March 14, 2026
Climate change
An early-season heat wave is descending across the Western United States, likely to bring record-shattering temperatures to much of the region.
Jobs
Pew Research - The federal workforce had a net loss of nearly 238,000 employees in 2025. The number of people who quit, retired, were laid off or otherwise left federal employment was up 80.8% from 2024. Meanwhile, the number of people who started federal employment was down 55.6%.
Trump and the law
The Hill - A federal judge ruled Friday that the Trump administration unlawfully took the position last year that it couldn’t request more funding for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). U.S. District Judge Edward Davila ordered the agency’s acting director, Russ Vought, to continue requesting the necessary funds from the Federal Reserve to carry out the CFPB’s obligations.
Inside Climate News - One year ago today, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin announced he was terminating the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, one of the biggest climate initiatives of the Biden administration, after weeks of alleging the $20 billion in grants had been awarded in a “criminal” scheme.
But the Trump administration never was able to show the federal courts evidence of wrongdoing with regards to the fund, which Congress created in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act to spur private investment in clean energy and climate solutions.
Now, the chaos and accusations of those early months of President Donald Trump’s second term are at center stage in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. After an unusual hearing before 10 of the 11 judges last month (Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson is not participating in the case), the court is weighing what next steps are available for the grantees that have been frozen out of their accounts for the past year.
The D.C. Circuit, widely viewed as second only to the Supreme Court in judicial branch importance because of its role in hearing federal agency cases, questioned the Trump administration’s lawyer harshly. Dominated by Democratic appointees, the court seemed inclined to rule in favor of the grantees. But it is not clear that a favorable ruling will be enough to revive the nation’s first national “green bank.” The Trump administration is poised to continue to press a multi-pronged strategy to defend its right to terminate the slew of contractual agreements that established the program.
Iran War
NBC News - As the U.S. and Israel bombard Iran with strikes, the Islamic Republic is retaliating by utilizing its arsenal of missiles and cheap exploding drones. Footage from over 30 open-source videos and satellite images verified by NBC News show Iranian drone strikes and interceptions by the U.S. and allies across seven countries. Apparent targets include military bases, transportation hubs, energy infrastructure and diplomatic centers. The videos reveal a pattern of inadequate protection for strategic locations targeted by the drones from the outset of the war.
The drones' versatility may allow Iran to prolong the war by straining enemy resources, experts say. The technique, popular among cash-strapped states, challenges the economics of warfare by forcing targeted countries to use expensive munitions for interceptions.
The first week of the conflict, they estimate, ran up a bill for U.S. taxpayers of somewhere around $11 billion, though they admit this is more of a ballpark number than a hard-and-fast calculation. It is probably safe to assume that any error in their calculations is leading them to underestimate the cost rather than to overstate it.
Much of that cost was incurred in the form of munitions. The missiles and bombs that have been pounding Iran since the first attacks on Feb. 28 each carry substantial price tags. Add in the time of the pilots and operators carrying out the strikes — and then the costs of their support teams and vehicles — and it’s clear how quickly costs can add up.
The Iran war's looming economic threat: Higher food prices.
Iran threatens to strike oil facilities after the U.S. hits military targets on Kharg Island, a critical fuel hub.
Jack Detsch and Paul McLeary of Politico reported today that last year Hegseth slashed the oversight offices designed to limit civilian casualties in war and to investigate responsibility for them. Over the warnings of top military officials, he cut the number of employees working in that field from 200 to fewer than 40. Hegseth has vowed not to be hampered by “stupid rules of engagement,” but as Wes Bryant, the Pentagon’s former chief of civilian harm assessments, told the journalists, ““As it turns out, when you kill less civilians, you tend to be putting your resources toward killing the enemy.
Middle East
NBC News - Approximately 5,000 additional Marines and sailors are deploying to the Middle East to support the war in Iran, according to three U.S. officials. One official said the additional forces were requested because "part of the plan for this war was to have Marines available to provide options for use." The Marines are trained for crisis response, such as evacuations and protecting embassies, and ground operations.
