The News You Need on Thursday, April 16th, 2026.
The news you need today from Scott Horton and Charles Kaiser.
Trump Corruption Watch
Paul Krugman Explains why Hungarian Corruption Gives Hope To America
Charles: Krugman writes: Autocracy and corruption aren’t separate issues. In practice they inevitably go hand in hand. They’re a natural pairing, like crypto and crime, because authoritarian rule removes accountability and opens the door for Grand Theft Autocracy.
What Hungary has shown the world is that autocratic corruption can be a powerful mobilizing issue…
Under Trump II blatant corruption has run wild at the highest levels of government, on a scale like nobody has ever seen before.
Trump and his family have used his office to extract billions in de facto graft, through crypto deals with petro-state autocrats, investments in prediction markets and defense contractors, making sweetheart foreign real estate deals that line up with favorable tariff treatment, soliciting hundreds of millions for Trump vanity projects.
Yahoo News Reports that Trump acolytes lucky enough to be original investors in Trump’s $TRUMP token have now lost 97% of their investment, if they still have it in their portfolio.
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Caveat emptor! Telegraph Sparks A Furor with False Report of Turkey Threatening to Invade Israel
Charles: The Hindu Times reports The Telegraph has apologized for a false report that Turkey was threatening to invade Israel. The Jerusalem Post picked up the story before Ankara called it “entirely unfounded.”
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has, however, frequently compared Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Hitler since the beginning of Israel’s war in Gaza. In a 2024 speech to the UN General Assembly, the Turkish president urged the world to stop Netanyahu just as Hitler was stopped 81 years ago.
China Supplies Iran With Spy Satellites
Financial Times
Trump this morning in an interview with Maria Bartiromo: “President Xi just wrote me a beautiful letter. He responded to a letter I wrote because I had heard that China is giving weapons to Iran. I wrote him a letter asking him not to do that. And he wrote me a letter saying that essentially he’s not going that.”
Meanwhile an investigation by the Financial Times concludes:
Iran secretly acquired a Chinese spy satellite that gave the Islamic republic a powerful new capability to target US military bases across the Middle East during the recent war, according to a Financial Times investigation. Leaked Iranian military documents show the satellite, known as TEE-01B, was acquired by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Aerospace Force in late 2024 after it was launched into space from China. Time-stamped coordinate lists, satellite imagery and orbital analysis show that Iranian military commanders later tasked the satellite to monitor key US military sites. The images were taken in March before and after drone and missile strikes on those locations. TEE-01B was built and launched by Earth Eye Co, a Chinese company that says it offers “in-orbit delivery”, a little-known export model under which spacecraft launched in China are transferred to overseas customers after reaching orbit. As part of the agreement, the IRGC was granted access to commercial ground stations operated by Emposat, a Beijing-based provider of satellite control and data services with a global network spanning Asia, Latin America and other regions.
The use of a Chinese-built satellite by the IRGC during a war where Tehran has repeatedly targeted its neighbors with missiles and drones is likely to be highly sensitive across the region. China is the largest trading partner of the Gulf countries and is the largest buyer of their oil. The logs show that the satellite captured images of Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia on March 13, 14 and 15. On March 14, US President Donald Trump confirmed US planes at the base had been hit. Five US Air Force refuelling planes were damaged. The satellite also conducted surveillance of the Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan and locations close to the US Fifth Fleet naval base in Manama, Bahrain, and Erbil airport, Iraq, around the time of IRGC-claimed attacks on facilities in those areas. Other areas surveilled by the satellite included Camp Buehring and Ali Al Salem air base in Kuwait, the Camp Lemonnier US military base in Djibouti and Duqm International Airport in Oman. Gulf civilian infrastructure monitored included the Khor Fakkan container port area and the Qidfa power and desalination plant in the United Arab Emirates, as well as the Alba facility in Bahrain — one of the world’s largest aluminium smelters.
It appears that Trump was briefed by the US intelligence community on the move and that he decided the proper response was a “nice letter to Xi.” He uncritically accepted Xi’s assurances of non-involvement, just as he uncritically accepted Putin’s denial that Russia was assisting Iran in the targeting of US military personnel and equipment. For Trump, criticism from Pope Leo is far more troubling than Russia and China guiding Iranian missiles and drones down on US service personnel.
Meanwhile, 50% of Americans approve of Trump’s performance on national security questions, while 43% disapprove, making this Trump’s sole net positive polling issue, according to a Morning Consult poll from early April. This results from US broadcast media giving Trump overwhelmingly favorable and uncritical coverage on his military misadventures.
The International Space Station Transits the Moon
Keighley Rockcliffe:
This is an image of the International Space Station (ISS) as it begins to transit in front of the Moon. The ISS is in low-Earth orbit (LEO) where it wizzes around the Earth every 90 minutes. Orbiting the Earth 16 times per day for 25 years, the ISS has photobombed many familiar celestial objects including Venus, Mars, Saturn, and the Sun. Thousands of experiments led by researchers from over one hundred countries have been conducted on the ISS. Growing protein crystals in low gravity was one of the first experiments onboard the ISS and continues to contribute to new medical treatments. ISS astronauts study plant growth, water recycling, human health, and more to support the Artemis missions which will take humans farther than they’ve ever gone before. Next time you are out and about at night, try to spot the ISS zooming across the sky!
War Fever
“One of the great attractions of patriotism - it fulfills our worst wishes. In the person of our nation, we are able, vicariously, to bully and cheat. Bully and cheat, what’s more, with a feeling that we’re profoundly virtuous. Sweet and decorous to murder, lie, torture for the sake of the fatherland.”
-Aldous Huxley, Eyeless In Gaza
H/t John Loughery
The Voice of Reason on Late Night Since 1999
The Daily Show
Jon Stewart: Trump’s invincibility is being slowly eroded by world events and his own heart’s ability to clear liquid from his capillaries
We must embrace these moments of light and hope and oxygen.
There Goes The Neighborhood:
All the Neighborhoods
The Guardian
Charles: The critical Atlantic current system appears significantly more likely to collapse than previously thought after new research found that climate models predicting the biggest slowdown are the most realistic. Scientists called the new finding “very concerning” as a collapse would have catastrophic consequences for Europe, Africa and the Americas.
The Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (Amoc) is a major part of the global climate system and was already known to be at its weakest for 1,600 years as a result of the climate crisis. Scientists spotted warning signs of a tipping point in 2021 and know that the Amoc has collapsed in the Earth’s past.
The Amoc is a major part of the global climate system and brings sun-warmed tropical water to Europe and the Arctic, where it cools and sinks to form a deep return current. A collapse would shift the tropical rainfall belt on which many millions of people rely to grow their food, plunge western Europe into extreme cold winters and summer droughts, and add 50-100cm to already rising sea levels around the Atlantic.
Your Online Moment of Zen
San Giorgio Maggiore at Dusk
Claude Monet
Venice 1908
