At roughly the same time, a newly created account on the prediction-market platform Polymarket placed tens of thousands of dollars on Maduro’s being out of power by month’s end — a position that stood out for its size, its timing, and its confidence against prevailing odds. When Maduro was captured, the payout was immediate: more than $400,000 in profit.

For a brief moment, it looked like extraordinary luck. According to federal prosecutors, it was anything but. The person allegedly behind the trades was Army Special Forces Master Sergeant Gannon Ken Van Dyke — a soldier involved in planning the operation. He was arraigned yesterday and pleaded not guilty.

Van Dyke’s indictment marks the first case of its kind. It likely won’t be the last. And the question it raises goes well beyond the misconduct of one soldier. It concerns what happens when the mechanisms designed to predict events begin to intersect with the people responsible for carrying them out — as adversaries watch both.

A system built to surface information

Prediction markets operate on a simple premise: people with better information make better predictions when money is on the line. Platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi let users buy and sell contracts tied to real-world outcomes — whether a conflict will escalate, whether a political leader will fall — with prices fluctuating to reflect collective probability estimates.

In many cases, that works as intended. Markets incorporate information quickly, often adjusting faster than official statements or traditional analysis. It’s precisely this capacity that has made them attractive as forecasting tools — a military intelligence bulletin last year even advocated integrating Polymarket data into national security threat assessments.

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But these markets don’t distinguish between public information and privileged knowledge. They absorb whatever signals participants bring, regardless of origin. When those signals come from someone with access to classified information, the market doesn’t filter them out. It incorporates them. At that point, what looks like a prediction begins to resemble a leak.

Bets as intelligence leaks

This is where the risk becomes something more than that of financial crime. Prediction markets are public, operate continuously, and are globally accessible. Every price shift, every volume spike, every anomalous position is visible to anyone with the capacity to monitor it. Russia, China, and other powers that maintain sophisticated intelligence operations targeting the US have every incentive to watch these markets systematically and the tools to do it. A loosely regulated, publicly accessible platform trading on the nation’s military secrets is, from their perspective, an open intelligence window that costs nothing to look through.

“The issue isn’t the soldier ‘betting on himself’ — it’s that adversaries can read the order book,” said Alex Goldenberg, a fellow at the Rutgers University Miller Center on Policing and Community Resilience. “Prediction markets on military ops are a real-time intelligence feed for our enemies.”

In the hours before Israeli strikes on Tehran killed Ayatollah Khamenei, Polymarket lit up. Six accounts, funded through cryptocurrency wallets that had been dormant until shortly before, made more than $1.2 million betting on an imminent US strike. Whether the Iranian security apparatus was monitoring Polymarket is unknown. But the signal was there.

Former Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall put the risk of exploitation by adversaries plainly: “All it takes is monitoring for patterns that deviate from established norms. Modern AI tools do this at massive scale and with tremendous sophistication. It’s also easy for our enemies to set traps by encouraging betting in areas they are trying to collect intelligence on.”

That’s why Rep. Eugene Vindman (D-VA), a veteran, sent a letter to Polymarket’s CEO, Sean Coplan, demanding the company’s preservation and disclosure of all records tied to bets on US military actions.

Framing the operational stakes in a television interview, Vindman said, “Whether it’s a couple hours or a full 24 hours, that’s an eternity in military operations — that’s plenty of time to either adjust troop dispositions or put air defense assets on guard.”

From predicting outcomes to shaping them

It doesn’t require widespread abuse to become a problem. A single insider generates signals others interpret. Sophisticated actors could manipulate markets directly — placing trades not to profit but to create the appearance of momentum, induce panic, or drive a policy reaction.

As Max Meizlish of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies put it: “If an adversary could make it seem that there’s instability in the market, that could actually have some really big downstream implications if the market more broadly starts to actually recognize that and operate based on those signals.”

Retired Gen. Mark Kimmitt views the Van Dyke case as something closer to treason than to insider trading. “What’s the difference between him monetizing this by walking in the nearest embassy and saying, ‘I’ve got classified material, you’ll want to buy it’ — and this?” he said to The Preamble. “This is just a new venue for doing it.” He added a sharper concern: “It turns these prediction markets from observers into influencers. Because if the people involved are trying to make money on it, they can influence the outcome.”

