The News You Need on Friday, April 3rd, 2026.
The news you need today from Scott Horton and Charles Kaiser. Trump corruption watch, NASA's latest launch and Mubashir Khalif Hussen's testifies to Congress about ICE's racial profiling.
Two Snapshots of America on April 1, 2026
Scott: On top, Artemis II launches from from Kennedy Space Center at 1835 EDT on a mission to earth’s moon. Below, Donald Trump delivers an urgent message to the nation from the White House at 2100 EDT. These two images summarize the current predicament of America. On one hand its scientific and technological achievements soar and furnish inspiration for all of humankind. On the other, its democratic institutions seem rotted to the core, having produced the most mendacious, least capable and most self-centered leader in the nation’s history, while endowing him with power that none of his predecessors had or sought. On this brilliant day in spring, America seems poised on the rim of a cliff.
Trump Corruption Watch
Flooding The Zone With Incompetence and Theft
MS NOW
Charles: The second Trump term was only eight days old when The New York Times first reported the overwhelming success of the “flood the zone” strategy first articulated by Steve Bannon in 2018.
This time, the flood is bigger, wider and more brutally efficient. As President Trump begins his second term, he has enacted his agenda at breakneck speed as part of an intentional plan to knock his opponents off balance and dilute their response.
Firing inspectors general. Sweeping clemency for Jan. 6 defendants. Investigations of perceived enemies. A federal hiring freeze. Moving to end birthright citizenship. An immigration crackdown. Terminating diversity, equity and inclusion programs. Revoking security clearances.
On Tuesday, just when Democrats thought they might come up for air, news broke that Mr. Trump had ordered a freeze on trillions of dollars in federal grants and loans, prompting a new round of outrage.
Nowhere has this strategy worked better than the Department of Homeland Security, where the viciousness of its plans is only matched by the greed with which they are being implemented.
Let’s start with the viciousness. Last month Raul A. Reyes wrote in The Los Angeles Times that DHS was already warehousing 68,000 people in immigration detention centers; three quarters of whom have no criminal records. Now DHS will spend $38 billion to increase detention capacity to 92,000 beds.
This week Rachel Maddow focused on the obvious corruption in the amount being spent on existing warehouses that will be converted into prisons. DHS spent roughly $1 billion in recent months to buy eleven warehouses—and overpaid by at least $200 million:
In Salt Lake City, the administration paid almost 50% more than the property appeared to be worth. It was assessed at $97 million, and the government paid more than $145 million. In Roxbury, New Jersey, one warehouse was assessed at $62 million, but the Trump administration came in and offered $129 million for it — more than double the cost. In Georgia, one of the properties valued last year at $26 million was purchased for $129 million.
The press is so overwhelmed by scandals no one I could find has even had a chance to pinpoint who the owners of these warehouses are to figure out who is benefiting from this gigantic pillage.
In this administration, it is remarkable that DHS still has any inspector general at all. But it does and last month he said his investigations had been blocked eleven times by the newly ousted ex-secretary Kristi Noem. Noem told Congress the criticism was unfair because “he wants unfettered access to every single thing in the department, and that’s not the process.”
And then there’s the whole separate scandal of $227 million spent on TV ads starring Noem, virtually all of which went to firms with ties to her, Corey Lewandowski, or Trump campaign officials, like The Strategy Group Company, which is led by the husband of Noem’s then-spokesperson and Assistant Secretary, Tricia McLaughlin, and who has a long association with Noem and Lewandowski.
Pontifex Maximus v Tyrannosaurus Trumpensis: The Conflict Is Now a Daily Phenomenon
Financial Times
Scott: The two most powerful Americans on the global stage don’t see eye to eye on much of anything. One is basking in the highest approval numbers of any world figure. The other is more reviled than any world leader (excepting perhaps his friend and mentor, Vladimir Putin), and is now approaching Nixon-during-Watergate levels of disapproval at home. Just the same, they’re becoming intense rivals for the hearts and minds of Americans. JD Vance, a convert to Catholicism who has been publicly rebuked by two popes for his distortion of Catholic doctrine, is preparing a profession of faith that will defend Trump. Meanwhile Trump funder and thinker Peter Thiel has been hanging out in the back allies near the Vatican preaching heretical doctrine to counter the pope. Mattia Ferraresi, an Italian scholar of American intellectual history, takes a look at this curious phenomenon.
