Good god the kicker:

Texas Medical Board Sanctions Three Doctors for Delayed Care That Led to the Deaths of Two Pregnant Women The two women died during miscarriages. The state’s medical board has ruled that substandard care led to their deaths.

For the first time since ProPublica reported on preventable deaths of pregnant women under Texas’ abortion ban, the state’s medical board has disciplined doctors in those cases.

Graph that reads CCMS Complaints Received by fiscal year. It starts in 2013 with 800 complaints. There's a big spike in 2019 with 1693 complaints. And there's another big spike in 2025 with 2016 complaints.

There was a big spike in food safety complaints to USDA's FSIS in 2019.

But last year's number of food safety complaints for meat, poultry, and eggs is the highest since collection of the data started in 2001.

gizmodo.com/food-safety-...

Immigration Agent Is Charged With Assaulting a Colorado Protester The officer faces a misdemeanor charge after an encounter in Colorado, becoming one of the few federal agents to be prosecuted by local officials during the immigration crackdown.

An immigration officer in southwest Colorado who was caught on video grabbing a protester by the hair and hurling her down an embankment last October was charged with assault and criminal mischief on Tuesday, the local district attorney said. nyti.ms/4cYcXpF

Trump Is Said to Be in Talks to Send Afghans Who Aided U.S. Forces to Congo

there are more than 400 children among them.

This is important and shocking news from NYT.

And it doesn’t mention the DRC third-country deportation program has already begun. ICE sent 15 immigrants from Latin American countries there five days ago.

gillianbrockell.com/breaking-ice...

The contrast between Trump’s popular support and the reaction he gets from institutions should put to rest any notion that they were somehow captured by the radical left.

President Trump’s administration rocked the American research enterprise over the last year with disruptions and changes to the historically reliable stream of federal funding that fueled it.

Labs are running on fumes. https://wapo.st/48dWJWX

Trump Is Said to Be in Talks to Send Afghans Who Aided U.S. Forces to Congo A U.S. aid worker said that the Afghans, who were evacuated to Qatar, would face a choice between moving to the Democratic Republic of Congo and living under the Taliban.

Breaking News: President Trump is said to be in talks to send Afghans who helped the U.S. war effort to the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Simple rule: the Senate should not confirm any appointee to any post who can’t say clearly who legitimately won the 2020 presidential election. Not just who was “installed”, but who won the vote and the electoral college.

‘We were terrified they were going to kill us’: fishers who survived US boat strike speak out An Ecuadorian fishing crew describe their ordeal as victims of Trump’s purported war on ‘narcoterrorists’

These fishermen are lucky to be alive. We will probably never know how many of the ~180 people killed in similar US attacks were also just fishermen.

DHS Creating Smart Glasses for ICE to ID People in Real-Time The Department of Homeland Security is developing smart glasses for ICE, according to budget documents.

"The glasses would be only one more addition to the rapidly expanding surveillance state under the Trump administration, which is collecting massive amounts of data on people and organizations in the U.S.”

newrepublic.com/post/209309/...

ELIZABETH WARREN: Did Donald Trump lose the 2020 election?

KEVIN WARSH: Uhm, we try to keep politics if I'm confirmed out of the Federal Reserve

WARREN: I'm just asking a factual question

WARSH: I believe this body certified the election

WARREN: That's not the question I'm asking

Absolutely incredible.

NASA Astronaut Reid Wiseman, who commanded Artemis II, took this footage from the far side of the Moon with his iPhone.

Watch with sound on.

I think before you build an Arc de Triomphe you should be able to identify at least un (1) triomphe

Searing opinion from a federal judge on Long Island, who describes "police state"-like tactics by ICE to arrest peopleand draw up after-the-fact warrants.

He says DOJ is damaging its credibility with the courts by trying to shield ICE from scrutiny. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

yeah it is critical that dems win the senate

Federal judge unloads on ‘unserious’ RFK Jr., says anti-trans policy showed his ‘cruelty’ Judge Mustafa T. Kasubhai vacated the “Kennedy Declaration,” finding it unlawfully attempted to override medical standards and restrict care for transgender youth.

Breaking: HHS’s ban on gender-affirming care is struck down. Rarely have I read a ruling this sharply worded.

“This case is one of a long list of examples of how a leader’s wanton disregard for the rule of law causes very real harm to very real people.”

www.advocate.com/politics/nat...

Yikes! Always something…

We better wake up to what’s happening online. The right isn’t just posting anymore; they’re scaling influence with AI.

📌 AI-generated pro-Trump “influencers” are surging on social media and are starting to shape what people see and believe.

When simulation becomes the norm, it weakens the human capacity for discernment. As a result, our social bonds close in upon themselves, forming self-referential circuits that no longer expose us to reality. We thus come to live within bubbles, impermeable to one another. Feeling threatened by anyone who is different, we grow unaccustomed to encounter and dialogue. In this way, polarization, conflict, fear and violence spread. What is at stake is not merely the risk of error, but a transformation in our very relationship with truth.

pope tweets good

Only US Votes Against Women’s Rights Document At UN Commission - Health Policy Watch President of the UN General Assembly Annalena Baerbock told the opening of CSW that the backlash against women's rights "feels as though we are forced to

For the first time in decades, consensus broke at the UN Commission on the Status of Women. The United States cast the lone “no” vote on a document aimed at improving justice systems for women and girls worldwide. Misogyny is the official policy of the US under Trump.

I'm not joking when I say mRNA technology is more important than "AI" and it's a tragedy we're throwing billions into one while our government is aggressively defunding the other.

Behind Trump’s Public Bravado on the War, He Grapples With His Own Fears The president’s impulsive style has never been tested in a sustained military conflict, and he’s been ruminating on Jimmy Carter’s failure in Iran.

Props to the WSJ, they managed to pack almost every Trump decision-making pathology into a single story. It’s all here:

1) Short attention span
2) Impulsive behavior
3) Knowledge deficits
4) Gambling for resurrection
5) Belief in the madman theory

www.wsj.com/politics/nat...

Border-area mass surveillance and its resulting harassment is something you'll hear about if you talk to any person that lives near the border or who has to cross it regularly.

Extremely normal and fine for a company to put this in a public statement

Gov. Bill Lee signed a resolution defining family as a man, a woman, and their children, a move critics say targets LGBTQ+ households.

I am a gay dad and this is FUCKED UP

bugs bunny and daffy duck are standing next to a sign that says duck rabbit on it ALT: bugs bunny and daffy duck are standing next to a sign that says duck rabbit on it

strait of hormuz update

April 17, 2026
Cumulative measles cases reported in the United States by year
Johns Hopkins
{publichealth.jhu.edu/ivac/resources/us-measle...

Orbánism was, more or less, a model for what Trump and the Republican Party are trying to do in the United States. The Trump administration was so desperate to prevent Orbán’s defeat that it sent J. D. Vance to ask Hungarians to “stand for Western civilization” and “freedom, for truth and for the God of our fathers.” Few vice presidents have more consistently debased the office, to the point that most people hardly noticed that Vance had praised as godly a man who publicly condemned “race mixing.”

It's not the MOST pathetic thing Vance has done, but him going to Hungary to applaud man who condemned "race mixing" is absolutely wretched (🎁) www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...