Category: 2026

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Alia Chughtai @ Al Jazeera: ‘Vengeance for all’: How Iran’s Lego videos won narrative war against Trump

The viral videos by Iranian creators, say analysts, are high-quality though cheap, and strike at fissures in US politics while rallying a world audience against America’s long history of global wars and abuses.

It’s a Lego set, with a difference.

A Native American chief rides on his horse onto a barren landscape, bathed in moonlight. The animated video rapidly shuttles between a range of people who’ve been victims of the United States government, from Black Americans in chains to survivors of Iraq’s notorious Abu Ghraib prison complex.

Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American – April 17, 2026

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With Iran’s announcement the strait was open, Trump hit the media circle, announcing through interviews and social media posts that the war with Iran was over and peace talks were all but done …

He claimed that Iranian leaders had “agreed to everything,” …
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But, as Ashley Ahn of the New York Times reported, Iranian officials’ interpretation of events was quite different from Trump’s characterization. Iran’s top negotiator, speaker of parliament Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, posted on social media that Trump had made seven claims in an hour, and all seven of them were false. Iran rejected Trump’s claim that it had agreed to hand over its uranium stockpile, and also said that the strait was open for commercial vessels—not military ships—but would close again if the U.S. blockade continued.
(Heather Cox Richardson more…)
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Borowitz: Trump Claims Pope’s Election was Rigged

Escalating his attacks on Pope Leo XIV, Donald J. Trump claimed on Thursday that the pontiff’s election last year was “totally rigged.”

“There were a lot of ballots cast against him that were just burned,” he said. “You could see the smoke coming from the Vatican.”

Trump blasted Leo as “a terrible person and very ungrateful, quite frankly,” arguing that “he never would have become Pope without my help.”

“It was my idea to send JD to Rome in 2025,” Trump explained. “If he hadn’t gone, Pope Francis would still be alive and Leo would still be a crummy cardinal.”

Curtis M. Wong @ HuffPost: Pete Hegseth Quoted A Bible Verse. Turns Out It Was A Rip-Off Of ‘Pulp Fiction.’

The actual Ezekiel 25:17 passage as it appears in the King James Bible is significantly shorter than both Hegseth’s and Jackson’s, reading simply: “And I will execute great vengeance upon them with furious rebukes; and they shall know that I am the Lord, when I shall lay my vengeance upon them.”

Brian Allen: Speaker Johnson Lectured the Pope on a Doctrine the Pope’s Patron Saint Invented

Adam Kinzinger: Franklin Graham Defends Trump’s Jesus Post. Again.

Ewan Palmer @ DailyBeast: Trump Yanks Millions From Catholic Charities Amid Pope Feud

Robert Reich: The Courage and Clarity of Pope Leo

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Robert Reich: Stephen Miller’s Strait of Hormuz

His crackdown on immigrants is assumed to be good for America as long as it causes immigrants more pain than it does us. Same “logic” as Trump is using in Iran.

Trump’s chief bigot, Stephen Miller, said on Fox News that immigrants to the United States bring problems that extend through generations.

“Not only is the first generation unsuccessful,” Miller claimed. “You see persistent issues in every subsequent generation. So you see consistent high rates of welfare use, consistent high rates of criminal activity, consistent failures to assimilate.”
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Gerard Baker @ WSJ: For Now at Least, the Iran War Seems to Be Failing

If you’re winning, you don’t typically threaten to destroy a civilization or look for scapegoats.

It’s still too soon for a verdict on President Trump’s “excursion” in the Middle East. The failure of negotiations in Pakistan to end the war with Iran presumably presages an escalation of kinetic operations, and on Sunday Mr. Trump announced a blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, which suggests a new level of risk. We must continue to pray for our success and the safety of our troops. But it isn’t too soon to offer a tentative judgment on the president’s biggest foreign-policy action to date: ill-conceived, ill-planned, ill-executed and, so far, failing.

For those who dispute this and prefer to buy the administration’s protestations of victory, I’d suggest you listen not to the words of the president’s critics, but to his own voice and those of his supporters.

Priyanka Shankar @ Al Jazeera: How much will US Hormuz blockade hurt Iran, and does Tehran have an escape?

Munir Ahmed, Sam Metz, and The Associated Press @ Fortune: Trump’s leaky blockade: ship sneaks through and talks with Iran resume

Collin Eaton and Benoît Morenne @ WSJ: U.S. Oil Blockade Is Set to Boost American Exports—and Prices at the Pump

Borowitz: Obama Offers to Help Trump Craft Nuclear Deal with Iran

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Melissa Sanchez and Jodi S. Cohen @ ProPublica: The Real Story Behind the Midnight Immigration Raid on a Chicago Apartment Building

The Trump administration has claimed the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua had taken over the building. But new documents make no mention of the gang and reveal federal agents had information about “illegal aliens unlawfully occupying apartments.”

… new documents confirm in the government’s own words that what prompted the raid was more pedestrian: allegations that immigrants were squatting in the complex. And the landlord had given federal officials, who were already targeting immigrants in Chicago, the blessing to search the building.

Arrest records for two of the 37 immigrants detained that September night, included in a motion filed Tuesday that’s tied to an ongoing federal consent decree, provide the clearest picture yet of what led to the controversial and aggressive operation, in which agents descended from a Blackhawk helicopter, broke down doors and zip-tied U.S. citizens and immigrants.
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Hans Christensen: Oil War Boosts Renewable Energy

Many governments are now—perhaps not the US, but most other—looking for ways to push for a faster and more effective transition to non-fossil fuels. The IMF shows how previous oil shocks worked.

