are you following board governance directives?' And their answer would be, in effect, 'We don't listen to you anymore.'"
Now there's no board to answer to.
Rep. Zoe Lofgren of California, the top Democrat on the House Science Committee, called it "the latest stupid move made by a president who continues to harm science and American innovation. Will the president fill the NSB with MAGA loyalists who won't stand up to him as he hands over our leadership in science to our adversaries?"
That's the actual question.
Because while Trump is firing American scientists, China is building research universities at a rate we cannot match. The CDC just buried a study showing vaccines work.
RFK Jr. runs HHS. The EPA is gutted. The Forest Service is being broken. Half of American children are breathing dangerous air. And now the people who decide what gets researched in the United States have all been fired by email on a Friday afternoon.
Voting
The Guardian - California voters will decide in November whether to require photo identification to cast a ballot, making California the latest battleground in a long-running effort by conservatives to push voter ID laws that have been bolstered in recent years by Donald Trump’s repeated and unfounded accusations of widespread voter fraud. Nearly 1 million Californians signed on to support the ballot measure championed by Carl DeMaio, a Republican state representative from San Diego.
...Democrats have historically opposed voter ID laws, viewing them as unnecessary obstacles to casting a ballot that are likely to disproportionately affect voters who are low-income and people of color.
If the ballot measure passes, California voters would be required to present a photo identification when voting at a polling place, or submit a four-digit pin when sending a mail-in ballot.
Climate
NY Times - Global warming is accelerating — the last three years have been the warmest on record — and future heat waves are projected to be longer, as well as more frequent and severe. In New York City, where it’s hotter than the rest of the state and more than a quarter of residents live in poverty, extreme heat can expose a trifecta of crises: housing, energy affordability and climate change.
For low-income residents with health conditions, heat waves can be especially dangerous, said Earle Chambers, an epidemiologist at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx.
“Extreme heat can affect people with cardiovascular health issues, chronic kidney disease or anything that is exacerbated by dehydration,” Dr. Chambers said. And heat-related health care costs, such as emergency room visits, can leave people with less to spend on essentials like child care or rent, worsening an already precarious situation, he said.
“We wanted to get a full national picture,” said Anne Weir Schechinger, the report’s author. “And the sheer size of the numbers—there are over 62 million people impacted by this—I was not expecting that.”
The government set the legal limit of nitrate in water at 10 milligrams per liter in the early 1960s to help prevent cases of “blue baby” syndrome, a condition in which infants have low levels of blood oxygen. But research has since found that concentrations at 5 milligrams per liter and even lower are linked to colorectal and other cancers, thyroid disease and birth defects. Health advocates have pushed for lowering the limit, but the Environmental Protection Agency has yet to do so. The Trump administration gutted the division that would continue a review process started under the Biden administration, Schechinger noted.
Meanwhile. . .
Newsweek - French Broad Chocolates PBC has recalled various boxes of chocolate bonbons after discovering they may contain undeclared walnuts, potentially posing a “serious or life-threatening allergic reaction” for consumers with tree nut allergies, according to the announcement, published by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
California voters will decide in November whether to require photo identification to cast a ballot, making the state the latest battleground in a long-running effort by conservatives to push voter ID laws
Woman Goes into Labor on Delta Flight with 2 Passengers Helping Deliver the Baby Midair
China
NY Times - A research arm of the Chinese government said it had published an atlas of deep-sea mineral deposits, highlighting Beijing’s ambitions to mine the ocean floor and underscoring its disputed claims to waters that neighboring nations consider theirs.
Experts say the maps, in addition to pinpointing mineral deposits found in the deep ocean, give China’s military a thorough understanding of the seafloor in strategically important waters, providing an advantage if submarine warfare were to break out.
The announcement this month by the China Geological Survey puts pressure on other countries that have been ramping up their own seabed mining efforts, in part to reduce their dependence on China for critical minerals and rare earth elements. Ocean sediments are rich in valuable resources including cobalt, nickel, and manganese.
