April 24, 2026
Donald Trump
Democratic Coalition - As MAGA continues their faux-meltdown over the fraud in Minnesota - fraud that has been addressed and is being prosecuted BTW - let's just take a look at all the convicted fraudsters Trump has pardoned.
Middle East
The Hill - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday revealed he had undergone treatment for prostate cancer and delayed releasing the results at the peak of U.S. and Israeli military operations against Iran earlier this year.
Portside - Omer Bartov is an Israeli professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Brown University. He grew up in a Zionist home and served as an officer in the Israel Defense Forces, but he has long been concerned about Israel’s use of military power. In a new book called “Israel: What Went Wrong?,” Bartov argues that Zionism has morphed into an ideology of extremism that led to genocide in Gaza following the Hamas attacks of October 7th. “There is growing criticism of American support for these kinds of Israeli policies, both on the American left and on the American right,” Bartov tells David Remnick. Bartov believes that Israel requires “shock therapy” because “it has not still come to identify the limits of its own power, because those limits are in Washington, D.C., and it’s there that those limits have to be set.” “For Israel, that would be good, because I think Israel needs to be liberated from that kind of dependence on American power. I think, for American society and for American Jewry, that’s a very bad thing because there is a rise of . . . antisemitism from the Tucker Carlsons of the world, who are a rising force right now.” Download a Transcript.
But the US president’s claim seemed questionable in the face of the seizure of two container ships by Iranian commandos and a US report warning it could take six months to clear the strait of mines. Trump’s comments on Thursday came after US special forces boarded a stateless oil tanker in the Indian Ocean, which the Pentagon claimed was carrying Iranian crude oil. NPR - President Trump has ordered the Navy to “shoot and kill any boat” trying to lay mines in the Strait of Hormuz. Shipping through the Strait has nearly stopped over fears of mines, Iranian attacks and seizures of ships. The president says he is prepared to wait for the best deal to end the war with Iran. |
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NBC News - The ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon will be extended by three weeks, Trump announced.
ActBLue
Patriotwise - ActBlue’s CEO stands accused of lying to Congress about foreign donations, potentially crippling the Democratic Party’s fundraising lifeline amid a cascade of resignations and federal probes. ActBlue CEO Regina Wallace-Jones allegedly misled Congress in 2023 about robust foreign donation vetting, contradicted by internal legal memos. House Republican committees uncover 237 foreign IP donations in 30 days and lenient fraud rules prioritizing acceptance over scrutiny.
Seven senior staff, including top legal officer, resigned since February 2025; Trump administration targets platform with DOJ investigation.
Elon Musk
Washington Post - Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, is on the cusp of a record-setting initial public offering that could soon make him a trillionaire. But in recent months he’s been increasingly vocal about something else: rallying White people to stand up for their race.
“Whites are a rapidly dying minority,” Musk wrote in January in a post on his social media site X that has garnered more than 17 million views and 150,000 likes. In a February post liked by more than 365,000 accounts, Musk declared that “there has been unrelenting hate and poisonous propaganda in the West against anyone White, straight or male over the past decade or more,” adding, “No more guilt trips. ENOUGH.”
Musk’s X feed has for years served as a megaphone for his conservative views, especially since he emerged as one of the most prominent backers of Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential campaign. But a Washington Post analysis found that Musk has recently significantly increased his rate of online posts about race and his concerns about perceived threats to Whiteness or what he views as calls for a “genocide” against White people.
Democrats launch impeachment bid against Pentagon Secretary
Patriotwise - House Democrats just launched an impeachment bid against President Trump’s Pentagon chief—turning an already tense Iran conflict into a high-stakes fight over war powers, accountability, and who really controls America’s military decisions. . . . The allegations center on an “unauthorized” war with Iran, civilian-casualty claims, and obstruction of congressional oversight. . . .With Republicans controlling the House, the effort is unlikely to advance—but it will shape oversight fights and midterm messaging.
