March 19, 2026
Meanwhile. . .
Wikipedia explains artificial intelligence aka AI
NBC News - The late Cesar Chavez, one of the nation's most prominent civil rights leaders, has been accused of sexually abusing girls and women. Civil rights icon Dolores Huerta said in a statement that Chavez, her co-founder of what became the United Farm Workers, manipulated and pressured her into sex once and, in a second encounter, forced her “against my will” to have sex
Weather
Weather - A historic March heat wave has already smashed monthly records in dozens of cities in the West. This unusually early heat will spread into parts of the Plains and will have staying power in the Southwest into next week.
Topping the list of most impressive heat records, so far, was one location in the desert of southeast California.
Wednesday, a reporting station east of North Shore, California, about 45 miles southeast of Palm Springs, recorded a high of 108 degrees.
According to weather historian Christopher Burt, that tied the nation's hottest March temperature on record, previously set in Rio Grande City, Texas, on March 30, 1954 and on March 14, 1902.
If that city sounds a little familiar, this Deep South Texas reporting station recorded what may be the nation's hottest winter temperature just over a month ago.
This also appeared to top California's March state record of 107 degrees in Mecca on March 21, 2004.
An ad hoc committee of meteorologists may examine this 108-degree high to confirm a new record at a later date.
So far, 65 cities have already tied or set new March record highs, from Arizona and California to southern Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming and New Mexico.
Phoenix had only its second 100-degree high in March on Wednesday (102 degrees), eight days earlier than their previous record earliest triple-digit high (March 26, 1988).
Other March records set Wednesday included Las Vegas (94 degrees), Reno, Nevada (86 degrees) and Sacramento, California (88 degrees). Highs in the 70s tied or set March records in Laramie (71 degrees) and Casper, Wyoming (78 degrees).
Redwood City, California, hit 90 degrees in March on Wednesday, their third straight high in the 90s, when they hadn't previously reached 90 in March in 96 years of records.
It's so warm some male skiers and snowboarders were seen shirtless carving the slopes at Breckenridge, Colorado, Wednesday.
The National Weather Service has issued extreme heat warnings and heat advisories in the Southwest. This is the first time a heat advisory has been issued in the Bay Area during in March.
It will not only intensify in the Southwest, but it will spread throughout much of the West into parts of the Plains and South later this week into the weekend.
While some cooler air will slide into the northern and central U.S. beginning Sunday, record heat will persist in the Southwest into at least the first half of next week.
U.S. Gov’t Knew China Accessed American Voter Data in 2020, But Kept It Secret
Headline USA - The United States expressed its anger when Great Britain revealed two years ago that China hacked its voter registration databases. But American intelligence concealed its own secret at the time, having known since 2020 that Beijing also obtained access to American voter registration data, according to documents reviewed by Just the News and interviews with officials possessing direct knowledge.
“[Redacted] Chinese intelligence officials analyzed multiple U.S. states’ [Redacted] election voter registration data, [Redacted] to conduct public opinion analysis on the 2020 US general election,” stated a once highly classified April 2020 National Intelligence Council memo entitled “Cyber Operations Enabling Expansive Authoritarianism.”
The Biden administration heavily redacted the memo and quietly declassified it two years after it was written, where it has escaped most public notice. Six years later, the U.S. intelligence community has still not fully informed the American people or Congress about the scope of evidence it possesses regarding China’s actions, how Beijing acquired the data, and what operations it has undertaken or considered.
The underrated story of Frances Perkins
New Yorker -As institutions across the country honor Women’s History Month, Perkins [first female Cabinet member] remains a significant, often underappreciated figure. A well-born New Englander, she dedicated herself to more vulnerable populations, inspired in part by the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, in 1911, which had killed nearly a hundred and fifty garment workers in Manhattan. She made a career of expanding labor protections, leading a successful campaign to limit the workweek for women (to fifty-four hours), and impressing her future political benefactor, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.... Perkins sought to limit the labor required of others, but she didn’t avoid it herself. Her schedule in Washington was so punishing that, after “a few weeks in her service, the chauffeur assigned to drive her official car resigned,” The New Yorker reported. “He said that he was tired.” The New Yorker story
Democrats and the working class
The New Republic - Bill Clinton was the last Democratic presidential candidate to win the white working class (conventionally defined as “white non-college voters,” i.e., white voters who lack a college degree). In 1992, Clinton won 55 percent of this cohort, and in 1996 he won 53 percent. No Democratic presidential candidate has won the white working class since, even though it was once a core Democratic constituency. A lot of people say the reason is that Clinton signed the North American Free Trade Act into law and normalized trade relations with China, thereby beggaring American factory workers....
