NewsNation: Putin says he hopes there will be no need to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine

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In comments aired Sunday in a film by Russian state television about his quarter of a century in power, Putin said Russia has the strength and the means to bring the conflict in Ukraine to a “logical conclusion.”

Responding to a question about Ukrainian strikes on Russian territory, Putin said: “There has been no need to use those (nuclear) weapons … and I hope they will not be required.”

(NewsNation more…)

• Wired: Brendan Carr Is Turning the FCC Into MAGA’s Censoring Machine

  
  
  The formal agenda of the Federal Communications Commission’s open meeting this week seemed well in line with its normal wonky pursuits. There were items on satellite broadband, a licensing framework for the lower 37-gigahertz spectrum, and newly proposed rules that could help block robocalls. …

  Then came the regular press Q&A. Ever so politely, the beat journalists probed Carr about recent moves he’d made—like using the power of his role to investigate news organizations for airing stories that just happen to make Donald Trump unhappy. …
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  Carr’s response to questions about CBS at the open meeting was: “All options remain on the table,” even the “death penalty” of the network’s broadcast license. He also indicated that NBC and the other networks that have covered the case of the legal immigrant mistakenly deported to an El Salvadorian prison might be in similar trouble. His justification was that since broadcast outlets have exclusive access to their slice of public airwaves, their content must be in the public interest. If they don’t like that, he said, they can be podcasters.

  The trouble with this—well there are a lot of troubles with this—is that it’s obvious that “the public interest” here is being interpreted as “stuff Donald Trump likes.”
  (Wired more…)

  Mary Geddry: The Troll-in-Chief: When the White House Becomes a Weaponized Meme Account

  It’s one thing for extremists on fringe message boards to dehumanize immigrants. It’s another when the United States government does it, with the full weight of its institutions, the seal of Homeland Security, and the endorsement of the President himself. Over the past 24 hours, the official White House X account has reposted a trio of messages that would’ve once been unthinkable in American political discourse.

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• Dan Pfeiffer: Why Trump’s Efforts to Blame Biden for the Economy are Doomed to Fail

  Last week, the Department of Commerce announced that the economy shrunk for the first time since 2022. This latest datapoint shows that the economy has turned very negative, very fast since Trump took office. As Larry Summers, former economic adviser to Presidents Clinton and Obama, put it on Twitter:

  This has probably been the least successful first hundred days of a presidency on the economy in the last century. We have seen the stock market go down, the dollar go down, forecasts of unemployment go up, forecasts of inflation go up, forecasts on the odds of a recession go up. We’ve seen consumer confidence collapse. We’ve seen businesses take back all their previous earnings projections. So, this has been a disastrous hundred days for the US economy.

  The S&P 500 performed worse in Trump’s first 100 days than any president in the last 80 years. Trump’s political problem is massive — he was elected to strengthen the economy and lower prices, and now the economy is weaker than it has been in years, and prices are skyrocketing.

  Trump has a two-pronged approach to deal with this problem. For Trump’s base, the first solution is just to pretend like everything is fine. This will work with his most ardent supporters and most shameless media allies. For everyone else, Trump plans to blame Joe Biden for his problems.
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  Politics is about expectations. It’s often not about a great performance, but whether you did better than people expected. Trump barely won the popular vote. His margin of victory was smaller than any other election in nearly a quarter century. However, because most experts believed he would lose the popular vote, his razor-thin victory was widely regarded as a massive triumph.

  Trump could have modulated expectations on the economy. A competent president tells voters, as Barack Obama did when he took office amidst a financial crisis, that recovery takes time. Obama used to repeat, “We didn’t get into this mess overnight, and we won’t get out of it overnight.”

  Trump took a different, more bombastic approach. A few examples of Trump’s promises include:

  At an August 9, 2024 rally in Bozeman, Montana, Trump declared, “Starting on day one, we will end inflation and make America affordable again, to bring down the prices of all goods.” ​

  (Dan Pfeiffer more…)

  Moneywise: Texans could be ‘hardest hit’: The state could lose 370,000 jobs and $47 billion a year in GDP because of Trump’s tariffs

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  “Texas would by far be the state that’s hardest hit by these tariffs,” Ray Perryman, CEO of economic research company, The Perryman Group, told CBS. “We buy a lot of things from Mexico. Mexico buys a lot of things from us. For the last 30 years, we’ve stitched these economies together. They’re really integrated in some fundamental ways. And when you rip those seams apart, you’re going to start seeing some pretty significant impacts.”

