The News You Need on Wednesday, April 29th, 2026.
The news you need today from Scott Horton and Charles Kaiser. Stories about King Charles, Netenyahu and Trump's war on Iran, and what's hot with data centers.
God Bless The King
Charles: If it is still possible to make an argument in favor of the British monarchy, King Charles III did as good a job as anyone ever will with one of the best speeches I have ever heard in front of a joint session of Congress.
With dignity and intelligence he celebrated everything that has been important about the tattered so-called Special Relationship since World War I—the one that just barely persists after relentless efforts by our president to destroy it.
It was a speech in which Charles eviscerated everything Donald Trump stands for. But he did so with such perfect British understatement, all the Republicans joined all the Democrats in a long series of standing ovations.
These are the British-American values he embraced:
Magna Carta is cited in at least one hundred and sixty Supreme Court cases since 1789, not least as the foundation of the principle that the Executive power is subject to checks and balances.
An unyielding reserve is needed for the defense of Ukraine and her most courageous people.
We must reflect on our shared responsibility to safeguard nature, our most precious and irreplaceable asset. . . The natural wonders of the United States of America are indeed a unique asset, and generations of Americans have risen to this calling. Indigenous, political and civic leaders, people in rural communities and cities alike, have all helped to protect and nurture what President Theodore Roosevelt called the “glorious heritage” of this land’s extraordinary natural splendour, on which so much of its prosperity has always depended.
Then he threw in his reverence for NATO, an independent judiciary, the rule of law–and the Marshall Scholarship.
And then the peroration:
I pray with all my heart that our alliance will continue to defend our shared values with our partners in Europe and the Commonwealth and across the world. And ignore the clarion call to become ever more inward looking.
President Lincoln understood this so well in his reflection in the magisterial Gettysburg address.
The world may little note what we say but will never forget what we do.
And so to the United States of America, on your 250th birthday, let our two countries rededicate ourselves to each other in the selfless service of our peoples and of all the peoples of the world.
God bless the United States and God bless the United Kingdom.
Read the full text here.
The Weirdness Surrounding Trump DOJ’s Latest Indictment
Garrett Graff’s Doomsday Scenario
Scott: In authoritarian and wannabe totalitarian societies, whether of leftist or rightist flavoring, the prosecutorial branch takes on a special mission.
As Andrey Yanuaryevich Vyshinsky, Joseph Stalin’s renowned state prosecutor, admonished, the primary mission was to both uphold the position of the party and its leader and to take down his enemies in the most creative way possible, so that their prosecution and trial would be a teachable moment for the entire country. Hence, the actual facts didn’t matter so much. With control of the courtroom and of the judge through a process of party discipline, facts could be alleged as needed to create a vibrant story line that met the former Soviet Leader’s needs.
A process akin to this is gradually developing in the second Trump Administration. Prime evidence of it comes in the numerous political prosecutions which have been directed by the Leader. But the developing case surrounding Saturday’s incident at the Washington Hilton during the White House Correspondent’s Dinner is also instructive.
I would observe at the outset that this should not be a particularly difficult case to bring. After all, the perp has produced a manifesto which will furnish a road map for his prosecution and in the end insure a conviction of some crime (in general, the existence of a plan, and taking an overt step to implement it would be sufficient for some charges). But Todd Blanche is being pressed to come up with a prosecution that serves several specific goals of the administration.
One suggestion is plainly to build a ballroom, which has already fueled a couple of completely whackadoodle legal pleadings the Department of Justice has filed.
Another is to vilify and possibly criminalize political opponents generally.
As Garrett Graff, Joyce Vance and a handful of other commentators have noted, there is some real weirdness in both the charging documents and statements supporting them, suggesting the presence of some embarrassing facts that DOJ is scrambling to suppress. What are they and why?
According to the Justice Department documents, Allen was carrying two firearms at the time: A 12-gauge pump action shotgun and a Rock Island Armory 1911 .38 caliber pistol. There’s no indication he fired or drew the pistol, but the Justice Department is basing that third criminal charge on its theory he fired the shotgun.
But they don’t appear to have meaningful evidence to back that up—and there’s a lot of public circumstantial evidence to the contrary.
As the New York Times wrote, “Mr. Blanche said investigators believed the suspect fired his weapon because a spent shotgun shell was found inside its chamber, but he noted that more forensic examination would be done to determine exactly what happened.”
Really? After more than 24 hours, the forensic teams of the FBI and Secret Service can’t figure out whether the suspect fired off a shotgun inside the Washington Hilton?
That’s very hard to believe.
We don’t know exactly what kind of ammunition the shotgun was loaded with, but unless he was using some strange custom shell, there would normally be two standard types of shells—a “slug,” a large solid shot primarily used for hunting big game, or buckshot, a shell loaded with somewhere between eight and twenty smaller rounds.
Buckshot would be most common and expected.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with the differences between say a handgun, a rifle, and a shotgun, here’s a quote from a “tactical” shooting website reviewing the power of a 12-gauge shotgun like the one Cole Allen was allegedly carrying Saturday: “The 12 gauge shotgun is widely regarded by many to be the top performer with regards to terminal effectiveness in the armed citizen’s arsenal. The go-to anti-personnel load is buckshot, which consists of a shot shell loaded multiple smaller projectiles known as shot. The most common buckshot size used for defensive or tactical applications is 00 (pronounced ‘double-aught’). 00 shot shells generally contain eight or nine .330 caliber projectiles. To put that in context, one pull of the trigger is essentially the same as shooting eight or nine 9mm ball rounds all simultaneously. Buckshot produces some serious wound channels, and there is a reason why many folks regard the ‘stopping power’ of the shotgun as second to none.”
So far, audio analysis by the Wall Street Journal and others seem to indicate there were six shots and Blanche now says the Secret Service officer fired five of those. According to Blanche, the Secret Service officer who was shot was hit in the vest by a single shot—authorities had previously used the word “bullet” to describe what shot him, which is what one would call something fired by a handgun or rifle, not a shotgun.
If Allen fired off a shotgun inside an enclosed space like the single-story terrace lobby of the Washington Hilton, one would expect plenty of evidence of that happening. Buckshot would have peppered a fairly significant area.
In one of the weird comments Blanche made, he said, “When you fire a bullet, the bullet ends up somewhere. Sometimes you find it, sometimes you don’t.” Huh?That might be true if you’re looking for a bullet fired outdoors, but inside a fully enclosed hotel lobby?
Similarly, if the officer was hit by a shotgun burst and taken, say, eight .33-caliber rounds in his vest as opposed to a single bullet, the officer would clearly know the difference and there would be clear evidence on his vest of that impact pattern. And if the suspect had fired a solid shotgun slug, the officer and authorities would clearly—and immediately—know the difference from a typical bullet. Solid slugs come with enormous stopping power and would be what you’d expect to use to try to take down a feral hog or a black bear; if it hit a human at close range, one would expect some serious blunt force injuries, perhaps even fatal blunt force trauma, even if the officer was hit in a bullet-resistant (they’re never really bullet-“proof”!) vest.
We should be clear: Even if the perp never got off a shot, he can still be prosecuted, convicted and given a stiff sentence. This is all significant not on questions of guilt or innocence of the accused, but rather on a far more important issue to society, which is the candor of the prosecution. Are they wielding their formidable resources to reveal the truth, as their mission requires, or are they too preoccupied with hammering round pegs into square holes to be concerned with the truth? This is not a trivial question.