To say the Democrats lost the white working class after 1996 is not to say the Democrats lost the entire working class. A lot of people conflate these two groups, but the working class, which was overwhelmingly white when its political influence stood at its peak in the mid-twentieth century, is a lot less white now. And although the working class stopped voting reliably Democratic after the 1960s, no Democrat in the last century ever got himself elected president without winning the working-class vote—with one exception.
The exception was Joe Biden in 2020. It’s a great irony, since Biden was the most pro-labor president since Harry Truman and had a strong affinity for working-class people. Even so, Biden won the 2020 election while losing the working class—which is to say, the overall multiethnic working class—to Trump, 47 percent to 51 percent. ...
Winning back Latinos and Blacks who drifted to Trump in 2024 shouldn’t be that hard. In October, Axios reported Blacks (84 percent) and Latinos (70 percent) to be the two groups most dissatisfied with the country’s direction under Trump, and in January the BBC reported that Latino support for Trump had dropped from 49 percent at the start of his presidency to 38 percent. And that was before the Iran war sent oil prices through the roof. More
Abortion
Axios - Sen. Josh Hawley's push for a vote in Congress to ban the abortion drug mifepristone is elevating an issue that many Republicans were hoping not to address before the midterm elections. Lawmakers and the White House face internal tensions over how far to go in limiting access to the procedure and risking blowback from women and swing voters.
Hawley (R-Mo.) introduced his bill last week alongside leaders in the anti-abortion movement.
- It was a sign of frustration with the pace of an FDA investigation into the safety of the pills that Hawley helped spur last year.
- His bill also comes as anti-abortion advocates are showing increased impatience with the Trump administration for not taking faster action against the pills and for defending mifepristone against red state lawsuits.
Any new federal limits on the availability of the widely used pills would be highly controversial and portrayed by opponents as backtracking on President Trump's leave-it-to-the-states 2024 campaign pledge. While Hawley's bill won't get Democratic votes needed to advance in the Senate, it's roiling the waters within the GOP caucus.
- Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), locked in a tough primary, quickly endorsed the legislation.
- Senate health committee Chair Bill Cassidy (R-La.), who's also facing a primary challenge, held a hearing in January on what he termed the dangers of mifepristone but hasn't said whether his panel will take up Hawley's bill. More
Tax changes
NPR - Taxpayers who purchased a new vehicle in 2025 may qualify for a new deduction this filing season. It comes from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which also removes taxes on tips and overtime for qualifying workers, but eliminates the tax credit for electric vehicle purchases. Here's what you should know:
🚘 The deduction only works on new vehicles purchased after Dec. 31, 2024. If you purchased a used car, you are out of luck.
🚘 To qualify, the vehicle's final assembly process must have occurred in the U.S. You can determine this with your vehicle identification number.
🚘 The vehicle must be for personal use and not for a business purpose.
🚘 Unlike most tax deductions, this one is available to taxpayers who take the standard deduction instead of itemizing.
🚘 To qualify, the vehicle's final assembly process must have occurred in the U.S. You can determine this with your vehicle identification number.
🚘 The vehicle must be for personal use and not for a business purpose.
🚘 Unlike most tax deductions, this one is available to taxpayers who take the standard deduction instead of itemizing.
