The News You Need on Friday, April 10th, 2026.
The news you need today from Scott Horton and Charles Kaiser. Someone's playing the market with Trump's genocidal tweets and is it Netenyahu who has the firmest control of this war?
Keep your eyes peeled for The Horton-Kaiser Report’s podcast, which is launching today with an interview with Abdi Latif Dahir, who is the New York Times’ new Beirut Correspondent.
Who Is Playing the Markets With Prior Knowledge of Trump’s Tweets?
Associated Press
Scott: What can explain Trump’s bizarre and embarrassing rush late on Tuesday to announce a ceasefire—on terms that he later announced he hadn’t read and didn’t really understand? An aversion to reading complex texts? The absence of diplomatic skills, and more essentially, diplomats to advise him? Or perhaps it’s something still much more fundamental. People close to him who are eager to make a large fortune speculating predicated on their prior knowledge of his announcements. And perhaps these people had been told that such an announcement was imminent and had already plopped down large sums based on that inside scoop.
A group of new accounts on the prediction market Polymarket made highly specific, well-timed bets on whether the U.S. and Iran would reach a ceasefire on April 7, resulting in hundreds of thousands of dollars in profits for these new customers.
These bets were made even though, in the hours before a two-week ceasefire was announced on Tuesday, President Donald Trump’s rhetoric had escalated sharply and there were few signals that a ceasefire deal was imminent. Early in the day Trump had issued a warning on social media that “a whole civilization will die tonight” if Iran did not meet his demand to open the Strait of Hormuz by his 8 p.m. ET deadline.
An analysis of publicly available blockchain data from Polymarket, using the crypto analytics platform Dune, shows that at least 50 accounts, or wallets, placed substantial “Yes” bets Tuesday before Trump announced the ceasefire in a Truth Social post at around 6:30 pm ET. These were the first bets made by these particular wallets.
Donald Trump’s sons Donald Jr. and Eric are investors and advisors to Polymarket. David Urban, a Trump campaign advisor, is Polymarket’s lobbyist. The SEC, DOJ and state law enforcement agencies have the power to investigate these and other smelly trades surrounding the Iran War, as does Congress. There is as of yet no sign that any investigation is underway.
The Madness of The Mad Man Theory
Financial Times
Charles: Financial Times columnist Janan Ganesh explains all the reasons why there’s no comfort in believing Trump is emulating Richard Nixon’s “mad man theory.” In the original version, Henry Kissinger was supposed to tell the North Vietnamese that Nixon was crazy, to scare them into stopping the war in the south out of fear that the US would nuke them.
Nixon made his threats through private channels. If he decided to back down from them, he would not lose face in front of the entire world. In contrast, Trump’s threats to erase a civilisation could scarcely be more public. The pressure to make good on them at some point is correspondingly higher. This is why games of bluff are better played behind closed doors.
Mid-20th century Vietnam was not central to the world economy. Early-21st century Iran unmistakably is. If a few weeks of bombing can trigger the worst energy crisis for half a century, a “mad” escalation might turn oil-price inflation into outright oil shortages.
And the biggest reason of all: the mad man theory never worked for Nixon and Kissinger either:
Four years after the Oval Office conversation between Nixon and Kissinger, the North Vietnamese took Saigon. Of the 58,220 US deaths in the war, over 20,000 occurred under the genius pair.
Israel Botched the Iran War—and Shattered Its Standing in the United States
Ha’aretz
Scott: At the outset of the Iran War, Israeli public opinion was solidly aligned in support of the operation. Now, five weeks in, Israelis are not so sure… particularly because they don’t see where it’s headed and sense strongly that Netanyahu doesn’t want it to end. The fundamental dynamics are simple: Netanyahu believes he can continue to be Israel’s ruler indefinitely in war time, and thus he has no interest in war time ever coming to an end. Writing in Ha’aretz, Amos Harel captures the doubts perfectly,
When the campaign began on February 28, associates of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu outlined three overarching goals to journalists: the fall of the Iranian regime, the destruction of its nuclear program and the elimination of the ballistic missile threat.
So far, none of those goals has been achieved, though it cannot be ruled out that the war will resume in two weeks if the cease-fire collapses. The regime remains in place, no solution has yet been found for the 440 kilograms of enriched uranium, and the missile program remains active, at least in part.
By contrast, Israel’s standing in the United States has been significantly damaged, and it is likely to face accusations that it dragged President Donald Trump into an unnecessary war. Israel’s home front sustained considerable damage, which the military had to expend critical capabilities on a large scale to contain.
In the north, Israel has also entangled itself in a military confrontation with Hezbollah in Lebanon that threatens the security of northern residents and the rehabilitation of the Galilee.
