April 6, 2026
How the 25th Amendment works
Independent, UK The 25th Amendment establishes procedures for replacing the president or vice president in cases of death, removal, resignation, or incapacitation.
Section 1 specifies that the vice president assumes the presidency if the president is removed from office, dies, or resigns.
Section 4 allows the vice president and a majority of the cabinet to declare the president unable to discharge their duties, making the vice president the acting president. Section 4 has never been used. If the President declares their ability to resume office, but the vice president and cabinet dispute this, Congress must then decide the issue.
The first use of the 25th Amendment occurred in 1973 when President Richard Nixon nominated Congressman Gerald R. Ford to fill the vacancy left by Vice President Spiro Agnew's resignation. In less than a year, the 25th Amendment was used again when Vice President Ford became President after Nixon resigned.
Numbers don't back talk of religious revival
Alternet - Christian conservatives, including but not limited to supporters of President Donald Trump, like to claim that there is a Christian revival occurring right now in America, but The New York Times’ Lauren Jackson pointed out Sunday that the truth is much more complicated.
“Anecdotes don’t make a national trend,” Jackson wrote. “And experts have urged caution: ‘These stories are a very small drop in a very large ocean, whose currents have for decades been taking people away from religion,’ said David Campbell, a political scientist at Notre Dame who researches secularization. ‘For us to call this a true revival, we would need to see a level of conversion that we have never seen in the history of the United States.’ And Pew Research refuted claims of a Gen Z revival, writing that there is ‘no clear evidence that this kind of nationwide religious resurgence is underway.’
Jackson observed that people have stopped leaving churches altogether, and the pausing of this symptom of secularization is “a big deal. It upends decades of assumptions that the U.S. was on an inevitable march toward godlessness.” At the same time, “that doesn’t mean a revival is underway, that suddenly the country is rushing back to the pews. Religious change doesn’t happen that quickly.”
Federal judge halts White House effort to collect university data on applicants’ race
The Guardian - A federal judge on Friday halted efforts by the Trump administration to collect data that proves higher education institutions aren’t considering race in admissions.
The ruling from the US district court judge F Dennis Saylor IV in Boston granting the preliminary injunction follows a lawsuit filed earlier this month by a coalition of 17 Democratic state attorneys general. It will only apply to public universities in plaintiffs’ states.
The federal judge said the federal government likely has the authority to collect the data, but the demand was rolled out to universities in a “rushed and chaotic” manner.
“The 120-day deadline imposed by the president led directly to the failure of [the National Center for Education Statistics] to engage meaningfully with the institutions during the notice-and-comment process to address the multitude of problems presented by the new requirements,” Saylor wrote.
Bowling alone updated
Nationhood Lab - In 1995, Harvard University political scientist Robert Putnam wrote an research article called "Bowling Alone," which demonstrated that American's stock of social capital -- the fabric of a community's trust and cooperation - had declined dramatically since the 1950s. Social scientists and civic activists have been focused on the problem -- which has contributed to everything from deaths of despair to the rise of Trumpist ethnonationalism -- ever since. We've long suspected there are substantial differences in social capital across the U.S. regions, and this spring we confirmed that it is indeed the case.
Using a county-level social capital index, we calculated the scores for each of the American Nations model's regional cultures and found dramatic gaps between the "communitarian regions" of the Northeast and West Coast and the two regions founded by the Spanish Empire. (Southern regions generally lay in between.) ... People in some places may be bowling alone, but in others they may still have some people joining them.
Money
Axios - The wartime spike in gas and oil prices will likely push food prices even higher in the coming weeks, Axios Markets' Emily Peck reports.
- The war is just the latest stress on food inflation — on top of tariffs, rising electricity prices and an immigration crackdown that has driven up labor costs.
The immediate shock on the grocery shelf comes via higher costs of transportation — getting food from warehouses and farms to the store.
"Fucking" becoming more normal
The Hill - “Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the F---in’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah,” Trump said in a Truth Social post on Sunday.
Sam Smith - I scan hundreds of online news stories every day and one of the things that fascinates me is that the work fuck is being used more and more frequently. It seems to have gained at least semi-respectability. Not the word Trump but fuck.
