Stack the Week

April 20-24

Welcome everyone to the Stack the Week experiment for April twentieth through the twenty-fourth.¹ You can hear me read it here:

Iran on pause. Schrodinger’s Strait was both opened and closed. Kash Out Crash Out at the FBI and cash out from the Treasury Department. Virginia voters turned 3-d chess into checkers. A soldier bet on the wrong war. And in the UK Smoke ‘em while you got ‘em.

So let’s take it day by day.

Monday April 20

Iran War

In Islamabad, Pakistan, the high-security Red Zone surrounding the Serena Hotel was sealed off by traffic police. Billboards went up. Security checkpoints multiplied. All in anticipation of a face-to-face meeting between Vice President Vance and Iran’s Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf — a meeting that, by Monday night, had become a ghost summit. The Iranians refused to show, citing the ongoing U.S. naval blockade as a violation of the ceasefire.

The president called Iran’s leaders “indecisive.” Regional experts saw something different: an Iranian government waiting for a unified signal from Washington that never came.

Friday had looked different. The president told CBS News that Iran had “agreed to everything,” describing a joint operation to remove enriched uranium: “Our people, together with the Iranians, are going to work together to go get it. And then we’ll take it to the United States.” Within hours, Tehran disputed the president’s claims and said there was no such deal.

By Sunday, familiar terrain. The president posted that his representatives would arrive in Islamabad the following evening, warning that if Iran rejected what he called a “very fair and reasonable DEAL,” the United States would “knock out every single Power Plant, and every single Bridge, in Iran.” “NO MORE MR. NICE GUY!” he wrote.

While gas prices climbed, it felt like the gas went completely out of the president’s war effort.

An administration official told Axios that the president is “over it” and willing to give Iran a window of only “three to five days” to “get their shit together.” He doesn’t want to fight anymore, the official said, but will if he feels he has to.

Two questions keep surfacing. Did the president’s negotiating tactics — the public threats and the premature claims of a total surrender — poison whatever progress existed? And is this a repetition of what preceded the initial strike: a fundamental misreading of where the Iranians actually stood? One of the rotating justifications for the war was that Iran refused to negotiate in good faith. There were suggestions at the time that the U.S. had simply misread the internal fractures of the Iranian leadership. Career diplomats exist precisely to anticipate these gaps — to know the difference between posturing and a genuine impasse before the shooting starts.

This also returns us to the unanswered questions at the center of the entire war: Was Iran truly close to a weapon, and was military action the only remedy? Only one person claims to know the answers, and he is an unreliable narrator — perhaps even to himself.

Monday proved that in the Trumpian theater of war, the Negotiator and the Commander-in-Chief are often on stage at the same time, speaking over one another.

Gas Prices

President Trump told The Hill on Monday his Energy Secretary Chris Wright got it wrong when he said gas prices might not fall below $3 a gallon until next year. “No, I think he’s wrong on that. Totally wrong,” Trump said, adding that prices would drop “as soon as this ends”—meaning the Iran war. The president offered no mechanism, no timeline, just confidence overriding his own appointee’s assessment.

But Wright has the better of the argument. Reopening the Strait of Hormuz doesn’t flip a switch. It starts a clock. Tankers need weeks to reach refineries, refineries that cut capacity or shifted schedules during the disruption need time to ramp back up, and the fuel still has to move through the distribution chain to local stations. “Gas prices go up like a rocket and come down like a feather,” as independent oil analyst Tom Kloza put it to CNN.

Why? Gas station owners bought their current inventory at peak prices and won’t eat the loss until they’re confident the drop will stick. Consumers, meanwhile, stop comparison-shopping once prices dip even slightly, which removes the competitive pressure that might force stations to cut faster. And none of this accounts for OPEC+, which controls supply independent of any shipping lane. If the cartel holds production cuts to defend an $80 or $90 floor, American drivers pay that price regardless of what happens in the Strait. Peak summer driving season arrives on top of all of it, pushing demand higher just as supply tries to normalize.

SCOTUS on Catholic Preschools

The Supreme Court decided to wrestle this: A gay parent wants to send their four-year-old to a neighborhood preschool—with money the state set aside for exactly that purpose. The school says no, because the people who run it believe, at the core of who they are, that enrolling that child would be wrong.

The Supreme Court justices agreed on Monday to decide whether Catholic preschools in Colorado that decline to enroll 4-year-olds with gay or transgender parents can participate in a publicly funded state program. A Colorado program pays for families to send their children to the preschool of their choice, public or private, including faith-based programs.Two Catholic parish preschools in the Denver area said admitting such children would require them to violate their religious convictions. The state said the schools can’t block the kids. The church sued. The church lost—twice. Now the Supreme Court will decide.

At bottom, this is a fight about two things the government does when it makes that call: it decides who belongs, and it decides whose conscience counts. For a gay parent, a state that allows that exclusion when distributing tax dollars is a state that has decided who belongs. For a believer, a state that overrides their conviction is a state that has decided whose conscience counts.

FBI Director Kash Patel sues The Atlantic

Kash out. The FBI director announced Monday that he was suing The Atlantic for a story over the weekend that asserted that Patel drank to such excess that it was affecting his ability to do his job and that as a result, his job might be in danger. The magazine also reported that he is sometimes so out of pocket (that’s not a euphemism) that key decisions cannot be made and, in the article’s most colorful passage: “On multiple occasions in the past year, members of his security detail had difficulty waking Patel because he was seemingly intoxicated.” A request for “breaching equipment”—normally used by SWAT and hostage-rescue teams to quickly gain entry into buildings—was made last year because Patel had been unreachable behind locked doors.” If the FBI director were to carry this suit to its conclusion, The Atlantic would be able to depose Patel and administration officials under the penalty of perjury.

