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Again To the Grisly Well, With Ballrooms
Leave it to this still-repugnant regime to instantly twist a Keystone Cops security breach - not a so-distant-it-was-on-another-floor "assassination attempt" - to their own skeevy purposes: blaming Democrats for "this dark moment," demanding a $400 million gold ballroom for "national security," burnishing the Brave Dear Leader myth of an addled old man who barely registered it, and what gun control issue? Meet the Epstein class: When shots (again) ring out, they get a friggin' ballroom, kids get thoughts and prayers.
The latest "clown show on steroids" - and grim proof of Trump's relentless corrosion of political discourse - unfolded Saturday night at an evidently sloppily unsecured Washington Hilton, where in 1981 John Hinckley shot Reagan, who survived. The already contentious White House Correspondents' Dinner drew the black-tied, preening, profit-driven remnants of a craven legacy media - and a growing right-wing slopaganda brigade - both willing to pretend it was normal to party with an abusive enemy of free speech who's spent years attacking, belittling, suing, bullying and name-calling them as an "enemy of the people" for seeking to do their jobs and tell the truth, thus turning the evening into a queasy "case study in institutional self-abasement."
Even before the vitriolic and incendiary Trump - who led a Jan. 6 riot, urged fans to “knock the crap out” of protesters, bade Proud Boys "stand by," mused "the 2nd Amendment people" could do something" about his opponents, warned of "a bloodbath" if he was defeated, killed schoolgirls and threatened genocide in an illegal war he doesn't know how to end - let loose with what he dubbed "the most inappropriate speech ever made" (which Press Barbie called "shots fired") - before all that came a few muffled thuds of a dud of an assassination attempt, on the floor above, by a suspect who ran past a security checkpoint before being tackled. One shot was fired - it's unclear by whom - and one cop was wounded through a bulletproof vest; he is expected to be okay.
On the floor below, meanwhile, "absolute chaos" reigned. Panicked women in gowns and men in tuxedos hit the floor, flipping over chairs, lunging under tables and sometimes holding phone cameras aloft as a horde of Secret Service agents swarmed the ballroom, leaping on stage, yelling "Get down! Get down!", running in all directions at once, weapons poised and flailing. A crowd of security guys whisked J.D. Vance out of his chair first; then another cluster went for Trump, dazed and stumbling, guys holding him up on both sides. Video later showed alleged FBI head Kash Patel crouching absurdly behind a chair and RFK Jr. heroically leaving his wife behind; an idiotic "USA!" chant that "absolutely nobody wanted to hear" flared briefly before dying a well-earned death.
The suspect was identified as Cole Tomas Allen, 31, a Torrance, CA. mechanical engineer, game developer and teacher with a Masters degree in computer science; on Facebook, he also called himself "an amateur entomologist, casual composter and occasional artist." When he tried to breach the metal detectors above the ballroom, he was armed with a shotgun - loaded with buckshot not slugs "to minimize casualties" - a handgun and several knives. He was charged with two counts: Using a firearm during a crime of violence and assault on a federal officer with a dangerous weapon. Earlier, he'd posted a lucid, relatively mild missive from "a Friendly Federal Assassin" to explain his actions; it began with, "Hello everybody!" and apologies to "everyone whose trust I abused."
He apologized to his parents "for saying I had an interview without specifying it was for 'Most Wanted,'" to his colleagues and students, to "everyone abused or murdered before this or after, any "person raped in a detention camp, fisherman executed without trial, schoolkid blown up, child starved... I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes." As a Christian, he noted, "Turning the other cheek when *someone else* is oppressed is not Christian behavior; it is rather complicity in the oppressor’s crimes." He blasted the "insane" incompetence of the lax security he encountered, said he felt "awful" about what he thought he had to do, and expressed "rage thinking about everything this administration has done...Stay in school, kids."
Despite its placid tone, MAGA world promptly dubbed it "a manifesto" of "anti-Christian bile" from "a depraved crazy person." Press Barbie blasted the "demonization (and) hateful rhetoric directed at Trump...Nobody has faced more bullets and violence." Similarly, nobody in the cult wants to admit they're adamantly declining to acknowledge years of vicious Trump rhetoric that have shaped "an angry, polarized nation," or the role of rabid MAGA responses, say, to AOC noting she's glad everyone was safe - "There is a special place in hell for demons like you," "Go fuck right off with the other Commie losers" - or the "vibes for security" so lax - no photo ID, attendee list, checkpoint to enter the ballroom, basic competence - even attendees and the would-be assassin both denounced it.
