“A federal judge who halted construction of President Donald Trump’s $400 million White House ballroom clarified on Thursday that the administration can proceed with below-ground construction of a bunker and other ‘national security facilities’ at the site. U.S. District Judge Richard Leon in Washington issued his latest ruling in a lawsuit over the ballroom project several days after an appeals court instructed him to reconsider the possible national security implications of stopping construction. Government lawyers had argued that the project includes critical security features to guard against a range of possible threats, such as drones, ballistic missiles and biohazards. Leon had barred work from proceeding without congressional approval, but his March 31 order suspended enforcement of that order for two weeks. The appeals court extended that stay until Friday, but Leon stayed his latest decision for another week, which gives the administration more time to seek Supreme Court review.” (04/16/26)
“War against Iran. Kidnapping the president of Venezuela. Threatening to take over Cuba and Greenland. Plans to plunder the planet of its land, labor, and vital resources to feed the insatiable appetite of American capitalism are indeed afoot and, in the age of Donald Trump, U.S. imperialism is back with a particular vengeance. Not, of course, that it ever went away. In fact, it’s been there from the beginning. After all, the United States was launched as an act of settler colonialism, dispossessing the New World’s indigenous inhabitants. President James Monroe issued what became known as the ‘Monroe Doctrine’ in 1823, proclaiming the country’s exclusive right to determine the fate of the rest of the western hemisphere. Meanwhile, the slave trade and slavery constituted an imperial rape of Africa by America’s planter and merchant elites.” (04/16/26)
“Eric Swalwell was Nancy Pelosi’s made man, the golden child of San Francisco’s rotten machine politics. Today he’s roadkill, his name erased from the sign outside his congressional office, vultures feasting on his remains. Swalwell’s clinical political eradication this week tells you everything about the Democratic Party and how ruthlessly and efficiently it will move to keep power in the state it has controlled for 15 years and run into the ground.” (04/15/26)
“The Utah judge overseeing the case against Charlie Kirk’s accused assassin Tyler Robinson has unsealed a ballistics report from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives that could not conclusively match a bullet fragment to the suspected murder weapon but confirmed a match with the spent casing. Prosecutors have alleged that separate testing found DNA consistent with Robinson’s on the gun, on the towel and on three of the four rounds inside. The report’s conclusions had already been made public in prior court proceedings, but the document itself is now available from the court, and it includes some new details. The tested material includes a ‘deformed/damaged’ piece of the bullet jacket as well as four lead fragments.” (04/16/26)
“Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel said Thursday that while Cuba does not want military aggression from the United States, his country is prepared to fight should it happen. Díaz-Canel spoke during a rally that drew hundreds of people to commemorate the 65th anniversary of the declaration of the Cuban Revolution’s socialist essence. ‘The moment is extremely challenging and calls upon us once again, as on April 16, 1961, to be ready to confront serious threats, including military aggression. We do not want it, but it is our duty to prepare to avoid it and, if it becomes inevitable, to defeat it,’ Díaz-Canel said. He spoke as tensions remain high between the two countries, with Cuba’s crises deepening as a result of a U.S. energy blockade. Earlier this week, Trump said his administration could focus on Cuba after the war in Iran ends.” (04/16/26)
“Ronald Reagan’s budget director, David Stockman, spoke candidly years ago about why Republicans like tax cuts so much. In his 1986 book, The Triumph of Politics: Why the Reagan Revolution Failed, he confided that tax cuts served the purpose of creating budget deficits that could then be used to justify spending cuts on government programs. Typically, administrations only cut spending for a program if it’s no longer necessary, and the resultant surplus may then be used as a tax cut to stimulate the economy. However, Stockman turned this on its head by using the tax cuts to create a budgetary crisis that would then require cuts in spending regardless of whether the programs were necessary or not. In other words, Stockman used tax cuts to create a revenue problem that the Reagan administration could then mask as a spending problem. This is known as ‘starving the beast’.” (04/16/26)
“When yet another air conditioner in her apartment building broke down in early March, Heather Myatt braced herself and began her usual beeline for the property manager’s office. For more than a year, Myatt and her neighbors have been waging a war to secure long-overdue repairs at Maple Grove Apartments, an income-restricted building in Brandenburg, KY. Being ignored had become routine for the tenants of Maple Grove; last summer, an elderly resident whose AC had been broken for two years, despite regular complaints to the building’s landlord, reportedly collapsed from the heat. But now, for the first time, Myatt knew her demand might actually be heard. ‘Y’all really don’t want to be violating this contract already,’ Myatt, a proud mother of two, recalls telling the property manager. ‘You have 24 hours to respond, or that’s a breach. You put it on this paper. You just signed it. Keep your word.'” (04/16/26)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“I don’t mind admitting that I hope the US and Israel suffer a crushing, devastating defeat in Iran. I hope this war collapses the entire US empire. My only loyalty is to humanity, and being on Team Human in today’s world means being against the US empire and against Israel. I hope the empire falls. I hope the apartheid state of Israel is dismantled. … YouTube has banned the channel that’s been creating viral AI Lego music videos criticizing the US war on Iran. The Google-owned platform claims the Lego videos somehow constituted ‘violent content,’ but we all know it was to facilitate the US propaganda effort by shutting down effective propaganda for the other side.” (04/15/26)
Source: Brennan Center for Justice
by Michael Waldman
“This week, autocrat Viktor Orbán conceded defeat in Hungary’s general election. It was a landslide victory for Péter Magyar, and for democracy worldwide. Over the course of 16 years, Orbán worked to dismantle and undermine democratic institutions. He took control of most news outlets. He rewrote election rules. He replaced judges with loyalists. His government faced numerous corruption scandals, including one surrounding a presidential pardon. He was also a fan favorite of the Trump administration. Our vice president campaigned for him. What are the implications of his defeat for democracy in the United States? To be sure, midterm elections often rebuke the party in power, and it’s hard to predict whether this election augurs any November results. But just as Brexit presaged Trump in 2016, worldwide trends are at play.” (04/15/26)
“Donald Trump is nothing if not impulsive – and there’s often a method to his seeming madness. At times that means going way over the line – consciously, deliberately – and at others it’s just rash. Whether he’s dealing with Iran, the Epstein files, mass deportation or the leader of the Catholic Church, the president busts through the usual guardrails of decency and compassion. I know this is often intentional, because the president has acknowledged it to me. Ripping others may bring him negative publicity, but Trump doesn’t mind that if it gets the pundits and the public chattering about the issue he wants driving the media agenda. Trump posting a user’s AI image of himself as Jesus Christ, healing a patient with glowing hands – and adding a demon in the background – was such a fiasco that he deleted it 12 hours later, which he almost never does.” (04/15/26)