Detroit Ballots

The Justice Department demanded that Wayne County, Michigan — home to Detroit — turn over more than 860,000 ballots, envelopes, and receipts from the 2024 election. DOJ cited three fraud convictions and five lawsuits as evidence of the county’s “history” of election problems. But the three convictions were from 2020, involved individuals caught forging signatures, and were prosecuted by the state — in other words, cases where the system worked exactly as designed. The five lawsuits were almost entirely dismissed by Michigan judges for lack of evidence. The Republican-led state Senate also investigated and found no widespread fraud. None of it had anything to do with 2024.

This fits a pattern. In January, the FBI raided the Fulton County, Georgia, elections office and seized hundreds of boxes of 2020 ballots. Last May, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s team seized voting machines in Puerto Rico, finding no evidence of the Venezuelan interference they were looking for. The Justice Department has sued 24 states for refusing to turn over unredacted voter rolls. In each case, the administration cites election integrity; in each case, the predicate is thin or nonexistent.

One detail worth noting: Trump won Michigan in 2024. He lost Wayne County by nearly 250,000 votes. The DOJ is investigating an election its own boss won, in a county where he didn’t.

Whether any of these inquiries turn up actual fraud is almost beside the point. As Trump’s own attorney general William Barr testified in 2022, he told the White House at the time that its election fraud theories were “crazy stuff” doing “grave, grave disservice to the country.” Trump and his allies lost dozens of lawsuits challenging 2020 results. But Trump has repeatedly, across decades, raised the specter of election fraud where none exists — not necessarily to prove it, but to create enough confusion that the claim itself becomes the point.

Tariff Refunds. (New York Times)

Even though president Trump said tariffs were paid by other countries, it was always Americans who paid the import taxes. That’s why this Monday, exactly two months after the Supreme Court struck down President Donald Trump’s most sweeping tariffs, American importers started applying for reimbursement. They are owed $166 billion in refunds plus interest. It is estimated that 30,000 to 35,000 firms will apply. Everything from precision manufacturers to pharmaceutical importers will be eligible to upload proof of the levies they paid. It’s a deluge. Some companies have up to 5,000 individual entry lines to reconcile.Refunds will be issued 60 to 90 days after approval. The court ruled that the president had usurped Congress’ power to tax through his tariff program. Economists note that while the money is coming back, it doesn’t account for the “lost opportunity cost.” That is all the things that couldn’t be done while trying to avoid the import taxes– Companies reported moving senior logistics managers off of product development and into “tariff mitigation” full-time for over 18 months– and now another opportunity cost: all the stuff that isn’t being done in order to keep up with this paperwork nightmare that was easily avoidable. Many small businesses, unable to float the 25% tax, went under; they will not be able to request refunds.

In an interview, the president said he will “remember” companies that don’t claim their money.

While the president’s signature economic policy is being dismantled in keeping with the Supreme Court ruling, his standing on the economy continues to drop. An Associated Press poll puts approval on the economy at 30 percent in April, down from 38 percent in March. Only about a quarter of adults approve of his handling of the cost of living — a Marquette Law School survey puts that number at 24 percent. The New York Times has him at his highest disapproval rating ever: 58 percent.

Gaza needs $71 billion to rebuild

“Domicide” is the systematic destruction of the ability to call a palace home. That is what a new study by the European Union, United Nations and World Bank shows has happened in Gaza. It says the Israeli destruction in retaliation for the Hamas attack on October 7 has knocked the civilization back eight decades. Over 371,000 housing units are damaged or destroyed. That is roughly 92% of all pre-war residential structures. A daily average of four people are still killed and 24 wounded every day during this “ceasefire” period due to unexploded ordnance and lingering skirmishes.

Six months into the ceasefire, the “reconstruction” hasn’t actually begun for most. Nearly the entire population is squeezed into a sliver of land along the coast, while the rest of the territory is occupied or under displacement orders.

over 50% of hospitals non-functional. Because Israel still restricts fuel, half of all families are now burning hazardous waste and plastic to cook their food, leading to a surge in respiratory illnesses among children. There is an estimated 40 million tonnes of debris to clear. To put that in perspective, if you lined up the trucks needed to move it, the line would stretch from Gaza to New York and back.Over 80% of croplands are destroyed. The soil is now “decimated” by munitions and noxious gases, meaning Gazans cannot even grow their own vegetables to offset the aid shortages. The World Health Organization’s emergency minimum water ration is 15 liters per person per day. Gazans are currently averaging 8.4 liters—less than a single 10-minute shower for an entire day of drinking, cooking, and washing.

Drought in the US

In context that is so different I can’t make obvious transition, there are water shortages in the U.S. too. More than 61% of the nation is now in a drought, the highest percentage in nearly four years, according to the most recent U.S. Drought Monitor. In all, 45 of 50 states are enduring drought, with only Alaska, North Dakota, Michigan, Connecticut and Rhode Island completely drought-free.In Texas and the Southern Plains, soil moisture levels are at historic lows, which typically leads to higher crop insurance claims and potential spikes in food pricing for corn and wheat. In Virginia and the Carolinas, summer droughts significantly increase the risk of “dry lightning” and forest fires in the Appalachian region. Power plants (thermal and nuclear) require massive amounts of water for cooling. Low water levels in reservoirs can lead to reduced power output or temporary shutdowns during peak summer heat.

North Korean Missile Launch: Father and Daughter Affair.

What are intergenerational dictators wearing to missile launches this season? Black leather jackets. Not exactly a departure from menace wear, but that’s what North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and his teenage daughter were both wearing as they watched a missile test launch from a coastal observation point as a projectile soared over the water, trailing gray smoke. No fuchsia for the next generation, but it was far more stylish than the four elderly military officers standing behind them in regulation brown, peering up into the sky, all of them holding small booklets and writing instruments like they were all recording their golf scores. South Korea’s spy service recently assessed that the daughter, reportedly named Kim Ju Ae, could be considered Kim’s heir. North Korea has tested cluster bomb warheads before. But observers say the Iran war may have prompted North Korea to display that it has cluster munitions and accelerate efforts to develop better ones.