- YouTube www.youtube.com
Despite faux-thoughtful deadlines - "Stunned Washington Faces Searching Questions About Political Violence" - Trump entirely missed the point, rambling and deflecting in his clueless, bonkers, self-serving way. He said he wanted the dinner to go ahead: The show must go on. He (weirdly) crooned about the "very strong, really attractive law enforcement." He babbled he'd "studied assassinations...The most impactful people, they're the ones they go after. Like Abraham Lincoln. I hate to say I’m honored by that, but I’ve done a lot." He called the presidency "a dangerous profession," worse than bullfighting. He declared the "manifesto" “strongly anti-Christian," and the perp "a very sick person...a lone wolf whack job," though he's an incomparably more dangerous one.
Mostly, relentlessly, he shilled for his ballroom: "This event would never have happened...The conditions that took place, I didn't wanna say it but this is why we have to have it...We need levels of security probably like no one's ever seen...This is exactly the reason our great Military, Secret Service, Law Enforcement and every President for the last 150 years have been demanding a large, safe, secure Ballroom be built," which is bullshit 'cause only he's demanding it. Still, miraculously, within six minutes of the lone shot fired, MAGA pivoted, lockstep, online to the same skeevy, amidst-a-war-and-ravaged-economy-how-is-this-a-thing refrain: This is why Trump needs the ballroom. Also, the lawsuit against it "puts the lives of the President, his family, and his staff at grave risk."
As if the whole corrupt ballroom shtick, "the definition of a non-sequitur,” wasn't grotesque enough, there was the right's virtual ignoring of any recognition of guns as a relevant part of the deadly equation - this, in a country with more guns than people, with 120 mass shootings since the start of the year, with over 3,800 people dead and over 6,500 wounded, with 100 people shot every day, with Trump having dismantled gun safety and mental health measures, with as yet no accountability for Renee Good and Alex Pretti being gunned down in the street, with the awful, prevailing, willfully blind, "gun violence for thee but not for me" admonishment that, "Every few months, Americans are asked to resume their banquet, and pretend a shooting didn’t just happen."
Which is what we regularly ask of our kids. "Last night, powerful people hid," wrote Digital Drumbeat. "Journalists, lobbyists, and politicians dove under tables, pressed against walls, and ran for exits..Secret Service moved. Protocols activated. And within hours, everyone went home. Welcome to the reality American children, teachers, and parents live every single day. Except they do not get the protocols. They do not get the security detail. And not all of them get to go home." It was not "crouching in a locked, darkened classroom for three hours while your phone dies and you cannot call your mother," or a teacher saying "to be very, very quiet," which is "a Tuesday in America." What we can't imagine: "Wanting an entire secure ballroom for one man, and not wanting gun reform for every child."
Other obscenities abound: The billions in ballroom funding from corporations, most of which are seeking billions more in federal contracts; the latest grift of secretly awarding the ballroom-building company a no-bid $17.4 million contract to repair two fountains in Lafayette Park that Biden estimated would cost $3.3 million; the "brazen inversion of reality" that is the MAGA claim criticism of Trump's hateful, violent rhetoric is what somehow incites more violence, when he's done more than anyone in recent history to normalize it; the righteous indignation - Fire Jimmy Kimmel (again) for joking Melania looks like an expectant widow! - when anyone notes the gross hypocrisy. Color America skeptical: "Fuck him, he can only go to the well so many times."
Also, we're still gonna need those Epstein files. See Trump lash out at CBS' Norah O'Donnell when she quotes Cole Allen's "pedophile, rapist, and traitor": "I was waiting for you to read that (because) you're horrible people..I'm not a rapist...I'm not a pedophile... You're disgraceful." Will Bunch: "This is our country now." The Rude Pundit: "We live in the goddamn United States. We're never far away from someone shooting a gun. It's what we are debased enough to call 'freedom.'" And in the two days before the shooting, Trump made a racist attack against Hakeem Jeffries, called for Hillary and Obama to be arrested, boasted of more war crimes. In brief, "We don't have to pretend that a motherfucker isn't a motherfucker just because someone wanted to kill him."
Update: It seems CBS cut out more paranoid babbling in his "I'm not a rapist" interview. His brain is oatmeal and grievance.
NORAH O’DONNELL: What did security tell you about what may have been his motives?
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, see, they– the part– the reason you have people like that is you have people doing No Kings. I’m not a king. What I am– if I was a king I wouldn’t be dealing with you. No, I’m not a king. I– I get– I– I don’t laugh. I don’t– I– I see these No Kings, which are funded just like the Southern Law was– funded– you saw all that? Southern Law is financing the KKK and lots of other radical, terrible groups.
Climate-Fueled Extreme Heat Poses 'Systemic Risk to Global Food Security,' Warns UN
Just a month after a sweeping World Meteorological Organization report led United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres to declare that "every key climate indicator is flashing red," WMO and another UN agency marked Earth Day on Wednesday by releasing an analysis focused on "how extreme heat is reshaping food production and food security."
Simply titled "Extreme Heat and Agriculture," the WMO and Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) report lays out how extreme heat "is influenced by multiple interlinked drivers," including the trends and inertia of human-induced climate change, natural climate variability, and meteorological phenomena such as droughts and atmospheric and marine heatwaves. Then, it gets into what that means for agriculture.
