Friday, April 17, 2026

USA

Trump Perceived as a War Criminal and a Mad Man

Friday 17 April 2026, by Dan La Botz



The people of the United States are demonstrating a growing dissatisfaction with President Donald Trump’s administration and in particular with his war on Iran. While most Republicans continue to back the president, some in the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement oppose the war. Various Democrats and MAGA influencers have called for the invocation of the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office because he’s mentally unstable.

Wartime presidents have historically risen in the public’s esteem, at least at the beginning of a war. But Trump’s approval has been declining on all fronts. As I write on April 12, according to reliable polls, 37% approve of Trump’s presidency, 56% disapprove, and 7% are not sure. And regarding his war on Iran, some 56% of Americans disapprove, while 68% disapprove of sending ground troops to Iran, and 71% are opposed to spending $200 billion on further military action in Iran. Above all, the war has led to rising prices for gas and other products and threatens an even worse economy.

While diplomatic negotiations with Iran have so far failed to bring any resolution to the conflict, Trump said it didn’t matter if a deal with Iran was reached or not: “We win, regardless,” he said. “We’ve defeated them militarily.” Yet some commentators on the right and the left have argued that this has been America’s biggest defeat since Vietnam.

Many were appalled by Trump’s threat a week ago that “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.” Democrats, some Republicans, and important figures in his Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement not only doubt that the U.S. has won the war, but many also doubt Trump’s leadership and even his sanity. Jamie Raskin, a leading Democrat, said, “His apparently deteriorating condition has caused tremendous alarm across the nation … about the President’s cognitive function and continuing mental fitness for the office of President, and prompted concerns about the President’s well-being.” He called for the presidential physician to conduct a “comprehensive” cognitive evaluation of Trump.

From the beginning, many in MAGA disapproved of Trump’s war on Iran, saying that it betrayed his “America First” policy and promises to avoid foreign wars. Once the war began, several leading MAGA commentators Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Candace Owens and Alex Jones became vocal critics of the war. Recently retired Republican congressional representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, once the president’s biggest booster said, “It’s absolute madness. How can any person that is mentally stable call for an entire civilization of people to be murdered, to be wiped out, to never come back again? That’s what the President called for, and that shows that there’s serious instability in his thinking,” Greene said. “He’s out of control, and people within the administration need to step up, take responsibility and rein this in,” she said. She wrote on X, “25th Amendment!!!”

Senator Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, has also called for the use of the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office.

The 25th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution provides that when top executive and legislative officials determine that “the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office,” he may be removed and replaced by the vice-president.

With Trump still controlling the Republican Party, which controls Congress, there is little chance of the 25th Amendment being invoked. Nevertheless, the fact that this is being widely discussed and reported on weakens Trump’s hold on the public and hopefully his hold on power when the midterm elections take place in November. For us on the left, it’s back in the streets on May 1, opposing Trump and his war.

12 April 2026



OPINION

The Terrifying Ridiculous Spectacle


America’s insane inept commander-in-chief
Image from cover of Germany’s Der Spiegel


Abby Zimet
Apr 13, 2026
COMMON DREAMS
FURTHER

Whew. It’s been a time: “Open the Fuckin’ Strait,” “A whole civilization will die,” puerile threats, boundless botches and cover-ups, deranged lurches into ballrooms, auto-pens, Davy Crockett, and a media sanewashing it all. And when their slapstick “ceasefire” and “peace talks” imploded, our Supreme Leader was at a UFC cage match watching men batter each other bloody for fun and profit. Then he depicted himself as Jesus, with a hotel on the moon. Breaking: “The president has lost his mind.”

It’s a historic given that the final act of any narcissist is inevitably a descent into psychosis. Thus are we now witnessing - and struggling to survive - the mayhem of “history’s dumbest madman,” a toddler with a gun, a Dunning-Kruger president with a brain of moldering oatmeal as supremely confident as he is utterly ignorant, leading to dazzling insights like, “I’ll know the war is over when I feel it in my bones.” A criminal braggart and loathsome human being, he is above all extraordinarily stupid, giving rise to the first time in history you can post, “He’s an idiot,” and 90% of the world knows who you’re talking about. It may also be the first time aggrieved, enraged citizens regularly say of their purported leader, “Die as soon as possible, you child-raping worthless fuck.”

Today, we find ourselves mired in “the worst-run war in US history,” a witless war conducted mostly by thumb by “a depraved idiot“ with no plan, no map, no clue, inexorably morphed into the ”Worst. Ceasefire. Ever.“ In his staggering stupidity, Trump has done more damage to American status, power and respect in weeks than any adversary did in decades, experts say, empowering and enriching Russia, China and Iran while endlessly, mindlessly declaring, Baghdad-Bob-like, ”victory“ over ”obliterated“ enemy forces. Abetted by a cabal of inept sycophants whose ”collective incompetence is unprecedented,“ a demented old crook who relishes carnage has rendered America a rogue state lacking all credibility, a beleaguered world’s preeminent villain and laughingstock.

In the lead-up to his illegal war, the chaos begun on Day One had already wildly escalated, blunders coming fast and lethal. He gutted measures to reduce civilian casualties, decommissioned minesweepers, fired judge advocate generals who keep military action within international law, did no planning for the economic fallout, stupefyingly ignored warnings about Iran closing the Strait of Hormuz - universally deemed by anyone who’s glanced at a map or history book the key vulnerability in Middle East geopolitics. The result: A Wild West lack of accountability that on the first day saw a US strike slaughter some 175 Iranian schoolgirls, an atrocity first met with lies and denials, then silence and as yet no apology from any American representative.

We’ve since seen a flood of senseless, trash-talking claims, threats and whiplash deadlines that sound either like a rabid 10-year-old schoolyard bully, a pissed-off late-night text to a mob sweetheart who hasn’t called back, or a ransom note in crayon: “If they don’t make a deal, I am blowing up everything,” “Watch what happens to these deranged scumbags today,” “WE DO NOT NEED THE HELP OF ANYONE!”, “If it goes well we’ll settle, otherwise we’ll keep bombing our little hearts out,” “TAKE THE OIL & MAKE A FORTUNE,” “48 hours before all Hell will reign (sic) down,” “We will bomb Iran back into the Stone ages (sic).” They’re so dumb Iran trolls him online: When he claimed (fictional) “good and productive talks,” they echoed him with a smiley face and, “To the president of peace.”

They, and the world, were less amused when he went full genocidal and proclaimed, “Power Plant Day and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one. Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards,” with a jeering, “Praise be to Allah,” and then the more bonkers, “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.” Still-spineless legacy media translated that into, “Mr. Trump issued a new ultimatum.” For Easter, Jonathan Larsen noted the day would be “commemorated with the traditional threatening of the war crimes (with the) ritual repetition of deadlines and horrific consequences...(The) incantation was followed (by) the miracle of the levitating oil prices. They were risen.” The Strait, Iran officials asserted, “will not be opened through the ridiculous spectacle (of) the president of the United States.” His name, they wrote, “will be etched in history as a supreme war criminal.”

Another deadline shuffled, the madness by “a dangerous delinquent idiot” went on. At a surreal Easter Egg Roll, he ranted about Iran’s fighters beside a bewildered Easter Bunny, babbled to the assembled, equally baffled kids about Biden’s auto-pen, insisted bombing was good for Iranian children, and silently stared down a reporter who asked about war crimes, stonily turning away with, “What else?” He gave a droopy, gibberish speech about America’s “overwhelming victories on the battlefield,” though there haven’t been any battles and “the whelmingest victory” was against a girls’ school. It was rote stale lies, noted Colbert: “All the stuff you’ve heard before, delivered by a narcotized turtle” who’d disastrously “started a 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle” and then walked away.

