Trump and the law

ACYN -  Federal Judge Luttig: Every single lower federal court judge has honored his or her oath to the Constitution of the United States to the letter. In almost every instance, those judges collectively have struck down as unconstitutional essentially every initiative of this president, as the Constitution required them to do.

So today, the only people who can save America are the lower federal court judges of the United States, and they are determined to do so simply by honoring their oath in every one of these cases.

There are hundreds of them. Every single time Donald Trump opens his mouth or takes an action, the American people are forced to go into court and litigate. That’s the tragic place America finds itself in today.

But to complete the thought, at this point it is only the Supreme Court of the United States that is standing in the way of the American people saving their country.

Trump stuff

Washington Post - For nearly two centuries, the White House’s main entrance — framed by a row of graceful Ionic columns — has been a signature image of the seat of American power.

Now the Trump-appointed head of a federal arts commission is proposing to replace them with a more ornate style favored by President Donald Trump. Those more decorative columns, a style known as Corinthian, are considered the most luxurious in classical architecture and appear on buildings such as the U.S. Capitol and the Supreme Court. They have long been deployed on Trump’s properties, and the president has handpicked them for his planned White House ballroom, too.

“Corinthian is the highest order [of column], and that’s what our other two branches of government have,” Rodney Mims Cook Jr., the Trump appointee who chairs the Commission of Fine Arts, a federal panel charged with advising the president on design matters, said in an interview last week. “Why the White House didn’t originally use them, at least on the north front, which is considered the front door, is beyond me.”

Tump and Israel's Middle East war

New Republic - None of us knows how long this war is going to last. But it’s certainly no Venezuela, which took—ready?—two and a half hours. Donald Trump may have told British Prime Minister Keir Starmer over the weekend that the war was “already won.” But also over the weekend, a prewar intelligence report was leaked to two Washington Post reporters showing that the National Intelligence Council, a panel of independent intel experts, seems to think that dislodging the regime could take a very long time indeed—at $37 million an hour, a rate that is almost sure to rise, especially if ground troops get involved.

Ethnicity

The Hill - Texas and Florida are facing criticism and potential legal challenges over moves to exclude Islamic schools from their school voucher programs. Both states have tried to designate the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the largest U.S. Muslim advocacy group, as a foreign terrorist organization, despite it lacking a criminal conviction or any similar federal categorization. And now, GOP efforts to expand school choice options are running directly into what critics say is a rising wave of Islamophobia.

                          Damaan, AKA 'Philly's Finest!'

Weather

Newsweek - Heavy snow, strong winds, and ice are forecast to hit northern and western areas of the U.S., as the National Weather Service (NWS) warns people in nine states including Alaska and Hawaii to "stay indoors until conditions improve."   Other states likely to be most affected by heavy snow, winds, and ice are Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, South Dakota, North Dakota, Wyoming and Montana.  

Immigration

NY Times -    For years, the agricultural sector has faced a tight labor market as farmworkers age and fewer new immigrants and younger Americans are willing to toil in the fields. Top Trump administration officials vowed that mass deportations would help, leading to “higher wages with better benefits” and a “100 percent American work force.”

But the administration has quietly acknowledged in recent months that its immigration raids and crackdown on the border have aggravated the issue. So it has instead turned to an alternative source, making it cheaper for farmers to hire immigrant farmworkers on temporary visas.

Many farmers have celebrated those changes, made to an increasingly popular visa program known as H-2A, noting the difficulty in hiring American workers and tough economic conditions for the industry. But immigration hawks and labor unions alike are opposed, arguing the move will only increase the share of foreign workers and hurt native workers and suppress their wages.

The simmering debate underscores how some of the administration’s top goals of reducing immigration, keeping food prices low and helping American workers may inevitably conflict. The competing interests at play also show the spillover effects of Mr. Trump’s hard-line approach to legal and illegal immigration.

MS NOW - The White House seems to know it is losing its immigration fight in the court of public opinion. A sign of that came recently when a White House deputy chief of staff reportedly urged House Republicans in private to stop emphasizing “mass deportations” and focus instead on efforts to remove violent criminals, argues Zeeshan Aleem. But a change in messaging may not be enough to stop a slide in support for Trump’s approach to immigration, and warning signs abound that his own voters may be splitting over the issue. Read more. 

