Source: WTOP News
“Tensions in the standoff between the U.S. and Iran over the Strait of Hormuz intensified Friday after U.S. President Donald Trump said he ordered the U.S. military to ‘shoot and kill’ Iranian small boats in the strait, while Iran pushed back on Trump’s claim there was a leadership rift in the Islamic Republic. … Trump also said Thursday evening that Israel and Lebanon agreed to extend a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah by three weeks after talks at the White House. The standoff between the U.S. and Iran has effectively choked off nearly all exports through the Strait of Hormuz, where 20% of the world’s traded oil passes in peacetime, with no end in sight.” (04/24/26)
https://wtop.com/national/2026/04/the-latest-standoff-intensifies-in-strait-of-hormuz-after-trump-issues-shoot-and-kill-order/
Source: Garrison Center
by Thomas L Knapp
“The absolute BEST way to end the gerrymander wars would be to abolish Congress (and the rest of the US government). I’m all for it, but I sense I’m in the minority on that suggestion. There’s an easier — or at least simpler — way to get it done, while still catering to the fantasy that it’s possible for a politician to ‘represent’ the rights and interests of the diverse populations who elect him or her. It’s a two-step process: First, Congress repeals the Uniform Congressional District Act. Second, each state goes from ‘single-member district’ elections to ‘at-large statewide’ elections with Ranked Choice Voting.” (04/23/26)
https://thegarrisoncenter.org/archives/20552
Source: Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression
“The fight for privacy and free speech in the surveillance age.” (04/23/26)
https://www.fire.org/news/podcasts/so-speak-free-speech-podcast/fight-privacy-and-free-speech-surveillance-age
Source: The Guardian [UK]
“The Trump administration has moved to reclassify marijuana, more than four months after Donald Trump signed an executive order directing the attorney general to move it from schedule I to schedule III under the Controlled Substances Act. The schedule I classification meant marijuana was alongside heroin, LSD, MDMA and synthetic opioids, whereas a schedule III classification put it in the same category as ketamine, anabolic steroids and testosterone. … rescheduling will not immediately legalize marijuana or affect the sentences of those incarcerated for possession.” (04/23/26)
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/apr/23/trump-administration-reclassify-marijuana-schedule-iii
Source: The Intercept
by Radley Balko
“You might spend your Saturday mornings sipping coffee, attending a kids’ soccer game, or just recovering from a tough week at work. Not Paul Heaton. He recently spent a weekend persuading ChatGPT to confess to a crime it didn’t commit. … In his exchange with ChatGPT, Heaton used the Reid technique, the confrontational interrogation method first developed in the 1950s that has since been adopted by police departments all over the country. The man for whom it’s named, John Reid, published his methodology after winning acclaim for getting a man named Darrel Parker to confess to raping and murdering his own wife — an origin story with a haunting twist. It worked. … One of the problems with the Reid technique is that its primary function isn’t to gather evidence and generate leads, it’s to extract a confession from the person police already believe committed the crime.” (04/23/26)
https://theintercept.com/2026/04/23/chatgpt-ai-false-confession-interrogation-crime/
Source: Independent [UK]
“Ukraine’s drone wing says it has killed at least 12 officers and injured 15 others in a strike on a command post for Russian Federal Security Service (FSB). Unmanned Systems Forces commander Robert ‘Madyar’ Brovdi confirmed the attack yesterday in [the formerly Ukrainian region of] Donetsk, and said Ukrainian forces used FP-2 drones manufactured by the Ukrainian defence company Fire Point. He said the command post hit in the attack is responsible for sabotage operations, building intelligence networks, recruitment, carrying out terrorist attacks and arson, and coordinating Russian proxy forces.” (04/24/26)
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/ukraine-russia-war-live-drone-strike-fsb-donetsk-putin-zelensky-b2964061.html
Source: Antiwar.com
by David Vine
“Trump’s embrace of endless wars already has killed and injured tens of thousands, displaced millions, squandered tens of billions of taxpayer dollars, driven up prices on gas and other necessities, created a global economic crisis, and risked wider catastrophe and World War III. And don’t forget Trump’s genocidal threats to ‘wipe out’ Iranian civilization, implying a potential nuclear attack. Faced with the threat of more endless war in Iran and beyond, Congress must do everything in its power to stop Trump. One tool Congress hasn’t used is its power to immediately cut off money for wars in Iran and beyond. With constitutional authority over government spending, Congress can use its rescission power – that is, the power to rescind, or take back, money previously appropriated to government agencies.” (04/23/26)
https://original.antiwar.com/david-vine/2026/04/22/to-stop-endless-war-in-iran-and-beyond-congress-should-rescind-the-money-to-fight/
Source: The Hill
“A U.S. Army soldier has been accused of using classified information about the military operation to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro to place bets on the prediction market Polymarket, federal officials said Thursday. Gannon Ken Van Dyke, a soldier stationed at Fort Bragg who was involved in the planning of the operation, was charged with using confidential government information for personal gain. He allegedly made more than $400,000 in profits from the wagers. … Van Dyke allegedly created an account on Polymarket on Dec. 26 and placed about $33,000 worth of bets on markets about U.S. operations in Venezuela and Maduro’s ouster between Dec. 27 and Jan. 2. The U.S. launched the operation in Venezuela early on Jan. 3, capturing Maduro and his wife. The U.S. attorney’s office also accused Van Dyke of attempting to conceal his identity as the trades drew widespread scrutiny.” (04/23/26)
https://thehill.com/business/5846393-solider-in-maduro-raid-charged-over-prediction-market-bets-on-operation-doj/
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by Thiago VS Coelho
“The Good Food Institute openly says it works with governments to advocate public investment in alternative proteins, while New Harvest says that ‘publicly-funded groups like ours’ are needed to steer cellular agriculture toward the public good. By GFI’s own 2024 policy report, governments were estimated to disburse about $560 million on alternative proteins in 2024, with cultivated meat alone drawing $84 million in public investment that year, double the previous high. In the United States, USDA already put a historic $10 million grant into Tufts’[s] National Institute for Cellular Agriculture, where the research agenda includes consumer acceptance, willingness-to-pay, scalable cell lines, serum-free media, scaffolds, and process optimization. That is not a picture of a market proving itself. It is a picture of advocates trying to socialize the cost of proving whether a market exists.” (04/23/26)
https://mises.org/mises-wire/next-food-pyramid-lab-grown-meat-and-new-moral-orthodoxy
Source: CBS News
“Israeli strikes in southern Lebanon that killed a journalist on Wednesday were a war crime, Lebanon’s prime minister said. A journalists’ union said rescuers were prevented from accessing the destroyed building where the reporter was left trapped beneath rubble. Amal Khalil, 43, a journalist with the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar, bled to death in the ruins of a building that was hit in an Israeli drone strike after Israeli forces’ gunfire prevented ambulance crews from reaching her ‘for nearly four hours,’ according to Lebanon’s Union of Journalists.” (04/23/26)
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/lebanon-israel-war-crime-journalist-killed-drone-strike/