Online, amidst a war, he’s ceaselessly spewed batshit claptrap: He raged at Somali Americans, wondered if Jasmine Crockett is related to Davy Crockett, trashed Bill Maher and “dried-up old prune” Springsteen (LOL), obsessed over his ballroom and Hitler-esque arch. He said “we can’t take care of daycare” or Medicaid/ Medicare “little scams” because we need more war; speaking of, he posted a bizarre, pre-Bonespurs photo of himself in military garb. He danced, partied as tankers burned, danced again: “Young man, there’s no need to feel down!” Letting his homicidal freak flag fly, he fundraised off images of dead soldiers - him in his fucking baseball cap - and lied their families urged the war on. One non-fan: “He has the empathy of a serial killer.”

He’s also brazenly saber-rattled - the US military can do “whatever it wants in the world” - and blasphemed - God supports the war because He/She “wants to see people taken care of.” Umm. Add the “heretical Christianist gibberish” of bombastic ghoul Drunk Pete - who’s giddily celebrated “death and destruction from the sky,” urged war-crimey “no quarter” against enemies, and prayed for “overwhelming violence against those who deserve no mercy” - and even devoutly apolitical church leaders have protested, “There are no new crusades. If God is present in this war, He is among those who are dying.” Noted Pope Leo, “Jesus, King of Peace, does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, saying: ‘Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen: Your hands are full of blood.’”

Following in a long, grim American tradition, the regime’s hands may prove more bloody than we know. Despite an “investigation” into the massacre of Iranian schoolgirls, there’s been no accountability and many deem it unlikely there will ever be. Meanwhile, multiple reports suggest a series of cover-ups by officials seeking to hide the deadly cost of a catastrophic war nobody wants. A new report accuses military leaders of a “casualty cover-up,” charging they’re issuing “low-ball and outdated figures” of U.S. casualties of up to 750 Americans killed or wounded. Unsurprisingly, the chest-thumping, out-of-his-depth, lying- his-way-out-of-sexual-assault-charges Drunktank Pete is often at the center of reported deceptions, with angry soldiers themselves calling them out.

Survivors have disputed his account of a deadly March 1 Iranian drone attack in Kuwait that killed six U.S. soldiers and wounded dozens, with almost 40 hospitalized. Soldiers describe a grisly scene with many head wounds, perforated eardrums and shrapnel hits to abdomens and limbs; The Great Empathizer infamously shrugged off the carnage with, “That’s the way it is.” Hegseth claimed the drone was a “squirter,” an anomaly that “squeaked through” a well-fortified operations center. But survivors call bullshit, saying they were left “unprepared to provide any defense.” “Calling it a squirter is a falsehood,” said one, citing “a bunch of little tin buildings” unprotected from the sky, in “a deeply unsafe area” not just within range of Iran’s missiles but a known potential target. On the degree of fortification, he said, “I would put it in the ‘none’ category.”

A new WaPo story also disputes Hegseth claims about Iran’s losses that fail to line up with intel and reality. Despite his persistent boasts that Tehran’s military might has been “decimated” by U.S. forces’ “complete control of Iranian skies” in now-“uncontested airspace,” experts say Iran still has over half its missile launchers and thousands of medium- and short-range ballistic weapons that can be repaired or pulled from underground facilities. They also say his focus on the number of Iran’s missile launches is “a dumb metric” that ignores what matters: Not their volume, but their precision, or “hit rates,” which are increasing as their strategy evolves. In another nod to his cluelessness, they note the downing of an F-15 and subsequent rescue of its airman - itself a suspected cover-up of a failed mission - is “what happens when you have air superiority but not air supremacy.”

Finally, many have suggested a cover-up of possible sabotage on the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier, the Navy’s $13 billion crown jewel, which has morphed into a sort of McHale’s Navy “Voyage of the Damned” for a war-weary crew of about 4,500 sailors stuck in a record-breaking 11th month of deployment. “It’s on fire. It’s heading to Greece. And the toilets don’t work,” runs one succinct summary of its series of mishaps, from the breakdown of over 600 toilets - also suspected as sabotage - to a laundry-room fire that raged for 30 hours, caused far greater damage than initially reported, and left some 600 sailors sleeping on floors and tables before the ship limped to Greece for repairs. The Navy is now investigating whether the fire was deliberately set,

Between lies, blunders, mutinies against mindless wars and an addled Commander Bonespurs who doesn’t know how batteries work, some WH officials have reportedly “raised concerns” - thanks legacy media - if lackeys are “explaining the evolving complexity of the conflict” to him. Seriously? The guy claims he invented the word “groceries,” thinks migrants come from insane asylums, and gets his daily info from a two-minute video of “stuff blowing up” (which has never ended a war, except in Hiroshima) so what are the odds? This weekend, he again displayed his strategic acumen by railing against a (female) reporter who asked about the Strait. “We win, no matter what,” he snapped. “We’ve defeated their military, it’s all at the bottom of the sea (with sharks!), their leaders are dead. With all that, lets see what happens. But from my standpoint, I don’t care.”

Neither, apparently, do the whip-smart, deeply knowledgeable “negotiators” - a corrupt slumlord, clueless golf bro and creep who fucks couches - who just went to Pakistan for “peace talks.” Less than shockingly, they gave up in under 24 hours and fled home empty-handed. According to Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, the Ugly Americans “derailed” the talks with “maximalist demands and shifting goalposts” just as the two sides were “inches away” from an agreement. “Zero lessons learned,” Araghchi wrote. “Good will begets good will. Enmity begets enmity.” Profoundly weirdly - and aptly for this timeline - at the same moment J.D. was announcing their failure, Trump, slathered in clown makeup, was entering Miami’s Kaseya Center to watch two men beat up each other, or pretend to, in a UFC cage match.

With Kid Rock blaring and accompanied by assorted bottom-feeders - UFC’s Dana White, rapper Vanilla Ice, a few of his evil spawn and a hammered-looking, dead-eyed Marco Rubio who bafflingly skipped seeking peace, which is kinda his job, for this - Trump strutted into his last MAGA chud safe space, a symptom of the decline of Western civilization and a tacky haven for people who get off on watching other people get hurt. Last year, Trump was loudly cheered here; this year, he was cheered and booed, not a good sign for his shot at the UFC Peace Prize. Amidst our many crises, people mulled why Rubio was there. One sage: “He makes Trump look tall.” Others: “This ain’t a cabinet. It’s a junk drawer,” “This is not serious leadership. It’s amateur hour,” and “What a circus.”

Trump, a fat, clumsy, longtime manosphere wannabe, watched the fighting intensely from ringside, occasionally dodging blood and spit, oblivious to the madness of attending a fucking cage match as the world burns. Ever-dazzled by celebrity, he went gaga for Brazil’s Paulo Costa when the fighter came over to shake his teeny, rotting hand. “You’re a beautiful guy,” Trump crooned. “You could be a model, you look so good.” Filmmaker Jeremy Newberger: “This montage of dueling events” - UFC vs. war and peace - “would be the denouement of The Godfather Part VII: Corleone Nights, a straight to video release by a second cousin of Francis Ford Coppola’s tax attorney.” We are adrift in a dumpster-fire idiocracy, wading through Trump’s opus, I Really Don’t Care, Do U?