A prediction market trade is not the same as a classified briefing. An adversary cannot know with certainty whether a sudden shift reflects real knowledge, speculation, or deliberate misdirection. But in high-stakes environments, even the possibility of credible information can prompt defensive moves, miscalculations, or overreactions.

A regulatory gap

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) oversees these markets with roughly one-eighth the staff of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), despite the fact that Kalshi alone receives more than $2 billion in trades every week. Van Dyke allegedly used cryptocurrency accounts to place his bets on Polymarket’s offshore platform. That version — which was set up outside of US regulatory reach and which, as part of a 2022 settlement, the CFTC ordered Polymarket to bar US users from accessing — has nonetheless been widely used to skirt those restrictions. That ban appears to have been lightly enforced at best.

The Trump administration has shown little appetite for tightening the rules. CFTC investigations into prediction markets have been dropped. Truth Social has announced plans for its own prediction market. Donald Trump Jr. serves as an adviser to both Polymarket and Kalshi, with his venture capital fund invested in Polymarket.

“Given the conflicted relationship of the first family,” said Yale’s Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, “CFTC oversight could be compromised.”

When Trump was asked about Van Dyke, he compared him to Pete Rose — who was banned from baseball for betting on his team’s wins. The comparison misses the point entirely. Van Dyke didn’t bet on a game everyone knew was being played. He bet on a classified operation no one outside a narrow circle was supposed to know existed — and, in doing so, left traces readable by anyone with the right tools.

The gamification of war

This is all unfolding alongside a broader change in the way we process news about conflicts. The Iran war has already demonstrated how fully both sides have embraced the information environment as a theater of operations. White House videos mix strike footage with scenes from the movie Top Gun and imagery from Call of Duty, the popular combat video game franchise. Iranian Lego animations on American social media feeds depict a cartoonish Trump figure fleeing missiles and watching helplessly as Iran prevails. Both sides understand that in 2026, the information space is no longer a backdrop to the conflict but a central part of it.

Prediction markets fit that same ecosystem. They convert the uncertainty of war into real-time metrics — a percentage chance of escalation, a contract on a leader’s survival. In this way, they become another layer of the gamification of war. Just as stylized video clips make destruction look like a highlight reel, betting markets make military outcomes seem like positions to be traded and opportunities to be exploited.

The open question

Van Dyke’s indictment has been greeted by some as proof the system works. Polymarket’s Coplan said the platform flagged Van Dyke’s account and cooperated with investigators. The problem is that by the time a trade is prosecuted, information has already moved through the system. Any adversary watching has already seen it.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Pentagon’s research and development arm, tried something like this two decades ago — a government-backed exchange called the Policy Analysis Market, designed to price geopolitical contingencies and surface early intelligence signals. Congress shut it down in days, with one senator calling it a “federal betting parlor” on terrorism and assassination. What private industry has now built is far more advanced, far more liquid, and operating with almost none of the constraints that killed that earlier experiment. Every adversary in the world can access it.

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If the allegations hold, Van Dyke made the mistake of being traceable. While Polymarket uses crypto wallets with pseudonyms, transactions are publicly recorded, and investigators can often link activity back to real identities through account data.

The next insider may be more careful. An adversary seeking to exploit these markets rather than profit from them may leave no trace at all. As Trump himself observed, “The whole world, unfortunately, has become somewhat of a casino.”

Without stronger efforts to regulate those in power from betting on the outcomes they control, the American people — and the national security apparatus sworn to protect them — could end up holding the losing hand.

Former FBI Director Indicted Again

Former FBI Director James Comey was indicted today on charges of making and transmitting threats — the Justice Department’s second attempt in seven months to prosecute him.

The charges stem from an Instagram post Comey made last year after walking on a North Carolina beach. He photographed seashells arranged to read “86 47” and shared the image online. Republicans read it as a threat against Trump, the 47th president — “86” is slang for getting rid of something or someone. Comey said he had not arranged the shells himself, called the post a political message rather than a call to violence, and deleted it.