Meanwhile. ..

10 most-visited national parks

Trump & Israel's war on Iran

NY Times -  A torrent of fake videos and images generated by artificial intelligence have overrun social networks during the first weeks of the war in Iran. The videos — showing huge explosions that never happened, decimated city streets that were never attacked or troops protesting the war who do not exist — have added a chaotic and confusing layer to the conflict online.

The New York Times identified over 110 unique A.I.-generated images and videos from the past two weeks about the war in the Middle East. The fakes covered every aspect of the fighting: They falsely depicted screaming Israelis cowering as explosions ripped through Tel Aviv, Iranians mourning their dead and American military vessels bombarded with missiles and torpedoes.

Time -   Federal authorities have reportedly issued warnings about potential Iranian attacks within the U.S. since the beginning of the war, raising particular concern about cyberattacks and transmissions that could activate “sleeper assets” outside of Iran.

In late February, the FBI ...warned California police departments that it had received "unverified information" about Iran having “aspired” to conduct a “surprise attack” in the state using drones launched from "an unidentified vessel off the coast," ABC News first reported.

Experts tell TIME that Iran has the capability to carry out attacks in the U.S. by several means, including through cyberattacks and various groups or individuals it has forged connections with in North America, and that retaliatory efforts could persist even after American strikes in the Middle East end.

But John D. Cohen, who acted as the Under-Secretary for Intelligence and Analysis during the Obama Administration, explains that the U.S. is well prepared to handle these potential attacks.

MS NOW -  Roughly a fifth of the world’s traded oil passes through the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway at the mouth of the Persian Gulf. But Iranian forces have laid mines and threatened any ship that attempts to pass through, writes Adam Hudacek. The resulting bottleneck is expected to send crude oil prices even higher, and by extension, cause hikes in consumer goods, steel, aluminum and roughly a third of the world’s fertilizer supply — sending food prices soaring. That gives Iran the ability to exert pressure on the U.S. to end the conflict. Read more.

The Guardian -   Donald Trump said on Saturday that the United States may carry out more strikes on Iran’s vital Kharg Island oil export hub “just for fun”, rejecting the prospect of a swift peace deal with Tehran.

“The terms aren’t good enough yet,” the US president told NBC News. The Iranian regime wants to make an agreement, he claimed.

After days of conflicting messaging from the White House on how much longer it will continue to wage war on Iran, Trump alleged that US strikes had “totally demolished” most of Kharg Island, and told the network that its military may hit site “a few more times just for fun”.

Who's getting the most out of the Iran war?

Robert Reich -   That war is costing the U.S. about $1 billion a day. The Pentagon’s budget is around $1 trillion this year, and Trump wants an additional $500 billion. Because of the war, the cost of oil has topped $100 a barrel, and the price of a gallon of gas at the U.S. pump now averages $3.67 — up from $2.92 before the war....

A new analysis by government watchdog Open the Books found that as the 2025 fiscal year was ending, Hegseth’s Pentagon spent: nearly $100,000 on a Steinway grand piano to outfit the home of the Air Force chief of staff; $60,719 on premium office furniture, including at least one luxurious $1,844 Aeron Chair; $12,540 for three-tiered fruit basket stands; $2 million on Alaskan king crab, $6.9 million on lobster tail, $15.1 million on ribeye steak, and $1 million on salmon; $124,000 for ice cream machines; and $26,000 for sushi preparation tables.

The Pentagon has failed every audit since it was legally required to start submitting them in 2018, and reports say it will continue to fail them at least through 2028.

The ballooning profits of military contractors are helped by their near monopoly on defense production. Since the 1990s, the number of prime contractors for the Defense Department has shrunk from 55 to five....

These giants have been spending more on enriching their investors than expanding production. Between 2020 and 2025, top military contractors devoted $110 billion to stock buybacks and dividends — more than double what they spent on capital expenditures — which boosted their stock values and the pay packages of their CEOs...

Finally, there’s Trump’s on-again, off-again ally Vladimir Putin. In just two weeks of war, Russia has reaped an estimated $6.9 billion from the increase in oil prices and the easing of sanctions.