The next day, he announced a blockade to block the blockade that’s blocking the Strait of Hormuz that wasn’t blocked before he caused it to be. “Any Iranian who fires at us, will be BLOWN TO HELL!” he bellowed. “We are fully ‘LOCKED AND LOADED.’” He went on Fox, babbling about the Gulf of Trump and stunning into wide-eyed silence Maria Bartiromo when she asked if he thought gas prices would be lower by the midterms. “I hope so. I mean, I think so. It could be,” he yammered. “It could be or the same or maybe a little bit higher.” Online, he (again) trashed Pope Leo, who’s “weak on crime,” for being against war. Rep. Ted Lieu, who earlier reminded the military not to obey illegal orders, added, “If you receive an illegal order to attack the Vatican, you will also disobey that order.”

In a social media frenzy, he rage-posted 12 times through Sunday night. He posted an AI image of a Trump Hotel on the moon. Then he posted an image of himself cosplaying as Jesus healing a sick man, who if things weren’t weird enough many thought looked like Epstein. Cue flags, eagles, jets, angels, widespread outrage even from MAGA world - most charged “blasphemy,” not insanity - who maybe should’ve seen this coming? Taken aback by the uproar, he sputtered it “had to do with red cross as a red cross worker,” but took it down. Still, America’s eyes hurt. The consensus: “This man is not well.” And, said John Brennan, “The 25th Amendment was written with Donald Trump in mind.” Aaron Rupar sent out the image as a plea. “I’m not sure it has broken through to the general public that the president is a megalomaniac crazy person,” he wrote. “Hopefully posts like this help.” Or not.


Trump watches guys maul each otherImage from Bluesky


This man is not well.Image from Truth Social

Top psychiatrists issue urgent letter to Congress about Trump's mental instability


News photographers wait for U.S. President Donald Trump to walk out of the Oval Office to speak with reporters at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., April 13, 2026. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
April 15, 2026


Editor’s note: The following letter was sent to the bipartisan leadership of Congress on Monday, April 13, 2026 in regard to recent rhetoric and actions taken by US President Donald J. Trump.


Senator John Thune
Senate Majority Leader, US Senate

Senator Charles E. Schumer
Senate Minority Leader, US Senate

Representative Mike Johnson
Speaker of the House, USHouse of Representatives


Representative Hakeem Jeffries
House Minority Leader, US House of Representatives

Dear Senate Majority Leader Thune, Senate Minority Leader Schumer, Speaker Johnson, and House Minority Leader Jeffries:


We write to you today with a sense of urgency that we do not use lightly. The behavior and rhetoric of President Donald Trump have crossed a threshold that demands the immediate and bipartisan attention of Congress. This is not a partisan assessment. It is a judgment grounded in observable fact, consistent professional assessment, and the constitutional responsibilities that your offices carry.

President Trump exhibits what forensic mental health experts have, across dozens of independent assessments, identified as the “Dark Triad” of personality traits: narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy. Rather than constituting a clinical diagnosis, this trait-based assessment is grounded in behavioral observation and is particularly useful for assessing the level of danger an individual poses in a political leadership position. We do not offer this as a clinical verdict. We offer it as the considered judgment of a substantial body of professional opinion, based on well-researched evidence that is consistent, accumulating, and impossible to dismiss.


What makes this more than an academic matter is what predictably happens when this personality structure collides with immovable obstacles. The clinical literature is clear: individuals with Dark Triad profiles, when confronted with situations they cannot control or escape, do not recalibrate. They escalate. The psychological imperative to relieve narcissistic collapse overrides strategic calculation, concern for consequences, and ordinary self-restraint. Rage surges to domination. Impulsivity overrides caution. The urgent need to extinguish psychological pain eclipses every other consideration.


We are watching this dynamic unfold in real time.

The President’s recent public communications have been, by any normal standard of political discourse, alarming. His posts demanding that Iran “open the f------’ strait, you crazy b------” and his threat to bomb Iran “back to the stone ages,” adding that “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” are not the rhetoric of calculated geopolitical pressure. They are the expressions of a man in profound psychological distress who is reaching for the most extreme retaliatory threats available to him. That these statements were addressed to an adversary in the context of an active military confrontation makes them not merely shocking but profoundly dangerous.

President Trump has now ordered a US naval blockade of Iran — an action that has sent world oil prices soaring and placed the United States in direct opposition to the international community. His ongoing actions carry the potential to trigger a global economic catastrophe, draw in regional and great powers, and ignite a wider conflict with consequences that no one can bound. These orders are being issued without adequate deliberation, without congressional authorization, and in a context in which the President’s judgment is, by every visible measure, severely compromised.


We urge three specific actions.

First, Congress must immediately retake its constitutional authority over war. The bombing of Iran and the initiation of a naval blockade — acts of war under both US and international law — cannot be authorized by presidential fiat. Article I of the Constitution vests in Congress the sole power to declare war and to regulate commerce with foreign nations. The Framers intended Congress to deliberate upon and be accountable for precisely such consequential actions. Congress must assume its constitutional authority now, before further escalation renders the question moot.

Second, congressional leadership — on a bipartisan basis — must convene urgent consultations with senior administration officials, including the Secretary of Defense, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the Secretary of State, and the Director of National Intelligence. The purpose is not routine oversight. It is to create a circuit breaker capable of preventing escalation toward catastrophe, including the potential use of nuclear weapons. Those officials have their own constitutional and statutory obligations. Congress should insist on those obligations and provide a forum in which they can be exercised.

Third, Congress should formally initiate consultation with the Vice President and Cabinet regarding the President’s fitness for office under Section 4 of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment. We do not prejudge the outcome. We are not calling for the President’s immediate removal. We are calling for the process that the Constitution itself provides for this contingency: when a President’s capacity to discharge the duties of office is in question and poses a potential imminent danger to the nation. The Amendment exists because those who drafted it recognized that the question of presidential incapacity would occasionally arise, and that it required a constitutional answer rather than a political improvisation.


He is a constitutional emergency. The mechanisms for addressing such an emergency exist. They were placed in the Constitution and its amendments for moments precisely like this one.

We recognize the gravity of what we are asking. We ask it because the gravity of the situation demands it.

A President who publicly threatens to destroy a foreign civilization, who launches a bombing campaign and then imposes a naval blockade without congressional authorization, and who shows every behavioral sign of a personality in acute crisis is not merely a political problem. He is a constitutional emergency. The mechanisms for addressing such an emergency exist. They were placed in the Constitution and its amendments for moments precisely like this one.

The war with Iran will not wait. The escalation dynamics of this active military confrontation will not wait. The psychological conditions driving the President’s decisions will not improve under pressure — they will worsen.


We urge you to act without delay. The Constitution gives you the tools. Your oath of office assigns you the responsibility.