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• BBC Mundo: Por qué Ronald Reagan decidió hacer una amnistía para regularizar a 3 millones de migrantes en EE.UU. (y los efectos positivos que tuvo sobre la economía del país)

  
  
  
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  “Reagan, tras ser gobernador de California, comprendió que la mano de obra mexicana era un elemento fundamental para la prosperidad económica estadounidense y que, a la larga, el crecimiento de la inmigración indocumentada no era una estrategia sostenible”, dice Raúl Hinojosa, profesor de la Universidad de California een Los Angeles, quien ya por aquellos años estaba inmerso en el debate migratorio en EE.UU., sobre el cual escribió su tesis doctoral.
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  “IRCA failed to anticipate or anticipate the continued and growing demand for workers in the United States, especially in the low-skilled labor market. Without a plan to manage future legal immigration and labor market needs, the three-pronged solution [employer sanctions, enhanced border enforcement, and legalization of undocumented immigrants] to illegal immigration collapsed under the weight of economic and demographic forces,” explain researchers Muzaffar Chishti and Charles Kamasaki in a 2014 article published by the Migration Policy Institute.
  (BBC Mundo more…)

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• Thom Hartmann: Chapter 3: What it takes to build a middle class

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  Building on the foundation of the “administrative state” that FDR created in the 1930s, presidents of both parties have since passed sweeping social safety net programs including Unemployment Insurance, the Minimum Wage (both established by FDR’s New Deal), Medicare and Medicaid (LBJ), expanded government protections of workers and the environment, and built massive government-funded infrastructure programs including the TVA (also FDR’s), the Eisenhower Highway System, and the Hoover Dam.

  Most recently, President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act hearkened back to FDR and LBJ, using tax incentives and direct investment to stimulate American manufacturing and raise the wages of US workers. So far, it’s been an overwhelming success, keeping the economy humming while reducing inflation faster than in any other developed country in the world.
  (Thom Hartmann more…)

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• Mary Geddry: The Gospel According to Golf: 100 Days of Trump, Tyranny, and Techno-Feudalism

  Let’s start with a simple truth: Donald Trump is very tired. Not from governing, of course, he’s spent almost a third of his presidency this term playing golf, often at his luxury resorts. Now, under the new GOP budget proposal, taxpayers could be on the hook for $300 million in “security and support expenses” tied to his travel, an item critics say is essentially a golf slush fund, even as Trump slashes spending on disaster relief, housing, and public health. When the country’s crumbling, nothing says leadership like billing the public for 18 holes and a cheeseburger at Mar-a-Lago. But priorities are priorities, and in Trump’s America, nothing screams fiscal responsibility like a bunker shot followed by a seven-figure government invoice.
  (Mary Geddry more…)

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• Jess Piper: Dispatch from a Red State

  Radar’s hometown
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  Folks were waiting for me when I arrived at the Temple of Creative Arts. It was a Jewish synagogue donated to the town about ten years ago. I knew as soon as I stepped into the space that it was a holy space. The wood and the windows and the seating arrangement gave it away.
  

  
  
  
  I spoke to an audience of about 40 people. They listened politely and as I ended my talk, we started a Q&A session — the question session is my favorite part of my speaking events.

  You might like to know what rural Midwestern folks typically ask me at these events.
  (Jess Piper more…)

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• Ruth Ann Crystal MD: COVID & Health News, 5/4/25

  Acute respiratory illness levels are now LOW across America. Influenza B is decreasing and COVID cases are declining as well.
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  H5N1
  Top virologists from more than 40 countries are urging global leaders to take immediate action against the growing threat of H5N1 avian flu. … Without action, the experts warn that the virus could evolve to spread more easily among humans.

  The CDC canceled a planned National Academy of Sciences workshop focused on preventing human H5N1 bird flu infections, despite growing concerns over the virus’s spread among U.S. cattle and poultry. The event was set to train farmworkers and veterinarians on proper use of personal protective equipment (PPE), but was abruptly terminated by the Department of Health and Human Services.

  Measles
  As of May 1, 2025 in the US, a total of 935 Measles cases were reported by 29 states, 13% have been hospitalized for measles complications and 3 deaths have been reported.
  …

  Vaccines, HHS, and Misinformation
  Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. continues to spread misinformation about vaccines. In recent interviews, he falsely claimed that the MMR vaccine contains “aborted fetus debris” and advised parents to “do your own research” rather than trust decades of proven vaccine science. The MMR vaccine does not contain fetal tissue, and it has safely protected against Measles, Mumps, and Rubella for over 50 years.