"Extreme heat is increasingly defining the conditions under which agrifood systems operate," WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo and FAO Director-General Qu Dongyu stressed in the foreword of the report. "Rising temperatures and heatwaves, occurring with greater frequency, duration, and intensity, are often accompanied by prolonged drought and other climate extremes."
"Higher temperatures parch soils, reduce harvests, strain livestock, disrupt fisheries, and increase wildfire risk. When combined with water scarcity, the consequences intensify, cutting production, lowering incomes, and tightening food supplies," the pair wrote. "These impacts extend far beyond the farm gate. They represent a systemic risk to global food security and to the livelihoods of more than 1.23 billion people who rely on agriculture."
For example, yields of staple crops such as maize and wheat have already declined by 7.5% and 6%, respectively, with 1ºC of global temperature rise beyond preindustrial levels. The publication points out that yields "are projected to decline by up to an additional 10% for every 1ºC of warming in the future."
It also notes that "under high-emission scenarios, nearly half the world's cattle could be exposed to dangerous heat by 2100," resulting in annual losses nearing $40 billion. Under a low-emission scenario, the report adds, "impacts from livestock exposure to extreme heat are reduced by nearly two-thirds."
The report details vulnerabilities, observed impacts, and projections for not only crops and livestock but also fisheries and aquaculture; forests, plantations, and orchards; and agricultural workers.
Saulo and Qu highlighted that "agricultural workers are already experiencing effects on their health, productivity, and income. As climate variability intensifies, hard-won progress in reducing hunger and poverty comes under strain, with shocks rippling through economies and households and disproportionately affecting the most vulnerable."
The report outlines the existing "range of technical agricultural adaptation options and other broader nontechnical risk management strategies" for responding to extreme heat, as well as barriers to implementing them. It also offers a case study: the extreme heat event that hit Brazil in 2023-24.
That period in the South American country "serves as a stark example of the breadth and severity of compound impacts that can be triggered by a primary extreme heat event," the report states. "On top of a warmer baseline shaped by climate change and amplified by El Niño, the heatwave simultaneously impacted crops, livestock, forests, fisheries, and human health."
"The interconnected failures highlight the profound vulnerability of the entire agricultural sector and the grave implications such events have for the livelihoods and food security of the millions who depend on it," the report continues, emphasizing that "building systemic resilience through adaptation and dedicated risk reduction is imperative."
"While this report outlines a path toward enhanced resilience, solutions and opportunities are not infinite," the publication adds. "Alongside robust adaptation and risk reduction strategies, the only durable solution to the escalating threat of extreme heat lies in ambitious, multilateral climate change mitigation."
🌡️ Extreme heat is already affecting crops, livestock, forests, fisheries & the people who produce our food.New @fao.org-@wmo-global.bsky.social report on #ExtremeHeat & Agriculture shows the impacts & #ClimateAction needed to respond to this growing threat.🔗 https://bit.ly/4cXmmOe#EarthDay
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— Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (@fao.org) April 22, 2026 at 4:15 AM
After the most recent UN Climate Change Conference, COP30, concluded in Brazil late last year, critics called it "another failed climate summit." The United States is the world's largest historical climate polluter, yet President Donald Trump didn't even attend, and has spent his second term not only repealing climate policies but also serving the planet-wrecking fossil fuel industry whose campaign cash helped him return to power.
Trump has also started a new illegal war in the Middle East, partnering with Israel to target Iran. That assault has underscored how armed conflict negatively impacts agriculture and food systems around the world. The Iranian government has restricted traffic through the Strait of Hormuz—a key trade route, including for fertilizer and fossil fuels—which has prompted mounting alarm about a global food crisis.
Earlier this month, ahead of the current fragile ceasefire, the FAO's chief economist, Máximo Torero, warned that farmers would soon "have to choose: Farm the same with fewer inputs, plant less, or switch to less intensive fertilizer crops."
Jorge Moreira da Silva, executive director of the UN Office for Project Services, said Tuesday that "the planting season has already started, and in most countries in Africa it will end in May. So, if we don't get some solution immediately, the crisis will be very significant and severe, particularly for the poorest countries and for the poorest citizens."
'Fuck This Coin': Trump Crypto Gala Admission Price Plummets as Meme Coin Value Down Over 90%
The price to attend Saturday's second "VIP reception" for investors in President Donald Trump's meme coin has plunged nearly as much as the cryptocurrency itself, leaving investors bamboozled and bankrupt.
Meme coins are highly volatile cryptocurrencies inspired by internet memes, jokes, or cultural trends. While many thousands of meme coins are introduced daily, the overwhelming majority of them fail after a short period as influencer-driven hype and investor "FOMO"—fear of missing out—subside.