Trump regime
The Hill - The Department of Justice (DOJ) announced today that it is dropping its criminal investigation into the Federal Reserve and its chair Jerome Powell. An ongoing criminal investigation would continue to delay the confirmation process for Trump’s nominee to be the next Fed chair, Kevin Warsh. Closing the case could clear the way for Warsh to be confirmed by the Senate in the coming days.
Timing: Powell’s term ends on May 15. However, the Federal Reserve chair typically does not step down until a replacement is confirmed. Today’s announcement could put that timing back on track.
Is this saga over for Powell?: Well, U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro said in a statement that she asked the Fed inspector general to investigate Powell and the Fed renovations.
The Hill - The Navy secretary’s removal, which caught many officials and lawmakers by surprise, comes as the president has aggressively pushed to supercharge U.S. shipbuilding, the commander in chief’s growing priority in efforts to counter China’s industrial and naval might.
Retired Navy Rear Adm. Mark Montgomery said Thursday that he was not “disappointed” with Phelan’s ouster, but he said his grumbles with the Navy secretary were over the Trump-class battleship. “He and the president cooked up an extremely bad idea, which is a very large target known as a battleship. That’s going to cost $24 to $26 billion minimum. For the first one, which is the cost of like, 12 destroyers,” Montgomery, a senior director for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), told reporters Thursday morning.
In late December, Trump announced a new class of battleships as part of the U.S. Navy’s “Golden Fleet,” envisioned as an upgrade to the Navy’s Arleigh Burke-class destroyers.
Trump aimed for the new class of battleships to be built by 2028, a timeline experts argued would be unlikely, saying the new vessels would take billions of dollars and far more time to complete.
The Navy asked for a $377 billion budget for next year, including more than $65.8 billion for shipbuilding, to procure 18 warships, including destroyers and submarines.
The CIA spies on the Vatican
Ken Klippenstein - - When Trump declared Pope Leo “terrible for foreign policy,” the U.S. intelligence community took the president’s remarks as a directive to prioritize spying on the Vatican.
It has for years, sources tell me. The CIA has human spies working inside the Holy See bureaucracy. The NSA and CIA seek to intercept telecommunications, emails, and texts. The FBI investigates crimes committed against and by the Vatican. The State Department closely follows the ins and outs of Papal diplomacy and politics. All of these agencies liaise with the Vatican’s own foreign policy, intelligence and law enforcement agencies.
“Pope Leo is WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy,” Trump said in an April 12 social media post. Trump went on to cite several specific foreign policy grievances, including the Pope’s criticism of the Iran War and the abduction of Venezuelan ruler Nicolas Maduro. Trump said:
“I don’t want a Pope who thinks it’s OK for Iran to have a Nuclear Weapon. I don’t want a Pope who thinks it’s terrible that America attacked Venezuela, a Country that was sending massive amounts of Drugs into the United States and, even worse, emptying their prisons, including murderers, drug dealers, and killers, into our Country. And I don’t want a Pope who criticizes the President of the United States …”
Weather
Newsweek - A late-April winter storm is bringing heavy snow, strong winds and increasing avalanche risk to parts of the northern Rockies, with forecasters warning that mountain travel and backcountry conditions could rapidly deteriorate through Friday night and into Saturday. The most severe impacts are expected across Montana, where multiple winter storm warnings are in effect, while the surrounding mountain regions of Wyoming and Idaho remain under winter weather advisories, according to the National Weather Service (NWS).
ICE
Newsweek - The Philadelphia City Council on Thursday approved a package of bills aimed at further limiting cooperation between city agencies and federal immigration authorities, sending the measures to Mayor Cherelle Parker for consideration. The "ICE Out" legislation passed with a veto-proof majority after advancing through committee earlier this month.
The legislation would restrict cooperation between city agencies and federal immigration authorities, including banning 287(g) agreements and limiting information sharing with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). It would also require visible identification for officers, prohibit discrimination based on immigration status and restrict ICE access to city property without a judicial warrant.
Polls
NY Times - Disapproval of President Trump has climbed to the highest level of his second term, according to The New York Times polling average, which found that 58 percent of Americans disapprove of the president’s job performance while only 39 percent approve.
