🚨 NEW EPISODE 🚨 Is Donald Trump the most corrupt president in history? This week, Rory and Alastair discuss how Trump is "looting" the government, and why nobody seems to be stopping it. + A&R talk to Vicky Spratt about how mainstream politics can win back the Gen Z vote. Link in the replies 👇

“The first official election campaign video from Netanyahu's Likud party treads familiar territory: incitement and division.” From Haaretz - Esther Solomon 1/2

📚 “The acts displayed by Minister Ben Gvir towards flotilla participants are utterly unacceptable and inconsistent with democratic norms and fundamental values of human dignity.” Haaretz reports 🎁 1/3

This is insanity: Trump's DOJ is about to "settle" his lawsuit against the IRS by creating a $1.7 billion slush fund to pay off victims of Biden "weaponization." I talked to Jamie Raskin about this. It's even more corrupt than it first appears. 1/ (new piece) newrepublic.com/article/2105...

Decoding what was said and achieved - or not - over key issues at Trump-Xi summit - https://www.channelnewsasia.com/east-asia/china-us-trump-xi-summit-key-takeaways-6123876

🎧 well worth a listen to #DemocracySausage podcast #auspol This week’s Episode: By-election tea leaves Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pocket Casts or wherever you get your podcasts. ⤵️ ausi.anu.edu.au/news/democra...

🚨Two years after they disappeared - where are Huda and Aisha Al Aqqad? A new investigation by GLAN+ @skynewsrss.bsky.social has revealed that Palestinian mother & daughter, Aisha Bakr Ahmed Al-Aqqad and Huda Mohammed Assouli Al-Aqqad were abducted by Israeli soldiers from Khan Younis in late 2023 🧵

An issue I've wondering about for a while is the extent to which the Trump administration is trying to restrict access to commercial satellite imagery in order to obscure such damage from the US public as opposed to restricting access to Iran (which is reportedly receiving imagery from Russia).

Interesting read. “How the [royal] commission balances calls for tougher safeguards with concerns about democratic freedoms and political expression will be a defining test of its approach to both antisemitism and social cohesion.” From Talia Slonim www.haaretz.com/haaretz-expl...

📚 “As with the U.S. Constitution, the UN Charter sharply limits recourse to force for very good reasons. We are currently witnessing the consequences of the failure of the President’s advisors and senior most lawyers to adequately convey these rationales ” ⤵️

Orwell, Politics and the English Language: “Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

This administration is just hell-bent against generating knowledge about the world. www.notus.org/health-scien...

“It had become clear to Mr. Phelan that the Navy & the U.S. shipbuilding industry did not have the ability to deliver on Mr. Trump’s vision. Mr. Phelan recently suggested to Mr.Trump that the Navy might have to rely on European shipyards to deliver the battleships on the ambitious timeline” #AUKUS ?

Have her introduce Trump Saturday night. www.stripes.com/opinion/2026...

Steve Witkoff's son Zach is the CEO of World Liberty Financial. World Liberty Financial has a business partnership with the Pakistani government. \_(ツ)_/¯ www.radio.gov.pk/14-01-2026/p...

Great to have @karlbode.com back on the show to dig into the recent Sam Altman story and the problem with how media too often reports on tech CEOs. They lie, then those lies get laundered through trusted sources. That needs to stop!

Published this piece on Wednesday about Trump's media attacks leading up to the WHCD but had to update after a) NY Times reported that the FBI had investigated its reporter over her coverage of Kash Patel and b) Stars and Stripes' ombuds said she was being fired as part of Pete Hegseth's DOD reign.

David Ellison "may not turn CNN into Fox News overnight...But it’s a virtual certainty that when his business interests are at stake, Trump will be given a seat at the editor’s desk," @freedom.press's Seth Stern told @andyreports.bsky.social. Read more:

In his second administration, President Trump’s family members are expanding their business ventures, earning hundreds of millions of dollars and prompting fresh concerns about influence peddling and conflicts of interest. https://to.pbs.org/4tTfPdh

This is superb reporting by BBC News’ Nick Marsh on spikes in insider trading ahead of Trump’s Truth Social pronouncements and weirdly accurate predictions on the betting market Polymarket. Well worth a read. “The insider trading suspicions looming over Trump's presidency”

“Just over the first year of Donald Trump’s second term, the [Palantir] company’s stock more than doubled in value, as it scored over $11 billion worth of contracts with the federal government.” ⤵️

The US Department of the Treasury announced the penalties on Tuesday, targeting 14 individuals and entities it accused of helping Iran acquire weapon components. The sanctions were imposed against companies and people based in Iran, Turkiye and the United Arab Emirates. #IraqWar ⤵️

The Explosive Mediaa team's Iran LEGO videos go beyond ordinary propaganda--they've lampooned the Trump administration and criticized it's alliance with Netanyahu in a way that is resonating with critics around the world.

The circle of the grifters … “DP World, a multi-national logistics company whose chairman recently resigned over publicised links to paedophile billionaire Jeffrey Epstein, could build a new port in either Gaza or on the nearby Egyptian coast, or develop a free trade zone in the enclave.”