The president's $TRUMP meme coin debuted just before his January 2025 return to the White House. Its price soared by more than 50% after its website announced last April that the coin’s top 220 investors would be invited to a private gala dinner with the president. The watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) revealed that invitees included dozens of investors in crypto assets named after white supremacist and outright Nazi themes.
However, even then, $TRUMP was already down significantly from its high of over $75 just after its launch. On Friday, it was trading at less than $3, and the top-tier entry price to Saturday's gala at the president's Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida is indicative of that precipitous plunge.
Tomorrow, President Trump will host an event for 297 $TRUMP memecoin holders at Mar-a-Lago. It’s the second time in less than a year that the president has offered special access to people who can afford to buy enough of his memecoin—and it’s somehow even worse than the first.🧵
— CREW (@citizensforethics.org) April 24, 2026 at 7:36 AM
According to the Financial Times, the 29 premier access attendees of Saturday's event held a median investment of $539,000. That's nearly 84% less than the $3.28 million median investment they had prior to last year's gala. Furthermore, the newspaper reported that many premier access winners have apparently liquidated their $TRUMP holdings since securing their VIP spots.
“Nobody likes it,” Morten Christensen, a crypto investor who went to last year's gala and plans on attending the Mar-a-Lago dinner, told Politico Thursday. “People are losing on the coin, and they are vocal. They are the people on Twitter like, ‘Fuck this coin’ or, ‘It’s a scam.’ And they’re right, basically.”
That's not stopping the gala organizers from touting what they're calling “THE MOST EXCLUSIVE CRYPTO & BUSINESS CONFERENCE IN THE WORLD!”
As Politico reported Thursday:
It is open to the top 297 $TRUMP investors, who will get the chance to hear from an eclectic lineup of speakers that includes several crypto executives, boxing legend Mike Tyson, motivational coach Tony Robbins, and Trump, who will speak during the event’s luncheon, according to promotional materials. He is expected to be in Washington later in the day for the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
While $TRUMP investors may be losing big, Trump and his family have made billions of dollars in crypto profits, while the Trump family and the coin's creators raked in $320 million in trading fees, even as the coin's value tanked.
A small group of elite investors has likewise been spared severe losses, including insiders who bought up $MELANIA, First Lady Melania Trump's meme coin, prior to its launch, a practice known as "sniping" that netted them around $100 million, according to the Financial Times.
$MELANIA launched on the eve of Trump's second inauguration and soared to an all-time high of $13.73 on Inauguration Day. It's now trading at $0.12, a 99% dive. Investors subsequently sued $MELANIA's creators, alleging that it's part of a fraudulent "pump-and-dump" scheme in which they manipulated the launch of $MELANIA and other coins in order to enrich themselves while later investors got wiped out.
That's not the only lawsuit targeting the president's family over alleged crypto fraud. Billionaire investor Justin Sun is suing World Liberty Financial, a cryptocurrency firm co-founded by Trump and his sons, accusing the company of illegally blocking Sun from selling up to $1 billion worth of digital tokens. Sun said last year that he's the world's largest single holder of the president's meme coin.
Last year, US Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), as well as Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), launched investigations into $TRUMP events.
“He’s normalized his corruption,” Blumenthal said of Trump during a Thursday interview, adding that the Mar-a-Lago gala is “simply another way to generate more money for himself, profiting directly from his office."
Trump—who once said he's "not a fan" of cryptocurrencies, "whose value is highly volatile and based on thin air"—has pushed crypto since returning to office, most notably in a January 2025 executive order calling for the establishment of a working group on digital assets to explore the possibility of creating a “national digit asset stockpile," a top crypto industry wish list item.
“It is literally cashing in on the presidency—creating a financial instrument so people can transfer money to the president’s family in connection with his office,” Campaign Legal Center executive director Adav Noti said last year.
Experts have warned prospective investors about the dangers associated with $TRUMP.
“Two exclusive promotional events offering access to the president created temporary price increases but did not reverse the long-term downward trend,” Marquette University finance professor emeritus David Krause wrote last month.
“With approximately 80% of the token supply controlled by Trump-affiliated entities and over $324 million in trading fees accruing to insiders, the token raises significant questions about the alignment of promotional activities with retail investor protection,” Krause added. “As political meme coins continue to emerge, the $TRUMP token may serve as a cautionary case for the risks of speculative assets tied to political figures.”
Looking forward to Saturday's Mar-a-Lago gathering—which Trump may not even attend, according to small print on the event's website—CREW said Wednesday that "like the first event, Trump will almost certainly host holders of alt-right and racist coins, foreign attendees—including those with potential ties to foreign governments—and people seeking favors."
"This weekend will provide a prime example of the level of corruption and profiteering that no other president would have even dreamt of engaging in, but Trump is comfortable doing so openly," the group added.