The first indictment against Comey, filed in 2025, accused Comey of lying to Congress about an FBI leak investigation. A federal judge threw it out, ruling that the prosecutor who brought the case had been appointed unlawfully and that the indictment was therefore invalid.

Trump has publicly pressed his Justice Department to investigate Comey for years, along with other perceived adversaries — including New York Attorney General Letitia James, who won a civil fraud judgment against Trump in 2024.

British Royals Visit the US

King Charles III addressed a joint session of Congress this afternoon, telling lawmakers that despite recent disagreements, the United States and the United Kingdom have always found ways to come together. The speech was the centerpiece of a four-day state visit timed to America’s 250th anniversary; Queen Elizabeth made a similar visit to the US during the bicentennial celebration in 1976.

The visit includes a state dinner at the White House this evening, and stops in Virginia and New York.

House FISA Renewal Stalls Again

FISA — the warrantless surveillance law — expires Thursday, and House Republicans still cannot agree on how to renew it. The House Rules Committee recessed this morning without taking further action on it.

FISA allows US intelligence agencies to collect the electronic communications of foreign nationals located outside the country — without obtaining a warrant. The government says the program is one of its most important tools for tracking terrorism, cyberattacks, and foreign espionage.

At least 10 Republicans oppose extending the program in its current form. Many want a warrant requirement before agents can search the database for Americans’ communications, which can be incidentally swept up when they interact with the targeted foreigners. The Senate is scheduled to hold its own procedural vote on a three-year extension this afternoon.

Congress passed a 10-day extension on April 17 to keep the program alive through April 30.

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Trump Family Demands ABC Fire Jimmy Kimmel

President Trump and the first lady are demanding that ABC fire late-night host Jimmy Kimmel over a joke from last week. During a sketch on his show, “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” last Thursday, Kimmel had described the first lady as having a “glow of an expectant widow.”

“People like Kimmel shouldn’t have the opportunity to enter our homes each evening to spread hate,” the first lady wrote on X. “Enough is enough. It is time for ABC to take a stand.”

Trump tied the joke to Saturday night’s shooting outside the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Writing on Truth Social, he said: “I appreciate that so many people are incensed by Kimmel’s despicable call to violence, and normally would not be responsive to anything that he said, but this is something far beyond the pale.”

In yesterday’s monologue, Kimmel called the line “a very light roast” and said it was “not by any stretch of the definition a call to assassination,” adding that he has spoken out against gun violence for years.

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Trump has repeatedly attacked Kimmel over his monologues. ABC briefly suspended “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” last September after Kimmel mocked the MAGA response to the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. But the network reinstated the show after a viewer backlash.

Meanwhile, the Trump-aligned Federal Communications Commission has moved to challenge the network’s station licenses — setting up a potential legal clash with parent company The Walt Disney Company.

In an order released today, the FCC directed ABC to submit renewal applications for all of its broadcast licenses within 30 days. The FCC moved to call in the broadcast licenses of eight ABC-owned stations for early renewal — including stations in New York and Chicago that are not due to be renewed for years.

Appeals Court Sides with Pentagon on Press Restrictions

A DC appeals court yesterday temporarily allowed the Defense Department to limit reporters’ movement inside the Pentagon. The department has put a restriction in place requiring official escorts for journalists inside the building.

The fight between the Pentagon and the press began last September, when Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth required reporters who worked in the building to sign a pledge to only publish authorized information. The New York Times sued in December, and in March, US District Judge Paul Friedman struck the pledge down as a First Amendment violation. The Pentagon then issued a revised policy that dropped the pledge but barred reporters from their longtime workspace inside the building and required escorts at all times. Friedman ruled this month that the policy was an end-run around his order.

Yesterday’s 2-1 stay from the DC Circuit lets the escort rule stand during the Pentagon’s appeal. The majority accepted the department’s argument that unauthorized disclosures had dropped since the policy took effect. Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said the policy “has never been about limiting journalism” but about “safeguarding classified information.” A Times spokesperson said the paper would “oppose vigorously” the Pentagon’s actions.