Airports
The Federal Aviation Administration announced yesterday that it is tightening safety rules in busy airspace around major airports. The agency will suspend the use of visual separation between helicopters and planes. Visual separation is a procedure where air traffic controllers warn pilots about nearby aircraft and instruct them to avoid other craft through visual observation. The agency's decision comes more than a year after the collision of a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter with an American Airlines regional jet near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, killing 67 people. The FAA also identified two recent close calls that prompted this policy change.The Federal Aviation Administration announced yesterday that it is tightening safety rules in busy airspace around major airports. The agency will suspend the use of visual separation between helicopters and planes. Visual separation is a procedure where air traffic controllers warn pilots about nearby aircraft and instruct them to avoid other craft through visual observation. The agency's decision comes more than a year after the collision of a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter with an American Airlines regional jet near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, killing 67 people. The FAA also identified two recent close calls that prompted this policy change.
Iran War
NPR - A wave of attacks from Iran today has hit the world’s largest liquefied natural gas complex in Qatar. Iran also targeted a gas field and facility in the United Arab Emirates and fired missiles and drones at Saudi Arabia. The attacks come after Israel bombed Iran’s South Pars gas field yesterday. Energy prices surged immediately, driving oil up to around $110 a barrel, which is about $40 higher than before the conflict began. President Trump said on social media late yesterday that Israel acted independently when it struck the gas field in Iran.
NBC News - Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard declined to say if Iran's nuclear program presented an "imminent threat," deflecting questions from lawmakers during a Senate hearing yesterday about whether U.S. intelligence backed up White House statements on the rationale for starting the war. Gabbard has stayed mostly silent on the war since it began on Feb. 28. Her reluctance to offer a full-throated endorsement of President Donald Trump's decision to wage war on Iran, unlike other Cabinet officials, renewed questions about her standing in the administration. More
The Guardian - More than 3,000 people are believed to have been killed across Iran so far, and the Pentagon says more than 15,000 targets in the country have been hit in the first two weeks. A girls’ school in the south-eastern Iranian city of Minab lies in rubble, with about 175 children and teachers killed in a strike that the US is believed to have carried out. The strait of Hormuz, the narrow sea passage turned chokepoint for the Gulf’s oil and the world, is effectively closed.
And the bill, according to analysts at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, is growing by roughly half a billion dollars every day.
A week after American and Israeli forces began their assault on Iran, and its repressive leadership, Pentagon officials told lawmakers in a closed-door briefing that the cost of the war had already exceeded $11.3bn in its first six days.
But that figure is only part of the story: sources familiar with the content of the briefing told the Guardian the estimate appeared largely limited to munitions expenditures and not the full cost of the opening days of the conflict, which could include forces deployed to the region, medical expenses, and the replacement of military aircraft lost in combat.
By day six, CSIS put the cumulative cost at $12.7bn. Today, it is likely to have exceeded $18bn – and the meter is still running.
Every impact is a human and environmental catastrophe, which together will add up to a toxic legacy that will blight the whole region – but especially Iran – for decades to come.
With attacks coming thick and fast, environmental monitors have struggled to keep up with incidents. Wim Zwijnenburg, a remote sensing specialist with the Dutch peace advocacy organisation Pax, told me on Wednesday that he has already compiled a database of more than 500 incidents of environmental harm inside Iran and a further 100 outside.
The happiest countries
Bloomberg - Finland is once again the world’s happiest country, according to the World Happiness Report for 2026, its ninth year on top. The US ranks 23rd, based on a three-year average of quality-of-life factors like income, health, having someone to count on, a sense of freedom, generosity and trust. Endless scrolling doesn’t help.
So, what’s Finland’s secret? Nature, and a culture built around it. Wellness here means living with the seasons and getting outside. Foraging and hiking are everyday habits, protected by “everyman’s right” (jokaisenoikeudet), which lets anyone roam, camp and fish freely, as long as they respect the land.
The rest of the world is taking note. Visitor numbers are rising despite Finland’s 830-mile border with Russia. So is its sauna culture, a ritual of heat, cold and contrast that reflects a broader mindset: pleasure and discomfort go hand in hand.
Immigration
The Guardian - The Trump administration is deporting a significant number of parents without asking them if they have children or allowing them to decide whether to bring their children with them, in apparent violation of its own policies, a major report has found.
In interviews with dozens of parents deported to Honduras, as well as physicians and psychologists, government officials and staff at reception centers for deportees, researchers found that many parents were deported quickly after they were detained, without a chance to arrange for the care of their children.