Trump Uses Correspondents' Dinner Shooting to Justify Expanding Spying Powers as Deadline Nears
An exchange of gunfire between an armed suspect and law enforcement outside the White House Correspondents' Dinner on Saturday came days ahead of a deadline for extending far-reaching government surveillance powers, and President Donald Trump wasted no time in claiming that the attempted attack on the event proved that the FBI must be permitted to spy on Americans without obtaining warrants.
In an interview with Fox News Sunday, Trump repeated his previous remarks that he is "willing to give up [his] security" in favor of extending Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which is set to expire on Thursday—and suggested other Americans should do the same for "the safety of our nation."
Section 702 allows US intelligence agencies to surveil the electronic communications of foreign nationals overseas without a warrant. Since some of the nearly 350,000 foreign nationals whose communications have been collected under the law are in touch with Americans, Section 702 allows for the collection of emails, text messages, and phone calls of US citizens.
Fox anchor Jacqui Heinrich emphasized that "we don't know right now" whether the suspect in Saturday's shooting, Cole Tomas Allen, "was radicalized" by a foreign individual or group, but asked whether the attack drove home "the importance of having these tools to protect our country from these kinds of threats."
The president responded by complaining that former FBI Director James Comey used FISA to obtain warrants to surveil a former Trump aide as part of the agency's investigation into the 2016 Trump presidential campaign's communications with Russia, before saying FISA has been used in the US-Israeli war on Iran and in the US military's invasion of Venezuela earlier this year.
"It's really needed for national security," said Trump. "Iran is decimated, and we got a lot of information by using FISA... I'm willing to give up my security for the military because ultimately that's to me the highest cause is, you know, the safety of our nation."
Pres. Trump, under prodding from Fox News, exploits White House Correspondents' Dinner shooting to push for Congress to approve FISA domestic spying program: "It's really needed for national security…"
He reiterates that he's willing to give up his liberties for safety. pic.twitter.com/tmcepp0Wgn
— Chris Menahan 🇺🇸 (@infolibnews) April 26, 2026
Jordan Liz, an associate professor of philosophy at San José State University, wrote last week in a column at Common Dreams that while Trump, Republican lawmakers, and US intelligence agencies "make sweeping claims about the terror attacks that Section 702 has prevented, there is little publicly available evidence to support this."
"According to the Cato Institute, there is only one well-documented, independently corroborated case of Section 702 preventing a terrorist attack on American soil: the 2009 New York subway bombing plot," wrote Liz. "In that case, Section 702 was used by the [National Security Agency] to track an exchange between an al-Qaeda courier and Najibullah Zazi, who was living in the US. The NSA passed this information to the FBI, which identified Zazi and disrupted the attack before it took place. Importantly, however, the NSA allegedly received the courier’s foreign email address from the government’s British intelligence partners. At best then, this success was a byproduct of productive intelligence sharing between allies. Rather than proving the necessity of Section 702, this incident underscores how Trump’s inane attacks against key US allies undermine our national security."
The suspect in Saturday's shooting is believed to have acted alone, and no evidence has been released that he was in communication with any foreign entities. A document he wrote alluded to his Christian beliefs and to reports of the administration's abuse of immigrants in detention centers, its boat-bombing operations in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean, and the bombing of an elementary school in Iran.
The president has been pushing in recent weeks for an extension of Section 702. The program was last reauthorized in 2024, and earlier this month two efforts to extend the program—one for 18 months and the other for five years—failed, with opponents objecting to a lack of privacy reforms and to a loophole allowing data brokers to sell private information about Americans to government agencies that have not obtained judicial approval to seize the data.
After those proposals failed, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) last week unveiled a new bill to extend Section 702 for three years and require the FBI to submit monthly reports on its reviews of Americans' private data to an oversight official, as well as imposing penalties for abuse—provisions that were dismissed by privacy advocates.
The House Rules Committee was set to convene on Monday, a step toward advancing the new bill toward a vote in the House, and according to NPR, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) circulated a memo late last week urging his colleagues to reject the Republicans' latest proposal.
The bill, he wrote, "continues the disastrous policy of trusting the FBI to self-police and self-report its abuses of Section 702 and backdoor searches of Americans' data... FBI agents can still collect, search, and review Americans' communications without any review from a judge."
Four Democrats in the House—Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), Tom Suozzi (D-NJ), Marie Gluesencamp Perez (D-Wash.), and Jared Golden (D-Maine)—broke with the party and joined the GOP earlier this month in supporting a procedural vote to advance the reauthorization of Section 702, and privacy advocates are ramping up pressure on them to oppose the latest proposal for an extension.
"It all comes down to those four and where they are going to land,” Hajar Hammado, a senior policy adviser at Demand Progress, told The Intercept Monday, “and if they are going to continue to try to hand Trump and [White House homeland security adviser] Stephen Miller warrantless surveillance authorities without any sort of checks or reforms that make sure they’re not violating civil liberties.”