How drones have changed the nature of war

Axios  - Cheap, mass-produced drones have permanently changed the face of warfare, Axios' Zachary Basu and Colin Demarest report.

• Without them, Russia's overwhelming manpower and firepower advantage would grind Ukraine into dust.
• Without them, the Houthis are a ragtag militia in Yemen — not a force that brought global shipping to its knees.
• Without them, a sanctioned, isolated Iran couldn't inflict nearly as much damage to the most powerful military in world history.

Size no longer guarantees victory. Any nation, any proxy, any rebel group with access to cash and commercial components can now bleed a superpower slowly, expensively and without a clean answer.

Iran's Shahed drone — said to cost between $20,000 and $50,000 — has been the regime's great equalizer, forcing the U.S. and allies to respond in some cases with interceptor missiles costing millions of dollars each.

• In the first week of the war alone, Tehran fired nearly 2,000 drones at U.S. bases and allied targets across 12 countries — slamming into airports, five-star hotels and oil infrastructure across the Gulf.
• Six U.S. service members were killed March 1 when an Iranian drone evaded air defenses and struck an operations center in Kuwait.

Ukraine, fighting for its life against Russian Shaheds for the past four years, is now the world's foremost authority on stopping them.

• As Axios first reported, Ukrainian officials offered Washington their anti-drone technology eight months before the Iran war started. The Trump administration turned them down.
• After the war started, the U.S. reversed course. Ukrainian specialists are now deployed to the Gulf to train U.S. and allied forces.

The U.S. has rushed 10,000 Merops interceptor drones to the Middle East, according to Army Secretary Dan Driscoll.

• The AI-enabled systems, stress-tested in Ukraine, cost roughly $14,000 each — cheaper than the Shahed it's designed to kill.
• The Pentagon says Iranian drone attacks are now down 95% from their peak.

Jeffrey Epstein

Headline USA -   Sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein worked as a “financial bounty hunter” for the U.S. government, according to a memo included in the “Epstein files”—the trove of roughly 3 million documents released about the deceased multimillionaire pursuant to congressional legislation.

A financial bounty hunter refers to someone who tracks and recovers stolen assets.

“At some point in time, Jeffrey Epstein worked for the United States government as a financial bounty hunter,” states the unsigned and undated memo. “He has retained significant political connections with both Israel and the United States.”

Though the memo isn’t signed or dated, it does contain information suggesting that it’s a government document. For instance, the memo recommends obtaining information about Epstein from government agencies. It also accuses him of violating the “International Megan’s Law to Prevent Child Exploitation and Other Sexual Crimes Through Advanced Notification of Traveling Sex Offenders,” which requires sex offenders like Epstein to inform the government about his international trips.

Newsbreak  - A prison guard on duty the night Jeffrey Epstein died inside his jail cell will appear before the House Oversight Committee. According to a report, the panel requested that Tova Noel — who was fired from the Metropolitan Correctional Center(MCC) in New York City following the disgraced financier'sshocking death — testify in Washington, D.C., on March 26. A letter to Noel signed by chairman James Comer reads: "Due to public reporting, documents released by the Department of Justice and documents obtained by the committee, the committee believes you have information that will assist in its investigation."

Decline of book reviews

Derek Wrissoff, Book Work -  While we all know that newspapers more generally have been closing, shrinking, or consolidating, the reality for book review sections is even starker. It’s no longer just the smaller market papers that have given up covering books, but now even the largest dailies have ceased or cut back. When I put together the list back in September, the Associated Press had just announced that they were no longer publishing reviews. And we were dealt another big blow a few weeks ago with the shuttering of The Washington Post’s “Book World.” This brings the current list to just the following:

The New York Times Book Review (and its daily review)

The Boston Globe

The Minneapolis Star Tribune

USA Today

The Wall Street Journal

Financial Times

The Guardian

The Chicago Tribune

With occasional coverage still to be found in the LA Times & NY Post

What about magazines?