The war in Iran is not the only point of contention. The Vatican and the White House are sharply at odds over immigration policy, the assault on Venezuela, the US confrontation with Europe and the dismantling of multilateral institutions. The Holy See is also monitoring the situation in Cuba with mounting anxiety. Many of Washington’s wars and domestic crackdowns run on Palantir software, which is why the Vatican has also pushed back against Trump’s allies in the tech world. Last month, the apocalyptically oriented tech investor Peter Thiel descended to the Eternal City to deliver his highly secretive yet well-known lectures on the antichrist and the end times. The Catholic world welcomed him as though he were a Visigoth coming to sack the city. Catholic dignitaries treated the Palantir co-founder as a dangerous apostate to be shunned, not as an unconventional Christian deserving to be heard. The Catholic press attacked him as a sinister pseudo-thinker promoting a twisted political theology, and one theologian at a pontifical university suggested that Thiel himself may be the antichrist.
The US president seems to have accomplished the miraculous task of bringing together the American bishops, historically divided between progressives and conservatives, in common opposition to policies pursued by one of the most Catholic-filled US administrations ever. The Iran war is turning into a stress test for ties between Washington and the Holy See, which misses no opportunity to show its opposition to this US president.
Why Trump was the First Sitting President to Witness Oral Arguments at SCOTUS
Charles: That makes sense: he heard they were doing oral and he said, ‘I’m in!’
—Desi Lydic, The Daily Show
CK
It’s Spring Cleaning in the Cabinet Room: Bondi follows Noem, as Gabbard packs her bags to go
New York Times
Scott: As his approval numbers crash below 30% in some polls (including a calamitous 80% disapproval among voters 35 in under in one major poll), Trump does the usual thing, which is tee up decapitation strikes inside the Beltway. First, Kristi Noem was forced out of DHS, an agency she never actually ran (that was Stephen Miller’s unofficial gig) as scandals surrounding her contracting process became too much even for the supine congressional Republicans. Today it is Pam Bondi, who got the bad news right after Trump’s appearance at a Holy Week function at which his Office of Faith Initiatives director, dressed like Mothra from the Japanese monsterverse, dutifully compared Trump favorably to Jesus (as Bishop Robert Barron stood by, applauding). Bondi pleaded for a reprieve, but Trump badly needed fresh blood. Now Trump attorney Todd Blanche will run the Ministry of Love while Trump looks for a new AG. Bondi’s failings all have to do with her inability to make Epstein just go away, in Trump’s mind at least. In the wings, Tulsi Gabbard waits fitfully. She’s been told she’s next up. NYT describes Bondi’s demission as follows:
President Trump fired Attorney General Pam Bondi on Thursday, removing the nation’s top law enforcement officer after privately venting his frustrations for months over her handling of the Epstein files and her failed efforts to prosecute his political enemies.
In prior presidencies, the choice of cabinet officers has been between the president, his senior advisors, and the Senate’s advice and consent function. That’s not how things work under Trump. One person who holds no office under federal or state law plays an outsized role. Her name is Laura Loomer, and she confidently announced the departures of Noem, Bondi and Gabbard. Sid Blumenthal described her role in a brilliant recent column in The Guardian:
On 2 April 2025, Trump invited the far-right influencer Laura Loomer into the Oval Office to unveil a dossier depicting staff experts of the national security council as treasonous to Trump. Vice-President Vance, chief of staff Susie Wiles, secretary of commerce Howard Lutnick, and other officials stood by. “You don’t want to be Loomered,” Trump said. “If you’re Loomered, you’re in deep trouble. That’s the end of your career in a sense. Thanks, Laura.” She played the Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland: “Off with their heads!”
Six experts were summarily fired, including Nate Swanson, the senior adviser on the NSC on Iran. On the eve of Trump’s war, Swanson wrote articles for Foreign Affairs and the Atlantic Council warning about the closing of the strait of Hormuz and that “Iran may seriously consider targeting the Gulf Arab states’ energy infrastructure directly.”
The American Gestapo on the Ground In Minnesota
American Civil Liberties Union
Charles: Written statement of Mubashir Khalif Hussen for a field hearing on “Kidnapped and Disappeared: Trump’s Deadly Assault on Minnesota”
Ranking Member Jayapal and distinguished members of Congress, thank you for the invitation to testify before you today.
