The News You Need on Tuesday, April 7th, 2026.
The news you need today from Scott Horton and Charles Kaiser. Trump's gallery of horrors (self portraits), California's booming economy, and a Kyrgistani-inspired easter menu.
A Gallery of Horrors
Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntags-Zeitung
Scott: In FAZ, Stefan Trinks examines the nine portraits of Trump that the current White House occupant has collected and exhibited. Historically portraits of presidents adopt a classical pose of benevolence and enlightenment. Trump’s are shockingly different. They point to a distinctly dark and disturbed man whose instincts are violent and confrontational, even towards those who surround him.
It is an outrage and a slap in the face to all serious artists. The facial expression resembles that of a petulant child; the tie appears completely flat and insubstantial—like a red plastic arrow. If Trump had to walk on such knock-knees in real life, he would trip over them in an instant. Anatomically speaking, it is a death-defying feat: the left leg twists so far inward that one can practically hear the kneecap splintering. The creator of this carnival-style painting is the self-proclaimed “Christian praise artist” Vanessa Horabuena…
By now, no fewer than nine portraits of Trump adorn the White House. Some presidents have enriched their Washington residence with images of their predecessors; very few, however, have chosen to display images of themselves while still in office. Never before, however, has an American president hung so many self-portraits upon these neoclassical walls—and certainly none as bizarre as these: all nine of them exude an atmosphere of menace…
What is genuinely new about Trump’s portraits is that every flattering idealization typical of conventional portraiture is replaced by visual landscapes of menace and an aesthetic of intimidation. The visual language of the White House becomes an extension of strategic gestures of intimidation—for instance, against Denmark in the dispute over Greenland, against Iran, and most recently against Cuba—with “art” pressed into service for his aggressive and unpredictable politics.
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Operation ‘Rescue Orbán’ Now Underway
The Times
Scott: Orbán has been caught staging a false-flag terrorist event to influence or to justify shutting down the elections. Hungary’s embattled right-wing prime minister is accused of staging a false flag operation to improve his chances of re-election after a bomb was allegedly found next to a gas pipeline into the country. Viktor Orban, who has ruled the central European nation for the past 16 years, claimed that “powerful” explosives and a detonator had been found only a few hundred metres away from the Balkan Stream pipeline, which funnels gas into Hungary, Serbia and Bulgaria. The scheme perfectly matches an operation plan that Orbán had his security service develop, which was leaked to the press in February.
Orban convened a session of the Hungarian national defence council over what he described as an “act of sabotage”, noting that “Ukraine has been trying to cut Europe off from Russian energy for years”.
Peter Szijjarto, his foreign minister, said the “attempted terror attack … fits right into the pattern of the Ukrainians’ ongoing efforts to disrupt Russian gas and oil supplies to Europe”.
The prime minister had previously alleged that Kyiv was trying to undermine his electoral prospects by deliberately dragging out repairs to the Druzhba oil pipeline from Russia to Hungary, which had been damaged by a Russian drone attack.
However, both Ukraine and the Hungarian opposition said that it was more likely that the Balkan Stream incident had been fabricated in an effort to revive Orban’s stalling campaign before the general election on Sunday.
Ship of Fools
JP Morgan Funds Research
Scott: In Sebastian Brandt’s Renaissance classic, The Ship of Fools (1494), we learn that fools can make astute observations about the difficult world in which they live. Today this role may be reserved to some funds analysts. Right now they are struggling for models and modes of analysis to tackle the peculiar dilemma into which America’s leadership have backed the country through their latest war in the Middle East. Michael Cembalest at J.P. Morgan says when we talk of regime change, perhaps we should start with what’s going on in the United States, where two cabinet officers have been fired while rumors predict the firing of another half dozen, and inside the Pentagon, where Pete Hegseth has fired a raft of senior generals he personally picked for high office. What should we make of this remarkable series of firings, in the midst of a war? In any event, it furnishes a warning sign: something is deeply wrong with America’s national security superstructure.
The pace of Trump’s military purge is the largest in the modern era. Posterity and military historians will determine which category the fired or sidelined four-star generals and admirals
below fall into, or if a new category is needed. All nine have occurred during the last 14 months compared to eleven
in the prior 150 years. There has always been a large degree of bipartisanship in the Congress on defense issues (see chart on NDAA passage margins), but this no longer applies to the Executive Branch.
The Further Adventures of Uday and Qusay
Financial Times
Scott: Fresh from their adventures with crypto and their heavy investment in the world of drones—using money thoughtfully advanced by the “Department of War”—Trump’s sons and heirs, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, have a new scheme. A company in which they have invested will offer an artificial intelligence-powered technology for scanning visitors to the World Cup games to determine who has an infectious disease. And soon this tech will be required at all ports-of-entry to the US.
A Trump family-linked investment group is backing a wellness and biosecurity company that plans to offer AI-powered infectious disease screening to US airports during the football World Cup in June. American Ventures in late February agreed to buy $31.3mn of convertible shares in Nasdaq-listed XWell, which at the time had a market capitalisation of less than $3mn. The American Ventures special purpose vehicle is managed by Trump Tower-based broker Dominari Securities. Through subsidiaries, XWell provides voluntary diagnostic tests to incoming international flyers, funded in part by US government contract awards. The company separately operates several airport spas and a small chain of waxing salons along Florida’s west coast.