'This Isn't Justice': Trump to Bring Back Firing Squad, Electric Chair, and Gas Executions
The US Department of Justice said on Friday that it was planning to bring back several long-abandoned methods of execution—including firing squads, gas asphyxiation, and electrocution—as part of President Donald Trump's effort to expand the use of the federal death penalty.
Trump has vowed to restore the death penalty at the federal level, reversing the moratorium imposed by former President Joe Biden, who downgraded the sentences of nearly all 40 people on death row to life in prison without parole.
"The prior administration failed in its duty to protect the American people by refusing to pursue and carry out the ultimate punishment against the most dangerous criminals, including terrorists, child murderers, and cop killers," said acting Attorney General Todd Blanche on Friday. "Under President Trump's leadership, the Department of Justice is once again enforcing the law and standing with victims."
The federal government has never in modern history used the firing squad as a method of execution. And with the exception of Utah and South Carolina—the latter of which only revived the practice in 2025—it has not been used in state executions in the modern era.
The chair, which was the most common method of execution in the 20th century, was gradually phased out beginning in the 1980s because it came to be widely viewed as violent and cruel.
Meanwhile, execution by poison gas was carried on in the US for decades after the Nazis used it to murder millions of victims during the Holocaust, with states mostly abandoning it because it was viewed as expensive and impractical. However, Alabama and Louisiana have recently brought it back using nitrogen gas.
Nearly all executions at the state level are now carried out with lethal injections, which, despite being considered more "humane," are known to cause intense pain and suffocation and are frequently botched.
Blanche, who has authorized the government to seek the death penalty against nine people, said reviving old methods is necessary to ensure that the department "is prepared to carry out lawful executions even if a specific drug is unavailable."
According to data from the Death Penalty Information Center, nearly 1 in 8 people convicted and sentenced to death have later been exonerated. Meanwhile, more than 550 capital convictions, over 5% of them, have been overturned due to prosecutorial misconduct.
Efforts to revive antiquated methods are likely to draw challenges from civil rights groups like the American Civil Liberties Union, which have called the death penalty a form of "cruel and unusual punishment" forbidden by the US Constitution and one that disproportionately harms people of color.
"This isn’t justice. It’s cruel, immoral, and discriminatory," said Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.). "Expanding the federal death penalty will be a stain on our history."
'No Truly Convincing Strategy': German Chancellor Says US Being 'Humiliated' by Iran
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz on Monday warned that the United States is being "humiliated" by Iran and risks getting trapped in a quagmire there like it did in Afghanistan and Iraq.
"The Iranians are clearly stronger than expected and the Americans clearly have no truly convincing strategy in the negotiations either," Merz told students at the Carolus-Magnus-Gymnasium in Marsberg, North Rhine-Westphalia. "The problem with conflicts like this is always: You don't just have to get in, you have to get out again. We saw that very painfully in Afghanistan for 20 years. We saw it in Iraq."
"At the moment, I do not see what strategic exit the Americans will choose, especially since the Iranians are clearly negotiating very skillfully—or very skillfully not negotiating," the Christian Democratic Union leader continued. "An entire nation is being humiliated by the Iranian leadership, particularly by the so-called Revolutionary Guards."
US President Donald Trump on Saturday abruptly canceled a planned trip by special envoys Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff to Islamabad, Pakistan to negotiate a ceasefire with Iranian officials after prior talks ended without an agreement.
Nearly two months of US and Israeli airstrikes on Iran have killed more than 3,400 people, at least 2,100 of them civilians—including 503 women, 413 children, 91 health workers, and 9 journalists, according to the Human Rights Activists News Agency.
The Lebanese Health Ministry said Monday that the death toll from Israeli bombing of its northern neighbor has topped 2,500, including hundreds of women and children. At least 14 people were killed on Sunday by Israeli strikes, despite a US-brokered ceasefire.
The head of the Iranian Red Crescent Society said Saturday that the organization has submitted evidence of US and Israeli war crimes to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, which in 2024 issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for crimes against humanity and war crimes—including murder and forced starvation—in Gaza, where more than 250,000 people have been killed or injured since October 2023.
Merz said Monday that the US-Israeli war on Iran is harming his country.
"It is at the moment a pretty tangled situation," he said. "And it is costing us a great deal of money. This conflict, this war against Iran, has a direct impact on our economic output."
Merz said that Germany was still open to deploying minesweeping warships to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz, where Iran has blocked almost all international shipping. However, the chancellor said such a move would only come after fighting stops.
The German leader also told students at the school that their country must assume a greater leadership role within the European Union.
"If we were to unite more effectively and do more together," he said, "we could be at least as strong as the United States of America."
Some observers asserted that the US isn't the only country being humiliated, pointing to Germany's support for Israel, which is rooted in deep-seated guilt over the country's systematic slaughter of 6 million Jews during the Nazi-era Holocaust.