March 13, 2026
Polls
Harris 39% (+17)
Newsom 22%
AOC 11%
Buttigieg 8%Another one: Newsom 44%
Vance 38%
Harris 44%
Vance 39%
AOC 43%
Vance 40%Focaldata poll | 3/6-3/10
President Trump approval
Disapprove 51%
Approve 39%
——
Trump's approval on the issues
Immigration: -7
Iran: -16
Economy: -18
Healthcare: -23
Inflation: -29 (new low)
Disapprove 51%
Approve 39%
——
Trump's approval on the issues
Immigration: -7
Iran: -16
Economy: -18
Healthcare: -23
Inflation: -29 (new low)NBC News - Nearly 6 in 10 voters say the economic and political systems are stacked against people like them, tying a record high over roughly 40 years of national NBC News polling.
The latest survey also found that an overwhelming share of voters (84%) say they agree with the statement that "the very rich and powerful are above the law when they do something wrong, they look out for each other, using their power and connections to get special treatment," while 14% disagree and 2% agree.
Axios - When asked who is most responsible for current gas prices, 48% said the president and his administration. That was followed by 16% who pointed at oil and gas companies, 13% who blamed global market forces and 11% who cited former President Biden.
Seven in 10 Americans say Donald Trump’s tariffs have led to them paying higher prices, according to an exclusive new poll for the Guardian. The Harris Poll survey presents Republicans with a major problem in the battle for the upcoming midterm elections. The majority of all voters (72%) believe Trump’s tariffs have had a negative rather than a positive impact and 67% said tariffs aren’t the right solution for improving the economy
Trump and the law
In a blistering 27-page decision unsealed on Friday, the judge, James E. Boasberg, derided the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, led by the Trump loyalist Jeanine Pirro, for pursuing a case against Mr. Powell when it appeared that its only reason to do so was President Trump’s desire to seek vengeance against him. Mr. Powell has long resisted calls from the White House to significantly lower borrowing costs, prompting a litany of attacks that has extended to the president’s effort to fire another top official, Lisa D. Cook.
“There is abundant evidence that the subpoenas’ dominant (if not sole) purpose is to harass and pressure Powell either to yield to the president or to resign and make way for a Fed chair who will,” Judge Boasberg wrote.
He continued, “On the other side of the scale, the government has offered no evidence whatsoever that Powell committed any crime other than displeasing the president.”
Trump lawyers argue that journalists are not fully protected by the First Amendment
|
|
Iran's new leader
Headline USA - Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, who replaced his slain father as the new supreme leader of Iran, issued his first statement on Thursday, where he said the Strait of Hormuz would remain closed and vowed Iranian attacks on US bases in the region would continue.
“Certainly, the leverage of blocking the Strait of Hormuz must also continue to be used,” Khamenei said in his message, which was issued as a written statement and read on Iranian TV. He suggested that Iran could open “other fronts” in the war and vowed there would be revenge for Iranians who have been killed, including more than 100 girls and boys who were killed by a US strike on an elementary school in the opening hours of the war.
“The retaliation we have in mind is not only related to the martyrdom of the great leader of the Revolution; rather, every member of the nation who is killed by the enemy becomes a separate case in the file of retaliation,” Khamenei said.
...The Iranian leader addressed regional countries, saying that Iran wants good relations with its neighbors but would continue targeting US bases as long as they remain. “From now on, we will again be compelled to continue doing this if necessary, although we still believe in the importance of maintaining friendly relations with those neighboring countries,” he said.
Meanwhile. . .
Bonita Gibson, who was believed to be the oldest person in Michigan, has died. She was 114. "Bonita was the oldest living person in the State of Michigan, she was the second oldest in the United States, and the seventh oldest in the world," the funeral home's obituary for Gibson said.
Newsom and oil prices
Politico - Republicans have spent years hammering Gavin Newsom for California’s high gas prices. Now, the Democratic governor is seizing a sudden opening to shift the blame to Donald Trump as the war in Iran sends oil costs skyward. “Look at your cost at the pump the last few days: That was an act of the Trump administration,” Newsom told reporters two days after the first U.S. strikes in Iran.
Then on Monday, after California gasoline prices surged 12 percent in a week to $5.20 a gallon — 57 cents higher than Washington state, the nation’s second-priciest state — Newsom doubled down on social media. He called Trump a “con man with no plan” after the president said that oil prices would drop rapidly once the “Iran nuclear threat is over.”
“California’s fuel prices were stable for years until Trump launched this war without a plan,” Newsom spokesperson Anthony Martinez said in an email. “Where is Donald Trump’s plan to lower prices?”