“China is pouring enormous resources in an effort to emerge as a world-leading oceanographic power,” said Bruce Jones, a naval affairs and foreign policy expert at the Brookings Institution. The United States historically dominated in ocean-science fields, he said. Now, China is closing the gap, increasing China’s military capabilities and equipping it with the knowledge needed to fight underwater, Dr. Jones said.
Israel
The Atlantic - The relationship between the United States and Israel is in crisis. Six in 10 Americans have a negative view of Israel, and a majority of those under 50 in both major parties view Israel as well as its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, negatively. After the brutal Gaza war, a large percentage of liberal-leaning Generation Z considers Israel a pariah state. Democratic candidates are scrambling to distance themselves from Israel and its controversial leader; earlier this month, 40 of the 47 Democratic senators voted against a military aid package for the country. And hostility toward Israel is spilling over into hostility toward Jews. Liberal influencers, activists, podcasters, and even politicians are invoking age-old anti-Semitic tropes with frightening regularity.
Health
Axios - Hospitals that treat patients who require extended stays have been closing at a rapid clip, driving up demand for the remaining beds and prompting health systems to appeal to the Trump administration and Congress for relief.The industry says it's unable to discharge certain patients who need long-term intensive care, which is adding to hospital overcrowding and stressing a system that's already experiencing a shortage of beds. It's also stoking a debate over the cost of caring for patients with serious wounds or organ failure, or who are on ventilators once they're stabilized.
More than 25% of long-term care hospitals have closed over the past 10 years, according to the American Hospital Association. Hospital groups blame Medicare policies dating to the Obama administration that they say shortchange long-term care hospitals. The issue is that they only give full payments for patients who've spent at least three days in an ICU or been on a ventilator for at least 96 hours.
.... Long-term care hospitals have long been blamed for driving up the cost of post-acute care and accounted for $5.5 billion in annual spending, according to one 2019 study.
- In 202, Stanford and MIT health economists estimated that Medicare could save about $4.6 billion annually without harming patients by sending them to skilled nursing facilities or home, instead of long-term care hospitals. More
Workers
NY Times - In a working paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research, Niklas Engbom, Aniket Baksy and Daniele Caratelli analyzed Current Population Survey federal data from 1982 to 2023 to try to figure out why wage growth has been weak over four decades. They estimate that “employed workers today are about half as likely to receive a better-paying outside offer as they were in the 1980s,” and major salary jumps often happen when you move to another company.
.... Engbom and his colleagues offer two main arguments for why American workers are less likely than they used to be 40 years ago to receive competitive offers. The first is “increased employer concentration.....”
The media industry is a great example of this. There used to be a thriving network of local newspapers and TV and radio stations to work for, but more and more of those outlets have shut down or are owned by a handful of conglomerates. Consolidation has also gone up in the tech and health care industries....
The other reason Engbom and his co-authors offer for the broken job ladder is the rise of noncompete agreements that prevent employees from working for a competitor, often in a defined geographic region and for a specific amount of time. While state laws concerning noncompete clauses vary, Engbom said that in the 1980s, courts started siding with employers more and allowing these agreements to be enforced. The Federal Trade Commission issued a rule banning their use in 2024, but business groups sued to get the rule overturned, and later that year the ban was blocked by the courts.
Overfishing
NPR - Southeast Asia is facing a critical environmental crisis, fueled by overfishing. The region produces over half of the world's fish. Since the 1950s, the Center for Strategic and International Studies estimates that 70-95% of fish stocks in the region have been depleted and are at risk of collapse. The trend is exacerbated by the rise of industrial-scale fishing, much of which is illegal. But legal overfishing also factors in the crisis. The U.S. imports about 50% of its seafood from Asia, with China, Vietnam, Indonesia, and India accounting for nearly $6.3 billion in trade, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. This activity harms unique ecosystems and significantly impacts artisanal and small-scale fishers in the region. Check out these photos from three countries showing the complex issues associated with overfishing.
Pete Hegseth
The Hill - A growing group of Senate Republicans are losing confidence in Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s leadership of the Defense Department and some GOP lawmakers would like to see him “move on,” though they say it’s President Trump’s call. Senate Republicans who spoke to The Hill on the condition of anonymity say Hegseth wouldn’t be confirmed to head the Pentagon if he were renominated by Trump today and they say senior staff turmoil at the Defense Department under Hegseth’s leadership is a major concern.
