May 4, 2026
Kamala Harris
Independent, UK - Former Vice President Kamala Harris’ new home, tucked away in a celebrity-packed part of Malibu, may signal what’s to come for her political future, according to a report. Harris, who lost the 2024 presidential election to Donald Trump, bought a 4,000-square-foot home in the exclusive and secluded Point Dume neighborhood for $8.15 million this past December.
The former VP has recently said she is “thinking about” running in 2028. However, political consultants, real estate experts and Harris’s new neighbors had mixed opinions on what the new home might mean for her political future, according to a report from Politico.
Donald Trump
Congressional Insider - President Trump declared he would have the “honor” of taking control of Cuba as the island nation teeters on the brink of total collapse, signaling an unprecedented shift in U.S.-Cuba relations that could reshape the Caribbean and challenge decades of failed communist rule.
Trump stated Cuba is a “failed nation” with “no money, no oil, no nothing” during remarks following the island’s nationwide electrical grid collapse. The President suggested a “friendly takeover” while asserting he could “do anything I want with it,” leaving options open from liberation to regime change.
Cuba’s weakened state stems from tightened U.S. sanctions, loss of Venezuelan oil subsidies, and economic mismanagement under communist leadership. White House policies include designating Cuba a state sponsor of terrorism and imposing tariffs on nations supplying oil to the regime
Religion
Trad West - Catholics are now almost 18% (~17.7%) of the world population... According to the Vatican’s latest official records, the global Catholic population has just reached a staggering 1.422 billion baptized members for the very first time.
How the G.O.P. Came to Embrace Psychedelic Drugs
NY Times - Mindbending may be just the word to describe the Oval Office ceremony on April 18, when President Trump ordered federal agencies to speed up research into the potential therapeutic uses of illegal psychedelic compounds like LSD, peyote and MDMA. Here was a law-and-order Republican and lifelong teetotaler championing the hallucinogenic substances that a previous Republican president, Richard Nixon, had condemned as “public enemy No. 1.”
In the decades since 1970, when Nixon consigned psychedelics to the most restrictive category of federal prohibition, his absolutist, just-say-no approach was embraced by waves of conservative politicians.
They generally held to the view that psychedelics were a morally corrupting intoxicant, the indulgences of hippies, draft-dodgers and other liberal degenerates.
“As someone who has worked with psychedelics for decades, watching the White House event was a very trippy experience,” said Dimitri Mugianis, an underground practitioner who was prosecuted by federal authorities for illegally treating a heroin addict with the psychedelic drug ibogaine.
Mr. Trump’s bold efforts to soften the federal government’s stance on certain illegal drugs have been head-spinning — last month, the Justice Department, at the president’s behest, loosened restrictions on medical marijuana, too.
LinkedIn may be searching your computer
Browsergate - LinkedIn’s scan reveals the religious beliefs, political opinions, disabilities, and job search activity of identified individuals. LinkedIn scans for extensions that identify practicing Muslims, extensions that reveal political orientation, extensions built for neurodivergent users, and 509 job search tools that expose who is secretly looking for work on the very platform where their current employer can see their profile. Under EU law, this category of data is not regulated. It is prohibited. LinkedIn has no consent, no disclosure, and no legal basis. Its privacy policy does not mention any of this.
Trump's weakening FEMA endangers response to floods and hurricanes
Rep. Bennie Thompson, MS NOW - Though President Donald Trump has not carried out his threat to eliminate the Federal Emergency Management Agency, his administration has systematically weakened it during his second term. He has hollowed out its workforce, pushed out experienced staff in favor of political lackeys, dismantled preparedness programs and undermined the agency’s ability to respond when Americans need it most. Last spring, the administration announced that it had canceled billions of dollars worth of key mitigation programs that helped communities become more resilient to the effects of floods, hurricanes and other disasters.
More than 5,000 employees have left or been pushed out of FEMA since the beginning of the second Trump administration. The elimination of those mitigation projects shifted risk onto states and local governments that lack the resources to pay for them themselves. More than 5,000 employees have left or been pushed out of FEMA since the beginning of the second Trump administration, worsening an already severe staffing shortage. Now reports suggest the Trump administration is considering even deeper workforce cuts — a highly dangerous proposal with the start of hurricane season less than a month away.