In addition to brutally cracking down on pro-Palestine protests and suppressing speech critical of Israel's obliteration of Gaza, Germany initially planned to intervene in the South Africa-led genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), also in The Hague.
However, Berlin said last month that it will not intervene in the ICJ case in support of Israel so that it can better focus on its own defense in a separate case before the tribunal filed by Nicaragua accusing Germany of enabling Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza via arms sales.
'Why Wouldn't You Just Release It?': DNC Chair Confronted Over Buried 2024 Election Autopsy
As grassroots Democrats push national committee chair Ken Martin to release the suppressed report, a longtime party booster asked, “What’s in the report that you wouldn’t want to publicize?”
Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin was confronted on a podcast on Tuesday about his continued refusal to release an "autopsy" report dissecting the party's defeat in the 2024 election.
Grassroots groups have not let up on calls to release the report, which Martin said in December would not be released publicly, claiming it would "prove counterproductive" to the party's efforts going forward.
While the full report remains under lock and key, it was reported in February that the officials who crafted it believed that the Biden administration’s unwavering support of Israel’s genocidal attack on Gaza cost then-Vice President Kamala Harris votes on Election Day and contributed to her loss to President Donald Trump.
When Martin appeared on Tuesday on the Pod Save America podcast, host Jon Favreau—a former speechwriter for President Barack Obama and a longtime booster of Democrats—refused to let the chairman off the hook for his excuses for not releasing what he has referred to as the “after-action review” of the election.
Favreau pointed to the fact that when Martin ran for the position after the party's gutting loss in 2024, he'd specifically criticized the party for refusing to release a similar report on Hillary Clinton's loss in 2016 and promised that "of course" a review of the party's 2024 loss "will be released" to the public.
"Why did you change your mind on that?" Favreau asked.
"What I said all along, even when I ran for this position, is that we were going to focus on the things that will help us win the upcoming election, right?" Martin said. "Making sure that we learn the right lessons that could help inform our victories. And that's what we've done."
Martin said it was more important to "keep our focus on those lessons" rather than "navel gazing and looking backwards, trying to relitigate 2024."
Favreau pointed to comments Martin made on Pod Save America in August, saying that the party was hard at work on the report “to give people who invested so much time, energy, and money a sense of what happened and why we lost.”
"What changed between August and December?" Favreau asked. "I understand there are lessons, but those are not the full report. Why not release the full report? What's in the report that you wouldn't want to publicize?"
Martin responded: "There's no smoking gun in the report, and I know that's what everyone's so eager to learn, the smoking gun... Guess what, Jon? There's no surprise in there."
Clearly unconvinced, Favreau interjected, "But if there's no smoking gun, why wouldn't you just release it then?"
Martin reiterated his previous point, that releasing the full report would be "looking backwards," and accused activist groups of being "obsessed" with the idea that there was a "smoking gun" buried within.
"Why did you spend the money going to 50 states, doing all these interviews, doing all this stuff, and doing this report in the first place if you weren't going to release the full results of it?" Favreau asked. "I don't get why just you and some of the senior [Democratic National Committee] people get to see it but not most of the DNC members who are state party chairs."
Favreau pointed to a call last week by more than a dozen DNC members to release the report, including Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.) and North Carolina Democratic Party Chair Anderson Clayton. He quoted Clayton, who asked, “Genuinely, what did you all find that we did not?”
Martin said the DNC had shared all of the "lessons" of the report with these members, but that they should stop focusing on the idea that it will contain "the one single reason that Kamala Harris lost the election or one single thing that we should have done differently that's going to help us win in the future."
The Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU) Policy Project has reported that behind closed doors, DNC officials who worked on the autopsy report have described Biden's policy toward Gaza as a "net-negative" in 2024, according to data the committee collected. DNC officials independently corroborated these findings to Axios in February.
While the results of any election are multifaceted, a poll commissioned by the IMEU Policy Project and conducted by YouGov in January found that when Biden 2020 voters cast their votes in 2024, 29% of them said the "most important issue" in deciding their vote was "ending Israel's violence in Gaza," a higher percentage than any other issue, including the economy.
Among Biden 2020 voters in battleground states who decided not to vote for Harris, 38% of them in Arizona said ending Israel's violence in Gaza was their top issue, while 32% said the same in Michigan and Wisconsin, and 19% did in Pennsylvania—all crucial states Harris lost by thin margins.
Polls of Democratic voters find that they overwhelmingly view Israel's military campaign in Gaza, which has killed at least 75,000 Palestinians, destroyed most of the territory's essential infrastructure, and left most of the population displaced, as a "genocide" and want the US to halt military support for Israel.
Most also say they want Democratic candidates to end their associations with pro-Israel lobbying groups like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which poured more than $100 million into the 2024 elections, including to influence Democratic primaries. The DNC also recently killed a resolution directly condemning AIPAC's influence, even as it continues to spend big against progressive candidates in this year's congressional primaries.