Labor Secretary Steps Down

Monday, the Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer stepped down amid an accordion file of accusations such as sending staff to pick up liquor and attempting to use business trips as excuses for personal travel including for example, a UFC fight in Chicago, a Morgan Wallen concert and to see friends and family in various states. She reportedly asked staff to design work trips that would provide her openings to attend those events. For months, the Labor Department’s Inspector General’s Office has been investigating these claims as well as a complaint that Chavez-DeRemer was having a sexual relationship with a member of her security team. She now joins former Homeland Security Secretary Christie Noem who was accused of similar business and former Attorney General Pam Bondi, as the highest profile ejections from the Trump administration.

Tim Cook to Step Down

Apple — the world’s most valuable company, one of the Magnificent Seven that drive the S&P 500, a $4 trillion enterprise whose devices sit in the hands of 2.5 billion people — will celebrate its 50th anniversary in 2026, and this week announced its most significant leadership transition in a generation. CEO Tim Cook will step down September 1, moving to Executive Chairman. Cook transformed Apple from a premium computer maker into a global utility — revenues nearly quadrupled to $400 billion under his watch. But his final years were shadowed by a perceived AI gap, with Apple trailing Microsoft and Google.

His successor: John Ternus, the 50-year-old hardware chief who has been with Apple since 2001 and led the transition to Apple Silicon, the move that unified the company’s chips and software architecture. Where Cook was the operations and supply chain master, Ternus is a product engineer — an amateur rally car racer known for taking teams to off-road tracks to practice precision under pressure. The choice signals Apple believes its AI problem is ultimately a hardware problem.

While Apple figures out its AI strategy, a Chinese smartphone company just built a robot that outruns every human who has ever lived. One year ago it finished a half marathon in two hours and forty minutes. This year: fifty minutes. So, if Apple licks its AI problem, the next Apple CEO might be a robot.

Tuesday April 21

Iran War

“Vacate your engine room. We are prepared to subject you to disabling fire.” This message sent Sunday by the USS Spruance preceded the disabling the Touska, an Iranian-flagged container ship, which like a child at college, had been ignoring messages. For six hours warnings were sent until finallyprecision rounds were fired directly into the ship’s propulsion compartment. This surgical strike allowed the Marines from the 31st MEU to board via helicopter and secure the vessel.

Why am I putting it on a Tuesday? First of all, it’s just an amazing story. And second of all, the seizure underscored the extreme tension in the Strait of Hormuz, where commercial traffic has effectively vanished; only three tankers transited the waterway that entire day, all of which carried non-Iranian cargo and were only permitted passage after pre-coordinating with regional authorities to avoid similar engine room events.

On the diplomatic front, the engine also seemed to be disabled. This somewhat bouncy transition brought to you by the bouncy cab in which it was written.

Tuesday, President Trump told CNBC that he expected a “great deal” with Iran but signaled he will not extend the ceasefire and was ready to resume bombing. By the end of the day he had announced an indefinite ceasefire.

In what is becoming common practice, $500 billion in oil trades were placed just before Trump made the ceasefire announcement.

In the CNBC interview the president said, “We’ve taken out their leaders…but these leaders are much more rational.”

This is an ongoing matter. Are the leaders of Iran really more rational? What evidence is there of that? These are the leaders whose civilization Trump was promising to destroy. Why would he have wanted to destroy the reasonable leaders? Why would he wing out civilization destroying threats if they were responding to reason. But let’s accept the president’s assertion that he changed the regime. What is the point of regime change if the regime that is in power is still very hostile to the United States or more hostile?

What is fair to say is that the U.S. strikes effectively ended the “Theocratic” era of Iran, replacing it with a Militaristic Autocracy led by the IRGC. The “regime change” Trump refers to is the transition from a government of clerics to a government of survivalist generals. Whether they are “rational” or simply “desperate” remains the central question of the current ceasefire negotiations.

Finally, because the Iran war has not gone as easily as the president expected, he’s taken to declaring that he would have had an easier time with other wars. Vietnam, for example, the war he did not decide to fight when he had the chance. “I would have won Vietnam very quickly. I would have, if I were president, I would have won Iraq in the same amount of time that we won, because essentially, we won here.

Just a week after Artemis II took humans farther from earth than any had ever been, this assertion traveled an even greater distance from life on earth as we know it.

Drone Boost

The Pentagon’s largest-ever budget request earmarks $75 billion for drones and the technology to counter them. The centerpiece: the Defense Autonomous Working Group, a little-known office working with U.S. commandos, would jump from $226 million this year to $54.6 billion — likely the largest single year-over-year boost of any defense program in history, and certain to draw scrutiny inside an already eye-catching $1.5 trillion request that’s 42 percent larger than this year’s budget.

The numbers amount to a verdict on how effective cheap drones have been in this conflict — and in Ukraine before it. The math is brutal: the U.S. routinely uses million-dollar Patriot and THAAD missiles to intercept drones that cost a few thousand dollars. Roughly $21 billion of the request targets that imbalance directly, funding directed-energy weapons — lasers and high-power microwaves — designed to kill drone swarms at a cost of a few dollars per shot rather than a few million.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Airline Iran War Fallout Spreads

Global jet fuel prices are up more than 70 percent, and the Iran-war-based pain is spreading across the airline industry. American Airlines lowered its earnings target, warning it may post a loss in 2026 after $4 billion in additional fuel costs. United Airlines says fares may rise 20 percent. In Europe, where airlines are the largest consumers of fuel shipped through the Strait of Hormuz, low-cost carrier Ryanair said last week it could only guarantee jet fuel supply through May.

