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The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Stick McGhee

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Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features blues guitarist Stick McGhee. Enjoy!

^{Stick McGhee - Housewarmin' Boogie}

"They said that I should lose my ideals and begin to believe in the methods of practical politicians. Now, I have not lost my ideals in the least; my faith in fundamentals is exactly what it always was. What I have lost is my childlike faith in practical politics."

-- Gilbert K. Chesterton

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News and Opinion

This Disgusting Iran War—and All That Comes With It—Is Not Just a Trump Problem

I’m generally disgusted that here in the US we almost always frame war in terms of its economic impact. But in this case the price of oil illustrates how America is deceiving itself about the true cost of its decision to choose, yet again, to go to war.

There are two prices of oil right now, and between them is an unprecedented gap. One is the paper price, the Brent futures you hear about on TV, sitting around 100 dollars as I’m writing this. The other is the physical price, what a refinery actually pays for a real barrel on a real tanker. Dated Brent has hit 144 dollars. The spread is the widest it has ever been. Forty dollars. Before the war it was less than a dollar.

The paper price is the market telling us a calming story. The physical is describing reality. When those two come back together, and they always do, it’s paper that moves to meet physical reality. America is experiencing a similar gap. We are telling ourselves a story about our position in the world that is about forty dollars above what’s actually arriving at the dock.

The war is the clearest picture of what we’ve chosen. It’s not about Iran’s nuclear program. It’s a resource war aimed at China, routed through Iran, and the administration’s own advisors have said so on the record. Look at the pattern. Venezuela first. We seized their oil, kidnapped their leaders, routed half a billion dollars through a Qatari bank account. Then Iran. Airstrikes, a blockade, the Strait of Hormuz closed. Then Netanyahu’s pitch to pipeline Gulf oil overland to Europe and away from Asian buyers. Then pressure on Denmark over Greenland. Then Lebanon, where Israel is now openly planning to occupy eight to fifteen percent of the country with our weapons and our political cover, on top of everything we are still arming in Gaza. Then secondary sanctions threats against any bank anywhere that dares touch an Iranian barrel.

The theory is this. Break the world’s energy flows before China’s navy can project force. Keep oil priced in dollars. Strangle Chinese growth before they catch all the way up. It is coherent. That is the problem. The coherence is the indictment. We think we are going to get back to our status as a respected world power through bullying and through being wannabe gangsters, and the strategy is so openly cynical that even the foreign policy establishment is now celebrating it in public as Trump’s best hand against China.

This is not just a Trump problem.

The House has forced four war powers votes and they have all failed, partly because Democrats themselves keep defecting on their own resolutions. Four Democrats voted against the first one in March. And when Hakeem Jeffries and the Democratic leadership actually had a shot to force another vote in late March during a pro forma session, they kept it off the floor. They waited until mid-April, after the troops had been rallied, by which point the war was well underway and the vote was mostly symbolic.

That is a failure of leadership on something as basic as stripping war powers from a madman. Jeffries has not called any of the defecting Democrats out. Not publicly. Not privately as far as we can tell. No pressure, no cost, no consequence.

Remember when Democrats did a sit-in on the House floor over gun violence? Cameras on, refusing to leave, forcing the country to look. That is what resistance would look like. This ain’t that. Both parties see our path to prosperity and relevance through war. That is why the response has been letters and press conferences and votes they knew would fail. Neither party wants to actually close the barn door on executive war-making because both parties want to use it when their turn comes.

And this pattern is older than Iran. In 2011 we went into a sovereign country with drones and jets, killed the leader’s protective guards, and set up his murder by local opposition forces. Call it whatever you want. That’s what happened. What was Gaddafi working on at the time? A pan-African gold-backed currency meant to price African oil in something other than dollars. The project died with him. When the dollar gets challenged, we break the challenger. Both parties have done it. The rules-based order we like to lecture other countries about has a pretty big asterisk on it, and the asterisk reads “except when it touches the dollar.”

The strategy is already backfiring, and everyone who can count can see it. China’s clean tech exports hit 21.9 billion dollars in March of 2026 alone, up 70 percent year over year in a single month. The oil shock we engineered to hurt them solved their solar overproduction problem for them. Iranian oil has been priced in yuan since April of last year. Tankers paying tolls to cross Hormuz are reportedly paying in yuan too. Deutsche Bank is now openly naming this war as a potential catalyst for the erosion of the petrodollar.

