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| Via Newsweek: Source: Consumer Affairs, U.S. Census Bureau, NLIHC, NeighborhoodScout, Walk Score, NYU Langone Health |
April 8, 2026
Best states to rent a home
Meanwhile. ..
Independent, UK - More than 270,000 Chevrolet Malibu cars recalled over faulty rearview camera screen
Axios - Crude oil prices dropped sharply Tuesday evening, falling well under $100 per barrel after President Trump said the U.S. agreed to a two-week ceasefire with Iran that Pakistan had proposed.
What Actually Keeps Kids Safe Online? Not What Most Parents Think
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.
Polls
NY Times - More than 60 percent of city residents believe that Mr. Mamdani, a democratic socialist and the city’s youngest mayor in a century, is hard-working and a good leader who understands the challenges facing the five boroughs. But somewhat fewer respondents say he has demonstrated effective governance so far. Overall, the poll found that 48 percent of New Yorkers approved of the job he was doing, while 30 percent disapproved.
Newsweek - Trump's approval rating with women is 35 percent, with a disapproval mark of 57 percent. The president's overall approval rating is 38 percent versus 55 percent disapproval. The poll was taken from April 3 to April 6 among 1,750 U.S. adults and has a margin of error of 3.2 percent.
Health
Study Finds - Older adults with higher optimism had about a 15% lower risk of developing dementia over time.
Independent, UK - The Trump administration’s newly proposed HIV funding cuts could threaten the health of thousands of Americans, researchers at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine have warned. If the $1.5 billion cuts are implemented, the number of HIV infections over the next five years could surge by up to 10 percent across 18 states, computer modeling shows.
That would be a major blow to the decades-long, bipartisan effort to fight the incurable, lifelong illness, which is still responsible for close to 4,500 deaths each year.
The virus, which is also known as “human immunodeficiency virus, aggressively attacks the body’s immune system, and infections were widely considered a death sentence until the development of HIV treatments in the 1980s.
Utah legalizes some climate damage
Mother Jones - Utah has made it nearly impossible for residents to hold fossil fuel companies legally accountable for climate damages in a move one advocacy group described as putting “profits for the biggest polluters over communities,” with other states expected to follow suit.
The new state legislation comes as part of a push from Big Oil and its political allies—including groups tied to right-wing impresario Leonard Leo—for legal immunity in red statehouses and Congress, with a goal of winning state and federal legal immunity similar to the liability waiver granted to the firearms industry in 2005.
Such policies would shield major fossil fuel companies from a wave of litigation they are facing from states, subnational governments, and individuals who claim the firms knew their products would cause climate damages, but sold them to the public anyway. Four other red states are considering laws similar to Utah’s—with two close to passage—and federal legislation is seemingly in the works
Iran
Robert Reich - 90 minutes before Trump said he’d cause the death of a “whole civilization” if Iran didn’t open the Strait of Hormuz, an Iranian official said the shipping channel would be reopened for two weeks if the United States stopped bombing Iran. The U.S. has now stopped bombing Iran.
So we’re back to the status quo before Trump began his war. Only now, Iran can credibly threaten to close the strait if it doesn’t get what it wants from Trump — thereby causing havoc to the U.S. (and world) economies. Trump’s only remaining bargaining leverage is the threat of committing war crimes.
In other words, last night’s showdown was a clear victory for Iran and a clear defeat for Trump (although he’ll frame it as a victory).
The Iran fiasco is only the latest in a host of examples revealing how to defeat Trump.
In addition to Iran, similar strategies have been used by China, Russia, Canada, Mexico, and Greenland. Inside the United States, the people of Minneapolis have used them, as have Harvard University, comedian Jimmy Kimmel, writer E. Jean Carroll, and the law firms Perkins Coie, Jenner & Block, Susman Godfrey, and WilmerHale.
What’s the strategy that connects them all?
All refused to cave to Trump, despite his superior military or economic power. Instead, they’ve engaged in a kind of jujitsu in which they use Trump’s power against him, while allowing Trump to save face by claiming he’s won.
Headlines USA - President Donald Trump launched the war against Iran a little more than two weeks after he was briefed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House, The New York Times reported on Tuesday. Sources told the Times that the briefing took place in the White House Situation Room during Netanyahu’s visit to Washington on February 11.
The Guardian - The US and Iran agreed to a two-week conditional ceasefire on Tuesday evening, which included a temporary reopening of the strait of Hormuz, after a last-minute diplomatic intervention led by Pakistan, canceling an ultimatum from Donald Trump for Iran to surrender or face widespread destruction.
Trump’s announcement of the ceasefire agreement came less than two hours before the US president’s self-imposed 8pm Eastern time deadline to bomb Iran’s power plants and bridges in a move that legal scholars, as well as officials from numerous countries and the pope, had warned could constitute war crimes.