Passengers are adapting in their own way. Travel experts report that frequent flyers are hedging against cancellations and route disruptions by using miles to make overlapping bookings across multiple routes for the same trip. Because award tickets carry minimal or no cancellation fees compared with cash bookings, travelers can drop the extra reservations at the last minute.

Those who stay home are staying home — and drinking there.

Nearly a third of Americans who still drink say they now pregame before going out because drinks cost too much. The practice, once associated with college, is showing up on spreadsheets. Suntory, which makes Jim Beam and Maker’s Mark, reports higher demand for its small-format bottles. Among drinkers who say prices influence whether they go out at all, 41 percent have switched to water or non-alcoholic options. Thirty-seven percent are pregaming.

Condom prices

Also potentially grounded as a result of the war: Malaysian company Karex told Reuters Tuesday that the company may be forced to raise condom prices at least 20 to 30 percent. Condom production requires materials that also arrive by ship through the waterway that has become the center of this conflict. The company, which produces Durex and Trojan makes 5 billion condoms annually and exports to more than 130 countries. The company’s CEO Goh told Reuters that along with higher costs for manufacturing and packaging, there are delays in shipping. “We’re seeing a lot more condoms actually sitting on vessels that have not ⁠arrived ​at their destination but are highly required.”

Pentagon Flu Vaccine

The Pentagon is no longer requiring those who serve to get the annual flu vaccine. For decades, the consensus was that a flu outbreak in a barracks or on a carrier could take a unit “off the board” just as effectively as an enemy strike. The new priority argues that the intangible cost to morale and the political cost of coercion are now higher than the biological cost of the virus. It frames the mandate not as a shield against disease, but as a “compliance test” that alienates the very demographic the military needs to recruit. This isn’t really about the flu; it’s a retroactive battle over the COVID-19 vaccine mandates. The resistance that formed during the pandemic has been industrialized into a broader skepticism of all mandatory medical interventions. By removing the flu shot—a long-standing, relatively uncontroversial requirement—the administration is signaling a “demilitarization” of public health, treating medical decisions as private choices rather than command directives.

Congressional Expulsions:

Last week two men accused of sexual predation were bounced from the house and this week on Tuesday, there were two more motions in the bouncy House. House Democrats prepared to expel Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (D-FL) for, among other things, funneling $5 million in COVID relief funds to her campaign, but the Congresswoman resigned before they could make it official. Rep. Nancy Mace introduced a measure to expel Rep. Cory Mills (R-FL) who has been accused of campaign finance violations and sexual misconduct.

Fed Independence:

For months Donald Trump has used his administration to target the Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell and member of the fed board of governors Lisa Cook. He didn’t like their reluctance to lower rates fast enough. They, along with most economists, worried inflation would rise.

Tuesday, the president’s replacement appeared as a part of his Senate confirmation. Much of the intense questioning Kevin Warsh faced regarded his independence from the White House. The Fed is an independent agency to keep politics out of interest rate decisions in order to safeguard the economy. But even a president booing from the sidelines has economic impacts.

Southern Poverty Law

A federal grand jury in Alabama indicted the Southern Poverty Law Center on Tuesday — 11 counts including wire fraud, bank fraud, and conspiracy to commit money laundering. The DOJ’s theory: the SPLC, a 55-year-old civil rights organization best known for fighting the Klan, defrauded its donors by secretly funneling more than $3 million to paid informants inside the very extremist groups it claimed to be dismantling.

The informants were known internally as “field sources” or “the Fs.” Between 2014 and 2023, at least eight were paid through shell companies with names like “Center Investigative Agency,” “Fox Photography,” and “Rare Books Warehouse,” with payments loaded onto prepaid cards. One informant affiliated with the neo-Nazi National Alliance received more than $1 million. Another, paid $270,000, sat in the online leadership group that planned the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville — attended the rally at the SPLC’s direction, made racist posts under their supervision, and coordinated transportation for other attendees. After Charlottesville left one person dead and dozens injured, SPLC donations nearly tripled, from $50 million to $132 million in a single year.

The SPLC calls it a “weaponized prosecution,” saying its informants risked their lives and shared intelligence that saved others. The core problem with the DOJ’s theory: paying confidential sources inside criminal organizations is what federal law enforcement does routinely. Multiple legal scholars called the indictment thin and questioned whether it makes out the elements of a crime.

That’s the legal question. The political question is broader. The SPLC’s “Hate Map” has been used for decades by the FBI, banks, and tech companies to track, de-platform, and investigate extremist groups. It has also been used to label conservative organizations — a fact Republicans have hammered for years. This indictment arrives under an acting attorney general who is under reported pressure from the president to deliver wins against perceived political opponents. Whether the underlying conduct was criminal or standard investigative practice, the charges alone freeze the SPLC’s operations and credibility at a moment when the organization sits on a $750 million endowment that the DOJ could target through forfeiture.

Florida and AI

Florida launched a criminal investigation into OpenAI on Tuesday after chat logs revealed the suspect in last April’s Florida State University shooting — two killed, six injured — asked ChatGPT what gun and ammunition to use, where and when on campus he’d find the most people, and whether school shooters go to maximum security prison. The chatbot answered. The state’s attorney general said if a human being had provided that advice, prosecutors would charge them with murder. The question with no precedent: does the same apply when the advisor is software?​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Ticks sending people to the ER

While city dwellers move to the country for the warmer months, ticks are moving in the opposite direction. Lyme disease cases in Michigan nearly quadrupled between 2022 and 2025 in part because ticks are moving to suburban and urban areas. The CDC reports that bites are sending Americans to the emergency room (ER) at the highest rate in nearly 10 years. It’s not just the city’s broadway plays and used bookstores that are causing the spike, however. The earlier onset of warm weather means more people are out and about outside.