Gallup’s global leadership approval poll from April 3 has China at 36 percent and the United States at 31. Widest gap in China’s favor in twenty years. U.S. net approval at negative 15, the worst in the history of the poll. That data was collected in 2025, before the January withdrawal from 66 international organizations, before the Iran war. The real number right now is almost certainly worse. Pew and the European Council on Foreign Relations say the same thing in different words. In most of Europe and Latin America more people now name the United States than China as the greatest threat to their country. ECFR put it cleanest. If there is a race for global popularity, America is currently losing to its Indo-Pacific rival. We are forcing the world to make choices, and we are not going to like the outcome.

We should be forcing ourselves to make choices instead. When we look at China, we are not looking at an enemy. We are looking at a reflection of our former selves, and we do not want to see it.

Sam Walton had a rule. Until you’re number one, you copy number one. He used to get arrested for crawling around competitors’ stores with a tape recorder, because the point of walking into a Kmart wasn’t to find what they were doing wrong. It was to walk out with an idea you didn’t have when you went in.

That’s what China is doing to us. And what they are copying is our playbook, the one that created the largest middle class in the history of the world. Hamiltonian industrial policy. State banks. State-directed investment in strategic industries. Alexander Hamilton’s Report on Manufactures from 1791. The American System. Lincoln’s land grant universities, the transcontinental railroad, the Homestead Act. The Arsenal of Democracy, where FDR forced competing firms to share their intellectual property because winning the war mattered more than winning the quarter. Apollo. DARPA. The NIH. The internet itself. Every single one was public capital, public purpose, public coordination, with private firms executing. We invented it. We ran it for 150 years. China picked it up off the floor where we dropped it in the 1980s, and is running it now.

Their space program is decades younger than ours and they have a space station, they are landing reusable rockets, they are scaling rapidly, and they are sharing their information. They are not competing for every single thing. They are working in unison to do better. The systems they are using are our own. We are being beaten by ourselves.

And we didn’t just invent the playbook. We invented the tempo. The Arsenal of Democracy built a wartime industrial economy from scratch in about four years. Ford was rolling a B-24 off the line at Willow Run every hour by 1944. Apollo went from Kennedy’s speech to a boot on the Moon in eight years. Rural electrification, the interstate system, the Manhattan Project. None of it took generations. China gets the tempo part too. They built the largest high-speed rail network in the world in about fifteen years from zero. EVs from nobody to global dominance in a decade. Solar in under a decade. Shipbuilding, drones, batteries, the whole deck, faster than we ever went, using our methods, while we tell ourselves a twenty or thirty year timeline is realistic.

When I was a kid we couldn’t compete with China because their labor was too cheap and they didn’t care about pollution. Then we were overregulated and our workers wanted too much. Then it was currency manipulation. Now it’s that they are too far ahead on robotics and we will never catch up. The excuse changes every decade. The underlying move never does. We explain why we can’t, instead of doing the thing.

This is the part that matters most, because it is bigger than this administration. The entire American establishment, both parties, both sets of think tanks, the Pentagon, the corporate class, the press, has quietly agreed that American renewal is a generational project. Twenty years to reshore semiconductors. Ten years for permitting reform. Slow and steady. Patient. Serious. That timeline is a lie. Nothing we have ever actually built in this country got built on it. Generational change isn’t about being pragmatic, it’s about putting off the work. It lets everyone currently in power keep their arrangement running while the country erodes underneath them. It assumes our place on earth is god-given or immutable. It’s neither. And it’s crumbling quickly unless we do something about it.

Which brings me to the thing I actually want to say. This is a choice between destruction and construction. Between valuing death and valuing life. Between taking responsibility for our future and hoping it all works out.

Destruction is what we are doing right now. Destruction is the blockade. Destruction is hobbling the Chinese by working through proxies, cutting off oil, kidnapping Venezuelan leadership, pressuring Denmark over Greenland. Destruction is arming a genocide. Break other people’s things because we have forgotten how to build our own.