Voting rights
Maine Morning Star - President Donald Trump’s executive order restricting mail ballots faced a fresh challenge on Friday, as a coalition of Democratic states filed a lawsuit seeking to block an order that experts say is an extraordinary attempt by the president to assert authority over elections.
More than 20 states — led by California, Massachusetts, Nevada and Washington — and the District of Columbia sued in federal court in Massachusetts. They argue the order violates the Constitution, which gives states the responsibility to run elections and allows Congress, not the president unilaterally, the power to override state regulations...
Congress
Alternet - Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) appears ready to make his move to take over as Speaker of the House after Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.) is expected to make his move after the GOP loses control of Congress. NOTUS reported Monday that Republican lawmakers believe Jordan is preparing to take over and that he's raising and donating large sums of campaign cash to incumbents.
Iran
NPR - Lebanon's government says Israel has killed at least 54 medics since the war with Iran began. Some human rights groups say first responders are being targeted — something that Israel denies.
The nuclear plant, which is located in the south of the country and equipped with a 1,000-megawatt reactor, has been targeted four times since the US-Israeli war on Iran began.
Rafael Grossi, director of the IAEA, said that any strikes around the area “could cause a severe radiological accident with harmful consequences for people and the environment in Iran and beyond.”
He added that one strike hit just 75 metres (246 feet) from the plant perimeter. “A nuclear facility and surrounding areas should never be struck,” he said.
Teaching in the Trump times
"How do I describe this troubled world of ours — the grave crossroads we straddle, the mighty stakes of our decisions — in a manner both truthful and gentle? How do I gird my students for the uncertainties and obstacles ahead while equipping them with an ample store of hope? I’ve been on the faculty at Duke University for five years now, and this past one has been the most challenging and the strangest by far.” — Frank Bruni More
Donald Trump
The Guardian - District court judges nationwide have been increasingly issuing strong rulings challenging the legality of many of Donald Trump’s policies and executive power grabs, blocking key ones at least temporarily, and sparking angry responses from the president, former judges and prosecutors say.
Since the start of Trump’s second term, lower court federal judges have written sharply critical opinions about his legally dubious policies on immigration, tariffs, Department of Justice (DoJ) prosecutions of political foes and more.
The impact of the court rulings by these judges has been sizable, slowing or halting some of the president’s most extreme policies and prompting Trump and Maga allies to respond with vindictive attacks that have helped to fuel some threats against several judges.
Pentagon wants $200 billion more
MSN - The Trump administration is preparing to ask Congress for hundreds of billions of dollars in funding to pay for its military campaign against Iran, setting the stage for a high-stakes fight on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers in both parties have been leery of an extended overseas conflict.
The Pentagon has asked the White House to seek an additional $200 billion to cover operations, according to a senior administration official. The money would go toward flying thousands of combat missions over Iran, as well as replenishing munitions that have been used in nearly three weeks of fighting in the Middle East.
The size of the expected request comes as Trump administration officials have refused to put a timeline on the war.
“It takes money to kill bad guys,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters at the Pentagon on Thursday. “So we are going back to Congress and our folks there to ensure that we are properly funded for what’s been done, for what we may have to do in the future.”
Hegseth said the amount of money could change, but didn’t dispute that the Pentagon was seeking around $200 billion, a figure reported earlier by the Washington Post. “As far as $200 billion, I think that number could move,” he said.
Not letting the news ruin our lives
Sam Smith - I majored in anthropology back in the 1950s and also became news director of Harvard's student run radio station, WHRB. Thanks in no small part to my academic major, my approach towards journalism did not depend on only the most prominent individuals and institutions but also included ways in which the habits, gatherings, actions and views of ordinary citizens, too often ignored by major media, were newsworthy as well.
I learned back then that civilization was not the sole property of the famous and the powerful but also included the thoughts and habits of plain people.
In the 1960s I started a paper on Washington's Capitol Hill, the neighborhood next to a great white building that provided its name. During the 1968 riots following Martin Luther King's death, one of the hardest hit areas was right near this headquarter of Congress. In other words, some of the most powerful in the world worked near some of the weakest.
