April 7, 2026
Irregular bedtimes and sleeping less than 8 hours may double your risk of heart attack
Daily Mail, UK - People who go to bed at inconsistent times and sleep less than eight hours a night may be twice as likely to suffer major heart problems, according to a new study.
Researchers at the University of Oulu in Finland followed 3,231 adults for ten years to study how sleep patterns affect heart health.
Participants wore wearable devices that recorded when they went to bed, woke up, and the midpoint of sleep, which is the halfway point between falling asleep and waking.
To identify who had irregular sleep schedules, the researchers measured how much these times varied each day over seven consecutive days.
During the ten-year follow-up, 128 participants - about four per cent - experienced major heart events, including heart attack, stroke, unstable angina, hospitalisation for heart failure, and even death from cardiovascular disease.
People with highly variable bedtimes or sleep midpoints were at significantly higher risk - but only if they slept less than the median of seven hours and 56 minutes per night.
Those who slept longer than this did not show the same increased risk.
Meanwhile. . .
Ford recalls over 400,000 trucks and SUVs due to increased risk of crash
Sam Smith - While I have failed to see any official medical reports on Donald Trump, I have never seen in my lifetime so many negative mental assessments by high ranking officials of a president in office.
Iran
NY Times - The Geneva Conventions require militaries to distinguish between civilians and combatants and to take precautions to protect noncombatants, including by ensuring that the attacks are proportional.
The U.S. military’s own law of war manual states that “the protection of civilians against the harmful effects of hostilities is one of the main purposes of the law of war.” The manual goes on to outline the duties the U.S. military has by not directly attacking civilians and minimizing harm to the civilian population.
What seems like straightforward terminology outlined in the Geneva Conventions or U.S. law can have varying interpretations.
Ground troops, commanders and states may even define “civilian” differently. One example comes from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; the United States used the presence of “military-aged males” as a contributing factor in justifying lethal force because a person looked like they might be a combatant, regardless if they were armed.
In Iran, with power plants as possible targets, scrutiny is rising over another military term, “dual-use objects” — infrastructure that can be used for both civilian and military purposes.
Power grids are civilian objects by default but can become lawful targets if they make an effective contribution to military action and offer definite military advantage, experts say.
“Power plants sit at the heart of civilian life, which is why the legal bar to attack them is so high,” Ms. Yager said. “The civilian harm from blackouts, water disruption and collapsing health care must be weighed. In Iran, bombing power plants and bridges would be devastating, and the U.S. military would have no way of saying they didn’t know that.”
Washington Post - [Last month] he Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released its latest provisional numbers for overdose deaths nationwide. It projected 71,542 deaths in the 12-month period ending in October 2025, a 17 percent drop compared with the previous 12-month period. Even more encouraging, the full year of 2025 is expected to mark a 35 percent drop from the peak number of deaths in 2023.
Many factors contributed to this trend, but I think the most important reason is clear: Fentanyl supplies have dropped thanks to collaborative and wide-ranging counternarcotics strategies. Nothing else explains the timing and abruptness of the decline.
Drug seizures tested by the Drug Enforcement Administration illustrate this well. In August 2023, the agency reported that the purity of seized fentanyl powder products peaked at more than 20 percent; by the end of 2024, it dropped to just above 10 percent. The purity of fentanyl in pills dropped as well, though with some fits and starts likely due to Mexican producers “having difficulty obtaining some key precursor chemicals,” the DEA reported.
Washington Post - President Donald Trump spent Monday fending off questions about whether his threat to bomb “every” bridge and power plant in Iran would amount to war crimes. He rejected the premise, arguing that Iran’s leaders were “animals” who needed to be stopped. On Tuesday morning, he doubled down.
“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, his social media platform. “I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will.”
Such seemingly unrestrained statements have alarmed legal experts and former military officials, who argue that the president’s threat to conduct broad attacks on civilian infrastructure — “very little is off-limits,” he said Monday — could undermine America’s aims in Iran and create legal jeopardy for military leadership.