  Instead of promoting vaccination amid rising measles cases, RFK Jr. has now called for the development of new measles treatments. We do not need to waste time and money on new measles treatments when the MMR is proven to protect 97% against Measles. As Benjamin Franklin famously advised, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”

  Kennedy is also now planning placebo vaccine trials for all vaccines, which experts say violate medical ethics since the effectiveness of existing vaccines is well established and giving a placebo would be akin to malpractice. Separately, FDA commissioner Marty Makary is reviewing whether to authorize updated COVID boosters for next winter citing “a lack of data on booster shots” despite the fact that billions of doses of COVID vaccines have been given safely worldwide. As of May 2023, 677 million doses of COVID vaccines had been given in the United States alone.

  Pertussis (Whooping Cough)
  Whooping cough (Pertussis) infections in the U.S. have more than doubled this year, with 8,077 cases reported through mid-April—marking the worst outbreak in 70 years. At least four deaths, including two infants, have been linked to the surge which experts attribute to waning immunity and falling childhood vaccination rates. With fewer than 93% of kindergartners fully vaccinated against pertussis for the 2023–2024 school year, health officials warn that protection against vaccine-preventable diseases like measles and pertussis is weakening. The CDC urges up-to-date vaccinations and boosters especially for infants, pregnant individuals, and adults who have not been immunized.
  (Ruth Ann Crystal MD more…)

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• Slate: Trump Just Issued an Executive Order Aimed at Decimating the Civil Rights Act of 1964

  Trump’s executive order calls for the repeal of agencies’ disparate impact regulations under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

  When large bipartisan majorities of Congress enacted and subsequently amended the nation’s major civil rights laws during both Democratic and Republican presidencies, policymakers were aware of two core truths about the salience of race and racism in the United States. They knew that that our society must eradicate rampant intentional racial discrimination in housing, employment, voting, and other areas. But they also knew that certain arbitrary, artificial, and unnecessary yet purportedly race-neutral policies would perpetuate the effects of that purposeful discrimination if left unchecked. Congress, through explicit statutory text, and the Supreme Court, in construing less explicit language, have turned to the “disparate impact” framework to address that second truth.
  (Slate more…)

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• Reuters: US court halts ruling ordering Voice of America employees back to work

  A federal appeals court on Saturday blocked a ruling, opens new tab that had ordered the Trump administration to return more than 1,000 Voice of America employees back to work.
  U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth on April 22 ordered the administration to “take all necessary steps” to restore employees and contractors to their positions at the U.S. news service and resume radio, television and online news broadcasts and some grants.

  The appeals court in a 2-1 decision suggested Lamberth lacked jurisdiction to order the employees to return to work and to require the restoration of $15 million in grants for Radio Free Asia and Middle East Broadcasting Networks.

  …
  The appeals court noted the government did not challenge the aspect of Lamberth’s ruling requiring it to restore Voice of America’s “statutorily required programming levels.” Numerous reports on Friday said VOA was preparing to resume broadcasts next week. USAGM did not immediately comment Saturday.

  U.S. Circuit Judge Cornelia Pillard dissented from the ruling, saying it “all but guarantees that the networks will no longer exist in any meaningful form by the time this case is fully adjudicated.”
  (Reuters more…)

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• Closer to the Edge: Francisco García Casique

  Francisco García Casique was cutting hair in Longview, Texas when the United States government decided he was a national security threat.
  

  
  
  
  Twenty-four years old. A Venezuelan immigrant. No criminal record. No gang affiliations. Just scissors, tattoos, and a soft voice behind the chair at a Marvel-themed barbershop where he built a new life after arriving in December 2023.

  He wasn’t hiding. He wasn’t fleeing anything except the collapse of a homeland. He checked in regularly with ICE, kept his paperwork clean, and dreamed of opening his own shop one day. Instead, he vanished into a legal black hole — not because of what he’d done, but because of what he looked like.

  Francisco had tattoos. Religious ones. One read: “God gives His toughest battles to His strongest warriors.” He shared it with his brother Sebastián — a sign of faith, not affiliation. But to ICE under Donald Trump’s second term, a tattoo is a gang membership card, and a Venezuelan accent is probable cause.

  So on March 15, 2025, during a routine ICE check-in, Francisco was detained without warning, stripped of his rights, and tossed into a fast-tracked deportation process with no lawyer and no due process.

  He thought he was going home. He’d signed paperwork to be returned to Venezuela. But that’s not where ICE sent him.

  They sent him to El Salvador.
  (Closer to the Edge more…)

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