My name is Mubashir Khalif Hussen. I am a 20-year-old U.S. citizen. My family is Somali, and when I was six or seven years old, my family arrived in the United States from Ethiopia as refugees. Eight months after arriving in the United States, we moved to Minnesota.
I became a naturalized citizen in 2019, along with my parents and siblings. But my citizenship did not protect me from being physically detained and hurt by ICE agents.
On December 10, 2025, I was at work in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood. Around 1 p.m. I heard a commotion outside and what sounded like whistles and car horns. When I looked out the window, I saw what I assumed were ICE agents on the street. I did not want to be confronted by ICE, so I waited 20 or 30 minutes until the sounds died down before taking my lunch break.
As I exited the building, I paused to speak with someone on the street about what had happened earlier. That was when I noticed an unmarked, tan SUV approaching us.
A man wearing a ski mask and a police-style vest exited the vehicle and quickly walked toward me. The man did not say “stop” and did not identify himself. I turned to walk away, hoping he would leave me alone. The man quickened his pace, grabbed me forcefully, pushed me into a restaurant, and asked, “Why are you running from me?” I was not running. I was just walking away because I did not want to talk to him. I knew that ICE agents had been targeting people that look like me.
I immediately started repeating over and over again, “I’m a citizen, I’m a citizen,” but the agent did not stop to look at my ID.
A second ICE agent entered the restaurant. Together, they dragged me outside and put me into a headlock on the ground. I repeated, “I’m a citizen, I have an ID.” The agent kept saying, “That don’t matter, that don’t matter.” They put me in the back of an SUV.
While I was sitting in the back of the SUV, my boss came out with a copy of my passport card. He held the paper up to the windshield, but the ICE officers ignored him and refused to take the documents into account.
They eventually drove one street over before parking and telling me that they had to “scan my face.” I was terrified of what they were going to do with a picture of me, and I did not trust them. I would not let them take a picture of me.
The officers also kept telling me that they were going to “take me in” if I did not let them “scan my face.” One of the officers pulled out his phone and threatened to “push a button” and “call for transport.”
At that point, there were three ICE agents with me in the car. My back hurt from when I was put in a headlock on the ground and the handcuffs were extremely tight on my wrist. Each time I asked the agents if they could loosen them, the officers squeezed them tighter. When I asked for medical attention for my back, the original ICE officer grabbed me and forcefully pulled me to the ground.
After about half an hour, the ICE agents drove me to their office near Fort Snelling. When we arrived, they forced me to take the “face scan.”
When we got into the building, the agents took the handcuffs off and put shackles on my ankles before searching me. I asked for water, and they said no.
Then, an employee told me I was getting deported.
I again insisted that I was a citizen and that I could show proof of it on my phone. I showed the picture of my passport card to a woman at the ICE office. She took a photo of my passport card and then searched for my name in a criminal database. Eventually she just said, “Kick him out.”
It is difficult to believe that this happened to me. I knew that the president had made statements about Somali people and that there would be additional ICE officers in the Twin Cities focused on Somali people, but I did not think that this would happen to someone in my family – we are all United States citizens so we should not be at risk of being jailed or deported by ICE.
In the neighborhood in which I work, I hear screaming all the time, coming from encounters with federal immigration agents. I also hear whistles and honking all the time. When I hear these things, my heart starts beating fast and I can’t breathe. It brings me back to what I went through, and it almost feels like it is happening to me again. It is terrifying right now, wherever I go.
I am here today because what happened to me is wrong. The targeting, harassing, violence, and detention of Somali Americans is wrong, and I am worried for the safety of me, my family, my neighbors and community.
If Congress does not act, we will continue to be harmed simply for living in the United States of America.
A War With Little Planning or Thought to Execution
Le Monde
Scott: Trump has spent much of the last three days dispensing gratuitous smears to NATO and the leaders of long-standing American allies, including Britain, France and Italy. In the case of Emmanuel Macron, he added smears against his wife for further embellishment. Following Trump’s fiasco of a national address, the response from Europe has been measured and intentionally deescalatory. Nevertheless the consensus view is clear: this was an ill-conceived war which has unfolded the way just about every analyst expected, even if this comes as a shock to Trump and Hegseth. Trump has painted himself into a corner, from which it serves no one’s interests to extricate him.