“I’m concerned that the president’s bombast is putting the operational commanders in a very difficult position,” said Geoffrey Corn, who served as a top law-of-war expert at the U.S. Army in Iraq in 2004-2005. “They know that you cannot just draw a circle around the country and say every element of the electrical grid is now a lawful target.”
Jameel Jaffer, a longtime human rights lawyer and lecturer at Columbia University, said Trump’s latest threat to extinguish a “whole civilization” meets the “very definition of terrorism — to seek to achieve political ends through violence or threats of violence directed at civilians.”
NPR - As the Strait of Hormuz remains closed, the International Rescue Committee and Save the Children tell NPR that clinics and humanitarian centers across the Middle East, Asia and Africa face the risk of running out of basic medication and food.
NBC News - Iran has rejected proposals for a temporary ceasefire, including a 45-day proposal that was recently delivered by Pakistan to both the U.S. and Iranian officials, sources said. Trump has not signed off on the proposal, a White House official said.
Iran, for its part, has been demanding a permanent end to the war. Iranian state media IRNA reported that Tehran would reject a temporary ceasefire given that during previous rounds of negotiations with the U.S., the Trump administration launched military strikes while talks were ongoing. More
NY Times - President Trump threatened to wipe out a “whole civilization,” and the United States hit military targets on Iran’s main oil export hub, as he ramped up pressure on Tehran to fully open the Strait of Hormuz or potentially face a wave of strikes on critical infrastructure in the coming hours.
Mr. Trump issued the grave warning in a post on social media on Tuesday as a new round of attacks was launched across the Middle East. The U.S. attacked Kharg Island, the export hub, Israel and Iran launched fresh attacks and Israel’s military warned Iranians to avoid traveling by train. The increasingly incendiary threats and the intense fighting reinforced the fragile state of diplomacy, with no public signs of a diplomatic breakthrough to end the war.
Zeeshan Aleem, MSNOW - If the United States does in fact conduct such strikes, they would disable much of Iran’s economy, wreak havoc on its health care system and otherwise cause untold suffering across the civilian population.
The president’s advocacy of potential war crimes comes amid his increasingly desperate bid to get a leg up on Iran. But while the threats are ominous, the intimidation is highly unlikely to succeed strategically — and could even backfire.
Trump said Monday that he believed God supports the United States’ actions in the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, a widening conflict that has killed thousands in the Middle East, wounded many more and left 13 U.S. service members dead.
“I do, because God is good,” Trump said in response to a Washington Post reporter’s question during a White House news briefing. “And God wants to see people taken care of.”
Best and worst states for child healthcare
WalletHub - As workers pay an average of $6,850 annually toward employer-sponsored family health coverage and Every Kid Healthy Week begins on April 20, the personal-finance company WalletHub has released its report on 2026’s Best and Worst States for Children’s Health Care.
To identify the states that provide the most affordable and highest-quality health care for children, WalletHub evaluated the 50 states and the District of Columbia using 33 key indicators. The data set includes measures ranging from the percentage of children ages 0 to 17 who are in excellent or very good health to the number of pediatricians and family doctors per capita.
Best vs. Worst
To identify the states that provide the most affordable and highest-quality health care for children, WalletHub evaluated the 50 states and the District of Columbia using 33 key indicators. The data set includes measures ranging from the percentage of children ages 0 to 17 who are in excellent or very good health to the number of pediatricians and family doctors per capita.
| Best States for Children’s Health Care | Worst States for Children’s Health Care |
| 1. Massachusetts | 42. Arkansas |
| 2. Rhode Island | 43. Oklahoma |
| 3. Connecticut | 44. Texas |
| 4. Vermont | 45. Georgia |
| 5. Hawaii | 46. Wyoming |
| 6. New Jersey | 47. Kentucky |
| 7. Pennsylvania | 48. Montana |
| 8. New York | 49. Alaska |
| 9. Iowa | 50. Arizona |
| 10. California | 51. Mississippi |
Best vs. Worst
- Massachusetts has the lowest share of uninsured children aged 0 to 18, which is 7.5 times lower than in Texas, the highest.