But just as worrisome as qualified people being pushed out of FEMA is unqualified people being brought in. Gregg Phillips, whom Trump appointed associate administrator of the Office of Response and Recovery in December, holds one of the most powerful positions at FEMA. It’s his job to lead the federal government’s frontline response to hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, wildfires and other disasters. Because lives are on the line during such emergencies, the role ought to be filled by someone with relevant experience who has demonstrated a commitment to public safety, as well as has sound judgment and a steady hand. Unfortunately, it was clear before Phillips took his position that he lacks all those qualifications.
Best and worst states to be a police officer
WalletHub - WalletHub today released its report on the Best & Worst States to Be a Police Officer in 2026, to help identify where this hazardous but rewarding career is the most worthwhile....
Best vs. Worst
| Best States for Police Officers | Worst States for Police Officers |
| 1. California | 42. Mississippi |
| 2. Connecticut | 43. Vermont |
| 3. Illinois | 44. Oregon |
| 4. Maryland | 45. West Virginia |
| 5. District of Columbia | 46. Alabama |
| 6. Colorado | 47. Louisiana |
| 7. Minnesota | 48. Arkansas |
| 8. Washington | 49. Nevada |
| 9. Tennessee | 50. Hawaii |
| 10. Ohio | 51. Alaska |
Best vs. Worst
- The District of Columbia has the most police and sheriff’s patrol officers per 100,000 residents, which is 6.6 times more than in Washington, the fewest.
- Illinois has the highest median annual wage for police and sheriff’s patrol officers (adjusted for cost of living), which is 2 times higher than in Mississippi, the lowest.
- Rhode Island has the fewest individuals killed by police per 1,000,000 residents, which is 14.9 times fewer than in New Mexico, the most.
- Maine has the fewest violent crimes per 1,000 residents, which is 10.1 times fewer than in the District of Columbia, the most.
- The District of Columbia has the highest state and local police-protection expenses per capita, which is 4.1 times higher than in Kentucky, the lowest.
Congress
The Hill - The GOP only narrowly held onto its majority in the House in 2024, starting the term with a 220-215 edge. That would only require Democrats to net a few pickups in November to take back control. And polling widely suggests Democrats are favored to win the majority, even more so as voter frustration grows with the Iran war and rising energy costs.
Middle East
Word: “There are now only two outcomes to the conflict: either the kind of wholesale destruction of Iran that Mr. Trump posited, or a settlement that will leave the government intact and empowered, and a blustering American president humiliated.” - Scott Anderson, the author of “King of Kings: The Iranian Revolution: A Story of Hubris, Delusion and Catastrophic Miscalculation” Read
Health
Axios - When people delay care because of cost, small health issues are more likely to become serious — and far more expensive — problems later. 36% of adults say they've skipped doctor appointments in the past year because of cost. Adding to the concerns about overall affordability is the fact that health insurance premiums are swiftly rising as well.
Abortion
Axios - The legal battle over accessing abortion pills is returning to the Supreme Court after a panel of appeals court judges on Friday froze federal rules allowing the teleprescribing and mailing of the widely used drug mifepristone. The ruling was a major win for the anti-abortion movement, which had been pressing the Trump administration to reinstate in-person dispensing requirements.
Danco Laboratories, the maker of mifepristone, asked the Supreme Court on Saturday to stay the decision, saying it "injects immediate confusion and upheaval into highly time-sensitive medical decisions." The maker of a generic version made a similar request.
- A 5th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel on Friday sided with Louisiana in a case challenging Biden administration rules that expanded access to mifepristone.
- The state argued the federal rules undermined its laws protecting unborn human life and caused it to spend Medicaid funds on emergency care for women harmed by mifepristone.
- A lower court judge had ruled last month that mail-order prescriptions for mifepristone should continue while the FDA finishes a safety review of the drug.
Reproductive rights advocates said the appeals court ruling will force women to navigate new barriers to access the drugs, even in states where abortion is legal. It also puts the Trump administration in a bind after the president vowed not to block access to abortion pills on his watch.