Wednesday, April 22

Iran War: Six Months to Sweep Mines.

On Wednesday, Iran attacked three ships in the Strait of Hormuz and escorted two to Iranian waters. The dueling naval operations strained the ceasefire and exposed a key sticking point in negotiations: Iran’s chief negotiator says reopening the strait is impossible while the U.S. blockade remains.

That blockade was no longer the concern of Secretary of the Navy John Phelan, fired Wednesday, three weeks after Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George got the same treatment. The dispute reportedly pit Phelan—a political appointee—against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth over management style, personnel, and the pace of shipbuilding.

The Washington Post reported that in a classified briefing to the House Armed Services Committee, Pentagon officials said completely clearing the Strait of Hormuz of Iranian-laid mines could take six months.

This is what makes the war so tricky. Wednesday morning the president boasted about destroying the Iranian navy. True enough—92% of the fleet, 140 to 158 vessels. But military analysts and the Pentagon distinguish between the “conventional navy”—which is indeed “gone”—and Iran’s “asymmetric” capacity, which remains potent.

Iran deploys hundreds of small, civilian-style boats and midget submarines difficult to track. These launch from hidden coastal facilities and seed small numbers of mines even during a ceasefire or active blockade. Iran has GPS-enabled “floating” mines that can be released remotely, making their location unpredictable once they hit the current. Iran’s sea mine inventory numbers in the hundreds—enough to seed the Strait faster than the U.S. can clear it.

Specialized mine-countermeasure vessels are slow-moving and vulnerable. The U.S. uses unmanned underwater vehicles like Knifefish to minimize risk to personnel, but these drones still require support ships that are targets for Iranian missiles, drones, and fast-attack craft. The Navy must first establish a “sanitized” zone to protect clearing operations—difficult when Iran can fire land-based anti-ship missiles from coastal batteries and hidden tunnel networks.

And clearing has to be near-total to matter. Shipping firms suspended operations in late February after 21 confirmed attacks on merchant vessels. The uncertainty has driven insurance premiums to prohibitive levels.

Ukraine gets Cash

The war in Ukraine continues — another conflict the president said he would solve in short order. Since he hasn’t, the Ukrainians took what help they could get: the European Union will finally disburse a €90 billion loan after Hungary lifted its veto, ending months of deadlock over funding that Ukraine needs within weeks to keep both its military and its government running. The breakthrough came with a trade — Ukraine repaired the Druzhba pipeline and resumed Russian oil flows to Hungary and Slovakia, and in return, both countries dropped their blocks on the loan and a fresh package of Russian sanctions.

Can we pause here for a minute? Has any artist other than Jimi Hendrix done more with Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower” than Dave Matthews? Did I say that out loud? Sorry, that’s on my headphones.

No, the reason I wanted to pause is that what we have here is Ukraine repairing a pipeline so their enemy can sell oil — profits that fund the very missiles being fired at Ukrainian cities. They did it anyway, because they needed the money more than they needed the principle. That’s the paradoxical math of relations among nations.

On the battlefield, the money arrives at an unexpectedly strong moment. Ukraine’s foreign minister said the country’s frontline position is the strongest it has been in a year, driven largely by drone superiority and improved air defense. An analysis of data from the Institute for the Study of War confirmed that Russian troops made almost no territorial gains across the frontline in March — the first time that has happened in two and a half years.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Virginia Redistricting & 2026 Midterms

Reform minded states and voters have put independent redistricting commissions in place to keep the party in power from drawing maps that keep it in power. In 2020, 65 percent of Virginia voters approved exactly that — a bipartisan commission to draw the state’s congressional lines. This week, Virginia Democrats threw it out.On Tuesday, voters narrowly approved a referendum — 51.5 to 48.6 percent — to temporarily return redistricting to the Democratic-controlled legislature, which has already drawn a map favoring Democrats in 10 of the state’s 11 House districts. Virginia currently splits 6-5.

The new lines could flip four seats. Democrats aren’t pretending this is principled. They’re calling it necessary. The redistricting arms race started last summer, when President Trump pressured Texas to redraw its congressional map mid-decade — something states almost never do between censuses. Texas obliged, targeting five Democratic seats. Missouri and North Carolina followed. The Supreme Court allowed the Texas map to proceed 6-3, despite a lower court finding it was a racial gerrymander.

California responded with its own Democratic-friendly redraw. Virginia followed. Trump’s original calculation was straightforward: gerrymander enough red states to insulate the Republican House majority heading into the midterms. Instead, he triggered a chain reaction. Democrats now argue they can’t unilaterally respect nonpartisan commissions while Republicans dismantle the maps in every state they control. All of this activity nets out to mean that Democrats have actually picked up a seat.

The legal fight isn’t over. A Tazewell County judge — the same Republican appointee who tried to block the referendum twice before, and was overruled by the Virginia Supreme Court both times — declared the vote void the day after it passed. The attorney general is appealing. The state Supreme Court will likely have the final word before August primaries.

More districts drawn to be safe for one party means more representatives who answer only to their base, more primaries decided by the most partisan voters, and less incentive for anyone in office to negotiate with the other side. The commissions were supposed to prevent exactly this.

Ten Commandments in Texas classrooms

Texas can require the Ten Commandments to be displayed in public schools, a U.S. appeals court ruled. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, called the ruling “a major victory for Texas and our moral values.” “The Ten Commandments have had a profound impact on our nation, and it’s important that students learn from them every single day.” Paxton’s wife of 38 years filed for divorce last year “on Biblical grounds” and in the filing claimed that he had committed adultery, proof of the ongoing need of moral reminders. Similar laws in Arkansas and Louisiana are also before the courts.

