“As the U.S. and Israel’s war against Iran enters its second month, Iran has found a new way to hold leverage over the world economy: closing and opening the Strait of Hormuz at will. Iran’s ability to shut off one of the world’s major shipping routes, which transports one-fifth of the world’s oil and gas, allows it to dictate the cost of energy in the U.S. and everywhere else. Reporting suggests that Iran’s control over the strait won’t clear up whenever the war ends. … on Monday, the Iranian parliament passed a bill that would impose tolls on any ship passing through the strait, while banning U.S. and Israeli vessels from entering.” (04/01/26)
Source: Libertarian Institute
by William J Watkins Jr.
“Since the beginning of the war, President Donald Trump has touted dismantlement of the Iranian government as the American endgame. Even as U.S. officials negotiate with their Iranian counterparts to end the fighting and restore stability to world energy markets, Trump says he still wants to see a ‘very serious form of a regime change’ in the ultimate peace deal. This imperial hubris is unworthy of the president of a federal republic and would cause the Founding Fathers to cringe.” (04/01/26)
“On March 18, a jury in rural Adams County, Ohio, rejected a defamation lawsuit in a matter of hours. That speed was itself a verdict — not just on the merits, but on the character of the case. Seven law enforcement officers had sued a music artist for using his own home security footage to criticize a police raid on his own home. The officers lost, in what civil liberties advocates called a huge First Amendment victory. The more important question, though, is going largely unasked — whether the officers who brought this lawsuit should face criminal scrutiny as well.” (04/01/26)
Source: Brennan Center for Justice
by Michael Waldman
“The US Supreme Court today will hear a major constitutional case about birthright citizenship. We shouldn’t be debating this right now. But since the president chose to act with such striking disregard for the law, here we are. Birthright citizenship is in the Constitution. The first sentence of the 14th Amendment reads, ‘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.’ This has been the law for more than 150 years. … The Supreme Court in 1898 confirmed the 14th Amendment’s plain meaning. In United States v. Wong Kim Ark, it ruled that children born here are citizens, even if their parents are not. That principle gave rise to generations of new Americans. Donald Trump tried to Sharpie this out of the Constitution.” (04/01/26)
“Political dysfunction is not limited to the United States of America. Take Canada. Things have gotten bad enough there that one province is taking measures to ‘dissolve the political bands which have connected them’ with the folks running everything from Ottawa. … Alberta’s secession is going to the ballot. Will the voters choose yes? Secession is a messy, difficult business. But it’s easier in Canada than in, say, the United States (where it led to war). So we will see how the people of the province really feel about how horrific the government in Ottawa really is.” (04/01/26)
“President Donald Trump has an incredibly childish obsession with outdoing his predecessors, who he constantly derides as stupid and corrupt. There is, of course, no evidence for Trump’s charges, like the supposedly terrible economy he inherited from President Joe Biden, but Donald Trump is not a man who feels constrained by reality. While Trump does everything he can to reverse policies to promote clean energy, overturn trade agreements (including his own), and undermine security pacts, there is one area where Trump looks to substantially outpace the work of his predecessors. This is in promoting the transition to a non-fossil fuel-based economy. … his reckless attack on Iran will do a hundred times more to promote clean energy worldwide than all the incentives in Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act.” (04/01/26)
“The Iran war is a war of aggression and a crime against the Iranian people. Belatedly authorizing a war that should never have happened would be an endorsement of that crime. It is bad enough that members of Congress failed in their constitutional responsibilities when they did nothing to stop this war. To approve Trump’s actions after the fact would be so much worse.” (04/01/26)
“It is widely thought that the February 5 expiration of New START, the last arms control agreement capping US and Russian nuclear weapons, could usher in a dangerous and highly destabilizing new nuclear arms race. Since the Cold War peak of over 70,000 nuclear weapons in 1986, arms control treaties have reduced the number to approximately 12,200 today—still equivalent, however, to 145,000 Hiroshimas. Many of these decommissioned weapons remain in storage where they can be readily redeployed, making it possible to double Russian and US arsenals in one to two years. If a new nuclear arms race begins between the US and Russia, the US could ‘upload’ 800 bombs and cruise missiles stored at military bases back onto B-2 and B-52 bombers in a matter of weeks. ” (04/01/26)