Journalist Adam Johnson remarked that while defending his decision not to release the autopsy on Tuesday, Martin appeared to find about "seven different ways of saying 'pro-Israel groups and donors don’t want us to release it because it’ll make obvious what a liability Israel is to the party' without saying it."
He criticized Martin's excuse that "looking backward" at past failures would be a pointless exercise.
"By definition, lessons and history and accountability require looking backward," he said. "This is how humans assess future actions as entropy moves the arrow of time in only one direction."
Rights Group Demands Release of Gaza's Dr. Abu Safiya After Israeli Court Extends Detention
“Dr. Abu Safiya is currently held in Negev Prison under harsh conditions, without access to his medication or receiving medical treatment, despite the deterioration of his health," said the Israeli-based Physicians for Human Rights Israel.
An Israeli human rights group is demanding the release of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, director of the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Gaza, after a court ordered his detention extended.
Physicians for Human Rights Israel on Tuesday blasted the Beersheba District Court for extending the detention of Abu Safiya, who has been held in prison since December 27, 2024, without being charged with any criminal offenses.
The court justified keeping Abu Saifya detained under Israel's Unlawful Combatants Law, which allows for the detention of Palestinians for long periods without trial.
“The court upheld the detention despite arguments that detaining a doctor while performing his medical duties constitutes unlawful detention,” said Physicians for Human Rights Israel. “Dr. Abu Safiya is currently held in Negev Prison under harsh conditions, without access to his medication or receiving medical treatment, despite the deterioration of his health."
The group added that it is demanding "the immediate release of Dr. Abu Safiya along with 13 other detained doctors, as well as all medical personnel currently held in Israel. We call on the international community to intervene and put an end to this abuse."
The US-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) also slammed the court ruling, calling Abu Safiya's detention "a grave injustice and a blatant violation of fundamental human rights and due process."
"As a physician and hospital director, Dr. Abu Safiya dedicated his life to saving others," CAIR added, "yet he now faces indefinite imprisonment under conditions that credible reports indicate include torture, denial of medical care, and severe mistreatment."
A 2025 report from Amnesty International, which has also called for Abu Safiya's release, said that the Gaza-based physician "was detained in the course of caring for his patients and carrying out his medical duties."
Amnesty also noted that, prior to his detention, Abu Safiya and other colleagues at the Kamal Adwan Hospital had "provided human rights and humanitarian organizations with reliable information about the health situation" in Gaza, which has been left devastated by years of Israeli attacks that have killed at least 72,000 Palestinians.
Amid Energy Crisis of His Own Making, Trump Slammed for Using Taxpayer Money to Cancel Wind Projects
"We the taxpayers are going to pay companies $900 million... to NOT build wind power at a time when electricity prices are spiking and we need more clean power?" said one expert.
President Donald Trump's administration this week shelled out even more US taxpayer money to get energy firms to cancel planned renewable energy projects.
As The New York Times reported, the US Department of the Interior on Monday announced plans to reimburse energy companies a combined $885 million in exchange for forfeiting their leases to build wind farms in federal waters off the coasts of New York, New Jersey, and California.
The companies involved in the projects have promised promised to invest in fossil fuel energy projects, "including liquefied natural gas facilities along the Gulf Coast," the Times reported.
The agreements with the energy companies are similar to a deal the administration struck earlier this year with French firm TotalEnergies, which agreed to forfeit its leases for projects off the coasts of New York and North Carolina in exchange for $928 million that would be plugged into fossil fuels.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) blasted the administration for killing the projects planned off the coast of his state, decrying "a reckless decision that hurts working families and the economy."
"Once again, Donald Trump is attacking New York offshore wind at the behest of his fossil fuel donors with no justification," Schumer said.
Costa Samaras, director of the Carnegie Mellon University Scott Institute for Energy Innovation, expressed disbelief that the administration was killing clean energy projects at a time when Americans are suffering from surging gas prices, which on Tuesday hit their highest level in four years.
"Hold on," he wrote in a social media post. "We the taxpayers are going to pay companies $900 million, which is more than six times what we spend on wind power research and development, to NOT build wind power at a time when electricity prices are spiking and we need more clean power?"
New polling suggests that Trump's blanket opposition to wind power projects is becoming politically costly.
As Gizmodo reported on Tuesday, a recent survey conducted by GOP public opinion research firm the Tarrance Group found that "nearly three-quarters (74%) of voters favor the construction of offshore wind projects off the coast of their own state, with majorities favoring in every state surveyed."
The poll found that even Republican voters have grown more supportive of wind power projects, with support for offshore wind rising by 30 percentage points over the last year.
In its analysis of the poll, the Tarrance Group said that more voters have come around to supporting offshore wind due in part to "ongoing concerns about energy prices," which have spiked since Trump launched an illegal war with Iran in February.