Why the battle for Iran and Ukraine is coming for us all
Ruling in the case of a Black pastor who was arrested while watering his neighbor's flowers, the Alabama Supreme Court said police can demand to see identification during a stop if they are dissatisfied with a person's verbal answers. Justices issued the 6-3 decision last week after a federal judge presiding over a lawsuit about Michael Jennings' 2022 arrest asked the court to clarify whether officers can demand to see a person's identification under the state's "stop-and-identify" law. The minister was arrested when he declined to show Childersburg police identification.
While there are many political and policy victories Trump supporters can point to after his first year back in office, there are also questions about what might have been. A lingering one is often uttered in the form of a sigh: "What the hell happened to DOGE?" Elon Musk first suggested the Department of Government Efficiency to Trump during the 2024 campaign. A government agency specifically tasked with downsizing bloated federal agencies and rooting out fraud was politically popular, and signing an executive order establishing the agency was one of Trump's first actions upon being sworn in
Gavin Newsom is raising alarms on climate change again"and getting basic facts wrong. The California governor vows to sue the federal government over the Trump administration's repeal of the Environmental Protection Agency's 2009 "endangerment finding," the main legal basis under the Clean Air Act for mandating reductions in carbon-dioxide emissions. Mr. Newsom claims the reversal will trigger "more deadly wildfires" and "more extreme heat deaths." Age-adjusted heat-related death risk in California has risen modestly in recent decades"enough to account for 90 additional annual deaths likely linked to higher temperatures. But he omits the other side: Warming has helped reduce age-adjusted cold-related deaths by more than 5,000 a year. Citing only the tiny heat increase while ignoring the large decrease in cold-related deaths is misleading.
Last month, Illinois U.S. Senate candidate Juliana Stratton (the state's progressive lieutenant governor) ran an ad with a not-so-subtle message regarding our president: "F--- Trump." Stratton herself doesn't say this, but she lets multiple other people say it for her. The crude campaign stunt got me thinking: Is this really what Democratic voters want? (That primary election is March 17, as I write this, so it's TBD if her messaging worked.) There's a growing disconnect in America. As our political parties move further to their respective extremes, most voters fall somewhere in between. Whether Republican or Democrat, the majority of Americans simply want what's best for their families and for their country. The Democratic Party is having an especially hard time connecting with its constituents, as witnessed by a steady stream of polls showing just how bad off it is.
Wholesale prices rose sharply in February, providing another sign that inflation continues to percolate even aside from rising energy prices. The producer price index, a measure of pipeline costs that producers receive for their products, increased a seasonally adjusted 0.7% on the month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Wednesday. Excluding volatile food and energy costs, so-called core PPI increased 0.5%. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones had been looking for increases of 0.3% for both measures. For the all items index, prices rose faster than the 0.5% pace in January. However, the core increase was less than the 0.8% for the prior month. On a 12-month basis, headline PPI inflation was at 3.4%, the most since February 2025, while core was at 3.9%, according to the BLS. The Federal Reserve targets inflation at 2%.
American hegemony is unraveling in real time as Iran strikes Gulf states and US security guarantees prove hollow
Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss won Tuesday's Democratic primary to succeed Rep. Jan Schakowsky, dealing a blow to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in a race that had turned into a referendum on the group's ability to influence the party. Biss, whose mother is Israeli and whose grandparents are Holocaust survivors, has sharply criticized Israel's war in Gaza " and faced an onslaught of attack ads from a group aligned with AIPAC as a result. Read more
The UK government assessed that Iran did not pose a nuclear threat and saw no evidence of an imminent Iranian attack on Europe when the US and Israel launched their surprise and illegal attack on the people of Iran.
Benjamin Netanyahu's Dream for Decades
NBC News senior politics reporter Johnathan Allen spoke to President Donald Trump supporters in Pennsylvania and found some willing to pay more at the pump during the war with Iran, while others were calling it quits with Trump.
The UN OHCHR in Geneva reports: "Since 2 March, at least 886 people have been killed in Lebanon, including at least 111 children. Israeli airstrikes have destroyed hundreds of homes and civilian infrastructure, including healthcare facilities. Deliberately attacking civilians, civilian objects, or medical personnel amounts to a war crime, including the killing of 16 Lebanese health staff."
IDF War Criminals
Former Florida Rep. Anthony Sabatini " a Republican who previously made national headlines for wearing blackface in high school " said Monday he has filed a lawsuit against the University of Florida (UF) on behalf of the school's College Republicans chapter over its disbandment. On March 14, UF announced that it deactivated the chapter after the Florida Federation of College Republicans (FFCR) reported finding that some of its members had "engaged in a pattern of conduct that violated its rules and values, including a recent antisemitic gesture." The news came after a screenshot of a photo was shared on X (formerly known as Twitter) showing two people performing what appears to be a Nazi salute in a chatroom on Guilded, a group chat platform for gamers that was shut down in December 2025. The post from Sloan Rachmuth, who describes herself as an investigative journalist, claimed the photo showed one of the group's members.
President Donald Trump's administration is reportedly seeking to free a former FBI informant who admitted he lied to federal agents during the 2020 presidential election, an insider has claimed. Alexander Smirnov was arrested by the FBI in February 2024 and charged with lying to the agency. He faces a up to 25 years in prison, but the president and his team could be working on releasing Smirnov. An unnamed source speaking to Mother Jones claimed the administration is in the process of aiding the ex-FBI informant with avoiding his sentence and even trial. Smirnov is believed to have lied to the FBI about both Hunter and Joe Biden in 2020. Around the same time, prosecutors claim the ex-FBI informant was paid $600,000 by Economic Transformation Technologies. Two of ETT's owners, Shahal M. Khan and Farooq Arjomand, are associates of Donald Trump. Read more
An Arkansas law requiring that the Ten Commandments be prominently displayed in public school classrooms was struck down by a federal judge Monday
A new type of battery storage is about to be deployed on the Midwestern grid for the first time. Sodium-ion battery storage manufacturer Peak Energy and global energy company RWE Americas will pilot a passively cooled sodium-ion battery system in eastern Wisconsin on the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) network -- the first sodium-ion deployment on that grid.
Political donations from billionaires and their family members made up 19% of all reported federal campaign contributions in 2024, the New York Times found. Donations from 300 billionaires and their immediate family members to federal elections in 2024 totaled $3 billion, either directly or through political action committees. Read more
