Donald Trump

Ralph Nader -  To wreck, weaken, and endanger our country, Trump disrupts the lives of millions of civil servants, contractors, small businesses and their families. He fired or forced out hundreds of thousands of federal civil servants staffing programs that protect the health, safety, and economic well-being of tens of millions of Americans, relying on food supplements, Medicaid, government-backed loans, and innumerable other social safety nets.

Trump has especially targeted law enforcement programs directed at enforcing worker and consumer safety, financial protections, and environmental health against toxic corporations. He is taking federal cops off the corporate crime beat.

Hartmann Report - Has Trump’s mental health deteriorated so badly he’s a danger to the world? Even his longtime friends are saying yes, now on national television. On Morning Joe Friday, Rev. Al Sharpton — who has known Trump for decades as contemporaries in New York City society — told co-host Jonathan Lemire that Americans should be worried about the president’s state of mind. The trigger: a 79-year-old president posting on Truth Social well after 2 a.m., only to resume again five hours later, ranting about prosecuting the Clintons and whatever else crossed his mind.

Sharpton called the behavior unstable, which is an understatement. Chief of Staff Susie Wiles is doing a better job managing the White House than anyone did in term one, but as Sharpton put it, “they’re not containing him.” In the middle of the night, alone with his phone, the president can flip everything from policy to prosecutions to war. America now has a sleep-deprived, paranoid 79-year-old with the nuclear codes who’s awake at 2 a.m. posting rage into a phone and nobody can stop him. What could possibly go wrong? It’s long past time for Congress and his Cabinet to act.

Alternet -   In a “highly unusual” move, the contractor behind the construction of President Donald Trump’s ballroom got a monetary boost from the National Park Service. The New York Times reports that Maryland-based Clark Construction not only nabbed a secret no-bid contract for a nearby job, but the National Park Service under Trump inflated the value of the contract several times over before awarding it to them. The additional work involves construction at the site of two ornamental fountains in Lafayette Park near the White House in Washington, DC.

“The National Park Service wanted to repair two ornamental fountains in Lafayette Park, across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House,” reports the Times. “The Biden administration in 2022 had estimated the work would cost $3.3 million. But Mr. Trump’s government agreed to pay Clark $11.9 million to do it, and later added tasks that increased the contract to $17.4 million, the documents show.”

Alternet -   Former White House Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Matthews says nobody can escape Father Time, and right now Father Time is trampling boot marks all over President Donald Trump’s mind. Her opinion came after a painful series of photos of Trump appearing to nod off and go straight into REM sleep at an important Oval Office Thursday conference, augmented with citations of Trump’s more unnerving late-night posts.

“I just think it's gotten even worse in the sense that it's a little bit more extreme. In the first administration, we didn't have him posting about wanting to annihilate an entire civilization. And so … it seems like he's lost his fastball and that he's not beating Father Time,” said Matthews, who worked in Trump's first administration. “Look, you can't beat father time. And I think old age is catching up with him. And so he's not as on it and as sharp as he once was. And I think that is also just enhancing the craziness that was already kind of there and bringing it to a whole new level. And, and we're seeing that play out.”

MS NOW anchor Nicole Wallace pointed out that Trump “drift[ed] off to la la land” likely because he was furiously posting on social media between the hours of midnight and 2:45 A.M. a total of 18 times.

Polls

MSN -    Anxiety about the U.S.-Iran conflict and rising gas prices pushed Americans' view of the economy to the worst level ever recorded, according to the University of Michigan's consumer sentiment survey that has been running for 48 years....The consumer sentiment reading for April slid to 49.8 from 53.3 in March, landing just below the previous record low of 50 set in June 2022 during the post-pandemic inflation crisis.

The final 49.8 reading came in slightly above the preliminary April figure of 47.6 published two weeks ago, as responses collected later in the survey period—after the U.S. and Iran agreed to a two-week ceasefire on April 7—turned more positive, per Michigan survey director Joanne Hsu.