The UAE Leaves OPEC

The United Arab Emirates announced today that it will leave OPEC and OPEC+ on May 1. OPEC is the cartel of oil-producing countries that regulates how much crude its members pump in order to keep global oil prices stable.

The UAE has complained for years about the quota imposed by OPEC, currently around 3.2 million barrels per day, and has been building capacity to pump close to 5 million barrels a day. By leaving, it can sell as much oil as it wants. If the UAE increases its output, it could push global prices down.

Federal Agents Raid 22 Daycare Centers in Minneapolis

Federal agents executed 22 search warrants across the Minneapolis area this morning, raiding more than 20 childcare centers in what authorities described as an ongoing investigation into fraud against taxpayer-funded programs. The FBI and Homeland Security Investigations led the operation, with help from state and local agencies.

The targets were largely Somali-owned daycares — including Quality Learning Center, Mako Childcare Center and Baby Halimo Child Care — that allegedly billed for children they were not actually caring for.

Governor Tim Walz and other authorities stressed the raids were not immigration-related. “If you commit fraud in Minnesota you’re going to get caught,” Walz said, adding that state agencies had flagged the suspicious billing to federal investigators.

Judge Lets Fired Federal Prosecutor Sue Trump Administration

Maurene Comey, the former federal prosecutor fired by the Trump administration last summer, can sue the government in federal court for wrongful termination, a Manhattan judge ruled today.

Comey, the daughter of former FBI director James Comey, claims she was fired in July 2025 because of her father’s long feud with President Trump or because of her own perceived political views. Comey was an assistant US attorney in the Southern District of New York, where she helped prosecute Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, supervised the bribery case against former Senator Robert Menendez, and led the team that convicted rapper Sean “Diddy” Combs on prostitution-related charges two weeks before her dismissal.

The Justice Department argued that she wasn’t allowed to immediately sue, and that she first had to take her complaint to the Merit Systems Protection Board, an agency that handles routine federal-employee disputes.

The only reason the government had given for firing Comey, Judge Jesse Furman noted, was that the president has the constitutional authority to fire her. That kind of firing, the judge said, isn’t what the Merit Systems Protection Board exists for. The board handles ordinary workplace disputes between federal employees and their agencies. Comey’s case is about whether the president can fire a career prosecutor for political reasons, and that is a constitutional question for a federal court, not an administrative one, he said.

• His advice to Democrats on the midterms and the next presidential election

• Why the US soldier who won $400,000 betting on military action in Venezuela should never be pardoned, and the hidden risks of going easy on him

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A federal agency overseen by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), the Forest Service manages 193 million acres of land spread across the country. It includes half of all the designated “wilderness” in the lower 48 states and retains the largest road network in the world, much of which passes through or adjacent to private or locally owned land. If you live in rural America, odds are high that you drive on Forest Service roads daily, or that your town’s water supply relies upon one of the critical watershed management projects of the Forest Service.

At first glance, it’s easy to confuse the Forest Service with the National Park Service, as both are federal agencies that manage public lands, but each has its own unique history and priorities. While National Parks strive to preserve their natural and cultural resources unchanged, scrupulously enforcing a “leave no trace” directive, the Forest Service has always followed a multiple-use mandate, managing their lands for many purposes — timber, recreation, grazing, hunting, fishing, wildlife, and scientific research. Across 154 USFS forests — from Tongass National Forest in Alaska, to Coconino in Arizona, Superior in Minnesota, and White Mountain in New Hampshire, just to name a few — this public-land system not only preserves some of the most spectacular wildlands on earth, but it also plays a valuable role in preserving a healthy ecosystem for humans and wildlife.

But the Forest Service’s work is now being threatened. Earlier this month, the Trump administration announced a “re-organization” of the agency. Under the plan, Forest Service headquarters will be relocated from DC to Salt Lake City, three quarters of regional research facilities will be closed and consolidated into a single site in Fort Collins, Colorado, and all nine regional offices will close in favor of a state-level model with 15 politically appointed “state directors” in the capitals of states with large Forest Service holdings.