The Guardian - The announcement of a two-week ceasefire has allowed Donald Trump to hail the reopening of the Hormuz strait as a victorious dawn of a new golden age, but it is Iran that enters peace talks with the stronger hand.
The Tehran regime goes to the negotiations planned for Friday in Pakistan bloodied but intact. It still holds a stockpile of highly enriched uranium (the original crux of the conflict with the US, Israel and allies), and it now claims at least part-control of the strait, having demonstrated its power to close the narrow waterway and hold the world to ransom.
Trump won instant gratification. He got to remain the central player in the drama, having terrified the world with his threat that “a whole civilisation will die” before claiming a few hours later to have dramatically reversed course and to be “far along” along the road to an enduring Middle East peace.
With the president’s words the oil price went down and global stocks showed signs of rallying, demonstrating he still had the power at least to move short-term markets.
NPR - Iran's foreign minister Abbas Araghchi posted a statement on X expressing gratitude to Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif for facilitating a ceasefire. His statement also made it clear that Iran will maintain control over the Strait, and any ships permitted passage in the next two weeks will do so on Iran’s terms. While there’s a sense of relief in Iran, people are wary, NPR’s D. Parvaz says. While state media showed images of jubilant crowds waving flags in the streets, Parvaz says that for many, the ceasefire signals the end of any hope of real regime change.
Artificial Intelligence
CNN - AI-driven job losses may not just make it harder for affected workers to find employment in the short term but also could leave a yearslong “scarring,” marked by depressed income, delayed homeownership and even the lower probability of marriage, according to a new research report from Goldman Sachs.
And those outcomes are even worse if they happen during a recession, Goldman Sachs economists wrote Monday.
The latest analysis comes as economists, policymakers, academics and workers across industries are trying to assess how fast-rising artificial intelligence technologies could affect people, sectors and societies at large. Goldman Sachs previously estimated that 6% to 7% of US workers (about 11 million people) could have their jobs displaced by AI.
Elon Musk
Bloomberg - Elon Musk is racing toward a SpaceX IPO and may beat AI rivals Anthropic and OpenAI to the public markets as early as this summer. Leaning on the AI boom, it could be his most audacious product launch yet.
- SpaceX may be valued at around $2 trillion (or perhaps even more), roughly five times what the company was worth last year, which already struck some as rich.
- Starlink, its satellite internet service, is growing, but faces questions in both established markets and the developing world.
- The other major revenue source is the US government, a relationship that carries political risks, and Musk’s ties with Trump have been, well, a bit choppy.
- None of this is to say that Musk’s pitch for the SpaceX IPO will fall flat: Musk’s hype machine may prove stronger than investor caution.
Todd Blanche
Bloomberg - Trump seems in no rush to name a permanent attorney general to replace Pam Bondi, allowing acting chief Todd Blanche time to settle in. The White House has yet to decide whether Blanche, a trusted ally, is a viable long-term pick or could survive a Senate confirmation.
Abortion
NPR - At least 38 abortion clinics closed last year in states where abortion remains legal, according to data from I Need an A, a project that helps people find abortion options. Even in states that recently passed constitutional amendments to protect abortion rights, clinics have shut down since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. Now, communities are establishing alternatives, such as urgent care clinics, to help fill the gap.
Drugs
NPR - Immigration and Customs Enforcement acknowledged in a letter in response to lawmakers' questions that the agency is using spyware tools that can intercept encrypted messages as part of its efforts to disrupt fentanyl trafficking. Acting director Todd Lyons said in the letter, which was reviewed by NPR, that ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations uses various tools as part of its mission to disrupt and dismantle foreign terrorist organizations. His confirmation that the agency is using spyware comes as ICE intensifies its use of surveillance technologies to find people in the U.S. without authorization as part of the Trump administration's mass deportation campaign.
Politics
The Hill - Democrats’ high hopes of a flip were dashed in Georgia’s special House race on Tuesday, but an overperformance in the red district — plus a landslide win for liberals in a Supreme Court race in Wisconsin — underscored the party’s enduring momentum as the high-stakes midterm cycle ramps up.
Backed by President Trump, Republican Clay Fuller won the Peach State runoff to replace former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), the longtime Trump ally who quit the House in January amid a feud with the president. But Democrats notched a notable overperformance in the red district, further fueling their winning streak ahead of the midterms.
Over in the Badger State, Democratic-backed judicial candidate Chris Taylor easily won an open seat on the state Supreme Court — overperforming GOP-backed candidate Maria Lazar by about 20 percentage points, with most of the vote reported by Decision Desk HQ (DDHQ), to give the liberal faction on the court a 5-2 edge.
“This victory is only the beginning of the fight ahead to win a Democratic trifecta in November and deliver real, lasting change for the working people of Wisconsin,” the Democratic Party of Wisconsin said in a statement.
In Georgia, the Republican win in the 14th Congressional District came as no surprise given its red leanings.
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.
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