NBC News - Nearly half (47%) of adults ages 18-29 said that if they had the option, they’d choose to live in the past, according to a new NBC News Decision Desk Poll powered by SurveyMonkey. One-third said they’d pick a time period less than 50 years in the past, while another 14% said they’d choose more than 50 years in the past. Meanwhile, 38% of Gen Zers said they’d prefer to live in the present, 10% said they’d go less than 50 years in the future, and 5% chose more than 50 years in the future.

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. 

That is the highest disapproval rating Mr. Trump has faced since the end of his first term, in the aftermath of his re-election campaign loss and the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Meanwhile. . .

Independent, UK - Trader Joe’s customers have sued the popular grocery chain claiming there is not enough caffeine in their coffee.  The lawsuit filed in California Thursday alleges that Trader Joe’s deceived customers into believing its French Roast Low Acid whole bean coffee had significantly more caffeine than it did. "It is so common that it is now cliché that coffee drinkers depend on the caffeine contained therein to provide them with the energy they need to get through the day,” the lawsuit said, according to several media outlets. But when the coffee was tested, it was found to contain half the caffeine of a regular blend, according to the lawsuit.

Artificial intelligence and schools

Jessica Winter, New Yorker - Artificial intelligence has, with sudden and crushing speed, seeped into the fabric of our everyday existence. It’s in our love lives, our reading material, our health care. It is also, increasingly, in our schools. As the staff writer Jessica Winter reports, in an alarming new column, many school districts around the country have adopted A.I. tools for elementary-school classrooms, and the practice is quickly spreading. With it comes a growing number of parents, educators, and cognitive scientists who are expressing anxiety about the ubiquity and seeming inevitability of this technology’s usage in K-12 education. Does the “efficiency” these tools offer undermine the premise and the promise of learning? What happens when we impose cognitive offloading on kids who have yet to do much cognitive onloading? Did anyone stop to ask whether we should have A.I. in schools at all? I recently caught up with Winter, who covers family and education, to discuss what she learned.  More

Gays

Advocate - At Baylor University, a private Baptist institution in Waco, Texas, where questions of faith and identity have long been tightly policed, students gathered Wednesday for something that, until recently, would have been difficult to imagine. They called it “All Are Neighbors.”

The event, organized by a coalition of student groups, brought LGBTQ+-affirming Christian voices to campus in a deliberate counterpoint to a same-day stop by Turning Point USA, the far-right political group that targets young people.

For the first time, Baylor students were permitted to host prominent LGBTQ+ Christian advocates... It marked a rare moment in which out gay Christian voices were given a sanctioned platform at the university.

Related: Texas Baptists might end 140-year relationship with Baylor over one LGBTQ+ event

hrc president kelley robinson Human Rights Campaign President Kelley Robinson speaks about LGBTQ+ people and faith out of personal experience.Human Rights Campaign

Robinson made clear the moment didn’t come easily.  “We are here. On this campus, in this moment, together. Because this didn’t just happen,” she said. “This moment exists because people spoke up. Because students organized. Because a community decided that if harmful ideas were going to have a platform, then truth would have one too.”

Trump being sued for memo saying that text messages between officials can be deleted despite law to the contrary

New Republic -  President Trump is being sued by two watchdog groups for an internal White House memo asserting that text messages between officials could be deleted, regardless of a law stating the opposite. The lawsuit was filed Friday by the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and the Freedom of the Press Foundation.

“These text messages capture the day-to-day business of the most powerful office in the country—and arguably the world,” the Freedom of Press Foundation’s Lauren Harper told The New York Times, arguing that the memo “sanctifies” the notion that Trump and his Cabinet “get to decide what becomes part of the American story.”

This all comes after the Justice Department claimed that the post-Watergate Presidential Records Act was unconstitutional earlier this month. And just a day after that, the White House sent that memo around, asserting that text messages between officials didn’t need to be kept unless they were “the sole record of official decision-making.” The memo is cited in the watchdog groups’ lawsuit.