According to the report by the Women’s Refugee Commission (WRC) and Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), parents were forced to leave their children under the informal care of friends or family members who were also vulnerable to deportation. Others were separated from young children and toddlers – including a mother who was deported without her two-month-old baby.
Immigration officials “didn’t ask me anything”, one 22-year-old mother told researchers in Honduras, where she was sent without her two-year-old child. “They never said: ‘You have a daughter, you can bring her,’ because I would have brought [my daughter], she is very attached to me.”
Epstein
How a CEO tried to unlock his secrets about Trump
Headline USA - Sen. Ron Wyden, D-OR, accused Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche of personally intervening to block the Drug Enforcement Administration from releasing documents related to a secret drug trafficking investigation into Jeffrey Epstein.
Wyden, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, announced on social media that “Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche — Trump’s former personal lawyer who was also responsible for Ghislaine Maxwell’s transfer to a cushy club fed — has intervened to block the DEA from providing details of a mysterious Epstein investigation to my Finance Com.”
Trump regime
Newsworthy News - President Trump deployed Cold War-era emergency powers to restart offshore oil drilling off California’s coast, bypassing state laws and court orders in a move that ignites a constitutional showdown with Governor Gavin Newsom. Trump invoked the Defense Production Act to override California’s environmental regulations and restart dormant offshore oil platforms shut down since a 2015 spill. The executive order enables Sable Offshore Corp. to bypass state approval and court-ordered safety requirements, citing national security amid the Iran war energy crisis.
Governor Newsom vows immediate lawsuits, calling the move a “power grab” that threatens California’s coastline.
Immigration
Newsworthy News - Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has reversed a 25-year policy, stripping undocumented immigrants of their ability to obtain occupational licenses across 46 regulated professions—a move that could affect over 778,000 licensees and ripple through the state’s construction, personal services, and small business sectors.
State Senator Sarah Eckhardt warns the rule is a voluntary policy choice—not federally mandated—that threatens 778,000+ current licensees and millions of Texas consumers who depend on their services.
AG Paxton’s new legal opinion overturns a 2001 interpretation, barring undocumented immigrants from obtaining occupational licenses in Texas effective January 26, 2026.
The Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation now requires proof of lawful presence for license applicants across dozens of fields including electricians, plumbers, cosmetologists, and CDL drivers.
State Senator Sarah Eckhardt warns the rule is a voluntary policy choice—not federally mandated—that threatens 778,000+ current licensees and millions of Texas consumers who depend on their services.
Texas simultaneously expanded licensing pathways for legally present foreign-trained doctors through HB 2038, revealing a two-track approach based on immigration status rather than citizenship alone.
March 18, 2026
Word
Sen. Bernie Sanders - The war in Iran has already cost $22.8 billion. For $22.8 billion, we could:
• Provide Medicaid to 6.8 million kids• Build 2.6 million public housing units• Fund Head Start for 1.3 million• Hire 240,000 teachers• Cancel $20,000 in student debt for 1 million borrowers
Markwayne Mullin
Independent, UK - The top Republican on the Senate’s Homeland Security committee has ripped into Sen. Markwayne Mullin, who is asking for his colleagues’ approval to run the Department of Homeland Security under Donald Trump.
Mullin refused to apologize for his comments about Sen. Rand Paul, saying in his opening statements to the committee during his confirmation hearing that he “understands” why Paul’s neighbor attacked him, leaving him with several broken ribs.
The Oklahoma senator, who is set to be the face of the agency behind the president’s anti-immigration agenda, enters the picture after Trump fired Kristi Noem days after she came under bipartisan fire in congressional hearings earlier this month.
Mullin refused to apologize for his comments about Sen. Rand Paul, saying in his opening statements to the committee during his confirmation hearing that he “understands” why Paul’s neighbor attacked him, leaving him with several broken ribs.
The Oklahoma senator, who is set to be the face of the agency behind the president’s anti-immigration agenda, enters the picture after Trump fired Kristi Noem days after she came under bipartisan fire in congressional hearings earlier this month.
Polls
Newsweek - Trump's overall approval rating is 37 percent compared to a 56 percent disapproval rating. His approval rating with men is 41 percent versus 55 percent disapproval.