IMF (the International Monetary Fund) and World Bank’s spring meetings next week in Washington, DC will see economic policymakers from all over the world gather to assess the damage caused by Trump’s war on Iran has caused. …

International institutions are under pressure, again by Trump, but at least most of the main ones are still able to gather influential leaders, like the IMF does.

[From IMF video] So what hit us? A supply shock that is large, global, and asymmetric:

• It is large because the world’s daily oil flow cut by some 13 percent, and its LNG flow by some 20 percent;
• It is global because all of us now paying more for energy and with supply chains disrupted across the world;
• And it is asymmetric because its impact depends on proximity to the conflict, whether you are an energy exporter or importer, and your policy space.

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Jason Ma @ Fortune: ‘This is the last warning.’ Iran threatens U.S. warships after they throw down the gauntlet for winner-take-all Strait of Hormuz

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Iranian media said the destroyers turned around after being confronted by the IRGC, which reportedly launched a drone in the direction of the destroyers. The IRGC also said any attempt by military ships to cross the strait would be met with a “firm and forceful response.”

Natasha Bertrand, Haley Britzky, Zachary Cohen @ CNN: US intelligence indicates China is preparing weapons shipment to Iran amid fragile ceasefire

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It would be a provocative move considering Beijing said it helped broker the fragile ceasefire agreement that paused the war between Iran and the US earlier this week. President Donald Trump is also set to visit China early next month for talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

NY Times: Trump Was Watching a U.F.C. Fight in Miami While Iran Talks Collapsed

Terrence Goggin: Trump defers to Vance to save his presidency as his base disintegrates and the “free world” fractures

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Heather Delaney Reese: The First Lady Knows What’s Coming

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A trivial note. That’s what she called a warm, familiar email to a woman now serving 20 years in federal prison for sex trafficking minors.

And then she said something that I think reveals more than she intended. When explaining her connection to Epstein, she told the American people, “Donald and I were invited to the same parties as Epstein from time to time, since overlapping in social circles is common in New York City and Palm Beach.” She said it as if moving through rooms with men like Epstein is simply part of the lifestyle when you’re wealthy, connected, and inside those circles. She wants us to believe that proximity to a monster was just the cost of being elite.
(Heather Delaney Reese more…)

Borowitz: BREAKING: Another Statement From Melania

BREAKING: In the early hours of Friday, when everyone else at the White House was fast asleep, Melania Trump made the following statement:

Good morning.

The lies linking me with the disgraceful Donald J. Trump need to end today.

William Kristol, Andrew Egger, and Jim Swift @ Bulwark: Melania Throws Donald Under the Bus

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Matthew C. Klein: Russia’s Iran War Windfall in Perspective

At current prices, the Russian government’s energy-related tax revenues are probably running about 3x the monthly average from December 2025-February 2026. If those prices hold for the rest of the year, total oil and gas tax receipts would be worth about $180 billion in 2026, up from $101 billion in 2025.

If Russian export prices rise further from here—which seems likely given the world’s growing desperation for oil, gas, and refined products that are not affected by the Iranian government’s growing realization that it controls all traffic through the Strait of Hormuz—then the Russian government could find itself with a windfall worth hundreds of billions of dollars. (Unless of course its own export volumes are constrained by Ukrainian attacks.) Russia is also poised to benefit from its position as a major exporter of fertilizers now that Middle Eastern exports are no longer available.

Marc Bennetts @ Times of London: Why Putin is the real winner of the Iran war

Without firing a shot, Russia has emerged as a victor after the conflict created splits between Nato members and his ties with Iran strengthened

Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American – April 9, 2026

The ceasefire President Donald J. Trump announced Tuesday night fell apart almost immediately. …

Although Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth claims the U.S. has had a “historic and overwhelming victory” that achieved “every single objective,” David S. Cloud of the Wall Street Journal wrote yesterday that Iran saw the ceasefire as a “triumph” because it had survived a 38-day barrage from the United States and Israel and because it had gained control over the Strait of Hormuz, inflicting deep damage on the U.S. economy. Iran claimed the U.S. had suffered “an undeniable, historic, and crushing defeat.” Iran’s new leadership is even more anti-Western than the previous leadership, killed in the early days of the U.S.-Israeli strikes.

Yesterday the president posted his own interpretation of the terms of the agreement, but they were aspirational and asked for Iran to agree to terms that were less advantageous for the U.S. than the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) that President Barack Obama negotiated in 2015 and Trump tore up in 2018.
(Heather Cox Richardson more…)
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Borowitz: Iran Allows Ship Loaded With Epstein Files Through Strait of Hormuz

In its first act of goodwill since the declaration of a ceasefire, on Wednesday Iran permitted a container ship loaded with copies of the Epstein files to pass through the Strait of Hormuz.

“In recent weeks, the closure of the Strait has cut off the world’s supply of Epstein files,” an Iranian government statement read. “Now, those files will flow freely to the four corners of the globe.”

Although Iran is charging vessels millions for safe passage through the Strait, “We are sending the Epstein files through free of charge,” the statement indicated.

The Iranians said they had taken Donald J. Trump’s threat to destroy their civilization “very seriously,” noting, “We see what he’s already done to American civilization.”

Jennifer Rubin: What Comes From the Failure to Confront Insanity

Nate Silver: Nuclear brinkmanship usually works. It’s also incredibly dangerous.

Robert Reich: Trump’s Defeat in Iran

Hans Christensen: JD Vance in Budapest, Sign of Weakening US

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