MS NOW - Third Way and UnidosUS commissioned the poll of likely voters, which was conducted in March and oversampled Latino voters. They found that these voters are souring on Trump at a rate that outpaces the general electorate’s growing disenchantment with the president. While Trump’s overall favorability rating in the poll was 44% favorable to 55% unfavorable, among Latino voters it was 34% favorable and 66% unfavorable.
Suicides
NY Times - The rate of suicides among young people in the United States has dropped 11 percent below projections since the rollout of 988, the national suicide prevention hotline. It dropped even more significantly in states with the highest numbers of calls, according to a new study that Ellen Barry, who covers mental health, wrote about this week. Nearly 4,400 adolescents and young adults are alive, we think, because of the program.
The Department of Health and Human Services introduced 988 in July 2020 with bipartisan support and a $1.5 billion investment for the crisis centers that field calls.
The Department of Health and Human Services introduced 988 in July 2020 with bipartisan support and a $1.5 billion investment for the crisis centers that field calls.
Impeachment
Axios - Resistance-minded House Democrats are pushing their colleagues to begin building the case against President Trump now in anticipation of a Day 1 impeachment vote if they retake the House, Axios' Andrew Solender writes from the Capitol. The mere existence of this movement shows how much pressure Dem lawmakers will face next January if they retake the House and/or Senate.
Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.) told Axios the party should "build up the case so that when we are in power in January, we've created the conditions ... we've done the fact-checking, we've done the shadow hearings, everything we need to be able to impeach" Trump. Rep. Yassamin Ansari (D-Ariz.) told Axios that if Democrats recapture the House, as history says is likely, "the push for impeachment is going to be overwhelming." More
Marijuana
NPR - The Trump administration is easing restrictions on medical marijuana by moving it from the restrictive Schedule I to Schedule III, a category that includes drugs like Tylenol with codeine and anabolic steroids. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announced the move yesterday, saying it "allows for research on the safety and efficacy of this substance, ultimately providing patients with better care and doctors with more reliable information." |
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Meanwhile....
Meta is planning to lay off approximately 8,000 employees and eliminate another 6,000 open roles.
At least eight wildfires are tearing through parts of southern Georgia and northern Florida. |
Gambling
The Guardian - Gambling addiction is spiraling “out of control” in the US, a leading campaigner for stricter guardrails has warned, as experts from around the world are set to gather in Boston to push for more regulation of the industry. The rapid expansion of online gambling, prediction markets and sports betting platforms, “demands a public health response”, according to Harry Levant, director of gambling policy at the Public Health Advocacy Institute (PHAI), urging policymakers to intervene.
April 23, 2026
Polls
2028 DEM PRIMARY POLL:
Kamala Harris 22% (+1)
Gavin Newsom 21%
Pete Buttigieg 12%
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez 10%
- Echelon Insights |
Kamala Harris 22% (+1)
Gavin Newsom 21%
Pete Buttigieg 12%
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez 10%
- Echelon Insights |
The Hill - The decline in Americans who strongly approve of Trump’s job in office accounts for most of his falling approval rating — 20 percent strongly approve of the president, down from 26 percent one year ago. Meanwhile, the share who “somewhat approve” of the president dipped from 19 percent in last April to 17 percent today.
NY Times - Percentage of Americans who say that, as children, they knew a compassionate, nonjudgmental adult: 35
Percentage of these Americans who say that their mother was such a person: 50. That their father was: 5
Record high number of books banned by libraries
The Guardian - The American Library Association (ALA) has reported a record high in the number of books banned in US libraries. In 2025, 5,668 books were banned – representing 66% of the total number challenged – with an additional 920 censored through access restriction, such as relocation on the library shelves.
The most-banned book in 2025 was Sold, a 2006 novel by Patricia McCormick about sex trafficking in India. Other frequently challenged titles include The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky, Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe and Empire of Storms by Sarah J Maas.