TL;DR: Law professor Andrew Guthrie Ferguson discusses the implications of digital devices on privacy rights in his new book, 'Your Data Will Be Used Against You,' highlighting the risks posed to individual privacy in the digital age.

Netanyahu has no intention of agreeing to a long-term ceasefire in Lebanon because it gets in the way of his plans for territorial expansion. "Israel’s push for buffer zones and 'natural borders' suggests the emerging ceasefire is unlikely to halt its ongoing ethnic cleansing in southern Lebanon."

“We are witnessing the continuing utmost contempt for the international legal order, for diplomacy, and above all for the lives of civilians and the environment in Lebanon,” www.ohchr.org/en/press-rel...

“The world is stuck watching a perpetually performative series of announcements about meetings that could, may, will happen, involving US negotiators with no negotiating skills and a president not dealing with the reality that he is in a weak and confused bargaining position.” From Laura Tingle 1/2

Hotlines for US soldiers thinking of leaving the armed forces as "conscientious objectors" are being overwhelmed. Almost all the calls mention the bombing of the girls' school in Iran that killed more than 100 school children. www.npr.org/2026/04/10/n...

🎁 “That inquiry could have wider implications for Australia’s Big Four accounting firms – KPMG, Deloitte, PwC and EY – whose operations have been the subject of intense parliamentary & regulatory investigations in recent years.” - Jason Koutsoukis #auspol www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/share/23020/...

In 1998, a record 11 One Nation MLAs were elected to the Queensland parliament. Within months the party was tearing itself apart, and long before the next election all had left the party. Stephen Spencer on the long list of ex-One Nation candidates. satpa.pe/NnUkCs6

while even the Fox News keeps struggling to spin for the imploding bubble-boy presidency ... "going down to Miami for a UFC fight."

If Congress doesn’t do its job, “you end up with something closer to a monarchy or a dictatorship,” says @oonahathaway.bsky.social. “The whole reason for the revolution was to reject that form of government…When the president is able to act without any checks from Congress, all of that goes away.”

Perfect encapsulation of Israeli politics: the airstrike on Beirut's Tallet El Khayyat on Wednesday that leveled a building happened at almost the exact same time as the IDF Arabic spokesperson calling us a people of culture, civilization and lovers of life.

Israeli attacks on Lebanon have killed more than 2,000 people, and wounded more than 6,400, since March 2nd: — 165 children killed. — 248 women killed. — 85 healthcare workers killed. (Source: Lebanese Ministry of Health)

Loans from a UAE bank were funnelled into the Libyan war effort "likely including payments to Russia’s Wagner Group". More brilliant investigative work from @thesentryorg.bsky.social

My latest for Middle East Eye: satellite imagery analysis reveals that an Ethiopian army base in western Ethiopia is being used as a weapons & logistics hub by Sudan's UAE backed Rapid Support Forces (RSF), to launch cross border attacks on Sudanese army positions from Ethiopia.

Beirut, 1982 — being bombed by the Israeli military during its invasion. Your reminder that Israel has been bombing Lebanon since before Hezbollah existed. (Photo by Yan Morvan)

NEW FOIA Files newsletter is out! On April 1, the DOJ's Office of Legal Counsel publicly released a bombshell 52-page opinion. It said that the Presidential Records Act is “unconstitutional” and that Trump “need not further comply with its dictates.” 🧵 www.bloomberg.com/news/newslet...

🇬🇧 Britain is shelving its plan to hand back the Chagos Islands -- which hosts the strategic Diego Garcia US-UK military base -- according to a government spokesperson, following strong opposition from US President Donald Trump. ➡️ u.afp.com/SEi9

👀👇🏽

This is the 10 point peace plane from Iran gulfbusiness.com/en/2026/iran...

I spoke to TIME together with @rgoodlaw.bsky.social, @oonahathaway.bsky.social , and Harold Koh about this extraordinarily dangerous moment. time.com/article/2026...

Congress cannot wait until Trump’s deadline to find out if he was merely bluffing about committing a genocide in Iran. The statement itself is impeachable. The threat to do war crimes is impeachable. That’s the best case. The worst is he follows through. He must be stopped. He must be removed.

“As former uniformed military lawyers who advised targeting operations, we know the presidents’ words run counter to decades of legal training of military personnel and risk placing our warfighters on a path of no return," write Margaret Donovan and Rachel VanLandingham

More threatening war crimes unless Iran "cries uncle."

“International laws aimed at preventing the horrors of total war are codified in a series of agreements, including the Geneva Conventions, the Hague Conventions, the Nuremberg Principles and the United Nations Charter. Deliberate attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure violate those.” #MENA

It is a bit rich for POTUS to threaten a journalist for supposedly endangering the safety of US military personnel in Iran given that US service members would not be in harm’s way in Iran but for POTUS’s unnecessary war.

No matter how outrageous the crimes committed by the US and Israel, Albanese, Wong and Marles robotically mouth platitudes about our 'joint commitment to the rules-based international order'. And they wonder why the public looks beyond the political duopoly? www.justsecurity.org/135423/profe...