Beyond text messages, the memo relaxes restrictions on emails from personal accounts and general record-keeping.

DOJ reviving federal firing squads

New Republic -   The Department of Justice announced Friday that it will resurrect federal firing squads as part of an effort to implement Donald Trump’s day-one executive order to revamp capital punishment.

Trump’s order, signed in January 2025, demanded the attorney general pursue the death penalty on “all crimes of a severity demanding its use,” including murder of a law enforcement officer or any capital crime committed by an undocumented immigrant.

Under former President Joe Biden, Attorney General Merrick Garland had paused federal executions. Trump became furious when, before leaving the White House, Biden pardoned 37 prisoners on death row. The Republican kicked off his second term in office with a bloodthirsty decree for more death.

The January order made no mention of firing squads. Still, the DOJ said in its Friday announcement it had directed the Bureau of Prisons to “expand the execution protocol to include additional manners of execution such as the firing squad.”

Some view firing squads as more humane than lethal injection, which do not have a 100 percent success rate and sometimes require multiple doses. However, execution by firing squad can also result in prisoners slowly bleeding to death if they are not immediately killed by the bullet.

Middle East

President Trump on Saturday canceled plans for two of his top advisers to go to Pakistan. Earlier, Abbas Araghchi, the Iranian foreign minister, left Pakistan after holding discussions with the country’s leaders. Read more 

Both the United States and Iran are blocking the transit of ships through the waterway, which remains a critical issue in peace talks. Read more ›

Headline USA - The cost of the US war with Iran was not included in President Donald Trump’s request for a massive $1.5 trillion military budget for 2027, according to a Pentagon budget official. “This budget was formulated, honestly, before we went into conflict with Iran,” Jules Hurst III, the Pentagon’s acting chief financial officer, told reporters on April 21, according to USA Today. The record-shattering budget is a nearly 50% increase over this year’s $1 trillion budget, but the Trump administration is going to ask Congress for even more military spending to make up for depleted weapons and other military operations related to the Iran war.

The Hill -  Iran said it will not meet directly with the U.S. in upcoming talks mediated by Pakistan, despite a contrary statement from the White House earlier Friday. “No meeting is planned to take place between Iran and the U.S. Iran’s observations would be conveyed to Pakistan,” Esmaeil Baqaei, a spokesperson for Iran’s foreign ministry, said in a social media post Friday afternoon. Diplomats from Iran and the U.S. are expected to engage in negotiations facilitated by Pakistani officials in Islamabad this weekend. 

NBC News -   American military bases and other equipment in the Persian Gulf region suffered extensive damage from Iranian strikes that is far worse than publicly acknowledged and is expected to cost billions of dollars to repair, according to three U.S. officials, two congressional aides and another person familiar with the damage.

The Iranian regime swiftly retaliated after the U.S. military attacked on Feb. 28, hitting dozens of targets across American bases in seven Middle East countries. Those attacks struck warehouses, command headquarters, aircraft hangars, satellite communications infrastructure, runways, high-end radar systems and dozens of aircraft, according to the U.S. officials and an assessment by the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington, D.C.

....The Pentagon has not detailed the extent of the damage publicly or, according to the U.S. officials, to members of Congress. Some Republican lawmakers privately expressed frustration about the Pentagon’s refusal to provide information about the damage or cost of repairs, according to two GOP congressional aides. 

Jerome Powell

The Hill - White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Friday sought to signal that the legal pressure was not off Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, despite the Justice Department dropping its investigation into his handling of renovations at the central bank.

Leavitt said “the case is not necessarily dropped,” pointing to a statement released by Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, earlier in the day.

“It’s just being moved over to the Inspector General who has critical tools at their disposal to continue to look into the financial mismanagement at the Fed,” Leavitt said. “It’s just under a different authority, and that’s what you’ll continue to see.”