U.S. Rep. David Scott dies

U.S. Rep. David Scott, a Georgia Democrat and the first Black chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, died on Wednesday. He was 80. His office described the death as “unexpected,” – indeed he had voted Tuesday on the House floor– and while no specific cause was immediately released, he had recently dealt with declining health. Scott, who was seeking his 13th term in Congress despite challenges from within his party, was once a leading voice for Democrats on issues related to farm aid policy and food aid for consumers and a prominent Black member of the party’s moderate Blue Dog caucus.

CDC won’t publish report

The Washington Post reported that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had blocked the publication of a scientific study showing that COVID-19 vaccines significantly reduced hospitalizations and emergency room visits this past winter by approximately 50% to 55%. In public health terms, cutting the risk of hospitalization in half is at the high end of what is usually hoped for from a seasonal flu shot.

Acting CDC Director Jay Bhattacharya—who also leads the NIH—halted the publication citing “methodological concerns.” The Post cited sources familiar with the matter who noted the study used the same process—the “test-negative design” and VISION network data—the CDC recently used to publish flu vaccine effectiveness data.

The decision has sparked internal concern that scientific data is being suppressed to align with the views of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a prominent critic of the COVID-19 shots whose critiques have been received with withering criticism from experts across all scientific fields, who point out that his positions contradict the consensus of nearly every major global health body.

UK smoking ban

The UK Parliament passed the Tobacco and Vapes Bill on Tuesday — legislation that ensures anyone born on or after January 1, 2009, can never legally buy tobacco in their lifetime. Not at 18, not at 30, not ever. Starting in 2027, the legal purchasing age rises by one year, every year. The door closes behind today’s 17-year-olds and stays closed.

The scope goes well beyond cigarettes. The bill bans snus, the oral tobacco popular in Scandinavia, and extends to smoking accessories — including cigarette papers, meaning the 2009-and-after generation can’t buy the materials to roll their own. On vaping, the government still treats e-cigarettes as a quitting tool for adults but moved to strip away everything that makes them appealing to children: new powers to restrict candy-like flavors, packaging, and store displays, plus a ban on vaping in cars when children are present. Smoke-free and vape-free zones now extend to playgrounds and the areas outside schools and hospitals.

A clerk who fails to check ID faces a £200 on-the-spot fine. Shops that repeatedly violate the law can be banned from selling tobacco or nicotine products for a year. The bill cleared its final legislative stage between the Commons and the Lords on Tuesday and awaits Royal Assent from King Charles, expected next week.

While we’re in Britain: the Times published a quiz this week asking whether you can tell real British regional insults from fake ones. “Bampot” (Scottish: lunatic), “wazzock” (Northern English: idiot), “numpty” (Scottish: fool), and “mardy” (Midlands: soft, cowardly) are all apparently real words that real people say to other real people. The quiz is in the show notes, you jammy dodger.

Carter Page settlement.

The Trump Justice Department agreed Wednesday to pay $1.25 million to Carter Page, the 2016 campaign adviser the FBI wiretapped during the Russia investigation — settling a lawsuit the government had already won in lower courts. Two things are true about Carter Page, and the settlement works hard to obscure one of them. The FBI did botch its surveillance applications — an inspector general found serious errors and omissions across four rounds of court orders. Page had a legitimate grievance. But settling a case you’ve already won is almost unheard of in the history of the Justice Department. The government fights these cases precisely to avoid setting precedents that invite more lawsuits against taxpayers.

Walking away from a victory means something else is driving the decision. And this follows a pattern. Last month, $1.25 million to Michael Flynn, who twice pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI before being pardoned. Last year, nearly $5 million to the estate of Ashli Babbitt, shot while breaching the Capitol on January 6th. In each case, the DOJ bypassed normal procedures to carve out settlements for people aligned with President Trump. The administration calls it combating the “weaponization of government.” But taken together — an unprecedented legal surrender, combined with payouts that track loyalty rather than legal merit — it starts to look less like fairness and more like an effort to discredit the entire Russia investigation. An investigation corroborated by the U.S. intelligence community, the Mueller probe’s 34 indictments, and even the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee.

Spirit Airlines Bailout

We’ve talked about airlines absorbing the fuel costs of the war with Iran. For Spirit Airlines, the war didn’t just hurt — it made the airline’s existing bankruptcy exit plan mathematically impossible. Unlike the major carriers, Spirit does no fuel hedging — no pre-buying at lower rates — and its entire business model depends on filling cheap seats in volume. When fuel prices spike, the big airlines absorb the hit. Spirit drowns in it.

Now the Trump administration is negotiating a $500 million rescue package that could leave the federal government owning 90 percent of the airline. Remember last August, the government converted Biden-era grants into a 10 percent ownership stake in Intel, arguing that without it, the U.S. would depend on chip factories in Taiwan for everything from fighter jets to iPhones. In January, a similar stake in USA Rare Earth. The logic: don’t just give grants to firms, take equity because taxpayers share in the upside, and the government keeps strategic assets from failing or falling into foreign hands. For an administration that campaigned on getting government out of the way of business, it’s a striking turn — the federal government deciding which companies live and which ones don’t.

Why is a discount airline strategically critical? The administration argues if Spirit dies, the Big Three lose their primary low-cost competitor, and ticket prices for working-class travelers spike during an already inflationary war. The president also cited the loss of 14,000 jobs. A wrinkle: Spirit flies nothing but Airbus — 76 European-made planes. If this deal closes, the “Buy American” administration becomes the majority owner of an airline that doesn’t fly a single American-made aircraft, while simultaneously locked in trade tensions with the EU. Bottom line: will the U.S. gain leverage or become owner of an airline nobody else wanted.

988 Hotline Success

In July 2022 the 988 mental health crisis hotline launched, and over the next two and a half years there were 11 percent fewer suicide deaths among 15- to 23-year-olds than researchers had expected — nearly 4,400 lives. This, according to a study published Wednesday in JAMA. As a gut check, researchers looked at England, which had no comparable hotline launch during the same period — and saw no similar decline in youth suicides.

