curated news excerpts & citations
WSJ: U.S. Searches for Missing Crew Member After Iran Downs 2 U.S. Warplanes
A search-and-rescue operation was under way after Iran shot down an F-15E. The other crew member was rescued earlier. The pilot of a second American warplane also hit by Iran was safe.
(WSJ more…)
Hans Christensen: 20,000 Seafarers Stranded in the Gulf
Since 28 February 2026, The International Maritime Organization (IMO) has confirmed 21 attacks on commercial ships, with 10 seafarer fatalities and several injured. Around 20,000 civilian seafarers remain aboard vessels in the Persian Gulf.
Motoko Rich @ NY Times: Hegseth Says U.S. Troops Are Fighting for Jesus. The Pope Disagrees.
In sharp contrast to the Trump administration’s calls for Christian prayers for the war effort, Pope Leo XIV says military domination is “entirely foreign to the way of Jesus Christ.”
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Robert Reich: Memories of Vietnam
This is starting to feel a lot like the Vietnam War.
This morning, Iran shot down a U.S. F-15E fighter jet over Iran, according to U.S. and Israeli officials. The fate of the plane’s crew is unclear. A rescue effort has recovered one crew member. American officials are scrambling to mount a search and rescue operation for the second.
Anyone recall that this was how the Vietnam began to escalate?
Another parallel with Vietnam: Falsely optimistic reports from the Defense Department.
A few days ago, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Iran’s air defenses were so “degraded” that the United States was sending B-52 bombers over the country. Note that the F-15E is a much smaller, faster, and more agile bomber. It’s supposed to be a more difficult target than the B-52s.
On Wednesday evening, April Fools Day, Trump reiterated that Iran’s air defenses had been virtually eliminated, and threatened to bombard Iran “back to the Stone Ages” (using the infamous line of General Curtis LeMay, Air Force Chief of Staff during the Vietnam War).
Yet in recent days U.S. intelligence has found that about half of Iran’s missile launchers are still intact, and Iran still possesses thousands of drones despite weeks of attacks. Sources familiar with the intelligence told CNN Iran is still “poised to wreak absolute havoc.”
(Robert Reich more…)
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Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American – April 3, 2026
On April 4, 1949, representatives from twelve countries in Europe and North America—Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom, and the United States—signed the North Atlantic Treaty, creating the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO. This defensive security alliance has been a key institution for world stability since World War II.
(Heather Cox Richardson more…)
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NY Times: Why Iran Believes It Has the Upper Hand
… if regime change was one of the goals of the war from the Trump administration, and, of course, this was something that President Trump’s first messages around this war really highlighted, the Iranians now believe that they have been able to survive and that the regime itself, despite its having been grievously wounded, will remain intact.
That is something that is also quite a threat for their neighbors. We do see this debate happening both in public and certainly in private between the United States and some of its regional partners — the United Arab Emirates, the Saudis, the Qataris and others — who are very concerned about being left with a wounded, embittered and emboldened Iran on their doorstep.
An Iran that still has managed to preserve its missiles and its drones and its capability to fire on its neighbors, and also, by the way, has some stockpile of highly enriched uranium — perhaps buried under the ground in Isfahan, perhaps dispersed at other sites. Whatever restraint they had around their nuclear program is likely to be eliminated, as well, in the aftermath of this crisis.
We may see a regime that would be looking to move very quickly to nuclear weapons capability.
(NY Times more…)
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Matt Grossman @ WSJ: Hiring Defied Expectations in March, With 178,000 New Jobs
The unemployment rate declined to 4.3%, and gains were once again driven by the healthcare sector
(Matt Grossman @ WSJ more…)
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Jim Pattiz @ Hatch: Trump administration orders dismantling of the U.S. Forest Service
Late Tuesday afternoon, with the subtlety of a wrecking ball and the morality of a foreclosure notice, the Trump administration announced the most devastating attack on the U.S. Forest Service in the agency’s 121-year history. Not a budget cut. Not a policy shift. Not a “reorganization.” An execution.