Leavitt’s comments came hours after Pirro announced the Justice Department closed its investigation, which had been holding up the confirmation of President Trump’s nominee to replace Powell.

Wall Street Journal - The Justice Department said it would end its criminal investigation of Fed Chair Jerome Powell, an attempt to clear the obstacle that has stalled Kevin Warsh’s confirmation as his successor. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro said, if warranted, she would reopen the probe, which concerns Powell’s congressional testimony about the renovation of central-bank buildings. The Fed declined immediate comment.

Health

Independent UK  - A new study from researchers in Ireland indicates that drinking coffee, whether caffeinated or decaffeinated, can improve gut health and mood. The research found that regular coffee drinkers exhibited increased levels of beneficial gut bacteria, such as Firmicutes, Eggerthella, and Cryptobacterium curtum, which support metabolism and digestion. Participants in the two-year study, led by Professor Cryan of the University of Cork, reported reduced stress, depression, and impulsivity after reintroducing coffee, irrespective of its caffeine content. Significantly, only decaffeinated coffee drinkers showed improvements in learning and memory, suggesting that non-caffeine components of the beverage are responsible for this particular benefit. These findings add to existing research that highlights coffee's health advantages, including a reduced risk of dementia, slower biological ageing, and lower mortality rates.

1440 - Mental health crisis hotline linked to an estimated 4,400 fewer deaths in American teens and young adults who might otherwise die by suicide within its first 2.5 years. (More)

America becoming more multi-ethnic

Axios - America is becoming more multiracial, but its data systems are still thinking in black and white, Axios' Russell Contreras writes. ...The multiracial ("Two or More Races") population grew from 9 million in 2010 to 33.8 million in 2020, per the U.S. Census. It's expected to keep growing faster than most groups, and exactly how fast largely depends on how America measures race. 

Climate change

Democratic Conservation Alliance -  Glacier National Park once had 150 majestic glaciers. Now they have 26.

Joshua Tree National Park is experiencing such bad tree loss that scientists predict their namesake tree will be completely disappear by the end of the century.

The beautiful Everglades has lost over half of its original wetland habitat.

Inside Climate News -   The Pacific Ocean is a giant climate cauldron, with a powerful heat engine that affects storms, fisheries and rainfall patterns half a world away, and scientists are watching closely to see if it’s about to boil over. 

Their projections suggest the tropical Pacific is simmering toward a strong El Niño, the warm phase of an ocean-atmosphere cycle that can intensify and shift those impacts.

In a world already superheated by greenhouse gases, a strong El Niño during the next 12 to 18 months could permanently push the planet’s average annual temperature past the 1.5 degrees Celsius warming threshold enshrined in scientific documents and political agreements as a turning point for potentially irreversible climate impacts.

Climate scientists also recently published a study showing that strong El Niño events can trigger what they called “climate regime shifts,” meaning abrupt, lasting changes in heat, rainfall and drought patterns.

Old people

NY Times - It is not ageist to ask whether older people should be required to give more to younger Americans… Older Americans favor restrictions on immigration… there is a correlation between age and resistance to policies to halt the overheating of the planet… impose age ceilings on political offices… Older Americans own much of the most desirable real estate… It is not ageist, finally, to impose policies to transfer jobs, houses and wealth down the generational chain.

Word

From our overstocked archives: Dealing with old times

Tens of millions just three months away from financial ruin

The Hill -   Tens of millions of Americans are three months away from financial ruin. A single quarter stands between the average household and bankruptcy, and the average household knows it. According to a recent national survey, a little over $6,000 in additional debt is all it takes to push a family over the edge. Six thousand dollars. The cost of a half-decent secondhand car. A modest kitchen renovation. In the country that put a man on the moon, mapped the human genome, won two world wars, and produces more billionaires per capita than anywhere on earth, that’s the cliff edge.