Construction is the other path. Construction is Hamilton’s playbook, at speed. Reindustrialize. Repatriate the supply chains we offshored. Pharmaceuticals, semiconductors, steel, rare earths, shipbuilding. Repatriate health care from extractive finance back to something that serves the people paying for it. Rebuild public research. Rebuild the grid. Build rail. Build housing. Do it fast, because fast is the only tempo that has ever actually worked for this country.

Construction is also how you become useful to the world again. China is going to electrify the global south whether we like it or not. We can help build the world into a future like the Jetsons or we can try and bomb it into a future like the Flintstones. If we choose the Flintstones the world may turn their collective backs on us. A rules-based order means following rules, including the ones against wars of aggression and the ones against arming genocides. A democracy means practicing it. You get your respect back by being the thing you claim to be, not by bullying the people who have noticed you aren’t.

And this is where the responsibility piece lands, because I mean the word we. The American people allowed this. Voted for some of it. Looked away from the rest. Trusted that the serious people would handle it while the serious people were handling themselves. There is no version of this that gets fixed by waiting. Not for the other party, not for the next election, not for someone else to show up. We is the job description. It has to be, because hoping it all works out is how we got here.

The world is already choosing. Gallup, Pew, ECFR, they are telling us in every language they have that they have seen enough. The question is whether we will choose too. To war or not to war was our question, and we answered it wrong. The next question is what we build instead. And that one is still open.

Larry Johnson Drops a BOMBSHELL: Generals Just Told Trump to STAND DOWN

German Chancellor Says Iran 'HUMILIATED' Trump, No Exit Ramp

Iran has humiliated Trump

Friedrich Merz said the US had been humiliated by Iran, in an overt attack on Donald Trump.

The German chancellor also claimed that Washington “quite obviously went into this war without any strategy”, and said the Iranian leadership had been “negotiating very skilfully”.

Mr Merz said: “The Iranians are clearly stronger than expected and the Americans clearly have no truly convincing strategy in the negotiations either. 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. A whole nation is being humiliated by the Iranian leadership, especially by these so-called Revolutionary Guards.”

Iran & Russia Join Forces /Lt Col Daniel Davis & Jeremy Scahill

Iranian Group Submits Evidence of US-Israeli War Crimes to International Criminal Court

The head of the Iranian Red Crescent Society said Saturday that his organization has submitted evidence of US-Israeli war crimes to the International Criminal Court and other global bodies, seeking accountability for massive attacks on civilian infrastructure and other violations.

“The ICC prosecutor announced that the documents provided by the IRCS are accepted as official evidence,” said Pir-Hossein Koulivand, the head of the Iranian Red Crescent Society. “All cases of attacks on civilians are being legally pursued based on the Geneva Conventions.”

The IRCS estimates that US and Israeli airstrikes have destroyed more than 132,000 civilian structures throughout Iran, including hospitals, apartment buildings, universities, research facilities, and bridges. US President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened to destroy all of Iran’s bridges and power plants if the country’s leadership does not succumb to his administration’s demands in negotiations to end the war.

Luis Moreno Ocampo, the founding chief prosecutor of the ICC, said earlier this month that Trump could be indicted if he follows through on his threats.

“My suggestion: You read the indictment of the Russians, change the name, and it is very similar,” said Ocampo, referring to ICC arrest warrants issued against senior Russian officials in 2024 for alleged war crimes in Ukraine.

In a series of social media posts on Saturday, the IRCS provided video footage and photographic evidence of what the group described as war crimes committed by the US and Israeli militaries.

https://t.co/mMw77THEyH pic.twitter.com/FIjIbMyBiw

— (@Iranian_RCS) April 26, 2026

The ICC is tasked with investigating and prosecuting individuals for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and other grave violations of international law. Iran is not currently a party to the Rome Statute, which established the ICC—so the court does not have jurisdiction over war crimes committed on Iranian territory.

Human rights organizations and advocates have implored Iran to grant the ICC jurisdiction to pursue justice for war crimes committed during the illegal US-Israeli assault that began on February 28. On the first day of the war, the US bombed an elementary school in southern Iran.

“From the killing of over 150 students and teachers to strikes on hospitals full of newborns, every day more and more evidence emerges pointing to the commission of grave war crimes in Iran since the start of the war,” said Omar Shakir, executive director of DAWN. “Victims deserve justice. The mechanisms exist, and the US has no veto over them.”