It is the lowest approval rating Trump has received from men in his second term in office. In a survey in early February, he received an approval rating of 42 percent from men, with a disapproval rating of 52 percent.
Trump's dipping approval rating comes amid the war with Iran. Recent approval ratings show mixed reaction, as a poll from the conservative-leaning Trafalgar Group said he has a net positive in double digits. In the poll from The Economist and YouGov on Tuesday, Trump's approval rating on Iran is 36 percent and his disapproval 56 percent.
Conducted by researchers at the University of Michigan, the study found that about 7.3% of adults reported having those thoughts at some point in their lifetime. Another 3.3%, an estimated 8.5 million people, said they had thought about it in just the past year. Those are not passing frustrations or fleeting anger. Researchers asked specifically about serious thoughts of shooting another person.
Beyond thoughts alone, a meaningful number of people reported taking concrete steps toward carrying out violence. An estimated 4 million adults said they had thought about getting a gun specifically to shoot someone. Roughly 1.5 million reported having actually brought a gun to a location with the intention of shooting someone. For some respondents, those thoughts were paired with concrete steps toward action.
Post Office may run out of cash
The Guardian - The US Postal Service will run out of funds within a year, unless lawmakers lift a cap on how much money the agency can borrow, according to the postmaster general.
In an interview with the Associated Press, David Steiner warned that the postal service – which relies on stamps and service fees rather than tax dollars to deliver mail six days a week to every address in the country – would run out of cash for employees and vendors by February next year.
The agency has operated with a financial shortfall almost every fiscal year since 2007, as people and businesses have moved toward paperless billing and digital communication, forgoing first-class mail. But mail deliveries have continued, with USPS borrowing money from the US treasury to compensate for losses.
Independent, UK - Amazon plans to significantly reduce the number of packages it ships through the U.S. Postal Service as the agency struggles to stay afloat financially.
USPS’s biggest customer has scaled back the number of packages it sends through the service and intends to slash that number by at least two-thirds this fall, Amazon sources told The Wall Street Journal.
Nearly 15 percent of packages delivered by USPS in 2025 came from Amazon...
Amazon has relied heavily on USPS’s last-mile service to reach customers in remote and rural areas. The last mile of delivery is the most expensive part of the shipping process, accounting for up to 53 percent of a shipment’s total cost, according to the Association for Supply Chain Management.
Gavin Newsom
5 years ago, Gavin Newsom signed the Free School Meals for All Act — making California the first state in the nation to guarantee free breakfast and lunch to EVERY public school student. Today, 5.8+ million kids eat at school for free
Health
Washington Post - By 2050, a drop in physical activity as a result of a warming climate could result in 470,000 to 520,000 additional deaths and $2.4 billion to $2.59 billion in annual productivity losses, according to a study published in Lancet Global Health
Trump and the law
Occupy Democrats - A federal judge hammers the Trump administration over the White House East Wing demolition, says that calling it simply an "alteration" requires a "brazen interpretation of the laws of vocabulary." And he wasn't done there...
“It would have been a heck of a lot easier by any standard to have just gone to Congress to get the authority to do it,” said U.S. District Judge Richard Leon, slamming the administration for using "shifting theories and shifting dynamics” to argue that Trump had the legal authority to perform the demolition.
The case was brought by the National Trust for Historic Preservation who are seeking an end to construction of Trump's ballroom unless he can acquire congressional approval and pass independent reviews. The $400 million ballroom has become a central fixation for Trump despite the floundering economy and a worsening war in the Middle East. He sees the insanely corrupt project — which is being financed by large corporate donations — as a means of eking out a permanent legacy for himself.
In addition to rejecting the idea that Trump can pursue the project under a law that grants the power to pursue "alteration" and "improvement" as "the President may determine," Judge Leon dismissed the idea that the White House falls under the National Park's Authority for approval. “This isn’t any national park. This is an iconic symbol of this nation," he said.
.... Leon has stated that he intends on issuing his final ruling by the end of March. If he rules against Trump, the case will almost certainly move into the appeals process.