Respectfully,

James Gilligan, M.D.
Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, New York University School of Medicine
Adjunct Professor of Law, New York University School of Law
Former Faculty of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School
Former President, International Association of Forensic Psychotherapy

Prudence L. Gourguechon, M.D.
Former President, American Psychoanalytic Association
Former Vice President, World Mental Health Coalition


Bandy X. Lee, M.D., M.Div.
President, World Mental Health Coalition
Co-Founder, Preventing Violence Now
Former Faculty of Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Former Faculty of Law and Psychiatry, Yale School of Medicine

James R. Merikangas, M.D.
Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science, George Washington University
Research Consultant, National Institute of Mental Health
Co-Founder, American Neuropsychiatric Association
Former President, American Academy of Clinical Psychiatrists

Jeffrey D. Sachs, Ph.D.
University Professor, Columbia University
Election experts expect Trump to confiscate voting equipment following midterm results


President Donald J. Trump speaks on the phone in the Oval Office Wednesday, Nov. 14, 2018, with Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator Brock Long to receive the latest update on the devastating wildfires in California. (Official Whte House Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian)

April 17, 2026

There are always unanswered questions heading into any election. But usually those questions are more along the lines of “who’s going to win?” and less “will the federal government interfere with the election?”

This article was originally published by Votebeat, a nonprofit news organization covering local election administration and voting access.

But here in 2026, President Donald Trump’s broadsides against the legitimacy of U.S. elections and efforts to overhaul election laws have generated lots of uncertainty — and anxiety — about whether this will be a normal election year. Election officials and voters alike are left to wonder whether there will be new requirements for voters, physical interventions at the polls, or attempts to overturn results after the fact.

Despite seemingly endless speculation, no one knows for sure how likely any of these things is. But to get the most well-informed assessments, we turned to the people who spend the most time thinking about elections.

We asked 37 experts in the field of election administration — academics, lawyers, former election officials, etc. — to answer 26 questions about the likelihood of various scenarios coming to pass in the 2026 midterms.

Their answers reflect a general sense of cautious optimism about the most dire scenarios — such as an election getting overturned — and skepticism that the federal government will successfully change voting rules. But they also still believe the election will face serious challenges, including federal agents potentially showing up at polling places.

Election experts say new federal laws are unlikely, but split on state laws and court intervention

Since retaking office in 2025, Trump has pushed aggressively for the federal government to set more rules around how elections are run, promoting legislation that would require registering voters to prove their citizenship with documentation and issuing two election-related executive orders. (The first executive order has largely been blocked in court, though the administration has appealed. The second is currently under litigation, and the conventional wisdom is that it will be halted as well.)

However, experts were skeptical that these measures would ever take effect. Thirty-four of our 37 respondents said it was unlikely that the federal government would successfully require new registrants to prove their citizenship for the midterms, and 32 said it was unlikely that the federal government would successfully require all voters to show an ID or restrict the use of no-excuse absentee or mail ballots. (They provided their answers before Trump issued his second executive order, which sought to regulate mail voting through the U.S. Postal Service.)

Likewise, virtually all respondents thought it was unlikely that the federal government would restrict the hours or locations of in-person voting or limit or eliminate the use of voting machines to tally ballots in the midterms.

However, experts were more open to the possibility that some of these policies could take effect in individual states. Although none thought it was likely that a significant number of states would limit or eliminate the use of voting machines, about a quarter of respondents thought it was at least somewhat likely that a significant number of states would restrict the use of no-excuse absentee or mail ballots in the midterms. About one-third thought it was at least somewhat likely that a significant number of states would strengthen their voter ID requirements or restrict the hours or locations of in-person voting.

Even more respondents, 15 of the 37, thought it was at least somewhat likely that a significant number of states would pass proof-of-citizenship requirements before the election — perhaps unsurprisingly, given that such laws were working their way through several state legislatures at the time. Those laws have since passed in Florida, Mississippi, South Dakota, and Utah, although Florida’s does not take effect until 2027 and Mississippi’s is limited in scope.

Overall, though, most experts didn’t expect states to significantly change their election laws this year. Derek Muller, an election law professor at the University of Notre Dame, pointed out that many states have part-time legislatures that won’t be in session between now and the election. “I expect new legislation in the months ahead that might affect the 2026 election to be negligible,” Muller said.

If there are going to be major election-law changes before the midterms, experts expect them to come from the third branch of government: the judiciary. Seventeen experts said it was at least somewhat likely that pre-election court rulings would significantly alter election rules shortly before the midterms, although 19 still said that was unlikely.

In follow-up interviews, those who thought this was likely said that they were keeping an eye both on currently pending cases — such as a U.S. Supreme Court case that could require all mail ballots to arrive by Election Day — and those that have not yet been filed. That said, a Supreme Court ruling earlier this year will probably encourage litigants to bring any cases challenging election rules well before the election, making last-minute rule changes less likely.

Experts expect federal agents to disrupt the 2026 election

For many election officials and voting advocates, the nightmare scenario for the 2026 midterms is if federal agents, such as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, attempt to disrupt voting or the counting of ballots. It’s already illegal for armed troops to visit voting locations, and the Trump administration has repeatedly said that it will not send ICE agents to polling places this year. However, new Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin has declined to absolutely rule it out, and a majority of the experts we surveyed expected something like this to happen.

Twenty-seven of the 37 respondents said it was at least somewhat likely that the federal government would deploy some form of military or law enforcement at or near polling places in the midterms. A slight majority said it was likely that Trump would ask the National Guard or federal agents to seize voting equipment during the election, and over three-quarters said it was likely that Trump would ask them to seize voting equipment after the election. (It’s worth noting that respondents gave these answers just a few weeks after the FBI raided an election office in Fulton County, Georgia, and Trump said that he regretted not asking the National Guard to seize voting machines after the 2020 election.)

Multiple respondents told Votebeat that the seizure of voting equipment was more likely after the election because the election results will be known at that time. “Before the election, no one will know where seizing equipment or ballots could shift pivotal races,” said Christopher Mann, the research director at the Center for Election Innovation and Research. “After the election, a bad actor will have a better picture of where seizing voting equipment or ballots can shift the overall outcome.”

Twenty-eight experts said it was at least somewhat likely that there would be physical threats to voters or polling places in the midterms, including 11 who said it was very likely. (They were perhaps recalling 2024, when a string of bomb threats forced some polling places to close temporarily, though election officials were able to minimize disruptions to voting.) However, experts were divided on whether these threats would deter people from voting. Twenty-one experts said it was unlikely that a significant number of voters would decide not to vote because of threats or physical intimidation, while 16 said that was likely.

Notably, experts were not very confident about their predictions about armed intervention in the midterms. Some also pointed out that, even if it’s likely that Trump might order federal agents to interfere in the election, that doesn’t mean they will succeed. “Election officials, courts, and other state and local officials are going to stop any attempt to seize voting equipment or ballots,” Mann predicted.

And some experts emphasized that even if there are incidents at specific polling places, they expect the election overall to run smoothly. “I’m an optimist, which probably led to many of my answers,” admitted Jeff Greenburg, a retired election official in Pennsylvania and a senior adviser at the Committee of Seventy, a Philadelphia-based government watchdog group. But Greenburg said he doesn’t expect that physical threats to voting “will significantly impact elections nationwide. I have faith and trust in our election officials, as well as the rule of law, and believe in the end every vote cast will be counted.”

Losers may claim fraud, but it’s unlikely an election gets overturned

Election experts of all stripes are confident that U.S. elections are secure. All 37 respondents said it was unlikely that a significant number of ineligible voters would cast ballots in the midterms, including 35 who said it was not at all likely. Experts also unanimously said that it was unlikely that voter fraud would influence the outcome of a 2026 congressional race.

However, that isn’t expected to stop candidates from questioning the election results. Almost three-quarters of experts thought it was at least somewhat likely that a significant number of losing candidates would claim fraud influenced the outcome of the election. All 37 thought it was likely that at least one congressional or statewide election would be legally challenged, with 30 calling it very likely.