Kenneth Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch, wrote earlier this month that “the Iranian government could join the court now and grant it retroactive jurisdiction, similar to what Ukraine did to allow prosecution of Russian war crimes.”

Last month, the IRCS formally requested that the ICC initiate “an investigation into war crimes arising from attacks by the United States of America and the Israeli regime against civilian objects.”

“According to field reports from relief workers, operational documentation, and data recorded by the Iranian Red Crescent Society, a wide range of residential areas, medical facilities, schools, humanitarian facilities, vital urban infrastructure, and public places were directly or indiscriminately targeted during the recent military attacks,” the group wrote in a letter to the ICC’s top prosecutor.

ISRAEL MUST BE ‘STRATEGICALLY DEFEATED’ FOR IRAN WAR TO END | Robert Inlakesh

No headway in Middle East peace efforts as US and Iran refuse to yield

Hopes of a breakthrough in negotiations between Iran and the US faded further on Sunday, amid a deepening sense of deadlock in the nearly two-month-long conflict despite intense regional diplomatic activity. Washington and Tehran appear unwilling to moderate rhetoric or make concessions, and there are no negotiations scheduled that might bring the war to a definitive end.

On Sunday, Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, returned to Pakistan for a second consecutive day of talks with mediators after a brief trip to Oman for discussions there. Araghchi described his Pakistan trip on Saturday as “very fruitful” but signalled scepticism over Washington’s intentions. “Have yet to see if the US is truly serious about diplomacy,” he said on X.

Araghchi was also due to meet the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, as part of a trip that begins on Monday. Russia and Iran, both subject to tough western sanctions, have become increasingly close in recent years.

On Saturday, Donald Trump announced that he had cancelled a visit to Pakistan by his envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. The two men were to take part in a second round of talks with Iran that had been tentatively scheduled for this weekend. Speaking in Florida, before being rushed out of the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in Washington after a gunman fired shots at his security detail, Trump said the visit involved too much travel and expense for what he considered an inadequate Iranian offer.

The cancellation came after Iran said it would not be attending any direct talks while the US blockaded all shipping to or from the Islamic Republic. Trump later claimed that Tehran had offered a new proposal for agreement within minutes of his decision. “They gave us a paper that should have been better and – interestingly – immediately when I cancelled it, within 10 minutes, we got a new paper that was much better,” he told reporters, without elaborating.

Prof. Jeffrey Sachs : Is Trump Trapped?

Iran Caused Far More Damage to US Bases Than the Trump Administration Has Acknowledged

Iranian attacks on US bases across the Middle East have caused far more damage than the Trump administration has publicly acknowledged, and an Iranian fighter jet was able to bomb at least one US base, NBC News reported on Saturday, citing unnamed US officials.

The NBC report said that the Pentagon has also kept the information on the damage from Congress. “No one knows anything. And it’s not for lack of asking,” a Republican congressional aide told the outlet. “We have been asking for weeks and not getting specifics, even as the Pentagon is asking for a record high budget.”

The NBC report said that the headquarters of the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet in Bahrain “sustained serious damage” and that other US bases in the country also suffered serious damage that is likely repairable. The report also cited the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a Washington-based think tank, which said it assessed Iran hit more than 100 targets across 11 bases, and that the repairs would cost at least $5 billion, though the number doesn’t account for some of the radars, weapons systems, and other equipment that was destroyed.

Alastair Crooke: Iran War Is Now a Global War for World Order

Israel Apologists Lie About Their Feelings And Beliefs

A Jesus statue vandalized by Israeli soldiers has been treated with more solemnity and contrition than any IDF massacre of real human beings over the past three years. Top Israeli officials like Benjamin Netanyahu and Gideon Saar have posted statements condemning the incident, and the Israeli military has issued an apology and sentenced two men to thirty days in jail over the incident.

This is happening because Israel knows its American support base of Christian conservatives will care more about the statue than all of the IDF’s attacks on Palestinian, Lebanese and Iranian human beings combined since 2023. Middle easterners are so dehumanized in their eyes that they are viewed as less valuable than a Jesus-shaped piece of fiberglass.

