The News You Need on Thursday, March 19th, 2026.
The news you need today from Scott Horton and Charles Kaiser.
More Links Between Jeffrey Epstein and Russian Intelligence Services
Epstein Insider Revealed as Daughter of ‘FSB’ Translator Who Held Sensitive Russian Government Security Jobs
The Newsground
Scott: About two years after meeting Epstein and receiving $237k, and two decades after leaving the Soviet military, Yuri Pozhidaev re-entered the workforce in the Russian government. By 2018, he became Deputy Director of Security at Russian Railways' Iranian branch, one of the most sensitive positions in the entire Russian government. Was he summoned back to work at the FSB while his daughter was working for Epstein? The links between Epstein and the Russian intelligence services keep being revealed.
Score one For Rand Paul
It’s Been Illegal for 170 Years!
Occupy Democrats
Charles: “In 2023, Sen. Markwayne Mullin infamously attempted to fight Teamsters President Sean O’Brien in a U.S. Senate hearing after reading aloud tweets in which O’Brien mocked him as a ‘clown’ and a ‘fraud.’
“Sen. Rand Paul brought up this incident to highlight how Mullin is a man who glorifies violence and would be a very inappropriate choice to lead Homeland Security, an agency whose agents have been using wanton violence against the American people in pursuit of Trump’s inhumane deportation regime.
’In the days after the fight, you did many interviews in which you justified the violence as historically justified by precedents such as caning and dueling. Is it today your opinion that the caning of Charles Sumner was not only justified but argues still for resolving our political differences with violence?’ asked Paul, referring to the infamous 1856 beating of anti-slavery activist Charles Sumner by a pro-slavery Senator that nearly killed him.
“‘What I would simply point out is some of the rules that still apply to this body. For instance, dueling with two consenting adults is still there. I was pointing out what –’
Rand Paul cannot believe his ears. ‘Dueling has been illegal for 170 years! There’s no precedent for legal dueling!”’says a visibly incredulous and condescending Paul.
’Even then, they fled the country. Do you realize that the man that beat Charles Sumner with a cane, he beat him until was unconscious. You know why no senators intervened? Because his friend held a gun on the other senators, and he kept beating him and beating him until he crushed his skull. That’s what you’re insinuating as precedent of the Senate and that’s what you live by, and that is a very, very dangerous sentiment.’
“In one fell stroke, Sen. Markwayne Mullin has proved he is both too stupid and too violent to possibly be confirmed as leader of the Department of Homeland Security.
This guy is a caveman in a suit who thinks that political violence is somehow a legitimate part of Senate discourse.”
Israeli-American War on Iran is Damaging The Country’s Cultural Heritage
How Does One Protect Cultural Heritage When Bombs Are Falling?
Suddeutsche Zeitung
Scott: Archaeologists and art historians have been busy alerting the American and Israeli military leaders of the precise location of Iranian cultural treasures that need to be protected. To no avail. Apparently "real warriors" are oblivious to art and cultural monuments. According to Iran's Ministry of Culture, at least 56 museums and historical sites were damaged during the first two weeks of the war, including 19 in the capital, Tehran. UNESCO confirmed damage to several of the 27 World Heritage Sites in Iran.
More Deplorable Journalism About Trans People
In Tense Meeting, Mehmet Oz Pressed Medical Societies on Trans Care for Teens
New York Times
Charles: This is an awful piece with a particularly awful kicker. The author writes this story as if there are two equally valid positions on gender affirming care for teenagers. There aren’t. On the one side are nearly all major American medical associations, who are in favor of it, and the millions of sentient citizens who believe this decision should belong exclusively to Trans kids and their parents. The government should never have any role here. On the other side is a small minority of physicians, and a huge number of right-wing hate mongers who decided that treating Trans people about the same way the Nazis treated Jews can make the haters rich.
What makes this piece is even more appalling: the reporter of this story co-authored another story just three years ago that explained, correctly, that right-wingers had chosen to demonize Trans people after their polling convinced them there was big money to be made by doing that.
Donald Trump’s last presidential campaign spent $250 million attacking Trans people, and he has never stopped since then.
In our damaged country, Trans people have more courage than everyone else.
Because they have to.
Mehmet Oz, the head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, called in the leaders of American Medical Association, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons and the American Psychiatric Association, among others.