Republican defense hawks in the Senate aren’t happy about media reports that Hegseth pushed popular Army Chief of Staff Randy George to resign in early April, and they were surprised and disappointed to hear that Hegseth fired Navy Secretary John Phelan this past week. One Republican senator who requested anonymity said there have long been questions within the Senate GOP conference over Hegseth’s lack of experience managing a large and complex bureaucracy, as well as leeriness about his unconventional and often brash leadership style.
April 26, 2026
Donald Trump
Journalist — Why does such attacks keep
happening to you?
happening to you?
Trump — The people who make the biggest impacts,
like Abraham Lincoln, are the one they go after.
I hate to say it but I’m honored to be one.
Pentagon
AFGE, the largest union
representing 300,000 employees at the Department of Defense (DOD), expressed
outrage after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth appears to have issued a memo
directing agencies and components to terminate all collective bargaining
agreements between the DOD and AFGE. Read more »
Congress
Bowers News Media - Early on Thursday morning, the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate approved a budget resolution to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) for the remainder of Donald Trump's term in office without any reforms to the agencies. The vote was 50-48, with all Democrats and two Republicans voting against it.
Polls
NATIONAL POLL By CNBC
Interactive Polls
Pres. Trump
Approve: 40% (-5)
Disapprove: 58% (+6)
Lowest approval in either term by CNBC
——
Trump's net approval on key issues
Southern Border: +5
Economy: -21 (record low)
Tariffs: -23
Dealing with Iran: -25
Inflation: -39 (new low)
——
Generic Ballot
DEM: 49% (-1)
GOP: 45% (-1)
Southern Border: +5
Economy: -21 (record low)
Tariffs: -23
Dealing with Iran: -25
Inflation: -39 (new low)
——
Generic Ballot
DEM: 49% (-1)
GOP: 45% (-1)
Common Dreams - With the national average price for a gallon of gasoline sitting at $4.059 on Friday, a Reuters/Ipsos poll showed that fuel costs “are a very big concern” for 78% of Americans, and 77% blame President Donald Trump for the recent price spikes.
Cities powered by renewable energy
[MSN] - Six US cities powered entirely by renewable energy sources like wind, solar, and hydro The shift toward the use of sustainable energy sources is a profound transition in the energy system in the US. Here are six towns and cities in the US that are successfully using renewable energy for their electricity supplies, doing away with fossil fuels.
The press and Trump
Heather Cox Richardson - Since he entered the political arena, Trump has denigrated the press and even urged supporters to attack journalists, but in his second term his administration has gone further, trying to silence the press with lawsuits or threats of them against media outlets and individuals, blocking access to the White House and the Pentagon for journalists Trump dislikes, personally attacking female journalists, arresting independent journalists Don Lemon and Georgia Fort, and raiding the home of Washington Post political correspondent Hannah Natanson. Inviting him to address the press at a fancy dinner seemed to normalize his attacks on the First Amendment...
The Framers of our government enshrined the right to freedom of the press in our Constitution along with the right to gather together, to practice any religion we want (including none at all), the right to say what we want, and the right to ask our government to do (or not to do) things. After writing a new constitution that created a far stronger national government than existed under the Articles of Confederation, which had underpinned the government since 1777 (although the Articles were not ratified until 1781), the Framers designed the ten amendments that make up the Bill of Rights to hold back government power.
The power to control what citizens can publish about the government would give leaders the power to destroy democracy. A free press is imperative to keep people informed about what leaders are doing. Lose it, and those in power can do whatever they wish without accountability.
Federal judges receiving hundreds of threats
Alternet - Federal judges have received more than 800 threats since Trump's rhetoric intensified — and retired members of the judiciary are now speaking out. “According to the U.S. Marshals Service, there were 564 threats against federal judges in 2025 and there have been 275 already this year,” wrote USA Today’s Rex Huppke on Sunday. “The Marshals Service asked Congress for an additional $34 million in April, noting that ‘the threat environment’ is ‘unlikely to decrease in the foreseeable future.’”
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