Israel will let its soldiers commit every humanitarian abuse in the book, but jeopardizing the support base that keeps the weapons flowing? That’s a no-no.

Iran Toughens Terms As Aragchi Meets Putin; Refuses Talks On Enrichment; Russia Prepares War With EU

Pete Hegseth’s Iran war messaging echoes sermons from his extremist church

On 17 April, at a briefing on the Iran war, secretary of defense Pete Hegseth told reporters he had been “sitting in church with my family” the previous Sunday while the minister preached from Mark 3.

Hegseth then recast a passage about the Pharisees watching Jesus “so that they might accuse him” as a description of the US press corps, which has long been a target of his ire. “Our press is just like these Pharisees,” Hegseth said. He accused “the legacy Trump-hating press” of a “politically motivated animus” that blinded it to “the brilliance of our American warriors”.

The sermon Hegseth described as attending bears similarities to one delivered only days earlier at Christ Kirk DC, a Washington branch of the openly Christian nationalist Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC), the denomination to which Hegseth belongs. The 12 April sermon, titled “The Fellowship of Grievance”, also exhorted worshippers to embrace a “biblically informed hatred”.

That sermon, other Christ Kirk DC sermons, and episodes of podcasts produced inside the CREC network show pastors who have preached to Hegseth’s congregation, and the most senior figures in the denomination, advancing a theocratic program that would restrict the vote, criminalise LGBTQ+ expression and apply biblical law through the courts.

Asked in an email whether CREC had shaped Hegseth’s worldview, CREC founder and pastor of Christ Church, Moscow, Douglas Wilson wrote: “You would need to ask him that. But his worldview is broadly the same as ours.” Asked if he was a Christian nationalist, Wilson wrote: “Yes, that would be a fair description.” Hegseth’s cabinet tenure continues to underscore the growing influence of CREC inside the US military and the Trump administration, including through his portrayals of the Iran war.

Tucker is BETTER than Bernie on Israel (w/ Matt Kennard)

‘A sudden gap’: poorest to suffer from Trump’s drive to stop Cuba sending doctors to its neighbours

Novlyn Ebanks, 73, had been due to receive the eye surgery she needed free of charge at St Joseph’s hospital in Kingston. But after Jamaica’s unilateral decision in March to end the nearly 30-year agreement with Cuba to provide doctors, she was no longer able to schedule the procedure. The hospital’s ophthalmology centre was mainly staffed by Cuban doctors, many of whom had already left Jamaica.

“I’m really disturbed and concerned,” said Ebanks, who will now have to seek private treatment at a cost that, she said, could reach 350,000 Jamaican dollars (about £1,600).

In recent months, many people across Latin America and the Caribbean have suddenly found themselves without healthcare, as nearly a dozen countries acquiesce to pressure from the US to end medical agreements with the Cuban government. The US claims that the programme amounts to “forced labour” for doctors, who have most of their salaries withheld by the Cuban government.

Cuba acknowledges the retention but denies any human rights violations, saying the allegation is merely a pretext for the White House’s efforts to economically strangle the island and force regime change, which include the now months-long blockade of oil shipments. Meanwhile, doctors, NGOs and researchers agree that the people who will be most affected by the sudden withdrawal of doctors – typically deployed to remote and historically underserved healthcare areas – will be the region’s poorest communities.

The lone point of resistance has been Mexico, where the president, Claudia Sheinbaum, has refused to end the programme, saying that the about 3,000 Cuban doctors are of “great help” as they work in remote areas where there is a shortage of personnel.

‘More Destruction of Science’: Trump Fires Every Member of US National Science Board

US President Donald Trump on Friday quietly fired every member of the independent board that governs the National Science Foundation, a move seen as an escalation of the administration’s destructive war on science.

Members of the National Science Board (NSB) were notified in a brief email “on behalf of President Donald J. Trump” that their “position as a member of the National Science Board is terminated, effective immediately.” One fired board member, chemist Willie May, told The New York Times that he was “disappointed” but not “entirely surprised,” adding, “I have watched the systematic dismantling of the scientific advisory infrastructure of this government with growing alarm, and the National Science Board is simply the latest casualty.”