As written here before and during the war, there is no full correlation between superior military capability and a desirable strategic outcome.
Supreme Court remade by Trump ushers in historic defeats for civil rights
The Washington Post
Charles: Justin Jouvenal brings the statistical receipts proving the success of this Supreme Court’s continuing effort to run the United States backwards into the glorious ‘50’s—when Black people couldn’t vote in the South, women couldn’t get credit cards, and gay people couldn’t get a legal drink in a New York City bar.
The sharply conservative Supreme Court that President Donald Trump’s three appointees remade is the first since at least the 1950s to reject civil rights claims in a majority of cases involving women and minorities, according to a detailed analysis conducted for The Washington Post.
Since the three Trump appointees joined the court, the share of cases won by the side advocating an expansion of civil rights fell to 44 percent.
In all the other time periods going back to the early 1950s, the Supreme Court issued rulings in favor of expanding civil rights in a majority of such cases.
The high-water mark for rulings in favor of civil rights was 74 percent during the court of Earl Warren in the 1950s and 1960s.
If there is a firm hand on the rudder of US war-making, perhaps it’s Netanyahu’s
NBC News & Bloomberg
Scott: The ceasefire agreement came right on the heels of the Swan-Haberman Path to War narrative in which a host of voices near Trump struggled to place the blame for the whole decision to go to war against Iran squarely on Benjamin Netanyahu. What transpired in the hours immediately after the ceasefire was negotiated served to underscore this attribution in a dramatic fashion. Trump clarified that the agreement covered Lebanon, and indeed the Pakistani prime minister’s text said as much… more strikingly, telltale signs emerged that the Pakistani text had actually been composed inside the White House. Then Netanyahu decided to disregard the ceasefire, launching the heaviest bombing of the entire war in downtown Beirut, in an area with no ostensible military targets. Veteran observer Bill Grueskin highlights these two reports coming in rapid succession as demonstrative. First, an NBC News report:
In a phone call Wednesday, Trump asked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to pull back on the strikes to help ensure the success of the upcoming negotiations, two senior administration officials told NBC News. Trump confirmed that conversation in his interview with NBC News on Thursday, saying the Israelis were “scaling back” operations in Lebanon.
And the second, coming only minutes later, after the Trump-Netanyahu call, in Bloomberg:
Israel is continuing to strike Hezbollah and won’t stop until the security of communities in northern Israel is ensured, the Israeli prime minister says, addressing northern residents. “There is no ceasefire in Lebanon.” Planned talks will focus on disarming Hezbollah and reaching a sustainable peace agreement with Lebanon.
Whenever there is a divergence in perspective, Netanyahu controls. And that quickly became evident in remarks from Trump and Vance in the coming hours.
EU Demands that Orbán Clarify His Secret Compact with Russia
Die Welt
Scott: Following a series of exposé pieces highlighting secret dialogues between Viktor Orbán and Vladimir Putin and between their respective foreign ministers, it became clear that Orbán had entered into a formal compact with the Kremlin in which he promised to facilitate the Russian objective of derailing Ukraine’s membership in the EU and NATO and blocking financial and military assistance to Ukraine—all in exchange to concessions to Orbán which are unclear. Now the EU leadership has issued a formal demand to Orbán for an accounting of all these matters.
Just days before the Hungarian parliamentary election, the EU Commission has called upon Hungary to respond to reports regarding alleged collusion with Russia concerning Ukraine’s accession to the EU. These reports are “extremely disturbing, and it is incumbent upon the government of the member state in question to urgently provide an explanation,” Commission spokesperson Paula Pinho said on Thursday in Brussels.
Commission President Ursula von der Leyen intends to “raise this matter at the level of heads of state and government as well,” she added.
In late March, several media outlets reported that Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó—a close ally of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán—allegedly divulged details of EU discussions to his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov.
Melania’s Six Minute Presser
New York Times
Charles: Whenever you think for a moment that things can’t get any weirder, the First Couple always proves you wrong.
In a 2002 email written to Ghislaine Maxwell, a woman named “Melania” wrote to Ms. Maxwell to praise a profile of Mr. Epstein in New York magazine. Ms. Maxwell called the woman “sweet pea,” and the woman signed her email “Love.”
Times reporter Shawn McCreesh wrote that the First Lady
[summoned] a “small group of stunned reporters” yesterday afternoon to declare: “I never had a relationship with Epstein or his accomplice Maxwell. My email reply to Maxwell cannot be categorized as anything more than casual correspondence.
As she “turned on her stiletto heels and stalked out,”
“Daved reporters started shouting after her: “Why now!? Why now!?”