At the same time, though, most experts don’t expect those challenges to succeed. Thirty-one of the 37 respondents thought it was unlikely that any congressional or statewide elections would be successfully overturned.

Nathaniel Rakich is Votebeat’s managing editor and is based in Washington, D.C. Contact Nathaniel at nrakich@votebeat.org.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization covering local election integrity and voting access. Sign up for their newsletters here.
'Let them eat lead': Alex Jones targets Trump with Marie Antoinette image


(Screenshot/Alex Jones)

April 16, 2026  
ALTERNET


On Sunday, President Donald Trump shared an AI-generated image of himself as Jesus, prompting widespread outrage from many Christians. Then on Thursday morning, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth delivered a press briefing in which he compared Trump to Jesus.

Later in the morning, in a post to X, far-right commentator Alex Jones shared his own AI-Trump comparison: Trump as Marie Antoinette.

“TRUMP ‘MARIE ANTOINETTE’ SAYS,” declared Jones, "’It's not possible for us to take care of daycare, Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things... We have to take care of one thing: military protection. We have to guard the country,’ Trump said. He should have just said ‘let them eat lead, with a nice helping of hyper inflation.’”

While Jones has been a longtime ally of Trump, supporting him since the beginning of his first campaign in 2015, the relationship between the two has soured in recent months as the podcaster has become increasingly alarmed by the president’s behavior and his pro-war rather than “America First” policies.

In a follow-up post, Jones explained his reasoning behind comparing Trump to Antoinette.

“Trump's budget funnels $895B to Lockheed and Raytheon,” wrote Jones, “up 4.1%, while axing $800B from Medicaid, states bleed for Ukraine aid. Donors get cake; we get lead and hyperinflation. My point is Trump is changing his priority from domestic to foreign and telling us unlimited welfare for Israel is wonderful. Obviously the federal government needs to be cut, but you can’t slash entitlements in an election year and then spend trillions on wars at the same time. His behavior and statements literally look and sound like Marie Antoinette’s.”

Jones has previously criticized the president’s claim that the U.S. must prioritize war over domestic programs like Medicare and Medicaid, saying, “That’s always the big third rail situation that you know you don’t touch. That’s political suicide.”

In recent weeks, Jones has also questioned Trump’s mental and physical health, asserting Trump’s massively swollen ankles are a sign of “heart failure” and his behavior smacks of “dementia.”

“He does look sick,” said Jones. “And he does babble and sound like the brain’s not doing too hot.”

According to Jones, Trump’s actions have become too “erratic” to ignore, to the point where he has suggested invoking the 25th Amendment to remove the president from office.

“I think we’re dealing with the madness of King George III here,” said Jones. “We got a big, big problem.”


Pope Leo turns the tables on Trump — as he rallies Catholics against the president



Pope Leo XIV arrives for a public Mass at the Stade Louis-II stadium, as part of a one-day trip, in Monaco, March 28, 2026. REUTERS/Manon Cruz

April 16, 2026 
ALTERNET

“I am not a politician; I speak of the Gospel.” Pope Leo XIV’s recent remarks, made during his apostolic journey to Africa, immediately suggest that his clash with Donald Trump operates on a different level to the US president’s usual political spats.


This is not the classic kind of confrontation that Trump has often had with foreign heads of state and government in the past, such as in recent months with the UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, whose refusal to fully back the US and Israel in their war against Iran attracted Trump’s ire. Rather, it is a clash rooted in fundamentally different moral and political visions: between a president who treats power in transactional terms and a pope who frames war, migration and human dignity as matters of moral principle.

When Cardinal Robert Prevost was named as Pope Leo in May 2025, Trump and his administration initially appeared to welcome the new pontiff warmly. In fact, in a post to his Truth Social platform the US president appeared to take credit for his election as pope, writing that Prevost “was only put there by the Church because he was an American, and they thought that would be the best way to deal with President Donald J. Trump”.

But the war in the Middle East launched by the US and Israel has made the differences between their positions clearer – further heightening tensions between them. On Palm Sunday, the week before Easter, it became clear that Leo had decided to take a firm line against the war in Iran, saying that Jesus “does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them, saying: ‘Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen: your hands are full of blood’”.

His Easter message was equally clear: “Let those who have weapons lay them down! Let those who have the power to unleash wars choose peace! Not a peace imposed by force, but through dialogue! Not with the desire to dominate others, but to encounter them.”

Day’s later the pope denounced the US president’s apparent threat to destroy the whole of the Iranian civilisation as “truly unacceptable” in comments which roundly criticised the war and called for a “return to dialogue, negotiations”.

Trump responded in harsh terms, describing the pope in a Truth Social post as “weak on crime” and “terrible for foreign policy”. He went on to say that he did not want a pope “who thinks it is OK for Iran to have nuclear weapons”, adding that “Leo should use common sense, stop doing the bidding of the radical left, and focus on being a great pope rather than a politician”.

Returning to Washington from Florida, Trump also told reporters: “I don’t think he’s doing a good job. I’m not a fan of Pope Leo.” The pope replied on Monday by saying that he was not afraid of the Trump administration and would continue to speak out against war.

Trump did not stop there. He went so far as to publish an image portraying himself as Jesus Christ, a move that appeared to go too far even for many of his conservative supporters. The reaction was strong enough to force him to delete the post and backtrack.
This could hurt the US president

Trump has clashed with the Vatican before, but this confrontation unfolds in a very different setting. Pope Francis, the first Argentine pope and the first pontiff from the global south, was often openly critical of Trump, particularly on migration. In 2016, he famously suggested that a leader who thinks only of building walls rather than bridges is “not Christian”, crystallising the tension between them.


Pope Leo XiV calls for an end to war, March 29 2026.

The key difference was that Francis was also a divisive figure within sections of the American Catholic Church. He was frequently targeted by conservative Catholic commentators and church networks in the US, and in 2019 he remarked that “it’s an honour that the Americans attack me”.

Leo, by contrast, is the first US pope – and that changes the political equation. His voice is likely to carry different authority among Catholic voters, who are an important part of Trump’s electoral base.

In the last presidential election, 55% of Catholic voters supported Trump, including 62% of white Catholics. Senior Catholics also occupy prominent positions in his administration, including Vance and Trump’s secretary of state Marco Rubio.

That is why Leo’s criticism may prove more politically consequential. It does not come from an external moral voice alone, as was often the case with Francis, but from an American pontiff speaking into a church and an electorate that Trump cannot afford to ignore.

Early reactions suggest that many Catholic voices in the US have rallied behind Leo, making this not only a diplomatic clash, but a potentially significant domestic one too. (This could also really hurt J.D. Vance. As the likely contender to succeed Trump on the Repulican ticket, he is deeply invested in his Catholic faith and is about to publish a book devoted to his conversion.)

From an international perspective, the break with the pope has also had visible repercussions. Giorgia Meloni, the Italian prime minister, long regarded as Trump’s closest ally in Europe, went publicly in defence of Pope Leo, the bishop of Rome, drawing criticism from Trump himself, who defined the Italian prime minister’s behaviour as “unacceptable”.

To conclude, this is not a political confrontation like the many others the world has become used to with this US president. The stakes are higher at home and on the world stage. At home, it risks alienating many Catholic voters whose support will matter not only in the midterm elections but also in the next presidential race. Internationally, it may complicate Trump’s relationship with European conservative parties, many of which have long sought close association with the Vatican.