The NSB sets the policies of the US National Science Foundation (NSF), approves major funding decisions for NSF, and advises Congress and the president on “policy matters related to science and engineering.”

Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), the ranking member of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, said in a statement Saturday that “this is the latest stupid move made by a president who continues to harm science and American innovation.”

“The NSB is apolitical,” said Lofgren. “It advises the president on the future of NSF. It unfortunately is no surprise a president who has attacked NSF from day one would seek to destroy the board that helps guide the foundation. Will the president fill the NSB with MAGA loyalists who won’t stand up to him as he hands over our leadership in science to our adversaries? A real bozo the clown move.”

Alondra Nelson, an academic who resigned from the NSB last May over concerns of political interference, wrote on social media that “history will not look kindly on this administration for many reasons, but the systematic silencing of independent expertise is particularly troubling.”

Since the start of his second term, Trump and his deputies have assailed science across the federal government, including by eliminating the Environmental Protection Agency’s scientific research arm and firing experts en masse.

In the coming fiscal year, Trump has proposed cutting NSF’s budget by nearly 55%. Additionally, the president’s budget would “eliminate funding for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research,” Scientific American reported. The White House plan, if approved by Congress, would also slash NASA’s budget by nearly 25%.

“This is how the US loses its scientific leadership—with a reckless budget line,” Leigh Stearns, a glaciologist at the University of Pennsylvania, told Scientific American.

Musk and Altman’s bitter feud over OpenAI to be laid bare in court

The bitter rivalry between two of the tech world’s most powerful men arrives in court this week, as Elon Musk’s lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI heads to trial in Oakland, California. The case is set to feature some of the biggest names in Silicon Valley, and its outcome could affect the course of the AI boom. Musk’s suit, filed in 2024, focuses on the formative years of OpenAI when he, Altman and others co-founded the artificial intelligence company as a nonprofit with a grand purpose.

“OpenAI is a non-profit artificial intelligence research company. Our goal is to advance digital intelligence in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole, unconstrained by a need to generate financial return,” reads the company’s mission statement, published in late 2015.

Musk alleges that Altman, OpenAI’s CEO, broke the company’s founding agreement by restructuring the company and converting much of it to a for-profit enterprise. Altman and OpenAI counter that Musk, who left the firm in 2018 amid internal disputes and has since started his own rival AI business, is essentially a sore loser.

While the central disagreement may concern convoluted corporate structures and contractual agreements, the trial itself promises to be an explosive high point in the feud between the two tech billionaires. Court filings featuring emails, texts and diary entries involving Musk and Altman have already hinted at dramatic episodes in OpenAI’s history that will be detailed in full, and are rife with personal animosities and professional disputes that have shaped the AI industry.

The case also carries sizable stakes for OpenAI, which is expected to go public later this year at about a $1tn valuation. Musk is seeking a range of remedies that include the removal of Altman and OpenAI president Greg Brockman and more than $134bn in damages, which Musk says would be redistributed to OpenAI’s non-profit arm.

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California measure requiring photo ID at polls will be on November ballot

California voters will decide in November whether to require photo identification to cast a ballot, making California the latest battleground in a long-running effort by conservatives to push voter ID laws that have been bolstered in recent years by Donald Trump’s repeated and unfounded accusations of widespread voter fraud. Nearly 1 million Californians signed on to support the ballot measure championed by Carl DeMaio, a Republican state representative from San Diego.

“Voters will be able to restore election integrity in our state, citizenship verification, auditing voter rolls – and yes, requiring ID to vote,” DeMaio said in a video statement posted to X. Democrats have historically opposed voter ID laws, viewing them as unnecessary obstacles to casting a ballot that are likely to disproportionately affect voters who are low-income and people of color.

If the ballot measure passes, California voters would be required to present a photo identification when voting at a polling place, or submit a four-digit pin when sending a mail-in ballot.

Efforts to impose voter ID in solidly blue California have failed in the past. A poll released last month by the Institute of Governmental Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, however, found voters deadlocked on the issue, with 44% supporting it, 45% opposing and the rest undecided.

California is one of 14 states, along with the District of Columbia, that do not require voters to show ID when casting ballots, according to NBC News.

The two corporate parties continue to expand their monopoly on elections in the U.S., making rules that make it virtually impossible for 3rd parties to get a foothold.