The old vocabulary no longer fits. The conservative catechism of thrift, discipline, and delayed gratification has aged poorly in light of the evidence. Tariffs, as the survey notes, rippled through supply chains and left a sizeable dent in consumers’ pockets. Health care waits in the background, capable of dismantling a decade of careful saving with a single bad diagnosis. American households have always lived under financial pressure. The difference now is the direction — or rather, the directions. It is coming from everywhere at once, which is what makes it almost impossible to outrun.

The changing Republican drug policy

The Hill -   The Trump administration’s moves on marijuana and psychedelics signal the start of a new era in Republican drug policy. The orders to fast-track reviews of psychedelic drugs and reschedule medical marijuana are a far cry from the party of “just say no” and former Republican President Richard Nixon’s war on drugs. 

“Regardless of what one may think of the president … he seems to be someone who is open to innovation and is not imprisoned by dogmatic viewpoints,” said Bryan Hubbard, CEO of the advocacy group Americans for Ibogaine, a psychoactive compound that shows promise for addiction treatment. 

Last week, President Trump signed an executive order to loosen research restrictions on psychedelic drugs as medicine to treat mental conditions like depression and substance abuse disorder....

The order came with $50 million to boost states’ efforts and a directive for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to fast-track reviews that could ultimately lead to the approval of psychedelic medicines. 

Days later, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche ordered the reclassification of state-licensed medical marijuana as less dangerous. Blanche said the Justice Department “is delivering on President Trump’s promise to expand Americans’ access to medical treatment options.”  

...Psychedelics are still illegal, and Trump did not endorse their use recreationally. Similarly, recreational marijuana was not legalized. It remains a Schedule I drug under federal law, akin to heroin or LSD. 

But together, the moves reflect changing public perception on “softer” drugs like cannabis and LSD. It also reflects the influence of the “Make America Healthy Again” movement, which together with Trump’s populist tendencies has helped jump-start a desire for drug experimentation and health freedom.  

How Americans get their news

Pew Research -   A growing share of Americans say they mostly get news because they happen to come across it, not because they’re actively seeking it out. About half of U.S. adults (49%) say this is the case today, up from 39% when we first asked this question in 2019.

Most U.S. adults say they happen across opinions and humor about news but seek out deep dives and up-to-date information

However, Americans are especially likely to find certain types of news by chance and actively look for others, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey from the Pew-Knight Initiative.

The types of content that most Americans say they get by chance tend to be reactions to news: humor and opinions. About two-thirds of adults say they see funny posts (66%) and opinions (64%) about the news mostly because they happen to come across them. Meanwhile, 21% say they get opinions mostly by looking for them, and 14% say the same for funny posts.

By contrast, only 31% say they get in-depth information or deep dives into issues or news events because they happen to come across them. And 38% say this is how they tend to get the most up-to-date information about issues or events.

Key facts about Asians in the U.S.

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.

CALL TO ACTIVISM

 - There hasn’t been a single Cabinet meeting we’ve covered where Donald Trump didn’t fall completely asleep. There was no Biden meeting we covered where Biden ever fell asleep.

Word

Occupy Democrats

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.

Feedly - Donald Trump has again said that the US has “total control over the strait of Hormuz”, adding that Iran’s leadership was so hobbled by infighting that it was unclear who was in charge. 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.

🎧 There are no reliable figures on how many mines are in the Strait, NPR’s Jackie Northam tells Up First. She adds that they may not be as many as Iran is letting on, or Iran might not know where all of them are. Clearing these mines is a slow and dangerous task, especially amid the risk of attacks. Northam says this week's gunfire attacks and seizures of two ships by Iran have had a chilling effect on the already small number of ships trying to make it through the waterway. ➡️ Trump announced yesterday that Israel and Lebanon have agreed to extend their ceasefire for three weeks following high-level negotiations at the White House. This extension aims to maintain the fragile truce to pause fighting between the Israeli military and the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah.

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.

Farming

70% of Farmers Cannot Afford Fertilizer

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.