... The ALA also found that 40% of the materials challenged this year involved representations of LGBTQ+ people or people of colour.
Meanwhile...
Study Finds - A growing number of Americans are deciding they’re done. Done with the friend who never apologizes. Done with the family member whose phone calls leave them drained. Done with the group chat that feels more like an obligation than a connection. According to a new survey released for Mental Health Awareness Month, 38 percent of Americans have gone “no contact” with a friend or family member in the past year, cutting off communication entirely rather than working through whatever went wrong.
Kamala Haris
Occupy Democrats - Kamala Harris unleashes the most brutal takedown of Trump to date — shredding him for his rank incompetence, for getting dragged into a pointless war by Netanyahu, and for covering up the Epstein scandal....
"We are dealing with the most corrupt, callous, and incompetent presidential administration in the history of the United States. Period," the former vice president told a Democratic women's group in Michigan.
"And so on this list of what is empirical evidence of that point, let's talk about this war," she said. "He entered a war, got pulled into it by Bibi Netanyahu, let's be clear about that, entered a war that the American people do not want, putting at risk American service members."
Trump regime
Independent, 'UK - Long lines at airports may soon return as bosses at the Department of Homeland Security warn that they will quickly run out of funds to pay security staff.
“That money is dried up, if I continue down this path, the first week of May, because my payroll at DHS is just over $1.6 billion every two weeks,” newly instated DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin told Fox & Friends on Tuesday.
“There is no more emergency fund, so the president can’t do another executive order for us to use money, because there’s no more money there,” he added.
According to Office of Management and Budget data, as of this week, less than $1.4 billion remains in the DHS’s $10 billion budget.
Long lines at airports could return soon as bosses at the Department of Homeland Security warn that they will soon run out of funding to pay security staff.
The government shutdown affecting the DHS and Transport Security Administration workers has been ongoing since mid-February and is the longest in U.S. history, with approximately 100,000 employees reportedly at risk of not being paid until summer.
The lack of payment has resulted in heavy understaffing, causing huge lines out of airports and other major disruptions. According to Politico, by early March, nearly 500 TSA officers had already resigned.
Alternet America - The man whose job was to make sure America’s nuclear and chemical weapons stayed secret sat down to dinner with a woman he’d just met and told her everything. Andrew Hugg, the U.S. Army’s Chief of Chemical Nuclear Surety, was escorted out of the Pentagon and placed on administrative leave after O’Keefe Media Group released undercover footage of him spilling sensitive national security information to a woman he thought was on a date with him. She was not on a date with him.
Over dinner, Hugg discussed potential U.S. action against Iran’s leadership, described how nuclear launch decisions are made, confirmed that the U.S. still possesses nerve agents, confirmed an army chemist had recently died from exposure to an agent, and acknowledged that U.S. airstrikes had killed children in Iran. He said all of this to a stranger.
At some point during the evening, Hugg looked across the table and said: “You’re not a spy, right? Your eyes have mesmerized me so much… The easiest way to get intelligence… send a pretty girl, talk to the guy.”
Bloomberg - The Trump administration is said to be nearing a rescue package for Spirit Airlines that could give the US government the option to own as much as 90% of the carrier once it emerges from bankruptcy. It’s the latest unorthodox move by Trump into the kind of state-driven economic policy more commonly seen in places like China. During his second term, Trump has shown an extraordinary willingness to take financial positions in private-sector companies his administration deems essential for the US, such as chipmaker Intel. The strategy has drawn scrutiny from critics who question whether the approach could skew markets and create risks for taxpayers.
Climate change
Nearly half of Americans, 152.3 million people, live in places with unhealthy levels of air pollution, new study finds (More) | See most polluted cities (More) | ... and cleanest (More)
Ohio Is Where Wind and Solar Projects Go to Die, and Other Findings From New Research on State Permitting
Inside Climate News - Nearly half the nation’s children live in places with dangerous levels of air pollution, according to a report released Wednesday by the American Lung Association. That’s 33.5 million children—46 percent of the country’s kids—living in areas with failing grades for at least one measure of air pollution that is particularly harmful to developing lungs.