The pope, as the leader of a vast global community, cannot be treated as though he were just another political opponent.

Massimo D'Angelo, Research Associate in the Institute for Diplomacy and International Affairs, Loughborough University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
THE NEW CRUSADE

Citing Scripture, Hegseth Compares Trump to Jesus and Journalists Covering Unpopular Iran War to the Pharisees

Hegseth has often used the Bible to sanctify violence against enemies he deems “ungodly.” So far, more than 1,700 civilians have been killed in his and Trump’s war in Iran.



US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth speaks during a press briefing at the Pentagon on April 16, 2026, in Arlington, Virginia. Hegseth addressed the war between the United States and Israel against Iran as negotiations continue toward a longer-term agreement between the countries.
(Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)



Stephen Prager
Apr 16, 2026


Days after President Donald Trump elicited backlash with an artificially generated image likening himself to Jesus Christ, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth doubled down on the comparison, invoking scripture during a Pentagon press briefing.

Hegseth, an avowed Christian nationalist who has portrayed the war against Iran as part of a “crusade” against the Muslim world, has turned the Pentagon into a forum for proselytizing, with monthly prayer meetings featuring fundamentalist pastors.

And that posture has seeped into his regular briefings about the war, as it did on Thursday, when he likened reporters covering the war negatively to the “Pharisees,” who dismissed Jesus as a false prophet in the Bible.



“This past Sunday, I was sitting in church with my family, and our minister preached from the Book of Mark, the third chapter. And in the passage, Jesus entered a synagogue and healed a man with a withered hand,” Hegseth said.

“The Pharisees came to watch, and as the scripture reads, they came to see whether He, Jesus, would heal him on the Sabbath, so that they might accuse Him. You see, the Pharisees, the so-called elites of their time, were there to witness, to write everything down, to report. But their hearts were hardened,” he continued.

“Even though they witnessed a literal miracle, it didn’t matter. They were only there to explain away the goodness in pursuit of their agenda,” Hegseth continued. “I sat there in church, and I thought, ‘These press are just like these Pharisees.’ Not all of you, but the legacy, Trump-hating press.”



Trump’s portrayal of himself as a messiah over the weekend was met with so much outrage, including from many of his Christian supporters, that it is one of the few posts he has deleted from social media.

Other reporting from Axios on Thursday revealed that the controversial image was perhaps more deliberate than previously thought, having been discussed with one of his closest advisers, housing finance chief Bill Pulte, shortly before it was posted.

And Trump has since posted another image of himself being embraced by Jesus, accompanied by a caption stating that “God might be playing his Trump card.”

As for Hegseth’s comments on Thursday, there was little ambiguity in his description of Trump as a Christlike figure.

The defense secretary begged the press to “open their eyes” to the “historic goodness” of the war effort and referred to the operations by the US military to rescue downed bomber pilots in Iran as a “miracle.”



Hegseth has often used scripture to sanctify “overwhelming violence” against enemies he deems “ungodly.” During a Christian service at the Pentagon late last month, he said a prayer for the US military to deliver violence upon those “who deserve no mercy.”

“Behold now the wicked who rise against your justice and the peace of the righteous. Snap the rod of the oppressor, frustrate the wicked plans, and break the teeth of the ungodly. By the blast of your anger, let the evil perish,” Hegseth said. “Grant this task force clear and righteous targets for violence. Surround them as a shield, protect the innocent and blameless in their midst, make their arrows like those of a skilled warrior who returned not empty-handed. Let every round find its mark against the enemies of righteousness and our great nation.”

Whatever overtures have been made toward protecting “the innocent,” Hegseth’s holy war has resulted in more than 1,700 dead civilians in Iran, including more than 250 children, according to the most recent casualty report from the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA). More than 3 million people have been displaced from their homes, according to the United Nations Refugee Agency.

The war that Hegseth suggested the press should be covering positively has been broadly unpopular from the beginning, with 56% of respondents to a Marist poll in early March disapproving of military action.

Just 24% of Americans said in a Reuters/Ipsos poll this week that the war has been worth the costs and benefits, with a divide even among Trump’s core supporters. Twenty percent of Republicans said the war has not been worth it, and 24% were unsure.
Some MAGA voters say Trump assassination attempt was staged: 'The truth will come out'


Trump had just begun his speech at the Pennsylvania rally when the sound of shots rang out and a bullet grazed his right ear. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid


Nick Hilden
April 17, 2026
ALTERNET


The MAGA movement has long coalesced around conspiracy theories, and recently, many have begun floating a new hypothesis: that the 2024 assassination attempt on future President Donald Trump was staged, and that his administration is now covering it up.

On July 13, 2024, shots rang out during a Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, clipping his ear and killing an attendee sitting behind him. The 20-year-old shooter was then killed by the Secret Service, and almost immediately, conspiracy theories began popping up across the internet. MAGA faithful, however, took it as a sign of Trump's divine protection — at least for the time being.

Over the past several months, however, Trump’s appeal has waned with a MAGA that has been disappointed by the president’s foreign military endeavors, economic failings, and bumbling release of the Epstein files. As a result, a growing number of disillusioned MAGA adherents are suggesting that the assassination attempt was faked.


"I think that maybe it was staged," said podcaster Tim Dillon, previously a Trump devotee, in early April. According to Dillon, the time has come for Trump to come out and say that, “Some people are going to be upset by this, but we staged the assassination attempt in Butler to show people how important it was to vote for me and how far I was willing to go for them.”

While such claims are growing louder, they aren’t new. In November, Tucker Carlson suggested that the FBI was involved in covering up the facts behind the shooting, posting that the “FBI lied” about the shooter's online habits. The following day, conservative pundit Emerald Robinson went even further, posting that the FBI “did it.”


Now, however, MAGA followers have begun loudly connecting Trump to the supposed plot, particularly after former US National Counterterrorism Center director Joe Kent resigned from his post and appeared on Carlon’s podcast, during which Kent claimed (without offering evidence) that the investigation into the shooting had been ended before it was concluded.

This prompted QAnon promoter MJ Truth to ask his 100,000 Telegram followers, “How does everyone feel about the narrative surrounding the Butler Assassination Attempt on Trump?” Nearly all replies asserted that the assassination was staged.

“The truth will come out 60+ years from now when we're all dead and nobody really cares anymore … just like JFK!!!!,” wrote one.


Then after Carlson suggested that the Israeli government had “clues” about the shooting, far-right provocateur Candace Owens picked up the conspiracy, claiming that Israeli-American political donor Miriam Adelson was actually behind the attempted assassination. Adelson, proffered Owens, had donated $100 million to Trump in exchange for his support of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, and when he reneged, she tried to have him killed.

Ali Alexander — a far-right activist who organized the Stop the Steal campaign after the 2020 presidential election — has a completely different theory: that Trump is the Antichrist.

“If Donald Trump didn’t receive a miracle, then it was deception or a dark sign,” Alexander wrote in a PDF he posted to his Telegram channel on Tuesday. “There is biblical prophecy in Revelation 13:3 apparently about the Antichrist being struck on the head.”

The passage he’s referencing reads, “I saw that one of its heads seemed to have been mortally wounded, but this mortal wound was healed. Fascinated, the whole world followed after the beast." Trump has, incidentally, received numerous accusations that he is the Antichrist in recent weeks, though for other reasons.

As WIRED notes, “The vast majority of people discussing conspiracy theories about the shooting today are Trump supporters or former Trump supporters.”



