“There’s no getting around the fact that Signal-gate was a blunder. In soccer terms, it was an own goal, a totally unnecessary screw-up that set back the Trump team. But the team is still winning and the opposition is still in total disarray and fighting among themselves. Let’s hope lessons have been learned. It’s hard to believe that, of all the people on planet Earth, it was Jeffrey Goldberg, America’s most rabidly anti-Trump journalist, who could have been ‘inadvertently’ patched into a sensitive Signal group chat of the national security Cabinet discussing sensitive plans for military strikes against the Houthis in Yemen. But that’s what President Trump’s National Security Adviser Mike Waltz is telling us.” (03/26/25)
“U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem landed in Colombia on Thursday as part of a tour of three Latin American nations to discuss immigration, crime and deportation. Her trip comes amid a souring in relations between the Trump administration and the Colombian government – long the United States'[s] closest ally in the region. Tensions between the two countries rose in January over accepting flights of immigrants deported from the U.S. Noem sat down with the country’s foreign minister Thursday morning, and is set to meet with Colombia’s leftist leader and police to discuss efforts to fight organized crime later. Colombian President Gustavo Petro and U.S. President Donald Trump, both populists [sic], share diametrically opposed views over key issues like combatting crime and the American government’s role in Latin America.” (03/27/25)
“On the corner of West 25th Street and Broadway, a sea of blood-stained hands gather silently amid the noises of Midtown Manhattan. As tourists and locals rush across the intersection, some attempt to decipher the demonstration. A sign in Serbian Cyrillic reads, ‘Love for students, the ocean divides us, the fight connects us.’ After 15 minutes, the crowd breaks their silence, embracing one another through a shared goal, to show support for the students of Serbia. This demonstration is part of a larger student-led resistance sweeping Serbia over the past three months. After the deadly collapse of a canopy at a newly renovated railway station that claimed the lives of 16 people in Novi Sad, the country’s second-largest city, public outrage has sparked a monumental fight against corruption.” (03/27/25)
“In the two months since Donald Trump became president, the Democrats have engaged in a one-note mantra in which they insist the administration ‘is not normal.’ But do the Democrats own a mirror? Because if there is any normalcy on their side of the aisle, it seems to be in deep hiding. It is not normal, for example, that House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries [D-NY] and former Speaker Nancy Pelosi [D-CA] refuse to condemn the violence and destruction directed at Teslas and their owners across the nation. How hard is it – as some lower-level Democrats such as Rep. Ro Khanna [D-CA] have done, to just say, ‘Hey, it’s never OK to destroy personal property over politics?'” (03/27/25)
“BBC correspondent Mark Lowen has been deported from Turkey after being arrested in Istanbul on Wednesday, the BBC has said. Lowen had been in Turkey for several days to report on the ongoing protests that were sparked by the Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu’s arrest last week. Imamoglu — who is being held in jail on corruption charges he denies — is seen as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s main political rival. He has been selected by his party as presidential candidate in the 2028 election. In a statement issued on Thursday, the BBC said: ‘This morning (27 March) the Turkish authorities deported BBC News correspondent Mark Lowen from Istanbul, having taken him from his hotel the previous day and detained him for 17 hours.’ On Thursday morning, he was presented with a written notice that he was being deported for ‘being a threat to public order,’ the statement said.” (03/27/25)
“A county clerk in New York refused Thursday to file a more than $100,000 judgment from Texas against a doctor accused of prescribing abortion pills to a woman near Dallas, setting up a potential challenge to laws designed to shield abortion providers who serve patients in states with abortion bans. A Texas judge last month ordered Dr. Margaret Carpenter, who practices north of New York City, to pay the penalty for allegedly breaking that state’s law by prescribing abortion medication via telemedicine. The Texas attorney general’s office followed up last week by asking a New York court to enforce the default civil judgment, which is $113,000 with attorney and filing fees. The acting Ulster County clerk refused. ‘In accordance with the New York State Shield Law, I have refused this filing and will refuse any similar filings that may come to our office. …’ Acting Clerk Taylor Bruck said in a prepared statement.” (03/27/25)
“One week after the killing of UnitedHealthcare executive Brian Thompson, an intelligence report compiled by a regional intelligence center made an admission that’s shocking in its simplicity: Rising health care costs are correlated to threats against executives and civil unrest. The two-page document obtained by the Prospect and compiled by the Connecticut regional intelligence center (one of dozens of fusion centers across the country that communicate intelligence between federal agencies and state law enforcement) is uncharacteristically forthright in its language and assessment that health care costs lead to instability, and that the reaction to suspect Luigi Mangione’s alleged action was largely positive. According to the dossier, ‘Healthcare expenditure in the United States increased from $2.75Trillion (T) in 2004, to $4.09T in 2018, in inflation adjusted dollars. 2019 and 2020, saw expenditures of $4.2T and $4.6T respectfully, which represents a 10.6% increase year over year and was largely influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic.'” (03/27/25)
“Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lee Zeldin said Thursday that he has axed a $2 billion grant to a group linked to Stacey Abrams, the two-time Democratic candidate for governor of Georgia. ‘I have terminated the $2 BILLION Biden EPA grant to this Stacey Abrams-linked NGO,’ the former Long Island congressman tweeted. ‘The DOJ/FBI are investigating and the money has been frozen. It is insane that the Biden Admin would give $2B to an organization that previously only received $100!’ Zeldin was responding to a Thursday morning Truth Social post by President Trump, who has made Abrams the face of efforts to claw back Biden-era environmental and social-justice funds as part of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency cost-cutting initiative.” (03/27/25)
“The weaponization of government was probably the hallmark of the administration of Joe Biden. OK, the weaponization of government and senile, incoherent ramblings were the hallmarks. While the senile ramblings are gone, the infrastructure of that weaponization remains fully entrenched in agencies across the federal government. President Donald Trump needs to remove any and everyone involved in the effort to not only use the power of government against him for political purposes, but against any American. Weaponization of government is more than just filing bogus charges or creating new laws under which prosecutions can happen, it involves government creating flaming hoops through which Americans have to jump to open or expand a business, or simply do business with the government itself.” (03/27/25)
“One San Francisco politician’s attempt to save the struggling California cannabis industry has caught the eye of the Wall Street Journal editorial board, who seem eager to teach the San Francisco progressive a lesson in conservative economics. A Tuesday editorial in the East Coast newspaper took aim at a new bill from San Francisco Assemblymember Matt Haney that would stop California’s tax rate for legal cannabis from increasing. Currently, the state excise tax rate on legal pot is set to jump from 15% to 19% on July 1, an increase that Haney and others say will decimate the legal pot industry. ‘If we continue to pile on more taxes and fees onto our struggling small cannabis businesses, California’s cannabis culture is under serious threat of extinction,’ Haney said in a Monday news release.” (03/27/25)