USDA Secretary Brooke L. Rollins has lauded the “common sense” approach of the proposed restructuring, citing cost savings and the potential for improved employee recruitment. But in reality, the plan threatens to upend the work of a multi-faceted agency that’s served vital functions for industry, recreation, and scientific research for more than a century.

“The greatest good of the greatest number”

In 1876, with Western expansion moving at a thunderous pace and the clear-cutting of forests proceeding relatively unchecked, Congress first created the office of Special Agent in the US Department of Agriculture to assess the state of US forests, followed in 1881 by the expansion of the office into the Division of Forestry. A decade later, passage of the Forest Reserve Act authorized the President to designate public lands in the West into what were then called “forest reserves,” responsibility for which fell under the Department of the Interior.

In the final years of the nineteenth century, the new field of forestry was born and nurtured by a small group of visionaries including Gifford Pinchot, a close friend of Teddy Roosevelt. The efforts of these early forestry crusaders helped to secure millions of acres of forest reserves in the West. In 1905 President Roosevelt transferred the forest reserves from the Interior Department to the Department of Agriculture’s newly created US Forest Service. Pinchot led this new agency as its first Chief, charged with caring for the renamed “national forests.”

Historically, there has always been a tension between the competing demands of conservation, preservation, and optimized commercial use of Forest Service lands. In remarks given at a meeting of the American Forest Congress in January 1905, Roosevelt called upon “forest users…to consider how best to combine use with conservatism.”

An adamant proponent of utilizing the country’s resources wisely, Roosevelt wanted to ensure the long-term sustainability of those resources, not simply their preservation. The original objectives of these working national forests were to improve and protect the lands, secure favorable watershed conditions, and furnish a continuous supply of timber for the use of US citizens.

Roosevelt cared about conservation, but was also a pragmatist, and he knew he needed the buy-in of commercial interests to secure his desired end. In 1907, according to a letter written by Pinchot, the underlying philosophy of the Forest Service was that, “Where conflicting interests must be reconciled, the question will always be decided from the standpoint of the greatest good of the greatest number in the long run.”

Balancing industry with recreation, conservation, and crisis response

National forests comprise 8 percent of the total land area of the US and are logged more than any other public land — and logging in national forests is increasing significantly under President Trump. Forest Service employees engage with the logging industry, including through timber sales that deliver wood to market.

Mining, drilling, and fracked gas pipelines are also allowed on national forest lands, and the forests also contribute roughly 46% of the surface water supply in the US, providing over 83 million people the majority of their drinking water.

But the national forests are more than a source of resources. Millions of Americans visit federal public lands and national forests every year for outdoor recreation — hunters hire outfitters for extended trips into wilderness areas, families purchase bait from local marinas for a day’s fishing excursion, and visitors pay national park entrance fees, all contributing to $128 billion in annual economic activity in outdoor recreation. Additionally, outdoor recreation on US Forest Service lands supports 161,000 jobs nationwide.

To make all this activity possible, USFS employees actively manage and maintain the forests, performing tasks such as road repair, campground maintenance, trail upkeep, signage updates, thinning overstocked forests, and reforestation to build healthy forests.

The upkeep of healthy forests in particular has broader impacts. According to the World Bank, “Forests provide a critical carbon sink to slow climate change, however deforestation and forest degradation contribute about 12% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. [Thus,] protecting existing forests is key to all pathways for limiting global warming.” Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Forest Service plays a central role in US efforts to mitigate and prepare for the effects of climate change — it’s home to an Office of Sustainability and Climate focused on science, and in 2022 the agency launched the Forest Service Climate Adaptation Plan to work with scientists, managers, and landowners to incorporate climate change considerations into natural resource management.

That work is now at risk. Since the Trump administration’s re-organization plan was announced, conservation groups like Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility have warned that closing specialized research stations will cripple the agency’s ability to understand local forest diversity and combat climate change.

