the president of the united states is personally looting the treasury to the tune of literally billions of dollars and that he is not being immediately removed from office and tried for high crimes against this country is a devastating indictment of every part of our political system

This is a big one. Stellar reporting from Sarah Fitzpatrick. To call it a must-read is an understatement: www.theatlantic.com/politics/202...

Remarkable.

Loss of energy output in the Middle East due to the Iran War will take about two years to recover, according to the International Energy Agency.

There’s so much to say about the remarkable reporting from Jodi Kantor & Adam Liptak—and I’ll say a lot of it in Monday’s newsletter. But the most striking thing about all of it is the role & behavior of Chief Justice Roberts. “Calling balls and strikes” this ain’t: www.nytimes.com/2026/04/18/u...

A great shame on us.

Can’t tell you how many high level DC insiders have said to me in past two days they don’t believe anything WH says unless it is confirmed by Iran. And the smart ones want confirmation by Iranian actions not just words. Trump credibility even among GOPers is zero. Less than that.

Chief Justice John Roberts should be impeached and removed from the Supreme Court.

He’s lost his damn mind. Also, if he thinks Iran will “never close the Strait again” he’s delusional. He’s acting like the war is over because it’s back to status quo…ish. Still haven’t solved uranium or missiles. All we’ve done is get the Strait re-opened.

Wall Street’s entire response to the Iran War has been a strong indication that it does not indeed represent a perfect synthesis of known information.

DOJ demanded voter files from all 50 states. DOJ sued 31 states for refusing their demand. My law firm intervened to protect voters in those cases. DOJ is now 0-5. My firm is 5-0. Lesson: When we fight we win.

Vance has now seized the top seat in the Death of Expertise Hall of Fame: He has lectured the pope—the pope, the leader of a billion and a half Catholics—about being too sloppy with theology. The queen of all vices: Pride. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

Franklin Graham today: the Pope should thank Trump. Let that sit for a second. My new piece on how the Trump movement uses faith as a costume — and what happens when real religious leaders push back. open.substack.com/pub/adamkinz...

This is it:

Excellent overview:

Guy Fieri is a repugnant MAGA tool who looks as though any kitchen he enters should immediately be shutdown by the local Board of Health.

I hope there are Democratic ad makers collecting all these clips of congressional Republicans talking about how much congressional Republicans suck

BREAKING: The U.S. bishops’ Committee on Doctrine just issued a formal statement defending Pope Leo XIV's teaching authority on just war doctrine — less than twelve hours after JD Vance told a Turning Point USA crowd the pope should “be careful” talking theology. This is a serious escalation.

This GOP war with the Pope might be the new dumbest thing they’ve done, and as usual, it’s completely self-inflicted.

"No more shoes?" "Nope. AI all day." "What does that mean?" "It's AI. It's in everything. It's the future. So we're the future." "What does your AI do?" "Multi-modal agentic self-supervised latent-space singularity." "You don't know what that means, do you?" "No." "Here's a billion dollars."

This is what a pathological liar & sociopath who’s utterly detached from reality sounds like. And Maria just sits there and smiles.👇

We can't keep looking away from his emotional and cognitive issues. The attack on the Pope was the beginning of a full night of melting down. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

"since America’s problems with Iran are inherently political, military objectives cannot be proper war aims. And proper war aims are what’s missing: a desired end state that can be served by a ledger of destruction but must be more than the ledger itself.” @ryanevans.bsky.social

I think we should make the billionaires unhappy

The viral infection leaves millions with chronic pain, increased stroke risk, and lifelong nerve damage—yet vaccination rates remain dangerously low. www.wired.com/story/shingl...

the way that basically everyone (including myself) sees shit like this all the time and goes "huh. well," and moves along with the day, and that basically gives Trump a superpower, is sure grim

Trump is messing with the wrong guy.

Ossoff: "Trump apparently promised pardons for entire WH staff, which is what you do when you run it like a casino. Maybe the West Wing is too busy placing bets on the war to care, but American are getting hurt...in Trump’s America the well-connected get stock tips & everybody else makes sacrifices"

People will be closely studying how Hungary's opposition pulled off their win in such a pro-incumbent system. Important to note that the theme was corruption. Democrats need to get much better at calling out Trump's corruption.

Thankyou Hungary. You didn't listen to Vance, Trump, Putin or Netanyahu, which is the first step on the road to decency and sanity. This is an important win for Europe as well.

*Darth Vader blows up Death Star* Darth Vader: Good luck blowing it up now!

This tragedy of errors continues. Not one of the senior US negotiators was competent to the job. The US position was unrealistic. The process was fundamentally flawed.

Obama's former minister once said "God Damn America" and we never heard the end of it.

Election deniers. Conspiracy theorists. Anti-voting activists. Big Lie true believers. By the time we hold our next presidential vote, they could be running our elections — including in some key swing states. www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/...

Trump reportedly says he’ll issue mass pardons at end of his presidential term

BREAKING WSJ: Trump has repeatedly promised his top administration officials pardons before he leaves office, according to people who have heard his comments. "I'll pardon everyone who has come within 200 feet of the Oval," Trump said in a recent meeting. www.wsj.com/politics/pol...

4 shipped made it through the Strait of Hormuz today. Iran still controls their uranium and over half their ballistic missiles. But hey, at least a bunch of Trump’s close friends made bank making anonymous bets on Polymarket!

Right before Trump bombed Iran, they offered a deal he could’ve bragged about for a decade- “better than Obama” deal. Instead he attacked them for no reason. Now the deal on the table gives Iran control the Strait and lifts all sanctions The Art of the Cave

Both Trump’s economic and foreign policies have backfired in spectacular ways. Still, Fox has repeatedly urged Americans to bear the consequences and “sacrifice” for benefits that will likely never appear.

"I think there's a small but real chance he's eventually remembered as a Bernie Madoff- or Sam Bankman-Fried-level scammer."

We’ve gone from demanding freedom of navigation to fantasizing about toll booths in the ocean. Unreal.

Imagine being Israel and having all the leaders of Iran assassinated only to have the president of the United States step in, give Iran total control of the gulf oil economy, and then agree to remove all restraints on Iranian power and nuclearization

$2 million per ship — to cross a Strait that was free six weeks ago. @nytimes.com www.nytimes.com/2026/04/06/w...

Trump is a titanic fuck up, and will be known as such for all time. There is no possibility of redemption.

Old fool.

“Maybe the country threatening to destroy one of the world’s oldest civilizations aren’t the good guys.”

Just about everything that the MAGAverse complained about, accurately or not, regarding Obama, Clinton, and Biden, Trump and his crew have exceeded by a factor of 10 or more.

It would be nice if mainstream media would report the obvious fact that the president of the United States is out of his mind. Seems like a highly relevant fact that the media have buried so far, in betrayal of their duty.

There's a lot of consternation at our present state of constitutional collapse in part due to despair that any fixes to our present institutions are possible. I would like to highlight a neglected but relevant fact about the last time the Constitution was fundamentally changed, during Reconstruction

I hope all the people who voted against Genocide Joe are feeling good this morning