The reduction tracked directly with usage: the ten states with the largest increases in call volume saw an 18 percent drop in suicide deaths; the ten states with the smallest increases saw only 11 percent. The more a community used the service, the more lives were saved. The 988 program represents roughly $1.5 billion in federal investment, one of the largest in suicide prevention history. But that 11 percent drop was achieved with specialized sub-networks in place — including partnerships like the Trevor Project’s dedicated line for LGBTQ+ youth, a population at significantly elevated risk.The administration’s July 2025 termination of the dedicated LGBTQ+ sub-network has sparked warnings from researchers that the 2026 data could show a rebound in suicide rates among queer and trans youth, who previously utilized the ‘Press 3’ prompt for counselors specifically trained in their unique stressors.

Thursday, April 23

Iran War

Thursday it was the battle of the blockades.

The U.S. military intercepted two Iranian oil supertankers that had attempted to slip through the dragnet but were unable to because, well, they are supertankers, one definition of which is the largest self-propelled vehicles ever built. Very hard to be stealthy.

While the U.S. successfully interdicted the outward flow of Iranian crude, Tehran struck back. In a direct retaliation, Iranian Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) commandos seized two Western-linked vessels.

Senate Adopts G.O.P. Budget

The Senate passed a Republican budget blueprint early Thursday morning to end the longest Department of Homeland Security shutdown in American history. DHS has been partially paralyzed since mid-February, when federal agents fatally shot a 37-year-old man, Alex Pretti, during an immigration operation in Minneapolis. Democrats used the 60-vote filibuster threshold to block all DHS funding, demanding use-of-force reforms the administration refused to consider.

Republicans turned to budget reconciliation — a mechanism that lets them bypass the filibuster and pass the funding bill with a simple majority. The goal: unlock up to $70 billion for ICE and Border Patrol, putting the administration’s immigration agenda on autopilot for the next three and a half years.

Democrats couldn’t stop the bill, but they used the mandatory vote-a-rama — a marathon of rapid-fire amendments — to force Republicans on the record rejecting restoration of SNAP benefits, school meal funding, and energy-cost relief.

The larger story is what reconciliation costs. Congress generally gets only one reconciliation bill per budget cycle. By spending the 2026 slot to reopen a shuttered department and fund ICE, Republicans forfeit their best tool for passing tax cuts or deregulation later this year. That tradeoff likely drove the only two Republican defections: Rand Paul, who called it a fiscal gimmick that adds billions to the deficit, and Lisa Murkowski, who objected to abandoning the Senate’s tradition of bipartisan cooperation.

Epstein DOJ

The Justice Department’s internal watchdog opened a review Thursday into whether the department defied the law Congress wrote specifically to prevent it from doing what it did. The Epstein Files Transparency Act, signed by the president late last year, stripped the DOJ of its usual discretion — no withholding records for “political sensitivity,” “reputational harm,” or the “embarrassment” of public figures. Release everything within 30 days. The only exception: protecting victim identities.

The DOJ blew past the December deadline, producing a fraction of the documents and citing “logistical hurdles” that drew bipartisan contempt. When the department finally dumped millions of pages in late January, it managed a special kind of achievement. It failed in both directions: tens of thousands of pages still missing, while the rushed redaction process left the names and personal details of several victims exposed. The Inspector General now wants to know whether the department used privacy as a shield to hide records while simultaneously failing to protect the people the law existed to shield.

Marijuana Classification

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche signed an order moving state-licensed medical marijuana from Schedule I, the same classification as heroin, to Schedule III, alongside ketamine and Tylenol with codeine. The most significant shift in federal drug policy since 1970 legitimizes the medical programs of 40 states in one stroke while leaving recreational marijuana exactly where it was: federally illegal.

Medical dispensaries can now deduct rent, payroll, and operating costs on their taxes for the first time — a provision the old Schedule I classification blocked, costing the industry billions.

Researchers who spent years trapped in a bureaucratic paradox — needing federal approval to study a drug the federal government insisted had no medical value — can now access state-licensed cannabis for clinical trials without risking prosecution.

The legal result is stranger than the policy. The same plant, grown in the same facility, can now be a Schedule III medication when sold to a patient with a medical card and a Schedule I narcotic when sold to an adult for recreational use next door. The administration calls this common sense. The DEA will hold hearings in June on whether to reschedule marijuana more broadly.

Soldier arrested for Polymarket bets

He was the soldier who turned Operation Absolute Resolve into Operation No You Didn’t. A U.S. Army Special Forces master sergeant Gannon Ken Van Dyke was arrested for allegedly using classified information to make extremely profitable bets on the Polymarket prediction market related to the American military mission that captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, the Department of Justice said Thursday.Van Dyke, 38, wagered a total of about $33,000 in 13 or so bets in the week leading up to that operation, with the knowledge that the United States was secretly planning military action against Maduro. The bets won Van Dyke nearly $410,000, the indictment alleges.

Meta layoffs and Microsoft buyouts

Last week we told you that Meta was creating an AI replica of its founder, Mark Zuckerberg so that employees could interact with the AI boss to get a better sense of what he was thinking. 8,000 of those employees – or 10 percent of its workforce– will be denied that delicious conversation. They are being let go, the company said Thursday so Meta can ramp up spending on artificial intelligence infrastructure and highly paid AI-expert hires. Also Thursday, Microsoft said it was offering voluntary buyouts to thousands of its U.S. employees. The software giant plans to make the offers in early May to about 8,750 people, or 7% of its U.S. workforce.