- Hawaii has the lowest share of children aged 0 to 17 with unaffordable medical bills, which is 2.6 times lower than in Wyoming, the highest.
- The District of Columbia has the most pediatricians per 100,000 residents, which is 29 times more than in Louisiana, the fewest.
- Colorado have the lowest share of obese children aged 10 to 17, which is 2.4 times lower than in Mississippi, the highest.
Warming averages don't tell the whole story
Health & Wealth Digest - Researchers from Universidad Carlos III de Madrid and Universidad de Zaragoza examined daily temperature distributions across 48 contiguous U.S. states from 1950 to 2021. They used over 26,000 observations per state from NOAA data. This approach tracked shifts in coldest lows, hottest highs, and full ranges. Results showed 41 states with statistically significant warming in at least one segment. Only 27 states registered rising averages. This gap exposes patterns averages miss.
Work
Patriotwise - Americans are being pushed toward more schooling just to qualify for work that used to be learned on the job—and that’s a warning sign that our labor market is being distorted, not improved.
- A report says “most service workers now have college degrees,” raising questions about credential inflation and what employers really need.
- Career guidance sources show social work and human services roles increasingly require formal degrees, especially for licensed clinical positions.
Donald Trump
The Hill - Trump is fixated on finding the “leaker” who spilled details of the downing of a U.S. fighter jet in Iran last week. He suggested his administration would pressure the media to identify their source. “The person that did the story will go to jail” unless she or he identifies their source, he noted. Read more What media outlet is he referring to?: Trump didn’t specify a news organization or a specific story.
Money
NPR - Oil and gas prices aren't the only costs that have increased because of the war. From beer cans and helium balloons to mortgages, here are the shortages and price spikes that have started to pop up.
Trump and Putin
Thomas B. Edsall, NY Times - Keir Giles, a fellow at Chatham House, an international affairs think tank, answered my queries by sending me the publisher’s description of his forthcoming book, “American Overthrow: Moscow’s Endgame in Its Long War With Washington”:
Much of what Trump and his inner circle have done is precisely what the Kremlin would have wanted them to do; and in too many respects, Trump’s America has started to mimic Russia itself.For all the chaos of Trump’s first months back in the White House, one defining feature was common to all his destructive actions: the removal of the obstacles previously set up to prevent Russia from achieving its ambitions, whether they threatened Europe or America itself.The Trump administration’s determination to coerce Ukraine into surrendering to Russia is just the clearest example of how America is embracing Moscow’s objectives. And domestically, the war on facts and truth; the deployment of masked federal paramilitaries to the streets of major cities; the threats against neighboring countries; the consolidation of power; and the favoring of a narrow circle of oligarchs all mirror Vladimir Putin’s Russia of twenty years before.
Neo-Nazism
The Guardian - A network of militant neo-Nazi active clubs from around the US has been participating in riot-style combat events with other white nationalist groups in Virginia as part of what their founder called a “tip-off point for a fascist cultural revolution”.
Social media posts and group chats show members of so-called active clubs from Texas, Tennessee and Pennsylvania have in recent weeks and months travelled to Lynchburg, Virginia to train together at a secretive compound. The compound is run by the Wolves of Vinland, which the civil rights watchdog the Southern Poverty Law Center identifies as a neopagan white nationalist hate group. Also present were members of the white supremacist hate group Patriot Front and the neo-Nazi skinhead group known as the Hammerskins.
Active clubs, a loose network of localized white supremacist groups, were founded by the violent neo-Nazi Robert Rundo, who served jail time in 2024 for conspiring to stage riots at California political rallies.
Experts have warned that these groups, which mix rightwing extremism with fitness and combat sports to recruit and radicalize members of communities across the US, pose a potential public danger.
America
The Wall Street Journal: Allies Fear They Are Tied to an Erratic U.S. and Now Have Nowhere to Turn
As Michael Corthell noted on the Essay X² Substack: “There was a time when Americans expected political leadership to involve sobriety, judgment, and at least a passing acquaintance with reality. That time now feels like one of those lost civilizations historians whisper about, somewhere between Atlantis and the Republican Party of 1956.”