Trump's biggest fans want him to come clean about his 'staged' assassination attempt

Travis Gettys
April 17, 2026 
RAW STORY


FILE PHOTO: Republican presidential nominee and former U.S. president Donald Trump speaks during a rally at the site of the July assassination attempt against him, in Butler, Pennsylvania, U.S., October 5, 2024. REUTERS/Brian Snyder/File Photo

Even some of President Donald Trump's biggest fans are starting to believe his first assassination attempt was staged, and they want him to publicly admit it.

Conspiracy theories proliferated almost immediately after a 20-year-old gunman fired off shots that seemingly clipped Trump's ear and killed retired fire chief Corey Comperatore at a July 13, 2024, campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, but now some of the president's own supporters have been casting doubts on the official account of the shooting, reported Wired.

"I think that maybe it was staged," conservative podcaster Tim Dillon told listeners, adding that Trump should admit it. “Some people are going to be upset by this, but we staged the assassination attempt in Butler to show people how important it was to vote for me and how far I was willing to go for them.”

Tucker Carlson has been floating the possibility for months that the FBI had lied about the shooter's online activity as part of a coverup, and conservative pundit Emerald Robinson has blamed the law enforcement agency for pulling off the shooting, but the baseless conspiracy theories gained new traction when former U.S. National Counterterrorism Center director Joe Kent told Carlson the assassination probe had been prematurely shut down.

“If you don't want to address that question, then you just go silent and say you can't ask that question,” Kent told Carlson last month. “Which then creates people who come out of nowhere and they start drawing their own conclusions.”

Kent provided no evidence to support his claims, but his suggestion that the investigation had not been completed has reinvigorated conspiracy theories about the shooting on the MAGA right, with prominent QAnon promoter MJ Truth asking his 100,000 followers: “How does everyone feel about the narrative surrounding the Butler Assassination Attempt on Trump?”

According to Wired's analysis, the vast majority of MJ Truth's followers – nearly all of them Trump supporters – agreed the event had been staged and that the truth would never be revealed.

“The truth will come out 60+ years from now when we're all dead and nobody really cares anymore … just like JFK!!!!,” one follower wrote.

The conspiracy theories have also ramped up as some right-wing influencers float the possibility that Trump is the antichrist due to criticism around the Iran war and his public statements and social media posts comparing himself to Jesus Christ.

“To be clear: if Donald Trump didn’t receive a miracle, then it was deception or a dark sign,” wrote "Stop the Steal" activist Ali Alexander in a five-page PDF posted to his Telegram channel. “There is biblical prophecy in Revelation 13:3 apparently about the Antichrist being struck on the head.”

That biblical passage reads: “I saw that one of its heads seemed to have been mortally wounded, but this mortal wound was healed. Fascinated, the whole world followed after the beast.”

Some elements of the right-wing conspiracy theories draw from antisemitic tropes, such as Carlson's questions about Israel's possible involvement in the assassination plot and MAGA influencer Candace Owens' claims that Israeli-American political donor Miriam Adelson was behind the assassination attempt.

"While the vast majority of people discussing conspiracy theories about the shooting today are Trump supporters or former Trump supporters, in the hours and days after the shooting," Wired noted, "it was left wing so-called Blue Anon accounts pushing the claims that the shooting was staged, suggesting it was all orchestrated by the Secret Service and that Trump had used blood gel packs in an attempt to draw sympathy and votes."




Anti-Monopoly Dems Say Proposed Airline Megamerger ‘Should Never See Light of Day’

The heads of the congressional Monopoly-Busters Caucus warned that a future administration could “break up” a merger of United and American Airlines if it is approved by Trump regulators.



United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby speaks to reporters outside the White House on October 30, 2025 in Washington, DC.
(Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

Jake Johnson
Apr 15, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

The Democratic leaders of the congressional Monopoly-Busters Caucus said Wednesday that a recently floated megamerger of two of the largest airlines in the US—United and American—would be so awful for consumers that it shouldn’t even be considered, let alone approved by federal regulators.

“The rumored scheme to merge United and American should never see the light of day,” said Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), Chris Deluzio (D-Pa.), Pat Ryan (D-NY), and Angie Craig (D-Minn.). “This disaster of a merger would be illegal, consolidating more than a third of the US airline market, eliminating direct competitors on hundreds of routes across the country, and creating a near-monopoly on flights in many cities.”

The House Democrats went on to say that if a United-American merger is formally proposed and approved by President Donald Trump’s regulators, a future Democratic administration could break up the resulting airline behemoth.

“In a time when too many Americans just struggle to even go on vacation, much less afford their housing, childcare, and healthcare, these airline executives should not mistake the corruption of this administration as a green light to break the law,” the lawmakers said. “They should also remember that there is no statute of limitations on breaking up bad deals.”

“In case it is not crystal clear,” they added, “that is absolutely a threat to break up this merger should it ever happen.”

The lawmakers’ statement came a day after Bloomberg reported that United Airlines (UA) CEO Scott Kirby floated the idea of merging his company with American Airlines (AA) “directly” to Trump during a meeting in late February. Kirby also pitched the merger idea to other “senior government officials,” the outlet noted, without providing names.

“A combination would create the largest airline on the planet,” Bloomberg observed. “As a result, any merger between the two aviation giants would pose serious antitrust concerns and likely face significant backlash from consumers, politicians and rival US airlines.”

“That the United CEO raised the idea of a merger with American directly with Donald Trump suggests he thinks he might obtain direct approval from the president for a merger that would otherwise never be permitted.”

Contrary to claims of a “surging MAGA antitrust movement” in the early days of Trump’s second White House term, the president’s administration has proven friendly to corporate merger efforts, from Paramount-Skydance to UnitedHealth-Amedisys and more. Reuters reported Wednesday that “investment banking fees—earned from advising on mergers and acquisitions and underwriting deals—surged an average of 27% across six major US banks in the first quarter, with record dealmaking a key profit driver.”

William McGee, senior fellow for aviation and travel at the American Economic Liberties Project, said Wednesday that “thanks to the federal preemption clause in the 1978 Airline Deregulation Act, states have virtually no airline oversight.”

“So effectively the only sheriffs overseeing airlines are [the Department of Transportation] and [Department of Justice],” McGee observed. “Under Trump they’ve been derelict in policing competition.”

“To be clear: A UA-AA merger is absurd,” McGee added. “A monolith mega-mega-carrier operating 4 of every 10 domestic flights is so harmful that anyone favoring it doesn’t understand airlines. Or is a regulator eager to please a president who ‘loves to see big deals.’”

Robert Weissman, co-president of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, said in a statement Tuesday that “it would be easy to dismiss the prospect of such a merger passing antitrust scrutiny—except that the Trump Department of Justice seems content to bless dangerously high levels of corporate concentration, so long as administration cronies, allies, or flatterers are in charge of corporate goliath.”

“That the United CEO raised the idea of a merger with American directly with Donald Trump,” Weissman added, “suggests he thinks he might obtain direct approval from the president for a merger that would otherwise never be permitted.”
ICYMI

‘Decades in the Making’: Antitrust Advocates Celebrate as Jury Rules Against Live Nation-Ticketmaster


Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison called the verdict “a win for everyone who thinks concert tickets are too damn expensive.”



