“Washington is gearing up to crack down on ‘Big Medicine,’ with populist Sens. Elizabeth Warren [D-MA] and Josh Hawley, [R-MO] leading the charge. Over the past decade, America’s healthcare system has become increasingly consolidated, leaving patients with higher prices, fewer choices, and more bureaucratic frustration. But before lawmakers swing a scythe through the healthcare sector, they should ask how it became so consolidated in the first place. Insurance and hospital behemoths didn’t emerge by accident. They’re the predictable result of federal health policy — especially the Affordable Care Act — which has made size a prerequisite for survival. Obamacare’s rules have made it far harder for smaller insurers and independent healthcare providers to compete — while giving larger firms a decisive advantage. The law’s many mandates increase costs, complexity, and financial risk, all of which are easier to absorb at scale.” (04/25/26)
“More than three weeks ago, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) agreed to Democratic terms to fund most of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), except for its immigration enforcement agencies. That bill has still not become a law, prolonging the longest shutdown of any government agency in history. Nobody has even thought about the DHS shutdown for a while, because President Trump signed executive orders to first pay airport security agents on March 27, and then all other agency personnel on April 3, under the guise of emergency action. It should be said plainly: This is illegal, it has always been illegal, and the precedent it sets pushes Congress, the branch of government with the power of the purse, into total irrelevance.” (04/24/26)
“Expect the fight against fraud to dominate the Republican agenda in Congress and on the campaign trail in the months ahead: It’s past time to stop the theft of tens and even hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars from programs meant to help the sick, needy and otherwise vulnerable. Wednesday saw Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) unveil the Protecting American Taxpayers Act, a major package of legislation produced by the DOGE Caucus, a group of senators aiming to continue the work of the Department of Government Efficiency, the executive branch agency spearheaded by Elon Musk that targeted fraud and waste.” (04/25/26)
“Amid a spate of cellphone and social media bans for young people around the world, there’s a parallel, quieter shift taking place in education. It is away from the ubiquity of digital technology and back to the analog tools of paper, pen, and pencils. And, in an interesting twist, this change is being led by the Scandinavian nations that pioneered the shift to ed tech learning more than a decade ago. Today, they are grappling with restoring – or, rather, redefining – what contributes to meaningful and enduring education.” (04/24/26)
“An explosive new indictment was handed down against the Southern Poverty Law Center this week, accusing the storied civil rights organization of 11 counts of wire fraud, false statements to a federally insured bank, and money laundering. The Department of Justice is alleging that between 2014 and 2023, the SPLC secretly funneled over $3 million from donors to leaders of the Ku Klux Klan, Unite the Right, and the Nazi Party, among other extremist organizations. … Paying millions of dollars to Nazis and Klansmen would be bad enough. But the indictment alleges that the SPLC went beyond that, actually underwriting the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville in 2017, providing material support and supervision to what the Left turned into the symbol of Right-wing hate.” [editor’s note: Ungar-Sargon does have a little credibility on Charlottesville — on the “right” she was one of the few who didn’t try to perpetrate the “Charlottesville Hoax” Hoax – TLK] (04/26/26)
“Explosions and sustained gunfire have been reported in Mali’s capital, Bamako, as armed groups launched co-ordinated attacks across the country. Mali’s military said on Saturday evening that efforts to repel the attacks were under way, and some militants had already fled. Fighting has also been reported around Kati, home to a major military base outside the capital, as well as in Gao and Kidal in the north, and the central cities of Sevare and Mopti. One analyst described it as the largest jihadist attack in years. Mali has for years been plagued by insurgencies by groups affiliated with al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group, as well as a separatist movement in the country’s north.” (04/26/26)
“In the late hours of Friday night, Republicans on the Senate Banking Committee scheduled a vote to advance President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Federal Reserve, shortly after the Justice Department announced it was dropping its criminal probe into the current head of the central bank, Jerome Powell. The committee vote will take place on April 29, putting megarich financier Kevin Warsh on track for full Senate confirmation by the time Powell’s term as Fed chair ends on May 15. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), the top Democrat on the banking panel, said in a statement early Saturday morning that ‘either the Republican majority is fooled easily or they are hoping to fool the American people’, arguing that the Justice Department only agreed to drop its widely condemned probe of Powell—for now, at least—to clear the way for Warsh’s confirmation.” (04/25/26)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“One of the most frustrating things about Israel apologists is how they constantly pretend to believe things they don’t really believe in order to push Israeli PR. There’s a tweet going around by a rabbi named Elchanan Poupko that says ‘I had never met a Zionist who does not care also for the lives of innocent Palestinians. I have never met an anti-zionist who does care for the lives of israelis. That is the difference between us.’ This person does not believe his own claim. He is knowingly lying about what he thinks is true about Zionists. A Penn State survey published in Israeli media last year found that 82 percent of Jewish Israelis support the forced expulsion of all Palestinians from Gaza. Nearly half, 47 percent, said the IDF should kill all inhabitants of any city they capture — that’s inhabitants, not combatants.” (04/25/26)
“An explosive device killed 13 people traveling on a bus in southwestern Colombia on Saturday, an attack the country’s army chief described as a ‘terrorist act’ that also left at least 38 injured as violence linked to drug trafficking in the region escalates. Octavio Guzmán, the governor of the region of Cauca, said on X that the device was set off while the bus was traveling along the Panamerican Highway in the municipality of Cajibio. Five children were among the injured, Cauca Health Secretary Carolina Camargo told Noticias Caracol, a TV news program.” (04/26/26)
“Last week, The New York Times divulged a fresh trove of confidential internal memoranda between the Supreme Court justices. The documents allegedly show that Chief Justice John Roberts and his conservative colleagues have abused the Court’s technical procedures to block the agenda of Democratic presidents and to favor Republicans. While this accusation can only succeed by ignoring the broader context of the Court’s work, it heralds the latest progressive attack on the Court as a stabilizing institution in our national politics.” (04/25/26)