Magazines have been facing similar pressures to newspapers, with print circulation dropping dramatically. And online, in the world ruled by click-rate analytics, book review coverage has never drawn impressive numbers. Thankfully, despite all this, there are still mainstream glossy magazines that are covering books and see it as part of their identity as a publication and something their readers expect. Outlets such as the New Yorker, New Republic, Atlantic, Harper’s, and the Nation are still giving much-needed space to reviews, particularly of nonfiction, and, of course, the New York Review of Books and the Los Angeles Review of Books remain dedicated to their book-focused missions. Nevertheless, you can see that everyone is struggling to earn the ad revenue that justifies the space, and in some cases, the overall space of the publication is still shrinking.

Solar power

NPR - Easy-to-install solar panels that plug into regular outlets are gaining popularity as Americans worry about rising energy costs. These plug-in or balcony solar panels can reduce a homeowner's or renter's utility bill right away. To make them more widely available in the U.S., state lawmakers are proposing bills to eliminate complicated utility connection agreements. These are often required for larger solar rooftop installations, and most utilities say they should apply to plug-in solar too. But some legislators have delayed votes on these bills after electric utilities have raised safety concerns, primarily about lineworker safety during outages. Advocates for plug-in solar say concerns about the new technology have been addressed, and utilities are actually worried about losing business.

Deep sea mining

NPR - As global interest in deep-sea mining grows, the International Seabed Authority is developing rules for countries to lease and commercially mine internationally. The U.S. has opted out of the process and is forging ahead on its own. In January, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said it would expedite permits to mine in international waters. The announcement alarmed conservation groups, who expressed concern about cuts to the environmental review process. Rebecca Loomis, staff attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council. Says it's "exponentially more risky to cut off opportunities for analysis and public input" in this "brand-new industry."

Food

Costco Recalls Meatloaf in 26 States Due To ‘Fatal Infections’

NPR - Fast food chains are launching new protein-packed products to attract American consumers. This push follows the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' January dietary guidelines, which encourage prioritizing protein at every meal. But nutrition experts have mixed feelings about this focus, noting that Americans are generally not protein-deficient. (via IPM News)

Trump and the law

MS NOW  -   The D.C. Bar’s disciplinary case against a Trump administration attorney is more than just professional misconduct: It's a key test of whether the legal profession will hold government officials accountable for using their power to try to silence private institutions, writes Duncan Levin, a criminal defense attorney and former federal prosecutor. As interim U.S. attorney in D.C. last year, Ed Martin threatened Georgetown University Law Center over its policies on diversity, equity and inclusion, in an unfortunate echo of McCarthy-era blacklists and the Watergate scandal. If the Bar finds that Martin abused his position, sanctions could range from a reprimand to a suspension of his law license or even disbarment. 

The Guardian -   A New York lobbyist and attorney connected to a presidential pardon issued by Donald Trump in November has been charged with attempting to extort a former client and the client’s son over an alleged $500,000 debt.

Joshua Nass, 34, was arrested on Friday after being charged in federal court in Brooklyn with attempted Hobbs Act extortion. US justice department prosecutors contend that Nass threatened a client for payment that he claimed he was owed for his services.

Nass is alleged to have provided an unnamed individual with a phone number as well as addresses while instructing the individual to visit the client at his home. It was an effort to intimidate the client into paying up, as prosecutors put it.

According to prosecutors, Nass told the individual in question to “do anything and everything” to force to the payment, including “physically assaulting” the client’s son or “forcing him into a car with masked men and threatening him to make someone in [the son’s] family pay Nass”.

It is also alleged that Nass told the individual that he could not be a “human being” with the client’s son if the son rebuffed paying. Nass is alleged to have agreed to pay the individual “at least $15,000 for his continued efforts”...

Nass had a role in Trump’s 14 November 2025 pardon of Joseph Schwartz, who had been convicted in Arkansas over his ownership of a nursing-home empire that had failed to pay nearly $40m in employment and payroll taxes – and had been charged with Medicaid fraud.

Abortion

The Guardian -   Wyoming’s Republican-dominated legislature passed a six-week abortion ban this week, prompting a new lawsuit and some lawmakers to call it “an insult to voters and our institution”.

Mark Gordon, Wyoming’s governor, signed the bill while simultaneously warning of its constitutional hurdles, noting that prior abortion bans were struck down by the state’s all Republican-appointed supreme court this January. Almost immediately, an identical set of plaintiffs filed suit against the new bill.