They’re ripping the headquarters out of Washington and shipping it to Salt Lake City, Utah — the beating heart of the anti-public-lands movement in America. They’re shuttering every single one of the ten regional offices that have governed this agency since Gifford Pinchot built the system over a century ago — and with them, the career professionals who spent entire lifetimes earning the expertise and the authority to push back when politicians came calling with bad ideas and worse motives. They’re destroying more than fifty research facilities across thirty-one states, labs that house decades of irreplaceable long-term science, the kind you literally cannot restart once it’s gone. And they’re replacing all of it — the offices, the scientists, the institutional knowledge, the professional independence — with fifteen political appointees called “state directors,” embedded in state capitals alongside the very governors, legislators, and industry lobbyists who have spent their careers demanding that the Forest Service log more, protect less, and get out of the way.
One hundred and ninety-three million acres of your national forests. An area larger than Texas. The largest public land agency in the country. Just handed, on a silver platter, to the people who’ve spent their entire careers trying to destroy it.
(Jim Pattiz @ Hatch more…)
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James Eagle: The countries with the most farmland are not who feed the world
It is tempting to read this as a map of agricultural power. China, the US, Australia. Big countries with vast land. But the definition hides more than it reveals. Agricultural land includes pasture, which means much of what appears productive is simply land used for grazing. Australia’s 1.4 million square miles looks dominant until you realise much of it produces very little food per acre.
China tells a more interesting story. It has less arable land per person than most major economies, yet it feeds 1.4 billion people. That has forced a different model, one built on intensity rather than abundance. Irrigation, fertiliser use, and crop yields matter more than sheer land size. The US sits somewhere in between, combining scale with industrial efficiency and export strength.
The real gap emerges in places that appear rich in land but poor in output. Kazakhstan and Russia have vast agricultural footprints, yet climate and infrastructure limit what that land can actually produce. Africa faces a similar problem, but for different reasons. The constraint is not geography, it is investment and systems.
The chart looks like a ranking of land. It is really a map of constraints.
(James Eagle more…)
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Samantha Cole @ 404 Media: Houston, We Have Several Problems
In this week’s roundup: super drugs, security so bad it’s memeable, and more.
Al Jazeera Death toll and injuries live tracker
ICE Accountability Project
ICE deaths 2026 – They deserve remembrance and justice.
- March 16: Royer Perez-Jimenez
- March 14: Naseer Paktiawil
- February 25: Nurul Amin Shah Alam
April 1 – Jennifer Peltz and Jake Offenhartz @ AP: Death of a refugee left at a Buffalo doughnut shop by Border Patrol is ruled a homicide - January 24: Alex Pretti
- January 14: Heber Sanchaz Dominguez
- January 14: Victor Manuel Diaz
- January 9: Parady La
- January 7: Renée Good
- January 6: Luis Beltran Yanez-Cruz
- January 5: Luis Gustavo Nunez Caceres
- January 3: Geraldo Lunas Campos
- December 31, 2025: Keith Porter
Suffering Under President Obama
NACDL Criminal Case Tracker
Texas Tribune: A Walk for Peace: photos of Fort Worth monks’ journey to Washington
Walk for Peace – Dhammacetiya – The Ancient Sacred Buddhist Scripture Stupas
Margaret Chase Smith: Declaration of Conscience
NPR: January 6, 2021: A visual archive
Accountability Initiative ICE List
GriftMatrix
Trump Action Tracker
Timeline: Tracking the Trump Justice Department’s Anti-Voting Shift
Tracking the Lawsuits Against Trump’s Agenda
Trump Pardons Database
Project 2025 Tracker
DOGE Tracker
ProPublica: Elon Musk’s Demolition Crew
Wired: 6 Tools for Tracking the Trump Administration’s Attacks on Civil Liberties