Of course there’s an obvious answer for that. If you were married to someone you loathed, who had just started a huge war just to distract attention from the name of Jeffrey Epstein, how could you possibly display more “epic fury” than this does?
Or else Melania is trying to get ahead of some gigantic new disclosure. Trump indicated he hadn’t been clear about the subject of his wife’s press conference before she held it.
Heather Cox Richardson noticed that Trump’s next big social media post after his wife’s remarks featured a graphic depiction of a man killing a woman.
Living through Trump’s time bomb
The Handbasket
Imogen: This week, Trump has topped what we thought was his worst yet—twice. Independent journalist Marisa Kabas of The Handbasket encapsulates what it was like to live through Trump’s genocidal whims, as real, or not, as they may be.
After the shock of the first read, the questions flooded: Which civilization would allegedly die Tuesday night? Iran? Ours? All of human civilization? How would it die? “WHO KNOWS?” What could he have planned that would warrant the hyperbole of calling it one of the most important moments in world history? Would April 7th become one of those seismic dates to which people knowingly refer without context? Why is he blessing the people of Iran when he wants them dead? Was this a real threat or did he just want attention? Did that distinction really matter when a country of 92 million people thought they might be vaporized overnight?
…
While a civilization did not yet die this week, we most certainly experienced a very real loss; the loss of that last shred of hope that no matter how unhinged Trump becomes, no matter what he says in a rambling speech or an incoherent press conference, that he wouldn’t do that. That is now a menu item, even if its threat is just a means to an end.
Army Survivors of Russian-Guided Attack on US Base in Kuwait Are Livid About Pentagon Lies About the Attack
CBS News
Scott: In his five o’clock follies (as Hegseth briefings are known in the White House), his temper flares at questions about wounded or dead US service personnel and lost equipment. He plays all of this down and dismisses injuries as always nothing serious. But US Army personnel who lived through a devastating Iranian missile attack on a base in Kuwait—later revealed to have been directed by intelligence furnished by the Kremlin to Iran—were furious about Hegseth’s denigration of the danger they faced when they were interviewed by CBS News.
From there they resumed managing the movement of equipment, munitions and personnel across the Middle East.
About 30 minutes later, “everything shook,” one soldier told CBS News. “And it’s something like what you see in the movies. Your ears are ringing. Everything’s fuzzy. Your vision is blurry. You’re dizzy. There’s dust and smoke everywhere.”
Dazed, the service member surveyed a grisly scene: “Head wounds, heavy bleeding, lots of perforated eardrums, and then just shrapnel all over, so folks are bleeding from their abdomen, bleeding from arms, bleeding from legs.”
A video shows smoke billowing from the building, fires smoldering. The blast killed six—the deadliest attack on U.S. troops since 2021—and injured more than 20 others.
Starstruck
The Artemis II crew captured this photo of our galaxy, the Milky Way, on April 7, 2026. The Milky Way’s elegant spiral structure is dominated by just two arms wrapping off the ends of a central bar of stars. Spanning more than 100,000 light-years, Earth is located along one of the galaxy’s spiral arms, about halfway from the center.
IMF: 45 million around the world will face starvation due to Trump’s Iran War
Libération
Scott: For some, the war against Iran means an excellent opportunity to profit off the miseries of others. And for some 45 million it may well mean starvation.
At a briefing delivered on Thursday, April 9 in the International Monetary Fund headquarters in Washington, Fund director Kristalina Georgieva warned that the Iran war could plunge 45 million people into food insecurity due to rising energy prices and supply disruptions.
The institution anticipates additional requests for support from member countries “somewhere between $20 billion and $50 billion—at the lower end of that range if the ceasefire holds.” “It would have been worse without sound policies on the part of most emerging economies [...] and we have the necessary resources to weather this shock,” assured Kristalina Georgieva.
The sharp rise in energy prices and supply disruptions involving oil, liquefied natural gas, and fertilizers risk exacerbating global food insecurity, potentially driving the total number of “people suffering from hunger to over 360 million,” warned the IMF Managing Director. And “even in the best-case scenario, there will be no return” to the situation that prevailed prior to the outbreak of hostilities.
Your Online Moment of Zen
Academic Festival Overture
By Johannes Brahms, conducted by Leonard Bernstein.
This was my uncle Jerry Kaiser’s favorite piece. Throughout my youth, Jerry was my very human. He devoted his life to Justice. He got Martin Luther King Jr. to speak at his synagogue in Westport Connectict, and he opposed the War in Vietnam way back in 1966.
For some reason classical snobs hate this gorgeous overture. I have no idea why.
As we wade toward the apocalypse, if you can find a more reliable way to cheer yourself up than watching Lenny conduct this, please tell me what that could possibly be.
Edited by Imogen Sayers.