New development in synagogue attacker story
Headline USA - A man with a rifle who crashed into a large Michigan synagogue in what federal officials are saying was an attack had lost four family members in an Israeli airstrike in his native Lebanon last week, an official said Friday. Ayman Mohamad Ghazali, 41, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Lebanon, was killed by security after ramming into Temple Israel in West Bloomfield Township near Detroit and driving down a hallway in a vehicle that then caught fire, according to authorities.
McDonald's wants to bring back lower income clients
Charter - McDonald’s wants to win back budget-conscious diners with yet another value push, as the fast-food business loses more ground to sit-down restaurants. According to the Wall Street Journal, the burger chain will roll out menu items priced at $3 or less nationwide, along with new $4 breakfast meal deals, starting in April. The move follows a series of promotions in recent years, including the $5 meal deal the company launched in 2024 and a relaunch of its discount menu category last September.ChMcDonald’s wants to win back budget-conscious diners with yet another value push, as the fast-food business loses more ground to sit-down restaurants.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the burger chain will roll out menu items priced at $3 or less nationwide, along with new $4 breakfast meal deals, starting in April.
Artificial intelligence
The Guardian - The standoff between Anthropic and the Pentagon has forced the tech industry to once again grapple with the question of how its products are used for war – and what lines it will not cross. Amid Silicon Valley’s rightward shift under Donald Trump and the signing of lucrative defense contracts, big tech’s answer is looking very different than it did even less than a decade ago.
Anthropic’s feud with the Trump administration escalated three days ago as the AI firm sued the Department of Defense, claiming that the government’s decision to blacklist it from government work violated its first amendment rights. The company and the Pentagon have been locked in a months-long standoff, with Anthropic attempting to prohibit its AI model from being used for domestic mass surveillance or fully autonomous lethal weapons.
Jobs
Newsweek - A new report from artificial intelligence giant Anthropic has taken a closer look at which jobs were most at risk due to the rise of AI and large-language models (LLMs). The report, which was released on March 5, found that AI at present is, "far from reaching its theoretical capacity," and that it is currently achieving only a "fraction" of the coverage made possible by the technology....
Meanwhile, categories for "legal" and "arts and media" were both relatively high in "observed AI usage" in comparison to their "theoretical AI usage."
According to Anthropic, the most exposed workers demographically tended to be female, older, higher educated and higher paid.
The research showed that currently, AI is being utilized most in jobs involving programming and math—many coders are using AI to produce their work. Computer programmers were 74 percent exposed and data entry workers were 67 percent exposed. Customer service representatives were also more than 70 percent exposed.
Meanwhile, categories for "legal" and "arts and media" were both relatively high in "observed AI usage" in comparison to their "theoretical AI usage."
Both office and administration positions and sales positions have seen high levels of observed AI usage as well.
However, the company suggested that artificial intelligence is currently being underutilized most in areas like architecture and engineering. Their graph also suggested that life and social science jobs are far from their theoretical AI coverage.
The least exposed workers, unsurprisingly, were jobs that require a physical presence like installation and repair, grounds maintenance and transportation. Additionally, food and service workers appear relatively inoculated from AI.
The non-political origins of things like Trump
Sam Smith - As a one time anthropology major, I like to think occasionally about non-political influences on our poltics. Something that keeps coming back is the thought that Donald Trump is not just a political disaster, he's the product of some major changes in our culture.
One of these was television. We seldom talk about the influence that TV has on our life but this from Wikipedia gives a hint:
In 2011, 96.7% of households owned television sets.... Most households have more than one set... In 1948, 1 percent of U.S. households owned at least one television; in 1955, 75 percent did.
As a whole, the television networks that broadcast in the United States are the largest and most distributed in the world, and programs produced specifically for American networks are the most widely syndicated internationally.
My thinking is that the growth of television is one of the changes in America culture that affected our politics as well as other thngs. We spent much more of our time watching TV and absorbing the values it projected. Less important became our community, our neighbors and the values we had learned in school or at church. The winners in all this were less like friends and co-workers and more like the stars we saw on the screen, projecting themsleves as purported winners and not merely the folks down the street. One of those who entered our lives like this was Donald Trump, who actually had done hardly anything for us yet could easily pretend otherwise on the screen.
The Internet created new links between ourselves and those who wanted to enter and run our lives without having to ring our doorbell. Donald Trump is not just a political problem; he's a fearful example of a cultural issue.