The Supreme Court threw out a challenge to the mifepristone rules in 2024, finding that doctors who pressed the case lacked legal standing. More
Electric vehicles
NY Times - Washington turned against electric vehicles after Donald Trump became president. Congress eliminated a $7,500 tax credit for buyers last year, causing sales to plunge. But rising gas prices strengthen the argument for E.V.s, because electricity is almost always cheaper. And electric vehicles are becoming more affordable: Used models sell for about the same as comparable gasoline-powered cars. All of which may explain a recent revival. Monthly sales of new E.V.s rose 20 percent in March. Used ones soared 54 percent.
Is it true that there will be an automatic draft registration for men between the ages of 18 and 25 starting in December?
NY Times - Yes, under a rule pending final approval. No one has been drafted since the all-volunteer military was established in 1973 — and that’s not going to change anytime soon. But young men (yes, it’s only men) have been required to register for the draft, just in case the military needs them. Now, instead of filling out a form online, they’ll be automatically enrolled by the government.
May 3, 2026
The economic hazards of AI
NY Times - Since its early years, OpenAI believed that A.G.I. would transform the global economy and generate untold wealth for its creators. The leadership held that government action would be critical for helping people navigate the disruption that A.I. caused. In a 2021 blog post, the company’s chief executive, Sam Altman, predicted that within decades, “unstoppable” A.I. systems would be able to do almost any job a human could, and thus would shift power from labor to capital. His proposed solution was to aggressively tax assets: land and A.I.-company shares. “If public policy doesn’t adapt accordingly, most people will end up worse off than they are today,” Mr. Altman wrote....
This premonition is not a well-kept secret. It shows up in the Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei’s public pronouncements about a white-collar blood bath and in the disappearing-message Signal chats in which tech executives boast about the roles they plan to automate. You feel it in the fretting of recent college graduates who apply to hundreds of jobs without landing a single interview. You hear it in the gallows humor of the software engineers who joke about replacing themselves with Claude Code.
Money
Robert Reich - A history of the top marginal tax rates on the wealthiest Americans:
1940: 81%
1950: 84%
1960: 91%
1970: 72%
1980: 70%
1990: 28%
2000: 40%
2010: 35%
Now Trump wants to invade Cuba
Express, UK - US President Donald Trump has threatened to take over Cuba, claiming his military could do so "almost immediately." Speaking on Saturday, he said: "Cuba, which we will be taking over almost immediately." Addressing the crowd in Florida, Trump suggested the US could move away from the Iran war and deploy vessels towards Cuba on their return.
Sinking Mexico City
ABC News - The fact that Mexico City is sinking is not new. NASA says it has been documented the changes for more than a century. According to a 1995 report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, the city was already sinking roughly two inches per year by the late 1800s. By the 1950s, that number jumped to 18 inches, the report found.
The first finding was reported by engineer Roberto Gayol in 1925, who pointed to a large canal and tunnel built to drain water out of the city's waterlogged ground as the potential cause. Scientists now point to a more direct culprit — decades of draining the ancient lakebed aquifer that the city was built on.
As water is pumped out, the ground above it compacts and stays that way, according to a study published by the American Geophysical Union. Think of wet clay that gets squeezed flat and hardens in place.
Supreme Court
Independence Journal - Supreme Court unanimously ruled that First Choice Women’s Resource Centers can challenge New Jersey’s subpoena in federal court, rejecting the state’s attempt to compel sensitive donor and operational records. New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin issued a sweeping 2023 subpoena to the pro-life pregnancy center network under the Consumer Fraud Act, which critics describe as politically motivated targeting. The ruling establishes important precedent protecting nonprofits across the political spectrum from state harassment through invasive investigative demands
Polls
Washington Post - Trump’s overall approval now stands at 37 percent, largely the same as the 39 percent figure in February. But his disapproval has reached 62 percent, the highest of his two terms in office. Among Republicans, Trump’s approval has held steady at 85 percent, but his ratings among Republican-leaning independents have reached a new low of 56 percent. His approval rating stands at 25 percent among independents overall.