This bill effectively makes abortion illegal after six weeks of pregnancy, a time when many women have not yet learned that they are pregnant. Any person violating the law would face a felony punishable by prison sentence of up to five years.

Donald Trump

Trump fixates on trivial matters as Iran death toll mounts

Over a half million water bottles recalled

Health.com -   More than 650,000 plastic water bottles have been recalled in two states, according to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Valley Springs Artesian Gold, LLC, initally recalled the products on Feb. 6 because the water was bottled under "insanitary conditions." On Feb. 26, the FDA gave the recall the second-highest risk level, Class II, meaning the risk of severe health effects is low, but there is a possibility of temporary or reversible consequences.1

College and universities

The Hill -   The Trump administration’s attacks on universities have led to a slowdown in hiring, with international academics particularly caught in the crossfire.  

Colleges are being forced to navigate both threats to federal funding and immigration roadblocks, a landscape that many find increasingly untenable to navigate.  

...The loss of money led to hiring freezes at top universities such as Harvard and thousands to be laid off at Johns Hopkins University.  

While some schools have reached deals with the administration to restore funding and others won it back in the courts, restoration has not translated to a resurgence in hiring. 

Donald Trump

Futurism -   President Donald Trump’s Truth Social bid, Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), has burned through an alarming amount of cash. The company, which owns the president’s struggling far-right social media platform, issued an alarming financial report earlier this month, revealing that it had lost a staggering $712.1 million last year — while earning a pitiful $3.7 million.

The disastrous figures once again highlighted how the company, 52 percent of which is owned by Trump and which trades with a ticker of his initials DJT, has firmly cemented itself as a gauge of the president’s popularity rather than as a viable business.

As Trump’s war on Iran rages on, polls have shown that his approval rating continues to dip. A similar story is playing out at his social media company, with shares reaching an all-time low on Friday of $9.73. That’s an enormous fall from the company’s record high of just shy of $80 shortly after the company merged with a blank check acquisition company in March 2024, a move that allowed it to be publicly traded.

Economic Development, Climate Justice, and Prosperous Communities in the 21st Century

We usually treat our big problems as global or national, but here's a new book that looks at these issues from the perspective of one state...and it's well worth doiing. The whole book is readable here   

Yes, Trump is impeachable

Ralph Nader - It is long overdue for the Democrats in Congress to lay the groundwork for impeaching Trump and removing him from office. Trump provides them with the impeachable evidence openly and brazenly every day. No president in history has ever declared that “Then I have Article II, where I have the right to do anything I want as president.” No President has ever dared to say, as did Trump in an interview with Reuters on January 15, 2026, that “…when you think of it, we shouldn’t even have an election” and meant it.

Based on their detailed declaration against King George III in the Declaration of Independence (1776) and the Congressional safeguards in the Constitution drafted in 1787, our Founders, were they members of Congress today, would unanimously vote articles of impeachment against Trump for rampant constitutional lawlessness.

Here are seventeen articles of Impeachment against dictator Trump that many constitutional law scholars would endorse, drafted by constitutional law specialist and practitioner, Bruce Fein. (For the full text of the articles of Impeachment, here.)

ARTICLE 1—WAR POWER-MURDER-PIRACY

ARTICLE 2—MILITARIZATION OF DOMESTIC LAW ENFORCEMENT

ARTICLE 3—SERIAL UNCONSTITUTIONAL DETENTIONS AND DEPORTATIONS

ARTICLE 4—BRIBERY

ARTICLE 5—RETALIATION AGAINST CONSTITUTIONALLY PROTECTED SPEECH OR ASSOCIATION

ARTICLE 6—ABUSE OF THE PARDON POWER—SABOTAGING THE RULE OF LAW

ARTICLE 7—ILLEGALLY CRIPPLING OR DEFUNDING PROGRAMS TO PROTECT CONSUMERS, THE NEEDY, WORKERS, AND THE ENVIRONMENT

ARTICLE 8—USURPATION OF THE CONGRESSIONAL POWER OF THE PURSE

ARTICLE 9—CONTEMPT OF CONGRESS—SECRET GOVERNMENT

ARTICLE 10—PERVERTING LAW ENFORCEMENT TO PERSECUTE POLITICAL OPPONENTS AND BENEFIT FRIENDS

ARTICLE 11—SUSPENDING OR DISPENSING WITH LAWS

ARTICLE 12—FLOUTING SECTION 1 OF THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT

ARTICLE 13—SPECIOUS NATIONAL EMERGENCY—FOREIGN TERRORIST ORGANIZATION DECLARATIONS

ARTICLE 14—DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN EMOLUMENTS CLAUSES

ARTICLE 15—CHRONIC DECEIT AIMING AT DICTATORSHIP

ARTICLE 16—TREASON

ARTICLE 17—MEGALOMANIA-HUBRIS

Already, a growing majority of the American people want Trump Impeached. They are feeling the impact where they live, work, and raise their families of Trump’s dictatorial, corporatist regime, which is endangering, weakening, and wrecking America! 

Trump regime

NY Times - Investors in a deal to create a U.S.-controlled TikTok are set to pay $10 billion to the U.S. Treasury, the latest example of the Trump administration’s inserting the federal government into corporate deal making in unusual ways.

The fee, which the U.S. government is considering a transaction fee for its role in helping bring about the deal, will be paid by new investors in the U.S. TikTok, according to two people briefed on the matter who were not authorized to speak publicly about the transaction.

The new investors paid the Treasury roughly $2.5 billion of the fee when the deal closed in January. They plan to pay the rest of the fee in an additional set of payments, one of the people said. The investors include the software giant Oracle; MGX, an Emirati investment firm; and Silver Lake, another investment firm, which each own about 15 percent of the company.

TikTok struck a deal with the investors in January to address years of legal uncertainty about the video app, owned by the Chinese internet company ByteDance, after bipartisan concern that its ownership could pose a national security threat.

Trump and the law

Alternet - President Donald Trump’s lawsuits are so unsuccessful, lawyers are afraid of destroying their careers by working for him. In response, Trump is trying to make it harder to hold dishonest lawyers accountable — and a legal expert is calling out the president for this.

“Like all other lawyers licensed to practice in the United States, if they violate legal ethics rules, they can face sanctions in court or professional discipline, up to and including the permanent loss of their license to practice,” Deborah Pearlstein, the director of the Princeton program in law and public policy and a visiting professor of law at the Princeton University School of Public and International Affairs, wrote for The New York Times. “Efforts to overturn the 2020 election foundered in court more than 60 times, before judges of both parties, in part because lawyers arguing President Trump’s case often feared telling a court the same extravagant lies that he was telling the American people.”

The Hill -   A federal judge ruled Friday that the Trump administration unlawfully took the position last year that it couldn’t request more funding for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).  U.S. District Judge Edward Davila ordered the agency’s acting director, Russ Vought, to continue requesting the necessary funds from the Federal Reserve to carry out the CFPB’s obligations.

Inside Climate News  -  One year ago today, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin announced he was terminating the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, one of the biggest climate initiatives of the Biden administration, after weeks of alleging the $20 billion in grants had been awarded in a “criminal” scheme.

But the Trump administration never was able to show the federal courts evidence of wrongdoing with regards to the fund, which Congress created in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act to spur private investment in clean energy and climate solutions.

Now, the chaos and accusations of those early months of President Donald Trump’s second term are at center stage in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. After an unusual hearing before 10 of the 11 judges last month (Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson is not participating in the case), the court is weighing what next steps are available for the grantees that have been frozen out of their accounts for the past year.

The D.C. Circuit, widely viewed as second only to the Supreme Court in judicial branch importance because of its role in hearing federal agency cases, questioned the Trump administration’s lawyer harshly. Dominated by Democratic appointees, the court seemed inclined to rule in favor of the grantees. But it is not clear that a favorable ruling will be enough to revive the nation’s first national “green bank.” The Trump administration is poised to continue to press a multi-pronged strategy to defend its right to terminate the slew of contractual agreements that established the program.

Climate change

An early-season heat wave is descending across the Western United States, likely to bring record-shattering temperatures to much of the region

Officials in Corpus Christi expect a “water emergency” within months and to fully run out of water next year. That would halt jet fuel supplies to Texas airports, trigger a surge in gasoline prices and result in an “economic disaster” without precedent, former officials said..