Action Links
Mark Kelly is suing Pete Hegseth for violating the Constitution, after Hegseth abused his power and tried to punish Senator Kelly for speaking the truth. To support Kelly
Money
NY Times - Economic growth was slower at the end of 2025 than data first showed and inflationary pressures persisted at the start of this year, a troubling snapshot of an economy on unsteady footing before war with Iran upended oil and financial markets.
Consumer prices increased moderately in January, the Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation gauge showed on Friday. Economists worry prices will march even higher in the coming weeks. And gross domestic product, the benchmark measure of economic growth, which is adjusted for inflation, was revised down to a 0.7 percent annual pace for the last three months of the year.
The Personal Consumption Expenditures price index, the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge, notched a 0.3 percent monthly increase in the first month of 2026. Compared with the same time last year, prices were up 2.8 percent. The “core” inflation reading, which strips out more volatile food and energy prices, came in at 0.4 percent on a monthly basis, and 3.1 percent on an annual basis. That is a full percentage point above the Fed’s 2 percent target.
“It basically shows that inflation firmed up to start the year,” Omair Sharif, founder of the research firm Inflation Insights, said of the data. “All the key measures are moving in the wrong direction.”
Trump's and the law
Alternet - In an op-ed/essay published by the New York Times on Friday, March 13, Deborah Pearlstein — a law professor at Princeton University in New Jersey — describes the fear of ethics violations that federal DOJ prosecutors are facing during the second Trump Administration.
"Like all other lawyers licensed to practice in the United States, if they violate legal ethics rules, they can face sanctions in court or professional discipline, up to and including the permanent loss of their license to practice," Pearlstein explains. "Efforts to overturn the 2020 election foundered in court more than 60 times, before judges of both parties, in part because lawyers arguing President Trump's case often feared telling a court the same extravagant lies that the president was telling the American people. That was then. Now, under pressure to ignore a range of ethics rules, a large number of Department of Justice attorneys have quit, opting to lose their jobs but save their careers."
Dirt Diggers Digest - When it comes to alleged terrorists, drug cartels, so-called illegal aliens, and purported fraudulent voters, Trump’s Justice Department is quick to adopt an aggressive prosecutorial posture. The DOJ is eager to throw the book at defendants.
Yet when it comes to cases involving corporate misconduct, DOJ changes from a lion to a lamb. The focus shifts to leniency and the desire to avoid putting an undue burden on companies. Restraint seems to be the primary objective.
The latest expression of the latter approach can be seen in the DOJ’s announcement of the first Department-wide policy on how corporations should be criminally prosecuted. Actually, it is a policy on how they shouldn’t be prosecuted, since the emphasis is on rewarding companies that cooperate with investigations by declining to bring charges against them
Misnamed SAVE Act passes House
Forward Blue - The SAVE Act just passed the House — and it's heading to the Senate. If it becomes law, it could strip millions of Americans of their ability to vote. An estimated 69 million married women who changed their last names could be blocked from registering to vote, a right protected by our Constitution. Trans Americans, disabled voters, rural communities, and the elderly face even steeper barriers, with new requirements to appear in person with documents like passports that many simply don't have.
It doesn't stop there. The SAVE Act would eliminate online voter registration entirely and ban voter registration drives, gutting the very infrastructure that helps underserved communities participate in democracy.
New Republic - Republican Senator John Cornyn got a firsthand lesson in why the SAVE Act, backed by President Donald Trump, would suppress votes if passed.
At a Senate Judiciary hearing Thursday, Cornyn said, “I don’t understand how [the SAVE Act] could disenfranchise millions of Americans. Maybe you could explain.” His Democratic colleague, Dick Durbin, was happy to oblige. After thanking Cornyn for his question, Durbin explained that the voter ID requirements of the bill are not satisfied by a driver’s license, but only a passport.
“Fifty percent of Americans do not have a passport. Those who want to obtain it so they can vote will pay $186 and wait three or four weeks for that to happen,” Durbin said. “Secondly, you can use a birth certificate, but any person who has changed their name as a result of a marriage … has to find not only their birth certificate but some correction of it to prove that they are eligible to register to vote.
“It’s estimated that 9 percent of the voters in America do not have the identification required by this bill. It means that, ultimately, those people will not be voting. And I think that is the ultimate goal of this administration,” Durbin continued.
Housing
| ||||
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)