While it’s worked to the advantage of the GOP, the fossil fuel and private prison industries, and the billionaire class for four decades or more, it’s extraordinarily dangerous to our nation and our children’s future.
That’s because a society can’t function when its people don’t have faith in its institutions, and it’s even more of a challenge for a democracy, a form of government which only exists “by the consent of the governed.” When people lose faith in their nation’s institutions, the result is both social and political chaos much like America is experiencing right now.
Democrats
THe Hill - Rahm Emanuel helped build the modern Democratic Party. Now he’s making the case that it isn’t working. In recent months, as he tests the waters for a 2028 presidential bid, the onetime chief of staff to former President Obama has emerged as one of the party’s most pointed internal critics — warning that Democrats are losing their bearings on issues ranging from economic messaging to cultural positioning.
Democrats “lost the plot,” Emanuel said last month on the podcast “The Fifth Column,” adding that the party “got unanchored.”
“Every one of our most successful electoral presidents anchored themselves in what I call middle class values and values that are universal, at least in this country, ascribed to. We went from acceptance to advocacy,” said Emanuel, a former Chicago mayor who has at times tangled with progressives in the party.
....Emanuel’s remarks are getting outsized attention, in part because they come in a midterm election year from the architect of his party’s successful effort to retake the House in 2006.
At the time, Emanuel recruited a number of centrist candidates to win races in purple districts, including Heath Shuler, the former NFL quarterback who won a seat in North Carolina. Much of Emanuel’s message that year involved middle-class economic issues at a time when the Iraq War was the big focus.
Twenty years later, another war in the Middle East has Democrats arguing a GOP president has taken his eyes off the middle-class economic issues that drive voters to the polls, giving their party a big opportunity.
....As part of his recent tour, he has also sat down for interviews, where he has offered advice for Democrats struggling to connect with voters.
In an interview with Fox News Digital in late March, he urged Democrats to “centralize and ground ourselves in middle class values” and to “get to the core” of what voters want.
RFK Jr.
People - Fourteen years after the suicide of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s second wife, Mary Richardson Kennedy, who died by hanging in the barn of the family home in Bedford, N.Y., at age 52, a new biography RFK, Jr.: The Fall and Rise, by investigative reporter Isabel Vincent, reveals haunting new details of her final days.
The book, out April 14, delves into the Kennedy scion's astonishing rise to power and his private battles: lasting grief over the 1968 assassination of his father, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy; the weight of the family legacy; his past addiction to heroin; and his struggle with what he called his “lust demons.”
In the final months of Mary's life, their looming divorce turned ugly, as she and RFK Jr. fought over money, custody of their kids Conor, Aidan, Kyra and William, and his relationship with actress Cheryl Hines (whom he later wed). In the year following her death, Isabel Vincent was given access to several of his private diaries that Mary had taken "for insurance," a source told Vincent, who was covering Mary's death for the New York Post. In a 2023 Vlad TV podcast interview, RFK Jr. acknowledged the journals as “my own way of trying to live and examine life” and part of his 43 years in recovery.
Health
Congressional Insider - Researchers at University College London and the University of Eastern Finland analyzed data from nearly 470,000 participants across four large studies. Their work, published in npj Dementia, quantified the APOE gene’s impact using population-attributable fraction methodology. This approach shows APOE e3 and e4 variants account for 72 to 93 percent of late-onset Alzheimer’s cases. Late-onset form strikes after age 65 and represents most dementia diagnoses. The study challenges prior views that e3 variant posed no risk.
April 6, 2026
Book banning in Iowa
Yahoo - A federal appeals court decision on Monday cleared the way for enforcement of a state law that bans Iowa’s public schools from offering certain books and forms of instruction related to gender and sexual orientation.
Senate File 496, which was signed into law in 2023, included several provisions related to public schools, gender identity and sexuality. In two separate lawsuits, the American Civil Liberties Union, an LGBTQ advocacy groups and a coalition of publishers took the state to court over the issue, arguing that some elements of the law violated individuals’ constitutional rights.
