Fifteen minutes before the President announced he was pausing strikes on Iran, somebody moved $500 million in oil futures. Somebody knew. Somebody told them. Or somebody is them.
New piece ↓
open.substack.com/pub/adamkinz...
Well...this is one hell of a problem.
Secretary of War Pete Hegs... # © • 39m The War Department is once again restoring freedom to our Joint Force. We are discarding the mandatory flu vaccine requirement, effective immediately.
Make this make sense.
Merz on Trump: I try to maintain a reasonable personal relationship. Right now, we cannot defend ourselves on our own. ..only few of us can still speak with him. I have access to him—things improve when the doors are closed. But it’s still not good.
I didn’t choose him—but he is US president
RFK Jr. is testifying to a House committee.
Dem Rep. Diana DeGette tangling with him over cuts to family planning services.
"The secretary refuses to tell the American women whether he will let poor women used the contraception method of their choice."
"Let the record also reflect: It is 2026."
🚨BREAKING: Pro-voting groups sued the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) Tuesday to block its bid to build a national voter database using private voter data from every state. www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/...
whY iS evERyONe aROunD TRUmP tiEd To EPstEiN?
Save the Pecos!
Save Oak Flat!
Stop foreign mining on our Public Lands!
@SecWar: The War Department is once again restoring freedom to our Joint Force. We are discarding the mandatory flu vaccine requirement, effective immediately. 21 Apr 26
Washington ordered smallpox inoculations for the Continental Army beginning in 1777.
Hegseth, therefore, is taking a mid-18th century, pre-Industrial Age approach to medicine and warfare.
And .. here come the Freedom of Information Act requests for Kash Patel records
DC watchdog group Democracy Forward has formally requested Patel's calendars & any messages from security detail that include words "drinking", "hungover", "inebriated"
democracyforward.org/wp-content/u...
GALLEGO: Earlier today, you told Sec. Kennedy that Trump never demanded you to cut interest rates. Is that your sworn testimony?
WARSH: That is, senator.
GALLEGO: Okay. Well someone here is lying then. Because Trump confirmed he pressed you on interest rate cuts.
200,000 acres of Native Hawaiian land. 100 years of federal trust obligation.
Trump's move: reclassify them as a racial group, not a tribal nation. Same land. New legal category. Zero obligation.
That's not a budget cut. That's a legal erasure. #taxtherich
Jim McGovern continues to go off:
"This farm bill is a disaster. It's awful. It's terrible. It's beyond words. It's a giveaway to Big Ag and chemical companies. There's actually liability protection in this bill for people who make pesticides. Like, who thinks like that?!"
Keep cooking, Jim!
🔥
New in PN: Speaker Johnson's beginning of the end
"Johnson has such a small majority he can’t afford to alienate anybody, & he has nonetheless managed to alienate everybody. The coming months will be brutal for him & are likely to end w/his speakership destroyed in a humiliating, titanic blue wave"
This is the language of a failing dictator. Declare victory before the outcome exists, accuse critics of treason, attack the press, and insist that only he can be trusted to finish the job.
Trump’s argument boils down to this: if Congress investigates me, that’s treason. That is not constitutional government. That is dictator logic.
⚡ Zelenskyy on US envoys Witkoff and Kushner: "It's disrespectful [for them] to come to Moscow and not Kyiv, it's just disrespectful."
ICYMI: Most Democrats have education plans. Many of them have some very good pieces.
But Beshear has put education first and that is hitting with voters that Democrats need to reach.
1/4
💰️ Russians have withdrawn over $6 billion in cash since April 1 as internet disruptions and tightening government oversight shake trust in the digital banking system.
united24media.com/latest-news/...
China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, called this week for the Strait of Hormuz to reopen, his first such comments since Iran effectively closed the strategic waterway last month in response to U.S.-Israeli attacks on its territory.
Why is the Maga project teetering? Because not even Trump supporters voted for this dysfunction | Moira Donegan
Before they were arrested- Vets are demanding an end to the war on Iran at the Cannon Building in Washington, D.C.
SEN. @ossoff.senate.gov : “The faithless president depicts himself as Christ while he plunges the nation into wars of choice… Remember — While you pay more for everything, the First Family’s wealth is growing by billions. Because they’re crooks, and everybody knows it.”
Page One.
@wsj.com #Florida
Sebastian Gorka: The Counterterrorism Czar Without a Counterterrorism Plan, by @hannahallam.bsky.social
SORKIN: There's a whole number of very large companies, including Apple and Amazon, that have not sought reimbursements yet for the tariffs. From what I understand, part of the reason is they're worried about offending you.
TRUMP: I think it's brilliant. They got to know me very well. I'm honored.
There’s something mentally wrong with the President of the United States.
I noted the day of the SCOTUS decision that JB Pritzker IMMEDIATELY moved to make this point, by demanding a refund for IL. And State refunds may be the best way to politicize how Trump created the worst of all worlds. But Elizabeth Warren is, predictably, focused on it as well.
So you and I and everyone else are in effect now refunding American corporations for import tariffs, although we paid for most of them in the form of higher prices — which they won’t now lower because they have monopoly power to keep prices high.
The Art of the Deal.
The idea that we sent our service members into war on the word of a commander in chief who can’t even be trusted to be involved in the rescue operation of a service member that goes missing as a result of that decision is making me lose my mind. How is this even real?!
