Caity Weaver embarked on the greatest quest since The Odyssey, all to find the best free restaurant bread in America. She traversed 13,000 miles, had rolls thrown at her, got a rec from Stephen King, and more. Go get it:

See supporters of Hungary’s Tisza party and its lead candidate, Péter Magyar, celebrating in the streets of Budapest after soundly defeating Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party in a general election. See more images at the link: theatln.tc/GzuYDsSH

@dgraham.bsky.social: ”The posts illustrate that Trump views religion much the way he views everything else: as something that can serve him but does not create any obligations on him.”

@isaacstanleybecker.bsky.social: “Trump has a way of distancing himself from people who disappoint him ... But having tied himself so tightly to Orbán, he may find it unusually difficult to dissociate himself from the prime minister’s downfall.”

@qjurecic.bsky.social: “Pushing out the division’s career staff allowed Dhillon to move forward with reshaping the Civil Rights Division...But this loss of horsepower and expertise has come at the cost of her own effectiveness in the role—if, that is, effectiveness is really the goal to begin with.”

“Much as Iran’s forces exceeded expectations against the world’s most powerful military, Iran’s social-media posters have held their own against, or even upstaged, the world’s loudest voice online.”

”A group of new accounts on the prediction market Polymarket made highly specific, well-timed bets on whether the U.S. and Iran would reach a ceasefire on April 7, resulting in hundreds of thousands of dollars in profits for these new customers.”

The war in Iran has showed that “the United States is, in effect, moving toward a world in which it faces more connected opponents with a less cohesive coalition of its own,” Thomas Wright argues:

Trump said he went to war to end Iran’s nuclear ambitions—but Tehran showed that it has a non-nuclear way to deter future attacks, @nancyayoussef.bsky.social reports. theatln.tc/ZqHD6VQT 📸: Kaveh Kazemi / Getty

“Despite those significant complications, the White House seemed determined to plow ahead with a diplomatic process it was already describing as nothing short of total victory.”

“Some companies may start to pare back products they’ve made ‘smart’ to justify markups ... ‘Do we stop getting smart refrigerators? I don’t think that’s a net bad,’ Laine Nooney, a technology historian at NYU, told me.”

@dgraham.bsky.social: ‘Trump’s message this morning is also notable for the autocratic view that underpins it.”

@radiofreetom.bsky.social: If such an order comes to pass, the military can and must refuse.

Donald Trump’s threatening message to the Iranians shows that he believes he is completely unconstrained by American law, international law, Congress, or public opinion, @dgraham.bsky.social argues:

Yesterday, four astronauts swung around the far side of the moon, traveling farther from the Earth than any humans had ever gone before, taking some spectacular photographs along the way. theatln.tc/19ze00pK 📸: NASA; Ronaldo Schemidt / AFP / Getty

“The carrots that America offers the nation are sticks to the men who rule it. And the sticks that America wields against the regime—isolation, conflict, and chaos—are carrots to men whose power depends on all three.”

Per WSJ: An Iranian drone attack last month on the U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia did more extensive damage than previously disclosed, current and former American officials said, showing Iran’s ability to hit Washington’s assets in the kingdom.

Just over a month into the war in Iran, Pete Hegseth has purged the Army’s top officer—and the Army secretary’s job is also in jeopardy, Missy Ryan, Nancy A. Youssef, and Sarah Fitzpatrick report:

After Pam Bondi’s ouster, other top administration officials could be in jeopardy.

This is awful.

New: Military officials are planning for two potential high-risk ground assaults in Iran—all they need now is Trump’s go-ahead, three people familiar with the matter tell Nancy A. Youssef and Jonathan Lemire:

“Even before Donald Trump lifted oil sanctions on Russia, oil prices were skyrocketing—and filling Vladimir Putin’s war chest with billions of dollars, just as Russia’s wartime deficits were starting to cause significant pain.”

The war in Iran could raise global food prices as the conflict disrupts fertilizer shipments through one of the world’s most critical trade routes:

Breaking News: The U.S. will allow a Russian oil tanker to reach Cuba, letting critical fuel in after months of what amounted to a blockade.