In 2025, a federal judge imposed a set of parallel, temporary injunctions that effectively blocked enforcement of those provisions while the two cases are being litigated.
In two separate decisions issued Monday, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit vacated those injunctions and remanded both cases back to district court where the underlying challenges as to the law’s legality can proceed toward trial.
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Banning kids from social media may not be a good idea
Study Finds - A new Science analysis argues that blanket social media bans and broad surveillance rules for kids often fail to make them safer.
The big reason is trust: when children feel watched or shut out, they may hide problems instead of asking adults for help.
The authors point to four better bets: trust-building, easy reporting tools, real-time on-device supports, and digital safety education woven into daily life.
The paper also stresses a bigger shift in mindset: children should be treated as partners in digital safety, not just as passive people to control.
Trump timeline on Iran
- Mar 3: "We won the war."
Mar 7: "We defeated Iran."
Mar 9: "We must attack Iran."
Mar 9: "The war is ending almost completely, and very beautifully."
Mar 11: “You never like to say too ?early you won. We won. In ?the first hour it was over.”
Mar 12: "We did win, but we haven't won completely yet."
Mar 13: "We won the war."
Mar 14: "Please help us."
Mar 15: "If you don't help us, I will certainly remember it."
Mar 16: "Actually, we don't need any help at all."
Mar 16: "I was just testing to see who's listening to me."
Mar 16: "If NATO doesn't help, they will suffer something very bad."
Mar 17: "We neither need nor want NATO's help."
Mar 17: "I don't need Congressional approval to withdraw from NATO."
Mar 18: "Our allies must cooperate in reopening the Strait of Hormuz."
Mar 19: "US allies need to get a grip - step up and help open the Strait of Hormuz."
Mar 20: "NATO are cowards."
Mar 21: "The Strait of Hormuz must be protected by the countries that use it. We don't use it, we don't need to open it."
Mar 22: "This is the last time. I will give Iran 48 hours. Open the strait"
Mar 22: "Iran is Dead"
Mar 23: "We had very good and productive talks with Iran."
Mar 24: "We’re making progress."
Mar 25: “They gave us a present and the present arrived today. And it was a very big present worth a tremendous amount of money. I’m not going to tell you what that present is, but it was a very significant prize.”
Mar 26: "Make a deal, or we’ll just keep blowing them away."
Mar 27: "We don’t have to be there for NATO."
Mar 28: No major quote
Mar 29: Claimed talks were progressing
Mar 30: "Open the Strait of Hormuz immediately, or face devastating consequences."
Mar 31: Claimed a deal was "very close" and that Iran would "do the right thing"
Apr 1: "We’ll see what happens very soon."
Apr 2: Repeated that a deal was likely, while warning of continued strikes if not
Apr 3: "Something big is going to happen."
Apr 4: Said Iran must comply "immediately" or face further consequences.
Apr 5: "Open the f*ckin' Strait, you crazy bastards, or you'll be living in Hell - JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah."
Gavin Newsom
Gavin Newsom Press Office - California GDP surged 40% (to more than $4 trillion) — accounting for more than 14% of US output, since Gavin Newsom took office in January 2019. China expanded 32%, Germany increased 16%
Retirement isn's what it used to be
Noah Sheidlower, MSN - Fewer people are simply working 40 years, stepping away as Social Security kicks in, and then riding out their golden years. Over the last two years, I've interviewed more than 200 people who are still working past 80, and dozens more who retired in their 30s and 40s. Collectively, their stories lay bare how the traditional retirement path has withered away for millions of Americans.
As I reported in my "80 Over 80" series, 4.2% of the 80+ population still works, up from 3% in 2010, based on an analysis of Census data. The 75+ workforce is the fastest-growing of all demographics, while roughly one in five Americans 65+ works, double the rate in the 1980s. On the younger end, the FIRE (financial independence, retire early) movement has gained momentum as financial education moves into the mainstream. A 2023 survey of over 2,000 respondents conducted by The Harris Poll found that a quarter wanted to retire before turning 50, though the number who actually pull it off is much lower.
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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.
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