Cost of living: 76% disapprove
Inflation: 72%
Iran: 66%
Allies: 65%
Economy: 65%
Taxes: 61%
Immigration: 59%
Border: 54%
Washington Post - Americans reported the lowest trust in their government to regulate AI responsibly of any country surveyed: just 31 percent. The global average was 54 percent. In Singapore, that number was 81 percent.
Way to Win commissioned a March poll of 1,282 likely voters in Arizona, Georgia, Mississippi, Nevada, North Carolina, and Texas that also drilled down into 14 congressional battleground districts in four of those states. The good news for Democrats is that there’s a yawning gap in voters’ enthusiasm in those districts: 72 percent of Democratic voters said they were extremely motivated to vote in November, compared to 34 percent of Republicans and 66 percent of independents.
The bad news is that among those six states, Democrats are ahead only in only one of them—Georgia—on the generic ballot, and down five points overall across all of them. In the battleground districts specifically, voters favor Republicans over Democrats by seven points. This is a stark difference from national generic ballots, where Democrats lead Republicans by five points, on average.
This doesn’t mean voters are happy with Trump and the GOP. In Way to Win’s poll, the president is underwater on the economy by 17 points. That’s significantly lower than his overall approval rating of 49 percent in this poll, which itself is higher in these purple and red states than it is nationally. Respondents were more likely to blame rising costs on GOP politicians and big corporations than Trump’s preferred scapegoats—immigrants, Democrats, and the Federal Reserve. MORE
Why Spirit mattered
Axios - Spirit Airlines may have been the butt of jokes, but it filled a vital niche for cost-conscious travelers...
- 🚌 It was the Fung Wah bus of the skies, offering a cheap way to get around so long as you managed your expectations, brought your own snacks and didn't mind a delay or two.
- 🤳 Wharton School professor Mohamed A. El-Erian wrote on Bluesky yesterday that Spirit "helped democratize the skies, providing a bridge for those who previously found travel out of reach."
It also provided badly needed competition, pushing rivals to offer no-frills basic economy options of their own.
- 💵 Delta and United are now essentially operating premium and budget airlines all at once, extracting maximum cash from folks sitting up front while filling as many seats as possible in the back.
- Spirit and Southwest both tried to go upscale in response — but it wasn't enough to save the former.
📊 Even Spirit's reputation for delays was unearned — about 77% of Spirit flights arrived on time in 2025, per Transportation Department data.
- That's nearly as good as Delta (79%) and United (78%), and notably better than American (73%).
The bottom line: Spirit's primary cause of death will be listed as skyrocketing jet fuel prices tied to the Iran war that exacerbated longstanding financial issues. MORE
Black voting rights
NY Times - Two Southern governors on Friday said they would summon their state’s lawmakers to consider new House maps under the newly weakened Voting Rights Act, as Republicans rushed to dilute majority-Black districts before November’s midterm elections.
The governors, Bill Lee of Tennessee and Kay Ivey of Alabama, both Republican, moved to call special sessions next week, as the effect of this week’s Supreme Court decision began spreading beyond its immediate target, Louisiana. The court on Wednesday rejected Louisiana’s congressional map as an illegal racial gerrymander, prompting that state’s governor, the Republican Jeff Landry, to delay his state’s House primary as lawmakers considered a new congressional map that would endanger at least one Democratic seat.
....At least six majority-Black districts held by Democrats — two in Louisiana, one in Tennessee, two in Alabama and one in South Carolina — could be in play, though a clean sweep is unlikely.
Social Security
MS NOW - The Trump administration is reportedly looking to shrink supplementary Social Security Income payments for disabled adults who live with their families. The report has already raised a lot of concern about how it might play out, but “the confusion is a feature, not a bug,” argues David M. Perry, a journalist whose son is autistic and has Down syndrome. “You’re not supposed to know what you or your loved ones qualify for,” he writes. “Otherwise, you might get what you are actually owed.” The cuts are being done through changes to administrative rules, a tactic politicians have long used to shrink the safety net without admitting they are cutting benefits. MORE
Donald Trump
The I Paper - Donald Trump’s former lawyer has called for the President to be removed from office because he has turned into a “madman”. Ty Cobb, who worked closely with Trump during his first administration, claimed that the President’s “mental condition has deteriorated substantially” to the point where he was now unfit to serve.