Doug Mills/The New York Times
Putin Loses Loyalist
‘Put him on trial’: pro-Kremlin loyalist turns on Putin in rare outburst
Scott: Ilya Remeslo sends Telegram post titled ‘Five reasons why I stopped supporting Vladimir Putin’ to his 90,000 followers. Ilya needs to avoid eighth floor windows in the coming weeks. But Muscovites are increasingly in a state of rage over the ban against Telegram and the sudden falloff in mobile internet connectivity in a city that thrives on it.
The Biggest Hit in Late Night is Thirty Years Old
Charles: If you’re looking for latent signs of intelligent life in the universe, This headline from LateNightger is a big one:
The Daily Show Hits Five-Year Ratings High, Near Record Share
LateNighter
The Daily Show is on fire, ever since the producers realized the best way to replace Trevor Noah was to bring back Jon Stewart every Monday night and add five other prodigies as rotating hosts: Ronny Chieng, Michael Kosta, Jordan Klepper, Desi Lydic, and Josh Johnson. Each of them is now a star in their own right, and the smartest and toughest show in late night “delivered its strongest monthly ratings performance in years in February 2026—drawing its largest total audience in more than five years and posting the second-highest ratings share in the show’s 30-year history.”
“According to Nielsen Live+7 ratings data, the Comedy Central flagship averaged 1.23 million nightly viewers in February. The figure is up 33% from February 2025 and nearly triple the audience the show was drawing at one of its lowest points just over two years ago.
“The show also posted a 3.44 share among total viewers in February—a clearer measure of a program’s relative strength in an eroding marketplace. Remarkably, that figure is the highest monthly share the show has recorded in its 30-year history aside from Jon Stewart’s final stretch of episodes in August 2015...On YouTube alone, Stewart’s Monday night monologues regularly generate more than six million views per week”–an amazing achievement in our fractured media world.
Ronny Chieng, Desi Lydic, and Josh Johnson owe a debt to Arthur Sulzberger Jr. which they are undoubtedly unaware of. Back when Jon Stewart first became a late night star and Sulzberger was the publisher of The New York Times, Stewart was the guest of honor at the paper’s venerable Publisher’s Lunch. At question time, Sulzberger asked, “Why are all of your correspondents white men?” (Beth Littleford had been the only exception before Stewart became host.) Sulzberger’s colleagues cringed when he put Stewart on the spot, but within a year the Daily’s Show’s cast of correspondents looked much more like America than it ever had before.
During his twenty-five years as publisher, Sulzberger was also the most important and the most reliable straight ally the LGBTQ community had ever had.
Arthur Sulzberger Jr.
JD Vance to Support Hungarian Prime Minister
Vance plans Hungary visit in show of support for Orban ahead of tight election, sources say
Reuters
Scott: Charging ahead with plans to build the Populist International in conjunction with the Pentagon, JD Vance will travel to Hungary to join Viktor Orbán on the campaign trail in the final days before Hungarians go to the polls. Both Trump and Putin are enthusiastically and openly endorsing Orbán’s reelection and threating Hungarians about what may happen to them if Orbán is defeated. In Moscow, the newspaper Moskovskiy Komsomolnets explicitly threatens a repetition of 1956.
Palantir CEO Scrutinized by Vatican
American Heresy: Should We Burn Peter Thiel?
Le Grand Continent
Scott: The Vatican is offering a detailed rejoinder to Peter Thiel. Father Benanti, a key figure in the Vatican’s study of AI, issues a cool dissection of Peter Thiel’s “lectures on the anti-Christ”: as theology they are cartoonish nonsense. But behind them stands a transparent agenda—destroy liberal democracy as rapidly as possible to further empower the tech bros. The tech bros are seen as cynical manipulators who have suddenly decided to give their politics a thin theological coating.
Your Moment of Zen
Bob Dylan And the Band — Until I Threw It All Away
Magic Mushrooms Might be Miracle Cure for Depression
Psilocybin: The active substance in Magic Mushrooms can work against severe depression
Der Spiegel
Scott: German scientists say they were long misled by the US “war on drugs” and its attacks on naturally occurring drugs that had promising potential. Psilocybin, the active ingredient in “Magic Mushrooms,” is considered a beacon of hope for severe depression. A German study on it now fails to reach this conclusion—yet experts are impressed by the results just the same.
Edited by Imogen Sayers.
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