Alternet - In its desperation to replace fleeing prosecutors and defectors, President Donald Trump’s DOJ is now loosening hiring requirements for federal prosecutors. Trump’s DOJ says new applicants no longer need have any attorney experience to get a job. They can be fresh out of college, and CNN Chief Legal Affairs Correspondent Paula Reid says Americans can probably expect predictable results.
Washington Post - A federal judge ruled that the Trump administration’s dismantling of Voice of America was unlawful and ordered more than 1,000 employees, who have spent a full year on paid administrative leave, back to work.
Independent, UK - A journalist in Nashville who was arrested by immigration officers earlier this month argues that the federal government violated her First Amendment rights by “retaliating” against her reporting on the local impacts of Donald Trump’s mass deportation efforts.
Lawyers for the Department of Justice, however, claim she has no such constitutional rights.
... Her arrest — which sparked widespread outrage from press freedom groups and free speech advocates — amounts to unconstitutional “retaliation” for “exercising her First Amendment rights as a journalist reporting on ICE enforcement activities,” according to her attorneys.
But in their response on Tuesday, lawyers with the U.S. the Attorney's Office in Tennessee argue that the Supreme Court has never “explicitly ruled that undocumented immigrants or illegal aliens have protections under the First Amendment.”
Lawyers for the Department of Justice, however, claim she has no such constitutional rights.
... Her arrest — which sparked widespread outrage from press freedom groups and free speech advocates — amounts to unconstitutional “retaliation” for “exercising her First Amendment rights as a journalist reporting on ICE enforcement activities,” according to her attorneys.
But in their response on Tuesday, lawyers with the U.S. the Attorney's Office in Tennessee argue that the Supreme Court has never “explicitly ruled that undocumented immigrants or illegal aliens have protections under the First Amendment.”
Government lawyers said her attorneys “incorrectly represent” that she “clearly has First Amendment rights.”
“Neither history nor precedent indicates that the First Amendment definitively applies to illegal aliens,” they wrote.
“Neither history nor precedent indicates that the First Amendment definitively applies to illegal aliens,” they wrote.
Artificial Intelligence
Bloomberg
- Even as big tech companies and some leading AI startups plan to spend billions, if not trillions, of dollars on chips, data centers, electricity and talent, the debate on Wall Street is raging over whether the financial rewards will offset these vast costs.
- The payoff—if it comes—may be a long time away. The industry’s success depends on offering more advanced software, but that means having to educate businesses on what the tech can do in order to convince them to buy at scale.
- It’s not just money that could derail AI’s future, but physical constraints. AI data centers already face long queues to get connected to the grid and lawmakers are beginning to scrutinize their impact on power prices and water resources.
- But high-profile investors say not to underestimate the technology’s impact. Watch Oaktree Capital Management co-founder Howard Marks chat with Bloomberg TV about his approach.
Oil
Bloomberg - Oil prices stabilized as Iraq started exports via a route that avoids the Strait of Hormuz. The prospect of the narrow chokepoint reopening looks increasingly unlikely without a ceasefire, adding to worries about a growing global energy crisis, with Russia capitalizing on freer sales of its oil to India.
Meanwhile. . .
People - A Florida hospital fi.led a lawsuit to remove a former patient who was discharged in October 2025. Tallahassee Memorial Hospital says the woman’s continued stay is using resources and preventing the bed from being available for others
Independent, UK - Marriage between first cousins is still legal in Florida after a bill banning the union failed to pass the state Senate. While the Sunshine State bans marriage between most family members, Floridians are still allowed to tie the knot with their first cousins.
| NPR - A sweeping review of cannabis studies over the past 45 years found that there is little evidence that the drug helps with anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder or depression |
Iran
How many people have been displaced in Iran? Up to 3.2 million people, according to the UN’s refugee agency. Here, Tehran residents speak about their daily life under bombardment. NPR - Iran launched a barrage of missile attacks on Israel after confirming the deaths of two high-ranking officials, Ali Larijani and Gholamreza Soleimani. The Revolutionary Guard announced that it launched multiple warhead missiles today targeting the Tel Aviv area. Israel also carried out an assault on central Beirut overnight, resulting in the deaths of 10 people. The Israeli military stated that it aimed to target Hezbollah militants and their installations. |
|
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)