The Ticketmaster logo is displayed on a smartphone screen in a photo illustration.
(Photo by Jonathan Raa/NurPhoto via Getty Images)


Brad Reed
Apr 15, 2026
COMMON DREAMS


Antitrust advocates celebrated on Wednesday after a jury found that Live Nation and is subsidiary Ticketmaster were illegal monopolies who for decades systematically overcharged customers for concert tickets.

As reported by The Associated Press, the verdict against Live Nation and Ticketmaster could cost the two entities “hundreds of millions of dollars, just for the $1.72 per ticket that the jury found Ticketmaster had overcharged consumers in 22 states,” and they could be forced to sell off some of the venues they own.
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Iran’s Top Diplomat Says Trump Team Sabotaged Talks With Deal ‘Inches Away’

The case against Live Nation, which was brought by 33 states and the District of Columbia, was initially led by the US Department of Justice. However, under President Donald Trump, the DOJ last month reached a last-minute settlement with the company that would not require it to be broken up.

The state attorneys general, however, vowed to see the case through and were rewarded with a big verdict in their favor.

New York Attorney General Letitia James celebrated the verdict, describing it as “a landmark victory to protect New Yorkers from harmful monopolies.”

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison called the verdict “a win for everyone who thinks concert tickets are too damn expensive,” and declared himself “proud to have brought this lawsuit.”

District of Columbia Attorney General Brian Schwalb noted Live Nation “has raked in billions in profits from an illegal monopoly that coerces venues, restricts artists, and exploits fans,” and called the verdict “a massive win in the fight for fairness for local venues, artists, and fans.”

Lina Khan, former chair of the Federal Trade Commission under President Joe Biden, hailed the verdict, but said it was just “a key first step towards ending Live Nation’s monopolistic control and securing real relief for those it harmed.”

Lee Hepner, senior legal counsel at the American Economic Liberties Project, said the verdict was “decades in the making,” and he cited iconic Seattle band Pearl Jam’s fight against Ticketmaster in the 1990s to illustrate just how long it’s taken to hold the company accountable.

“Pour one out for Pearl Jam, who testified before Congress in 1993 about Ticketmaster’s abuse of the live concert industry,” he commented.

The Roosevelt Institute took a shot at the Trump DOJ for bailing on the case, and noted the verdict against Live Nation “only happened because state AGs kept pushing after a federal settlement that let the companies off the hook.”
‘This Fight Is Nowhere Near Over,’ Privacy Advocates Warn After GOP Again Punts FISA Vote

“We won’t stop fighting for a self-evident truth: The government should not be able to bypass the courts to surveil Americans,” said one privacy campaigner.



US Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.) arrives for a caucus meeting in the US Capitol in Washington, DC on April 15, 2026.
(Photo by Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc. via Getty Images)

Jessica Corbett
Apr 15, 2026
C0MMON DREAMS

A controversial federal spying power is set to expire next week, but Republican leadership in the US House of Representatives again delayed a reauthorization vote on Wednesday amid persistent demands for reforms from across the political spectrum.


President Donald Trump is pushing for a “clean” 18-month extension of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which allows for warrantless spying on the electronic communications of noncitizens located outside the United States.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) “canceled a vote scheduled for Wednesday evening... amid a hard-liner rebellion, making it more likely the program could expire in five days—but said the House would try again Thursday,” Politico reported.

As for whether there would be the necessary votes on Thursday to adopt a rule to proceed to consideration of the bill, Johnson said: “I think we will... We’re working through some final details.”

Although GOP leaders are plowing ahead with their reauthorization effort, Demand Progress senior policy adviser Hajar Hammado still welcomed the delay, declaring that “this time, fearmongering was not enough to overcome a bipartisan movement fighting for the privacy rights of all Americans.”

“We rarely ever see the full force of the White House and the intelligence agencies fail to browbeat Congress into giving them what they want,” Hammado noted. “That this happened today is a testament to the tireless work of our movement, which has been successfully bringing Republicans, Democrats, and Independents together for a common cause.”

“Of course, this fight is nowhere near over,” she added. “Speaker Johnson can still force a vote any time with extremely short notice, but our coalition feels the wind at our backs, and we won’t stop fighting for a self-evident truth: The government should not be able to bypass the courts to surveil Americans.”

Hammado’s group has been a leader in the growing coalition calling for reforms—including for lawmakers to close the “data broker loophole” that intelligence and law enforcement agencies use to buy their way around the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution, which is supposed to protect Americans against unreasonable searches and seizures.

It’s not just congressional Republicans under pressure. Demand Progress Action and Fight for the Future took aim at House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Jim Himes (D-Conn.)—who has signaled that he will support renewal and vote against adding privacy protections—with a Sunday print advertisement in the Connecticut Post.



On Tuesday, Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus Chair Grace Meng (D-NY), Congressional Hispanic Caucus Chair Adriano Espaillat (D-NY), and Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Greg Casar (D-Texas) spearheaded a letter to Democratic and Republican leaders in both chambers arguing that “this authority ought to include meaningful Fourth Amendment protections for Americans in its renewal package.”

“The Trump administration has demonstrated an unparalleled appetite for collecting and exploiting Americans’ personal data,” the caucus leaders and members wrote. “The administration has built profiles on American citizens, demanded that artificial intelligence (AI) companies assist in mass domestic surveillance, and paid hundreds of millions of dollars to build a megadatabase of Americans’ personal data. Without independent guardrails on Section 702, this administration has
repeatedly shown that it cannot be trusted to police its own use of this sweeping surveillance authority.”

Over 30 civil society organizations—including Demand Progress, Fight for the Future, Indivisible, Project On Government Oversight, RootsAction, and more—endorsed the congressional letter. POGO policy counsel Donald Bell commended the leadership of the caucuses “in seeking real guardrails and accountability that protect our constitutional rights,” while Hammado urged “all members of Congress to follow the lead” of the three groups.

Meanwhile, The American Prospect reported Monday that “the Congressional Black Caucus will quietly support an effort to reauthorize surveillance powers that were used to spy on Black Lives Matter activists in 2020,” which “comes after Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY), the powerful ranking member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, successfully lobbied CBC leadership to stand down on reforming the vast intelligence authority.”

After publication, Meeks told the outlet that “I support FISA reauthorization, but the only vote I’ve been whipping is my war powers resolution to end the war in Iran. Whip operations are traditionally conducted by the ranking member of the committee that has jurisdiction over the legislation being considered. Any claim that I’m whipping the CBC on FISA is false.”

In response to that reporting,Re Access Now, Fight for the Future, and STOP Spying NYC said in a joint statement that “if the heat of the glares aimed at Rep. Meeks right now could melt him, he’d be dripping like a snowman on the pavement in July. No one in Queens wants everybody in the federal government to have total access to the intimate details of their lives with the tap of a mouse.”

Highlighting the danger of continuing the spying power sans privacy protections as Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers roam US streets, the groups said that “it is a total betrayal of the Fourth Amendment and the dignity of everyday people in this country to treat us all as if we are guilty until Big Brother Trump proves us innocent by watching our every move. And worse—it’s impossible to predict how these troves of records may be weaponized in the future against racial justice activists, trans and queer families, abortion patients and providers, anti-war activists, or anyone who acts out of step with MAGA.”

“It’s supposed to be the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, not the Forever Indiscriminate Surveillance Act. Rep. Meeks’ colleagues are proposing real safeguards to protect people against this indiscriminate government surveillance,” the trio added. “He is not only failing his constituency, he is disrespecting them and putting them in danger. It’s not too late for Rep. Meeks to get on the right side of history.”