Regions that are often pummeled by severe storms—like the Midwestern United States under last weekend’s powerful thunderstorms and deadly tornadoes—could also face the threat of more extreme hail.  New research published in Atmospheric Science Letters for the first time linked human-caused warming with the size of hailstones in a single thunderstorm. The study examined a May 3 storm that pelted Paris and other parts of France with hail ranging in size from marbles to golfballs, destroying or damaging more than $350 million worth of property.. The researchers compared real-time data from May 3 with dozens of similar weather patterns from past decades to isolate how a warmer atmosphere changed the storm’s ingredients. 

Polls

Jobs

In These Times -   A third of American workers now have access to some form of government-issued paid leave — the biggest share ever.  The United States is one of only a handful of countries that doesn’t have a federal paid leave policy offering workers paid time off after the birth of a child or to seek medical care, for example, and access to unpaid leave is only about 30 years old. In that dearth of federal action, states and jurisdictions have moved ahead to pass 14 paid leave laws since 2002, which now cover a third of the population. Ten of those were passed in the past decade, as support for paid leave has risen; three go into effect this year...

This year, Colorado expanded its paid leave program to include an additional 12 weeks for parents of babies in the neonatal intensive care unit. In Oregon, survivors of domestic violence also qualify for paid leave. Connecticut offers paid leave if you’re serving as an organ or bone marrow donor.

According to research from the National Partnership for Women & Families, a nonprofit advocacy group, the 14 laws now cover 32 percent of private-sector workers, an estimated 46 million people. Of those covered, a third are women and a third are men, while overall a third are parents. Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders have especially benefited — 55 percent have paid leave through their state programs, as do 41 percent of Latinx workers due to a concentration of these communities in states that have enacted programs.

Pew Research - The federal workforce had a net loss of nearly 238,000 employees in 2025. The number of people who quit, retired, were laid off or otherwise left federal employment was up 80.8% from 2024. Meanwhile, the number of people who started federal employment was down 55.6%.

Iran War

NBC News -  As the U.S. and Israel bombard Iran with strikes, the Islamic Republic is retaliating by utilizing its arsenal of missiles and cheap exploding drones. Footage from over 30 open-source videos and satellite images verified by NBC News show Iranian drone strikes and interceptions by the U.S. and allies across seven countries. Apparent targets include military bases, transportation hubs, energy infrastructure and diplomatic centers. The videos reveal a pattern of inadequate protection for strategic locations targeted by the drones from the outset of the war. 

The drones' versatility may allow Iran to prolong the war by straining enemy resources, experts say. The technique, popular among cash-strapped states, challenges the economics of warfare by forcing targeted countries to use expensive munitions for interceptions.

MS NOW -   The bean-counters at the Department of Defense — admittedly not the best bean-counters in the federal government — have tallied up the cost of President Donald Trump’s unilateral military incursion into Iran.

The first week of the conflict, they estimate, ran up a bill for U.S. taxpayers of somewhere around $11 billion, though they admit this is more of a ballpark number than a hard-and-fast calculation. It is probably safe to assume that any error in their calculations is leading them to underestimate the cost rather than to overstate it.

Much of that cost was incurred in the form of munitions. The missiles and bombs that have been pounding Iran since the first attacks on Feb. 28 each carry substantial price tags. Add in the time of the pilots and operators carrying out the strikes — and then the costs of their support teams and vehicles — and it’s clear how quickly costs can add up.

The Iran war's looming economic threat: Higher food prices.

Iran threatens to strike oil facilities after the U.S. hits military targets on Kharg Island, a critical fuel hub.

Jack Detsch and Paul McLeary of Politico reported today that last year Hegseth slashed the oversight offices designed to limit civilian casualties in war and to investigate responsibility for them. Over the warnings of top military officials, he cut the number of employees working in that field from 200 to fewer than 40. Hegseth has vowed not to be hampered by “stupid rules of engagement,” but as Wes Bryant, the Pentagon’s former chief of civilian harm assessments, told the journalists, ““As it turns out, when you kill less civilians, you tend to be putting your resources toward killing the enemy.