Trump’s War on Universities Becomes Literal
Al Jazeera
Scott: By bombing Iran’s Sharif University, the nation’s most prestigious institution of higher learning, Trump’s war on higher education suddenly became quite literal. It’s the third school in Iran that Trump has bombed so far, starting with a girls’ school in Minab that claimed somewhere between 168 and 180 deaths, most of which were school girls.
At least 34 people have been killed, including six children, as the United States and Israel carried out massive attacks across Iran, targeting a top university as well as residential areas, after US President Donald Trump set a Tuesday deadline for Tehran to fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz or face strikes on its power plants and bridges.
The Fars news agency reported on Monday that an air attack killed 23 people, including four girls and two boys aged below 10 years, in Tehran province’s Baharestan County. At least five people were killed in an attack on a residential building in the city of Qom, according to the political and security deputy of the governor, Morteza Heydari. Six others were killed in Bandar-e Lengeh, in southern Iran, authorities said. At least a dozen cities were hit across Iran, including Bandar Abbas, Ahvaz, Mahshahr, Shiraz, Isfahan and Karaj. US-Israeli strikes also hit Sharif University in Tehran, one of Iran’s leading scientific universities, often compared with the US’s Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Al Jazeera’s Tohid Asadi, reporting from Tehran, said the facility was severely hit, with extensive damage reported in the compound’s mosque and laboratories.
The Near Side of the Moon
The astronauts aboard NASA’s Orion spacecraft captured this photo of the Moon’s near side on April 4, 2026. The image features dark patches at center and right; these are ancient lava flows, which are unique to this side of the Moon.
The Artemis II astronauts—astronauts Victor Glover, Reid Wiseman, and Christina Koch of NASA and CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen—are set to fly around the Moon on April 6, 2026.
Record Boom for the Economy of California
Bloomberg
Notwithstanding both unprecedented efforts by Trump to disadvantage the Golden State and devastating losses due to wildfire, California’s economy is now in a boom that leaves all other states completely in the dust. In fact California, which has a population of 39 million people, just supplanted Japan—123 million—as the fourth-largest economy on earth, and easily the largest economy inside the United States.
California became the top performing economy among its 49 siblings and any developed nation under Governor Gavin Newsom’s two-term leadership.
Gross domestic product surged 40% to more than $4 trillion, accounting for more than 14% of US output, after Newsom took office in January 2019.
California’s diversity and its strong technology and healthcare sectors are cited as key factors in the state’s superior economic performance, with the technology sector’s contribution to California’s GDP increased 59% since 2019.
Don’t expect to hear a word of this reported on Rupert Murdoch TV, but do ask yourself why the Murdochs live in California if they hate it so much.
Trump Demands Greenland, Again
Berlingske
Scott: Trump is back in front of the camera today, focused on his next invasion. Apparently it may yet be Greenland before Cuba. Describing his issue with NATO, he said, “It all began with, if you want to know the truth, Greenland. We want Greenland. They don’t want to give it to us and I said, Bye-bye.” In Trump’s mind, “they” is NATO. But in fact, Trump’s problem with NATO began in August 1987, immediately following a trip he made to Russia that was arranged by Russian ambassador Yuri Dubinin. Trump was hosted on this trip by Inturist, an entity later revealed to be an operating division of the KGB. He then took out ads that ran in the New York Times, the Boston Globe and the Washington Post, all lashing away at NATO. The ad copy he used was, according to a well-positioned Moscow friend, furnished by KGB operatives. But that was 1987. Here we are 39 years later.
“There is no doubt that we are in a NATO crisis.”
This is what Berlingske’s correspondent in the US, Jacob Heinel, said after the press conference at the White House on Monday evening.
“Trump uses almost every opportunity to hammer away at the alliance in relation to Iran - and now we also have to talk about Greenland again.”
Jacob Heinel does not believe that we should expect an escalation of the Greenland crisis based on the statement tonight, but it is a clear recognition from Trump.
“He was disappointed that he could not get his big deal so that he could become the president who could expand the USA with Greenland. It was a low point in the relationship between the USA and NATO,” says Jacob Heinel.
However, he does not believe that Trump will withdraw the USA from NATO right now, but after the Iran war he believes that it is very likely that we will be in a state of crisis again.
“Because the point is that Trump does not need to withdraw the USA for us to be in a NATO crisis. “NATO’s health, if you can put it that way, also depends on the mood among the allies – and in particular between the US and Europe. And it is really bad,” says Jacob Heinel, pointing out that the past 14 months have worn NATO down.
Your Online Moment of Zen
More by The Young Rascals
Charles: Released in 1967 and written by Marcello Ciorciolini, Norman Newell, Nino Oliviero & Riz Ortolani.
An Easter Dinner, Heavy on the Herbs
Scott: Our Easter dinner has grown over the years more to resemble Nowruz—Persian new year—celebration in Central Asia. That means things are very green, and herbs play a dominant role. This year’s Hungarian mushroom soup has parsley, thyme, marjoram and chervil. The leg of lamb is marinated (for three days) in a yoghurt-and-herbs based marinade we discovered in Kyrgyzstan, where it’s used to make the most tender shashlik. It works just as well on the leg of lamb, too. Lots of spring vegetables are essential, as is our dessert table, filled with contributions from our guests and Carol’s magnificent peach tarte.
Edited by Imogen Sayers.
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