Things have changed a lot since then but the gap between the strong and the weak has grown, thanks in no small part to the rise of television and the Internet, both of which have added power to the powerful and lessened our involvement, for example, in our communities and neighbors.
Our obsession with Trump and his ability to abuse it is thanks, in part, to the common lengthy use of TV and computers. Even someone like me, bothered by all this, still types away and goes after Trump because it seems the best use of my time.
Yet I also moved to a small town in Maine nearly two decades ago because Washington seemed working less and less well. And that's helped a lot. My Maine town shows that a real America is still alive.
Further, I think much more about real people than those I can only watch on a screen. I feel like I live in two worlds -one I only see and one I actually live with.
Lately, another personal experience has revived itself in my mind: the more than four decades that I played in bands. And it was not my solos that recovered these thoughts. On the contrary, it was that most of the time, as I played the piano, I was backing up someone else. The fact that, in a band, one's dominant time is spent helping others is seldom discussed yet is what really makes a tune sound good. Even if you are called a star much of the time you're a helper.
Another thing about playing music is that it is a metaphor for another way in which life really works, namely that you do your thing and then move on to something else. I have come to the conclusion that life is like playing a gigs or acting on stage. You play your part, then you go home and in a short time you have a new one coming up.
There are millions of us who are wiser or kinder or more sensible than those running our country. But we can't let our world be defined by television or the Internet. We need to get back to building an America we can love and be proud of. And we must treat other real Americans as our leaders.
April 5, 2026
A rabbi on Israel
Rabbi Yakoov Shapiro:
-No Jew owes allegiance to Israel over their own country
- Judaism is a faith not a political loyalty contract
- Israel does NOT represent all Jews
Saying every Jew must prioritize Israel over their own nation?
That’s not just wrong. It’s dangerous.
And yes, pushing that idea can itself fuel antisemitism.
Faith is not nationalism.
Judaism is not owned by any state.
Committing Hight Reason - Yaakov Shapiro is a scholar of Judaism, an international speaker, author, and a pulpit rabbi for over 30 years, now emeritus. He has attained an enviable place in the arena of anti-Zionist public intellectuals, having constructed a unique oeuvre on the ideology of Zionism and its hostile relationship toward Judaism
Jet fuel costs skyrocket
The Hill - An international jet fuel shortage is driving up airfares and triggering thousands of flight cancellations as airlines grapple with rising costs. Analysts warn the crisis could deepen in the coming weeks, with the war in Iran showing little sign of easing and jet fuel prices continuing to climb.
Since before the war began, the price of jet fuel in the U.S. has surged by 95 percent — from $2.50 per gallon on Feb. 27 to $4.88 on April 2, according to the Argus U.S. Jet Fuel Index, published by Airlines for America. That puts the price per barrel at nearly $205.
Airlines have already begun taking steps to offset higher costs, reducing flight schedules and quietly raising fares.
TSA
Independence Journal - White House proposes $52 million TSA budget cut and privatization following shutdown-induced airport meltdowns with 10%+ worker absences and 500+ resignations.
Airports using private screeners under existing TSA program avoided chaos entirely during funding crisis, demonstrating shutdown-proof alternative model
Proposal mandates small airports adopt private screening while expanding proven partnership program that reported efficiency gains and lower employee turnover
Labor unions and former TSA officials oppose plan as profit-driven threat to security, though private contractors operated under identical federal standards since 2004
Artificial Intelligence
The Guardian - Pupils using artificial intelligence are losing their capacity for critical thinking, according to a survey of secondary school teachers in England.
Two-thirds said they had observed the decline among children who they also said no longer felt the need to spell because of voice-to-text technology.
“Students are losing core skills – thinking, creativity, writing, even how to have a conversation,” one teacher told the National Education Union poll.
“AI is destroying what ‘learning’ – problem-solving, critical thinking and collaborative effort – is,” said another. A third anonymous contributor added: “Children no longer feel the need to spell as voice-to-text replaces knowledge.”
The government has called for a digital revolution involving AI in schools, and in January announced plans to develop AI tutoring tools to provide one-to-one learning support for up to 450,000 disadvantaged pupils.