The report also found that people of color are more than twice as likely as white people to live in a community with failing grades for all three measures. Latinos are more than three times as likely to live in such communities, unchanged from last year’s report.
Since 2000, the ALA’s annual State of the Air reports have detailed the nation’s air quality, which improved for decades following the passage of the 1970 Clean Air Act. But in recent years, heat and wildfires worsened by climate change are reversing some of that progress.
Gabrielle Canon Guardian - Scientists and officials are keeping a close eye on conditions brewing in the Pacific Ocean that could spike temperatures and smash global heat records in the year ahead. It’s still too early to get a definitive picture, but there are signs that a so-called super El Niño could develop this year, supercharging extreme weather events around the world. Some forecasts are suggesting it could become one of the strongest ever recorded.
Alongside heating from the human-caused climate crisis, this could put the world on track to once again temporarily breach the 1.5C average temperature rise over preindustrial levels – the critical climate threshold that experts have warned comes with a host of catastrophic consequences. Some models show that temperature anomalies could even push past that point next year and go beyond a 2C increase for the first time in recorded history.
Are we heading for ‘super El Niño’ – and what could we expect?
Chance of El Niño forming in Pacific Ocean may push global temperatures to record highs in 202
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Colleges
Portland Press Herald - Amid growing political pressures on American higher education and the rising cost of college, some southern Maine students are heading across the border. The number of American study permit holders in Canada reached its highest point in a decade in 2025. Last year, after President Donald Trump took office and began slashing grant funding and threatening schools with investigations, Canadian universities began seeing rising interest from American students
The Strategy That Built America’s Middle Class Still Works, So Why Won’t Democrats Deploy It?
Hartmann Report - There was a time when Democrats boldly promoted programs that literally built the world’s first over-50%-of-the-population middle class, and weren’t afraid to take names and kick ass.
Franklin D. Roosevelt transformed America with his New Deal programs, including legalizing unions, Social Security, the minimum wage, the 40-hour work week, ending child labor, Federal emergency relief (FERA), the FDIC, SEC, FCC, TVA, NLRB, FHA and Fannie Mae, and the National Archives (among others)....
President Lyndon Johnson similarly added to the middle class, while keeping the top income tax rate at a fierce 74% on individuals and 50% on corporations. His Great Society programs included Medicare, Medicaid, Meals on Wheels, Title I aid to low-income-district schools, Pell Grants, Head Start, Job Corps, Community Action Agencies/Community Services Block Grants, VISTA, the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, ending racial quotas on immigration, Food Stamps, HUD, NEA, NEH, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (NPR/PBS). More
Health
Congressional Insider - A breakthrough lung cancer treatment approved for England’s NHS nearly doubles survival for patients battling one of the deadliest forms of the disease, filling a treatment gap that has persisted for over two decades.
Approximately 530 English patients annually will benefit from the immunotherapy maintenance treatment following chemotherapy or radiotherapy. The approval represents the first advancement in limited-stage SCLC treatment in over 20 years Treatment is immediately available through NHS following official recommendation
ICE
NBC News - According to the two DHS officials, ICE field offices across the country have been instructed that its officers should no longer enter homes without a judicial warrant. ICE officers also have drastically curtailed the number of arrests they make during immigration court proceedings by taking people into custody only when a person is a target for deportation, one of the officials and the immigration attorneys said.
Trump regime moves to reclassify marijuana
The Guardian - The Trump administration has moved to reclassify marijuana, more than four months after Donald Trump signed an executive order directing the attorney general to move it from schedule I to schedule III under the Controlled Substances Act. The schedule I classification meant marijuana was alongside heroin, LSD, MDMA and synthetic opioids, whereas a schedule III classification put it in the same category as ketamine, anabolic steroids and testosterone.
Trump’s acting attorney general, Todd Blanche, signed the order on Thursday and said in a post on X that the Department of Justice was “delivering on President Trump’s promise to improve American healthcare”.
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