Florida is latest US state to enter redistricting war ahead of 2026 election

Florida begins a special session on Tuesday in what may be the last front of the redistricting war before the 2026 election, with Republicans trying to redraw maps to pick up more seats in Congress. Lawmakers enter the session in Tallahassee cloaked in mystery, with no preview of a proposed map to consider and no clear path for Republicans to increase their representation in what appears to be a hostile year for their party.

After Virginians voted on Tuesday to redraw their maps, the nationwide back-and-forth redistricting between states with Democratic and Republican control has left the partisan balance for congressional seats nearly even. Donald Trump’s initial call for Texas legislators to add five Republican-leaning districts was answered by California redrawing its own map, and then Virginia answered changes in Missouri and Ohio with a new map that pulled four districts into expected Democratic gains.

Lawmakers in Florida postponed earlier consideration of a mid-decade redistricting while waiting for a ruling on a US supreme court case – Louisiana v Callais – which may invalidate parts of the Voting Rights Act and offer more room for mapmakers to make changes. But that ruling has yet to be issued. The filing deadline to run for Congress in Florida is 12 June, and party primary votes are held on 18 August.

With little time left to make changes, the staff of Republican governor Ron DeSantis has reportedly been drafting a map in secret to be presented on Tuesday.

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Toxins plus climate harms likely cause of reduced fertility

Simultaneous exposure to toxic chemicals and climate change’s impacts likely generates an additive or synergistic effect that increases reproductive harm, and may contribute to the broad global drop in fertility, new peer-reviewed research finds. The review of scientific literature considers how endocrine-disrupting chemicals, often found in plastic, coupled with climate change’s effects, such as heat stress, are each linked to reductions in fertility and fecundity across global species – including in humans, wildlife and invertebrates.

Though the reproductive harms of each of these issues in isolation are well-studied, there is little research on what happens when living organisms are subjected to both. Together, the two issues likely pose a greater threat to fertility, and the additive effect is “alarming”, said Susanne Brander, a study lead author and courtesy faculty at Oregon State University. “You’re not just getting exposed to one – but two – stressors at the same time that both may affect your fertility, and in turn the overall impact is going to be a bit worse,” Brander said. The paper looked at 177 studies.

Shanna Swan, a co-author on the new paper, co-produced a groundbreaking 2017 study that found sperm levels among men in western countries had plummeted by more than 50% over four decades. Human fertility has been diminishing at a similar rate, other research has shown. The University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation previously found the world was approaching a “low-fertility future”, with more than three quarters of countries below replacement rate by 2050.

The new paper’s authors zeroed in on the effects of endocrine-disrupting chemicals and substances, including microplastics, bisphenol, phthalates, and Pfas. These are thought to cause a range of serious reproductive issues, disrupt hormones, and be a potential driver of the fertility drop. Brander noted how these chemicals’ harms are often the same across organisms, from invertebrates to humans. Phthalates, for example, have been linked to altered sperm shape in invertebrates, spermatogenesis in rodents, and reduced sperm counts in humans. Similarly, Pfas are thought to impact sperm quality, and both are linked to hormone disruption. The chemicals are ubiquitous in consumer goods, so humans are often regularly exposed.

Meanwhile, previous research has shown how warming temperatures, lower oxygen levels and heat stress, among other issues associated with climate change, similarly may exacerbate infertility. Heat stress has been found to affect human hormones, and is linked to spermatogenesis in rodents and bulls.

The great energy pivot: US oil and Chinese solar are the winners in Trump’s war on Iran

In the open seas, an armada of empty tankers has quietly turned west. A record number of super-sized vessels are now heading to the US, where oil drillers and refineries are preparing to profit from Donald Trump’s war in the Middle East. Almost 30 of these vessels, each able to hold 2m barrels of oil, are contracted to load US crude, destined for a global market facing the biggest supply crisis in history.

It is just over five years since the shale revolution made the US a net energy exporter and the world’s biggest producer of oil and gas. Now the White House is poised to strengthen its claim to an even greater share of the global oil market as the Middle East’s decades-long dominance is dismantled by war. The carriers preparing to amass in US waters are almost six times the monthly number that typically loaded US crude before the war throttled flows of Middle East fossil fuels to the market. ...

