Study Finds Between 29% and 39% of Americans believe they are currently living in the end times. That is not a fringe position held by a handful of doomsday cults. It cuts across Evangelical congregations, climate activist circles, Silicon Valley boardrooms, and rural prepper communities alike. And according to a new study, it may be one of the most consequential and least examined forces in how the public responds to the biggest threats facing the planet.
UNDERNEWS
Online report of the Progressive Review. Since 1964, the news while there's still time to do something about it.
March 16, 2026
Money
Trump and the law
The Guardian - The BBC has asked a US court to throw out Donald Trump’s $10bn (£7.5bn) lawsuit over the way a documentary edited one of his speeches, warning that proceeding with the case would have a “chilling effect” on its reporting on the president.
In papers filed to the Florida court dealing with the case, the BBC’s US lawyers claimed Trump’s reputation had not been damaged by the documentary, given it aired in the UK a week before his re-election.
The broadcaster’s lawyers also reiterated that the Panorama documentary, Trump: a Second Chance, was simply not published in the US, including Florida, meaning the court had no jurisdiction to hear the case.
They also cited other cases to argue that defendants should not have to deal with “expensive yet groundless litigation”, which restricted the ability to cover public figures.
“All the more so when [the] plaintiff is among the most powerful and high-profile individuals in the world, on whose activities the BBC reports every day,” the BBC’s case states.
“The chilling effect is clear. Federal courts in Florida therefore frequently dismiss defective defamation claims like this one at the pleading stage.”
The corporation’s lawyers cited a recent Trump lawsuit against CNN, which was dismissed as “meritless”. The 2022 suit objected to the network’s use of the phrase “the big lie”, which it used to refer to the president’s claim that the 2020 election was “stolen”.
The BBC has already apologised personally to Trump for a 12-second clip in the 2024 documentary, which spliced together two parts of the speech made on 6 January 2021. The clip suggested that Trump told the crowd: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be there with you, and we fight. We fight like hell.”
The words were taken from sections of his speech almost an hour apart. When the edit emerged at the end of last year, the BBC issued a retraction for “unintentionally” giving “the mistaken impression that President Trump had made a direct call for violent action”.
However, the BBC said the documentary was not shown in the US or Florida.
Its case states: “More than a year later, even after being re-elected with the support of a sizeable majority of Florida voters, the president alleged that the documentary defamed him in Florida – where defendants never aired it.”
Roll Call - The Trump administration vowed Friday to appeal a ruling from a federal judge that an investigation into Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell was likely politically motivated and blocked a grand jury subpoena.
Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, made the announcement at a news conference as the ruling was unsealed Friday. Her office has reportedly been investigating Powell’s 2025 testimony before the Senate Banking Committee about cost overruns on renovations to the Federal Reserve’s building.
Judge James E. Boasberg of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia issued the decision on Wednesday and said he would unseal it Friday. The judge cited months of statements by President Donald Trump pressuring Powell to make decisions to lower interest rates and criticizing Powell.
Boasberg also said Pirro appeared to act at Trump’s direction to initiate the investigation. “A mountain of evidence suggests that the Government served these subpoenas on the Board to pressure its Chair into voting for lower interest rates or resigning,” Boasberg wrote.
Roll Call - The Trump administration vowed Friday to appeal a ruling from a federal judge that an investigation into Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell was likely politically motivated and blocked a grand jury subpoena.
Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, made the announcement at a news conference as the ruling was unsealed Friday. Her office has reportedly been investigating Powell’s 2025 testimony before the Senate Banking Committee about cost overruns on renovations to the Federal Reserve’s building.
Judge James E. Boasberg of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia issued the decision on Wednesday and said he would unseal it Friday. The judge cited months of statements by President Donald Trump pressuring Powell to make decisions to lower interest rates and criticizing Powell.
Boasberg also said Pirro appeared to act at Trump’s direction to initiate the investigation. “A mountain of evidence suggests that the Government served these subpoenas on the Board to pressure its Chair into voting for lower interest rates or resigning,” Boasberg wrote.
Its case states: “More than a year later, even after being re-elected with the support of a sizeable majority of Florida voters, the president alleged that the documentary defamed him in Florida – where defendants never aired it.”
Roll Call - The Trump administration vowed Friday to appeal a ruling from a federal judge that an investigation into Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell was likely politically motivated and blocked a grand jury subpoena.
Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, made the announcement at a news conference as the ruling was unsealed Friday. Her office has reportedly been investigating Powell’s 2025 testimony before the Senate Banking Committee about cost overruns on renovations to the Federal Reserve’s building.
Judge James E. Boasberg of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia issued the decision on Wednesday and said he would unseal it Friday. The judge cited months of statements by President Donald Trump pressuring Powell to make decisions to lower interest rates and criticizing Powell.
Boasberg also said Pirro appeared to act at Trump’s direction to initiate the investigation. “A mountain of evidence suggests that the Government served these subpoenas on the Board to pressure its Chair into voting for lower interest rates or resigning,” Boasberg wrote.
Buttigieg opposes the electoral college
Most overweight cities
In order to call attention to the communities where weight-related problems are most prevalent, WalletHub compared 100 of the most populated U.S. metro areas across 19 key metrics. Our data set ranges from the share of physically inactive adults to projected obesity rates by 2050 to healthy-food access.
| Most Overweight & Obese Cities | |
| 1. Little Rock, AR | 11. Columbia, SC |
| 2. McAllen, TX | 12. Knoxville, TN |
| 3. Memphis, TN | 13. Birmingham, AL |
| 4. Jackson, MS | 14. Wichita, KS |
| 5. Augusta, GA | 15. Greenville, SC |
| 6. Lafayette, LA | 16. New Orleans, LA |
| 7. Fayetteville, AR | 17. Myrtle Beach, SC |
| 8. Shreveport, LA | 18. Winston, NC |
| 9. Mobile, AL | 19. Louisville, KY |
| 10. Baton Rouge, LA | 20. Fort Wayne, IN |
To read the full report and your city’s rank
FCC chair threatens TV broadcasters
Tech tips
MAY 1 REPLACE SMOKE ALARM BATTERIES: 4 alarms using 3 9volt batteries
MAY 3 MEREDITH BD
JUN KATHY CAR REGISTRATION JUN 30
JUN 14 POTLUCK SUPPER OUTSIDE MALLET BARN
JUN 15 JULIA BD
JUN 15 TAXES
The war on the media
Trump's anti-democracy bill
Iran War
The GOP plan to get anti-democracy SAVE America Act passed
Word
Democratic senator blames both parties for Iran tactics
Trump stuff
Immigration
Winners and losers in the Iran war
Trump and the law
March 15, 2026
Tump and Israel's Middle East war
Ethnicity
Weather
Immigration
Trump & Israel's war on Iran
Who's getting the most out of the Iran war?
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
Decline of book reviews
The New York Times Book Review (and its daily review)The Boston GlobeThe Minneapolis Star TribuneUSA TodayThe Wall Street JournalFinancial TimesThe GuardianThe Chicago TribuneWith occasional coverage still to be found in the LA Times & NY Post