In an exclusive interview with The i Paper, Cobb said that Trump’s second term was “scary and dystopian” because the President was now surrounded by enablers who were unable and unwilling to control his impulses. Cobb warned that the President, 79, the oldest person ever to be inaugurated into the role, appeared to growing “desperate” and more dangerous the longer his war on Iran went on. Despite a fragile ceasefire, both the US and Iran are blockading the global chokepoint of the Strait of Hormuz, fuelling a rise in energy prices worldwide and threatening spiralling disaster.
“We’re in a real crisis here in the US,” he said. The President had become a “dictator” who was “destroying our democracy”, he added
In an exclusive interview with The i Paper, Cobb said that Trump’s second term was “scary and dystopian” because the President was now surrounded by enablers who were unable and unwilling to control his impulses. Cobb warned that the President, 79, the oldest person ever to be inaugurated into the role, appeared to growing “desperate” and more dangerous the longer his war on Iran went on. Despite a fragile ceasefire, both the US and Iran are blockading the global chokepoint of the Strait of Hormuz, fuelling a rise in energy prices worldwide and threatening spiralling disaster.
“We’re in a real crisis here in the US,” he said. The President had become a “dictator” who was “destroying our democracy”, he added
May 2, 2026
A nation on the verge of collapse
Sam Smith - Although other presidents in the past hundred years - including Harry Truman and Jimmy Carter - got some Gallup poll results below those of Donald Trump, these were problems with policies and not competency or decency. With a news career that started in Washington over 60 years ago, a father who worked for FDR, and some good college history books , I can assure you that there has been no one as incompetent and dangerous to constitutional democracy as Trump.
While there may be little prospect of a second Civil War there is very clearly the danger of a collapse of the core systems we have enjoyed for 250 years. We are not currently treating this as the crisis it is thanks in no small part to a media that handles impending disasters as just more of the morning news and President Trump as a top politician.
But the truth is that we have never had such a liar in such a high position nor one who even starts major wars without obeying constitutional procedures. And he gets away with this thanks in no small part, not only due to a flawed media but because of a Supreme Court whose majority see themselves as the country's real rulers, and a Congress that lacks the will to defend not only its country but its own constitutional powers.
The other major factor in this crisis is the way America has culturally collapsed in past half century. No longer defined by community, ethnicity, religion and other aspects of intrinsic culture, it has become dominated by the values and instructions of huge corporations, television, the Internet and major money, all increasingly the property of a small minority.
America is no longer the place it was when I started as a young journalist. Which is one reason why, nearly two decades ago, I moved to a small town in Maine where I feel not only more American again, but more human as well. Life here is not defined by huge institutions but by decent real people.
I started coming to Maine in the summer when I was nine years old. Nearly eight decades later it still enjoys the values and the habits that once defined a later collapsing place known as America.
To survive this crisis, we must make our nation and its leaders as good as those we find in our communities.
Immigration
Alternet America - A quick civics refresher: the Federal Bureau of Investigation investigates federal crimes. Counterterrorism, organized crime, public corruption — that sort of thing.
Here’s what it does now. The FBI multiplied the number of employees assigned to immigration by a factor of 23 in the first nine months of the second Trump administration.
There were 279 FBI personnel working on immigration-related matters before Trump took office in January 2025. By September, that number had ballooned to more than 6,500. In total, 9,161 people at the FBI worked on immigration between Trump’s inauguration and September 7 of last year, out of a total workforce of 38,000.
There has been no corresponding surge in cartel prosecutions or trafficking convictions to explain the scale. What the numbers do show is an agency that was functioning as the largest immigration enforcement operation in the country — bigger than ICE itself.
Abortions
Washington Post - The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit has temporarily reinstated a requirement that abortion pills be picked up in person. The move, which abortion rights advocates argue will make it harder for women to access the commonly used abortion pill, stems from Louisiana’s lawsuit against the Food and Drug Administration that allowed patients to access the medicine through telehealth and mail.
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