The focus on rerouting fossil fuel flows overlooks another key reordering of the global energy system: the rise of the electrostate. Wood Mackenzie oil consultancy believes the “out-and-out winner” of the Iran crisis looks likely to be China. China has long dominated the supply chains for the key building blocks of clean energy technologies, from wind turbines to solar panels and batteries. Beijing’s industrial prowess has helped the world’s biggest energy importer to capture between 60% and 85% of the world’s renewables market at a time when countries are preparing to accelerate the shift away from fossil fuels.

As the world’s first “electrostate”, China stands in contrast with the White House pursuit of fossil fuel dominance. The country also stands to play a significant role in creating the new energy order. “China derives strategic leverage from its leadership across renewables and electrification, manufacturing and innovation, domestic deployment and global exports,” said Ember, a climate and energy thinktank. “China is not merely manufacturing electrotech hardware, it is manufacturing an energy future in which it holds a commanding position.”

The crisis has meant the world’s greatest supplier of clean technologies is selling these components at record rates as countries prepare to cut their use of fossil fuels for good. “Fossil shocks are boosting the solar surge,” said Euan Graham, a senior analyst at Ember. “Solar has already become the engine of the global economy, and now the current fossil fuel price shocks are taking it up a gear.” China’s exports of solar technology capacity doubled to a record high in the first month of the Iran crisis alone. The 68GW of exports was more than Spain’s entire solar power capacity.

‘The damage is done’: global oil crisis has changed fossil fuel industry for ever, IEA chief says

The oil crisis triggered by the Iran war has changed the fossil fuel industry for ever, turning countries away from fossil fuels to secure energy supplies, the world’s leading energy economist said. Fatih Birol, the executive director of the International Energy Agency (IEA), also said that, despite pressure, the UK should forgo much of its potential North Sea expansion.

Speaking exclusively to the Guardian, Birol said a key effect of the US-Israel war on Iran was that countries would lose trust in fossil fuels and demand for them would reduce. “Their perception of risk and reliability will change. Governments will review their energy strategies. There will be a significant boost to renewables and nuclear power and a further shift towards a more electrified future,” he said. “And this will cut into the main markets for oil.” Birol said there was no going back from the crisis: “The vase is broken, the damage is done – it will be very difficult to put the pieces back together. This will have permanent consequences for the global energy markets for years to come.”

While focused on the global picture of shortages and future demand, the IEA chief also urged caution over the UK’s potential plans. The oil industry and its allies have called for increased North Sea drilling, including giving the go-ahead to the Jackdaw and Rosebank fields that have received exploration licences but not production permits.

Birol said: “It is up to the government, but these fields would not change much for the UK’s energy security, nor would they change the price of oil and gas. They would not make any significant difference to this crisis.” He also cautioned against granting exploration licences for further new fields on commercial grounds. “They won’t provide any significant quantities of oil and gas for many years to come,” Birol said. “They will not lower the bills, the UK will remain a significant importer and price taker on international markets. I am not even talking about the climate change effects – just from a business point of view, making a major investment in exploration might not make business sense.”

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Also of Interest

Here are some articles of interest, some of which defied fair-use abstraction.

War On Iran: – Who To Blame?

Iran War: Israel Strikes Lebanon, Trump’s Negotiations Rug Pull, the View from the UAE

Press Freedom Groups Demand International Probe Into Israel’s Killing of Journalist Amal Khalil

‘Leaving the US Behind,’ 50+ Nations Gather in Colombia to ‘Phase Out Fossil Fuels’

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A Little Night Music

Sticks McGhee - Six To Eight

Stick McGhee - Drinkin’ Wine, Spo-Dee-O-Dee

Sticks McGhee - Whiskey, Women and Loaded Dice

Sticks McGhee - Venus Blues

Sticks McGhee - Things have Changed

Sticks McGhee - Sleep In Job

Sticks McGhee - The Wiggle Waggle Woo

Sticks McGhee - Oh What A Face

Sticks McGhee - Get Your Mind Out The Gutter

Stick McGhee & Buddies - Tennessee Waltz Blues

Sticks McGhee And His Buddies - Wee Wee Hours

Stick McGhee - My Baby's Comin' Back

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