College Tours

A study published this week by researchers at Amherst College found that the weather on the day of your campus visit meaningfully affects whether you apply. Applications dropped 10 percent when the tour was hot, 8 percent when it rained, and 5 percent when it was simply cloudy — compared to mild, sunny days. Male visitors, the study found, were more sensitive to weather conditions than female visitors. The study was published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, which is a serious institution that has now confirmed that a passing cloud may have determined where you spent four years of your life.

Friday, April 24

Iran War

At the end of the week, the United States was negotiating with Iran over the same points that have been at issue since 2015, when the Obama administration and five other world powers struck the JCPOA — the agreement designed to ensure Iran’s nuclear program stays peaceful. Same technical questions: how much enrichment Iran keeps, who inspects it, whether the stockpile goes to a third country. Same political question: what does Iran get in return.

Trump spent years mocking Obama for what he paid to get that deal. Now he’s spent considerably more. The New York Times reported this week that the war burned through roughly $28 to $35 billion — just under a billion dollars a day for 38 days. In the first two days alone, the military used $5.6 billion in munitions.

The U.S. fired more than 1,100 JASSM-ER cruise missiles — long-range stealth weapons designed not for Iran but for a war with China. Roughly 1,500 remain in inventory. More than 1,200 Patriot interceptor missiles, at $4 million each. The U.S. produces about 600 Patriots a year. Senator Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, said reconstituting what was expended “could take years.” Admiral Paparo, head of Indo-Pacific Command, told the New York Times: “There are finite limits to the magazine.”

Trump has been adamant in private that his deal must be better than Obama’s. But “better” isn’t just a measure of the document. The calculation requires subtracting what the JCPOA would have delivered, then weighing that delta against the full cost of getting here: the dead, the debt, the depleted Pacific posture, and whatever chilling effect this war has on America’s willingness to intervene the next time.

Dominic Tierney, writing in Foreign Affairs, offers the frame: the American way of war doesn’t reward tactical dominance. Americans believe winning requires decisive success — which means the definition of winning isn’t only Iran’s to give or the administration’s to give. Trump has to sell it to an electorate that already doesn’t believe him.

Support for continuing the war sits at 31 percent. Seventy-eight percent of Americans say the U.S. has not met its goals; 21 percent say it has. The president’s handling of the conflict draws 32 to 34 percent approval, with disapproval as high as 61 percent in Pew and YouGov tracking. Pew found that by nearly two to one, Americans say the war is not going well. Forty percent believe it will leave the country less safe. Sixty-six percent say the U.S. should find a way out, even without achieving its stated objectives.

Two thirds of the country have already decided that getting out matters more than winning.

For all of president Trump’s marketing genius.(that is how he became president, after all) he is slouching under the weight of two wars– a trade war and the war in Iran. Though he is trying to convince the public that the economy is doing great and that America has won in Iran, he is not succeeding.

Criminal inquiry into Jerome Powell closed

The Justice Department closed its criminal investigation into Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell on Friday — clearing the way for Kevin Warsh’s confirmation as Powell’s successor. The probe centered on cost overruns in the Fed’s headquarters renovation: a project that grew from $1.9 billion to roughly $2.5 billion, which the Fed attributed to a sinkhole, asbestos, and inflation. Powell had called the investigation an attempt to pressure the Fed into cutting rates — currently at 3.6% — toward the 1% the president wanted. In March, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg quashed the DOJ’s subpoenas, finding “essentially zero evidence” Powell had committed a crime. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro closed the file Friday, handing the renovation questions to the Fed’s Inspector General, with the option to reopen if the IG finds fraud rather than mismanagement. Republican Senator Thom Tillis had vowed to block any Fed nominee while the probe remained open. With it closed, Tillis signaled he’d support moving Warsh to a full Senate vote.

Judge’s Ruling on Asylum.

A federal appeals court ruled Friday that Trump’s declaration of an “invasion” at the southern border was illegal — effectively reopening the U.S. to migrants seeking asylum for the first time since the first day of his second term.

The administration will almost certainly appeal. Asylum processing hasn’t resumed, and the court didn’t set a timeline. But the ruling lands as a rebuke: Congress, the court found, never gave the president the power to waive asylum law by proclamation. The ruling doesn’t mean open borders — it means the U.S. rejoins nearly every other country in the world in giving people fleeing persecution a hearing.

The question of who this country keeps its promises to surfaced elsewhere this week. The Trump administration is weighing whether to send roughly 1,100 Afghans — translators, guides, people who worked alongside American troops against the Taliban — to the Democratic Republic of Congo rather than honor the visa program Congress authorized for them. The alternative the administration is also floating: return them to live under the Taliban. Lawmakers in both parties objected. “We made promises to those fighting by our side to bring them to the U.S.,” said Republican Representative Don Bacon of Nebraska. “We should keep our promises.”

And if you’re charting the tussle between the branches this week, you have the independent Fed on slightly firmer footing, the tariff money being repaid for executive overreach, and now this asylum ruling. Three rulings, one direction. Almost like the founders planned it that way.

World Cup final tickets listed for more than $2.2million

In economics, a Veblen good is one where demand increases alongside the price because the cost itself functions as a status symbol. This explains the psychological theater behind the news that a single 2026 World Cup ticket has been listed for $2.3 million. While no one is likely to actually pay that “moonshot” price, its mere existence serves a strategic purpose. By abandoning the resale price caps used in previous tournaments, FIFA has created a wild-west secondary market where they collect a 15% fee from both the buyer and the seller. This 30% combined “tax” gives the governing body a direct incentive to let wacky pricing stand.

From a psychological standpoint, however, this outlier functions as an anchor. It recalibrates the fan’s sense of value: once you’ve processed the idea of a $2 million seat, the actual $11,000 price tag for Category 1 seats—itself an astronomical sum—suddenly feels like a bargain.

1. Some of you may remember the Face the Nation Diary. Same instinct, new form. I think it’s probably best experienced if you listen to me read the audio version. Please let me know what you think — and what you like and don’t like.