“U.S. President Donald Trump has removed Attorney General Pam Bondi from her post, a White House official said on Thursday, following mounting frustration with her performance, including her handling of investigative files related to the late financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Trump had also reportedly grown frustrated that Bondi was not moving quickly enough to prosecute critics and adversaries who he wanted to face criminal charges. In a social media post, Trump praised Bondi as ‘a Great American Patriot and a loyal friend’ and said she will move to a job in the private sector. Trump said Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, his former personal lawyer, will lead the Justice Department in the interim.” (04/02/26)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“It used to be hard to help westerners see the depravity of the US empire. Now it’s just right in everyone’s face with raw genocide footage and insanely evil warmongering of direct economic consequence. It took a lot of work to help the average westerner understand that NATO aggressions actively provoked the war in Ukraine, or that western interventionism played a major role in the violence and chaos in Syria, or that US economic warfare was largely responsible for the suffering of Cubans and Venezuelans. The murderous savagery of the empire was hidden behind layers of obfuscation, allowing the propagandists to frame the western power structure as a passive witness to the abuses of foreign regimes. Now the propagandists have very little to work with, so those obfuscations can no longer take place.” (04/02/26)
“Our Secretary of Defense (or War) Pete Hegseth seems to be having a really great time killing people in Iran, but his live action video games come at a big cost, not just in lives, but in budget dollars. To be clear, the main reason to be opposed to this pointless war is its impact on the people of Iran and elsewhere in the region. But it also has a huge economic cost that is seriously underappreciated. The short-term cost is the shortage of oil, natural gas, fertilizers, and other items that would ordinarily travel through the Straits of Hormuz. This shortage has already sent prices of many items soaring. The impact is not just on the goods themselves, but there is a large secondary impact due to higher shipping costs, and if fertilizer supplies are not resumed soon, higher food prices, due to lower crop yields.” (04/02/26)
“At the core of our sovereignty is the right to determine who is entitled to citizenship. The Fourteenth Amendment grants citizenship to people born in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Trump v. Barbara, a case concerning the lawfulness of President Trump’s commonsense executive order that restores the original understanding of birthright citizenship.” [editor’s note: Even before the 14th Amendment, the US practiced birthright citizenship from its founding, as did it its parent country. “Born here, citizen here” IS the original understanding – TLK] (04/02/26)
“On April 1, the Supreme Court began hearing arguments in Trump v. Barbara, a class-action lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s executive order to ban birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants. Every lower court that has ruled on this issue thus far has found this executive order to be straightforwardly unconstitutional — and they are correct. The 14th Amendment is clear: ‘All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.'” (04/02/26)
“First off, I’m writing this before President Donald Trump speaks to the nation tonight, where I expect him to declare victory and announce something about when we’ll be done in Iran. Good. That doesn’t change my opinion about what comes next, so the submission deadline does not negate what follows. The Iranian regime wants to die; help them with that. Whatever shell of a government is left is launching rockets randomly at its neighbors, which indicates they’d rather fight until they’re dead than reconstitute itself into something that isn’t threatening to the rest of the world, so we should facilitate that end. How do we do that? Well, we’ve weakened them to the point that the people of Iran could rise and rip them apart – pull a Mussolini and string up their oppressors.” (04/02/26)
“The death in the US of ‘nearly blind’ refugee Nurul Amin Shah Alam, who was found outdoors in freezing temperatures days after his release from federal immigration custody, has been ruled a homicide in New York state. The Erie County Medical Examiner’s Office said Shah Alam’s death in the city of Buffalo was caused by ‘complications of a perforated duodenal ulcer, precipitated by hypothermia and dehydration.’ The designation of homicide may include negligent acts or omissions, the local officials said. It does not imply intent to cause harm or death, or indicate criminality. In response, a US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) spokesman told the BBC it was ‘another hoax being peddled by the media and sanctuary politicians to demonise our law enforcement.'” (04/02/26)
“As America is no stranger to war, it’s also no stranger to presidential addresses that justify and report on the wars then ongoing. No matter whether we’re winning or losing, first-strikers or get-struck-firsters, advancing or just holding the line, every previous wartime president has managed to stay on topic. But not Donald Trump. His Wednesday night speech was notable only in that he repeatedly strayed off topic. … Even granting that the topic of every Trump speech is Trump, that theme plays least well in an address supposedly intended to convince his fellow citizens that the course on which he’s set the nation is worth the sacrifices of combat and the travails (in this case, economic) of the home front.” (04/02/26)
“Russia plans to send a second oil tanker to Cuba, the country’s energy minister said Thursday, citing the island’s ongoing energy blockade and reiterating Russia’s solidarity with the troubled Caribbean nation. The announcement comes just two days after sanctioned Russian tanker Anatoly Kolodkin docked at the Cuban port of Matanzas laden with 730,000 barrels of oil, marking the first time in three months that an oil tanker reached the island. Experts have said that shipment could produce about 180,000 barrels of diesel, enough to feed Cuba’s daily demand for nine or 10 days.” (04/02/26)
“Not only are TSA agents getting paid, the whole absurd Homeland Security shutdown will soon end … with a whimper, wouldn’t you say? It leaves all sides in Washington a bit disgruntled and the public (especially those about to fly!) simply relieved. Senate and House GOP leaders John Thune and Mike Johnson announced Wednesday that they’d pass the bill to fund everything except some immigration-enforcement functions, then cover ICE and so on (which are fine for now thanks to special funding passed last year) in a reconciliation bill (which dodges the Senate filibuster) in a few weeks. Of course President Donald Trump took the key steps in ending the standoff, first by sending ICE agents to airports to help out and then by issuing an executive order to get TSA agents paid and so remove whatever cudgel Democrats thought they had to force ‘reforms’ to gut immigration enforcement.” (04/02/26)