....Of the 9,000 state school teachers polled by the NEU, which is holding its conference in Brighton, 49% said they opposed the government’s plan for AI tutors, with just 14% in agreement.
Arts Journal - This was a week AI stopped being a hypothetical for culture industries and started leaving fingerprints everywhere. The New York Times fired a freelance critic who used AI to write a book review. Hachette pulled a novel for suspected AI authorship — publishing’s first real scandal on this front — and the industry has no idea what to do next. Meanwhile, HarperCollins signed a multi-year deal with an AI animation studio, and Netflix acquired Ben Affleck’s AI production company, which promises to cut below-the-line costs by 20%. ...
Two-thirds said they had observed the decline among children who they also said no longer felt the need to spell because of voice-to-text technology.
“Students are losing core skills – thinking, creativity, writing, even how to have a conversation,” one teacher told the National Education Union poll.
“AI is destroying what ‘learning’ – problem-solving, critical thinking and collaborative effort – is,” said another. A third anonymous contributor added: “Children no longer feel the need to spell as voice-to-text replaces knowledge.”
The government has called for a digital revolution involving AI in schools, and in January announced plans to develop AI tutoring tools to provide one-to-one learning support for up to 450,000 disadvantaged pupils.
....Of the 9,000 state school teachers polled by the NEU, which is holding its conference in Brighton, 49% said they opposed the government’s plan for AI tutors, with just 14% in agreement.
Alongside this, the fights over who controls cultural institutions kept intensifying. The Smithsonian’s board sits with empty seats as the White House stalls appointments. A Tennessee library director was fired for refusing to pull books. And a Moscow court sentenced a German artist to prison — for art made in Germany.
Constitution
Time - The Republican governors of Florida, Mississippi, South Dakota, and Utah have all recently signed their states’ own versions of the SAVE America Act, a bill that would require voters to provide proof of citizenship and photo ID to vote in all 50 states that Trump has made his top legislative priority.
In several other states, measures to add additional language into their constitutions explicitly prohibiting non-citizens from voting are on the ballot in the November midterms. And in still more, efforts to get amendments of that kind on the ballot are underway and state legislators are weighing bills to introduce proof of citizenship requirements or otherwise restrict voting access.
Donald Trump
Alternet - President Donald Trump has realized in his second term that no one can stop him — and this demonstrates why we need to rein in the executive branch, at least according to one conservative think tank. “On day 1 of his first term, Trump issued only a single executive order,” wrote Gene Healy, senior editor at the right-wing think tank the Cato Institute, in a Sunday editorial for Reason Magazine. “....
By contrast, Healy pointed out that in the second Trump administration “Trump came out of the gate with 26 executive orders. By the 100-day mark he'd issued 143—more than triple Biden's near-record-setting pace—while signing fewer bills into law than any first-year president since Dwight D. Eisenhower.”
“We’re fighting wars. We can’t take care of daycare. You got to let a state take care of daycare, and they should pay for it too. They should pay. They’ll have to raise their taxes, but they should pay for it. And we could lower our taxes a little bit to them to make up,” Trump said. “It’s not possible for us to take care of daycare, Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things. They can do it on a state basis. You can’t do it on a federal. We have to take care of one thing: military protection.
“I can’t get a ballroom approved. It’s pretty amazing, right?” Trump also said in the speech. “If I was a king, we’d be doing a lot more. I’m doing a lot, but I could be doing a lot more if I was a king.”
Jeffry Epstein
NPR - In the more than two months since the Justice Department released its latest batch of documents on the investigation of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, prosecutors have not brought on any new charges, despite lawmakers’ demands for accountability. The files include accusations by alleged victims of Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell's abuse and thousands of emails and photos linking him with prominent figures. Appearing in the documents doesn’t amount to criminal wrongdoing. But the U.S.' lack of arrests contrasts with how the U.K. is pursuing charges related to corruption in its dealings with Epstein. NPR asked four former prosecutors and one former law enforcement officer why, despite the accusations made, the DOJ has made no additional arrests. This is what they had to say.