French President Emmanuel Macron said on Thursday, April 2, that a military operation to liberate the Strait of Hormuz is “unrealistic,” while lamenting Donald Trump’s differing daily statements on the Iran war and NATO. “There are those who advocate for the liberation of the Strait of Hormuz by force through a military operation, a position sometimes expressed by the United States,” Macron said during a visit to South Korea. “I say sometimes because it has varied, it is never the option we have chosen and we consider it unrealistic,” he said.
Rhenish Carnival Floats Stoke Kremlin Ire
Süddeutsche Zeitung
Putin, indicted war criminal with blood on his hands. A Mardi Gras float by Jacques Tilly
Scott: One of the hallmarks of a genuine wannabe totalitarian is a lack of any sense of humor. Putin is famous for that. Moreover, he really popped his cork over a series of carnival floats in Germany that took straight, ad hominem aim at him. So he ordained trials in absentia of the float designers, Jacques Tilly, on criminal charges of lèse majesté. This provides another opportunity to look at those floats, which are mischievous, naughty and hysterically funny—in the best tradition of Rhineland Fasching celebrations.
A court in Moscow has sentenced Düsseldorf carnival performer Jacques Tilly in absentia to eight years and six months in prison. Tilly was guilty of hurting religious feelings and spreading false news about the Russian armed forces, judge Konstantin Otschirov ruled in the controversial criminal case.
Tilly is known for his bitingly satirical theme floats in Düsseldorf’s Rose Monday parade. His motifs appear regularly on the front pages of the German and international press in the days after Carnival. He has dedicated his theme floats to Putin and specifically his war against Ukraine more than a dozen times. In the trial, which has been going on for months, there was repeated talk of insulting the Russian president… but ridicule, rather than insult, was Tilly’s explicit intention.
The Strait of Hormuz Is Getting Sorted, and Trump will be Furious
Reuters
Scott: Is the Strait of Hormuz closed? No. But it has been sorted. Iran has built a three-tier access system for the most important waterway on earth. Tier one: allies transit free. Tier two: compliant neutrals pay. Tier three: enemies (US, Israel and collaborators) are denied entirely. Now the UK has convened a meeting of 40 nations to talk about free transit of the strait of Hormuz. Trump wants to see a military alignment of combatants that will enter the war on his side to open the strait. Of the 40 participants, the total favoring this approach is zero. On the other hand, most favor some accommodation of the Iranian position. It looks like another humiliating loss for Trump, but then again, it is unfolding exactly as most analysts anticipated.
About 40 countries on Thursday discussed joint action to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and stop Iran holding “the global economy hostage,” Britain said, after U.S. President Donald Trump said securing the waterway was for others to resolve.
British foreign minister Yvette Cooper said Iran’s “recklessness” in blockading the waterway was “hitting households and businesses in every corner of the world” as she chaired the virtual meeting, which included France, Germany, Canada, the United Arab Emirates and India.
Today’s Best AI Video
Scott: Ari Kuschnir offers us an unforgettable preview of Trump’s Presidential Library, Casino and Resort in 2030. https://www.instagram.com/arikuschnir/reel/DWmzKPQAcuA/
Trump Prepares his New Budget and it looks like Police State
Bloomberg
Scott: Bloomberg reports that Trump is preparing to release a fiscal year 2027 budget plan on Friday that will frame the GOP’s midterm election message around a massive defense buildup, partially paid for by cuts to domestic agencies, health-care and other services. The budget will make the government look progressively more like a police state in which expenditures on security forces dwarf services to the people, and a state of war is used to justify curtailing health care to an aging populace, education, housing and domestic infrastructure.
A Strong Solar Flare
NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory captured this image of a solar flare—seen as the bright flash toward the upper middle—on Feb. 4, 2026. The image shows a subset of extreme ultraviolet light that highlights the extremely hot material in flares and which is colorized in blue and red.
This Feb. 4, 2026, image from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) captures a strong solar flare erupting from the star. Solar flares are powerful bursts of energy that can, along with other types of solar eruptions, can impact radio communications, electric power grids, navigation signals, and pose risks to spacecraft and astronauts. The flare pictured was classified as an X4.2 flare. X-class denotes the most intense flares, while the number provides more information about its strength.
SDO measures the Sun’s properties and solar activity to help us better understand the Sun’s magnetic changes. By studying flares and how they affect our planet and nearby space, SDO helps us to better prepare for and deal with these potential disruptions.
Your Online Moment of Zen
All I Want, Joni Mitchell, Blue
Edited by Imogen Sayers.