This is a GREAT read if you want to have a major coronary event

"Intelligent political agency is impossible without a foundation of fact. Yet the rise of unrestrained AI, combined with the incentives and biases that drive social media, has served to supplant facts with consequential delusions, and helped mass-market them to those most inclined to believe them."

This is a remarkable synthesis of our current cultural moment:

@elcush.bsky.social: “Hundreds of airports in this otherwise great nation do not have even one single solitary Chili’s Too.”

@tombartlett.bsky.social: “Each of these events individually is bad news for Kennedy’s agenda; together, they suggest that his grip on power is waning.” theatln.tc/FtNRfXK5

@galbeckerman.bsky.social: “Authoritarian leaders want their face in your face. Their ubiquitous images personalize the state, making it synonymous with one man’s power. And they turn the citizen’s relationship with that leader into an emotional one.”

“The Trump administration is also discussing which wealthy Republican donors with Cuban ancestry could be considered for future transition or leadership roles in Havana.”

@nickmiroff.bsky.social: “When Trump first proposed the wall, in 2015, it was a blunt solution to a complex crisis at the border ... Now back in office and freed of his first-term limits, he has turned its completion—even through remote areas—into a vanity project.”

A sanctioned Russian tanker loaded with liquid natural gas is drifting out of control in the Mediterranean with no crew on board and a gaping hole in one side, prompting warnings of a "serious risk of a major ecological disaster".

I wrote about the cautionary tale of Joe Kent, a conspiratorial activist who enabled a president who then launched a war that he ardently opposed, because he completely misunderstood the man and movement he backed. Gift link:

The disaster in the Strait of Hormuz is proof that treating allies poorly has consequences, @isaacstanleybecker.bsky.social reports:

New: Under Kristi Noem, ICE purchased 11 large warehouses around the country that it plans to convert into megajails, @nickmiroff.bsky.social reports—but senior DHS officials tell him they expect that effort to slow down and perhaps even pause:

When @mckaycoppins.bsky.social set out to report on the explosive growth of the sports-betting industry, his editors thought he should experience the phenomenon firsthand. Coppins reports on his year as a gambler—and what the industry is doing to America: theatln.tc/Jxl7ryUR

New: President Trump’s personal phone number is Washington’s hottest commodity—and some are willing to barter or pay to get it, @michaelscherer.bsky.social and @ashleyrparker.bsky.social report:

”The aggressive pace that won the administration so many early victories eventually proved to be its great weakness. The government could move so quickly only by skipping almost all of the procedural steps required by federal law.”

@dgraham.bsky.social: “The Trump administration can’t say why the United States went to war with Iran, and it can’t say what the goal of the war is. Now it can’t even decide whether the war is still going on.”

@adamserwer.bsky.social: “We have a data economy that thrives on selling products we don’t need for problems we don’t have, and a public that falls for these ploys—even as we think ourselves much too clever to be fooled.”

Exclusive: HSI, a branch of DHS that usually investigates drug cartels and human-trafficking networks, is probing the 2020 election results in Arizona:

The Trump administration has both invoked and avoided the word “war” in ways that seek glory and evade responsibility, @galbeckerman.bsky.social argues:

@saahildesai.bsky.social: “The U.S. caught a break: The Venezuela and Iran strikes were not thwarted by insider traders whose bets could have prompted swift retaliation. The next time, we may not be so lucky.”

Nearly a year after the national-security scandal that came to be known as Signalgate, no one in the Trump administration has faced consequences, Jeffrey Goldberg writes.

“Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was not, it’s safe to assume, a devoted Polymarket user. If he had been, the Iranian leader might still be alive,” @saahildesai.bsky.social argues. He examines how insider trading on Polymarket risks creating a new national-security threat:

@radiofreetom.bsky.social: The president is pointing to the American military’s excellence as though that somehow constitutes a strategy in itself.

Good piece detailing the Gulf states' vulnerabilities as they're caught in a war they can't control https://www.theatlantic.:

Trump and Netanyahu seem to have very different ideas about how the war should end:

“To the surprise of some officials in Kyiv, no one from the U.S. bothered to ask Ukraine to share its expertise in how to defend against drones before starting the offensive in Iran.”