Immigration
NPR - Camp East Montana is the largest immigrant detention center in the United States. It's also one of the facilities with the most detainee deaths. It opened in August 2025, and three of the 25 people who died in ICE detention since October were detained there. Advocacy groups, lawmakers and former detainees are raising concerns about Acquisition Logistics, the company that initially ran the center. Despite not having any prior experience running a center, it received a $1.3 billion federal contract. In February, ICE inspectors cited 49 violations, including inadequate medical care and failures to document required checks to prevent self-harm and suicide
Meanwhile . .
The Guardian - Immigration agents aren’t just targeting blue cities; they are coming to small towns, too, where some felt the relative quiet of their lives wouldn’t be impacted by Donald Trump’s plan for mass deportations.
Tiger Woods
MS NOW - There is an insatiable demand for golfing legend Tiger Woods to return to top form. But his recent brush with death after a car crash shows how this has warped the response to his frequent troubles, sports journalist Mike Wise argues. Woods’ history of accidents, DUIs, arrests and marital trouble shows a human being who needs help, and the constant focus on whether he will recover in time to play the next tournament is preventing him from getting it. The PGA of America, its corporate partners and golfing fans need to let Woods go, and he needs to stop trying to fix his swing and start trying to fix himself. Read more.
Iran
Newsworthy News - Secretary of State Marco Rubio says the U.S. gets “very little” energy through the Strait of Hormuz, while allies in Europe and Asia depend heavily on it. Iran has signaled it may change the “regime” of the Strait and has reportedly demanded large payments from ship operators to pass, testing norms of free navigation.
Rubio is publicly pressuring allied nations to “step up” on securing the waterway, signaling the U.S. may participate without necessarily leading.
The dispute is unfolding amid indirect U.S.-Iran contacts and an unresolved standoff over a U.S. proposal and Iran’s counter-conditions.
Rubio’s message: allies have more on the line than America does
Pete Hegseth
New Republic - When Pete Hegseth talks to God, he asks the Almighty to help him kill people—as violently and ruthlessly as possible. In a potential violation of the separation of church and state, Hegseth has ordered monthly prayer meetings at the Pentagon, and in his first such gathering since launching the war against Iran, the defense secretary pleaded for divine assistance in mowing down the Iranian foe.
“Let every round find its mark against the enemies of righteousness and our nation,” Hegseth intoned to a military audience, reciting a prayer previously given by a military chaplain before the Venezuela raid and applying it to American troops in Iran...
Hegseth’s prayer service attracted only scattered media attention. But it helps explain the real impetus behind a development that deserves far more notice: The appointed leader of the world’s most powerful military regularly speaks about his capacity to rain terror and death on the enemy with an undisguised relish that should unsettle us all.
April 4, 2026
Donald Trump
Alternet - As Congress continues to press the White House for greater transparency on the Epstein files, previously unreleased, handwritten notes from FBI agents are shedding new light on the relationship between notorious sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and President Donald Trump.
The 30 notes were derived from a series of 2019 interviews with a woman who claimed to have traveled with Epstein when she was a teen, alleging that during one trip, she was sexually assaulted by Trump. The White House has denied the allegations.
While much of the content of the handwritten notes was later transcribed into official summaries called 302s, the Post and Courier compared them and found that many details had not made it into the formal documents.
The woman, for example, provided the names of four young teenage girls who were at a pool party attended by Epstein. Their names are not included in or were redacted from the Epstein files that were released, and at least one says that she was never contacted by the FBI, even though she may be a corroborating witness to Epstein’s activities. MORE
People - Donald Trump jokingly suggested that any "bad publicity" he gets is White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt's fault as he spoke to reporters on Tuesday..."You're doing a terrible job," the president, 79, told Leavitt to her face. “Shall we keep her? I think we'll keep her,” Trump then said
Trump does not have to turn over his presidential records to the National Archives at the end of his administration, the DOJ said.
The Tennessee Holler - CAMPAIGN TRUMP: “Child care is child care. You have to have it. We’re going to make this into an incredible country that can afford to take care of its people. America first.”.... PRESIDENT TRUMP: “We can’t take care of daycare. Just military.”
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