And because shifts in climate have made wildfires more intense, another aspect of the Forest Service’s work has become even more critical: wildfire prevention. The Forest Service conducts prescribed burns that clear the natural deadfall of trees and vegetation in forest areas and mimic natural cycles to reduce the risk of catastrophic fires and promote healthy forests.

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The restructuring plan will disrupt the gathering and dissemination of wildfire and climate data as many regions of the US are expecting a catastrophic wildfire season. According to the National Interagency Fire Center, fire activity this year is “well above average,” with close to 17,000 wildfires already reported. Thanks to staffing cuts that began shortly after President Trump re-took the Oval Office, USFS has already lost as many as 1,400 wildfire-certified employees since last year, and a Congressional analysis found wildfire mitigation work declined by 38% in 2025 compared with the previous four years. More instability at the agency means that “the Forest Service will essentially no longer be the world’s leading wildfire research agency,” writes Julian Reyes, Chief of Staff of the Union of Concerned Scientists, and may not be equipped to respond to a challenging fire season.

But wildfires aren’t the only crises USFS works to prevent or mitigate. After Hurricane Helene in North Carolina devastated the Pisgah and Nantahala National Forests and surrounding communities in 2024, the Forest Service and the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission announced a $290 million partnership to support recovery efforts.

The USFS also studies, monitors, and — when necessary — introduces mitigation projects on public lands to protect the vitality of water, air, and soil. For example, 25 years of data collection as a part of the USFS Northwest Forest Plan revealed steady improvements in watershed health, impacting woodland birds, fish populations, streams, timber, and native plant species in Washington, Oregon, and California.

Research disruption and brain drain

Another major function of the Forest Service now at risk is the scientific research conducted in the Experimental Forests and Ranges (EFRs) — the largest and longest-lived ecological research network in the US, with many sites that are more than 60 years old. The network provides a home for long-term science and management studies in most major vegetation types, yielding a wealth of records and knowledge of ecological change in natural and managed US forest and grassland ecosystems. Crucially, much of the research going on in the EFRs is geographically fixed. You can’t pick up a stream or 100 acres of woods or grassland like those in the Northwest Forest Plan and pack them in a truck to ship cross-country.

The re-organization plan doesn’t account for those limitations, and would close 57 of 77 research facilities and all nine of the USFS regional offices across the country. With projects moved across the country, partnerships with local universities and landowners that have taken decades to build will no longer be feasible and will dissolve, and huge datasets will disappear.

The research capacities of the Forest Service also touch many areas of national industry and infrastructure like agriculture, human health and disease, as well as conservation. Among the thousands of studies currently underway are research on improving wood, paper, and pulp products for the timber industry; tracing increased insect and disease outbreaks in the wake of more intense fires that affect human populations; optimizing the use of grazing lands to support US livestock and the meat industry; and testing water filtration systems, to name a few.

The most indispensable part of the Forest Service’s research capability is the agency’s staff, made up of scientists and other experts embedded around the country. The re-organization plan poses a serious risk of continued staff loss at an agency that’s already been hard hit: last year, the Trump administration fired 3400 USFS employees nationwide. In the aftermath, more than a quarter of the service’s full-time employees left through early retirements or resignation buyouts.

Experts and current USFS employees warn that the closing of three-quarters of USFS’s research facilities will only accelerate this brain drain at the federal level and push scientific discovery back decades. Most of the scientists leading research efforts at USFS sites around the country are well-established and may well opt out of the Forest Service in favor of moving into the private sector through resignation buyouts or early retirement, rather than choose to relocate their families and careers. Further, because the plan would also move the agency’s headquarters from Washington, DC, to Salt Lake City, those staff would be pushed to relocate as well, and the agency would be isolated from other federal agencies and high-level decision-making.

According to Government Executive, many current USFS staff expressed skepticism that relocated staff would choose to stay with the agency, calling the plan “poorly thought out” and “incoherent.” One staffer commented, “Most I’ve talked to will not move, but we’ll see when it’s time to make their final decision.”

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Similar staff exoduses have already happened in other parts of the federal government under Trump. In 2020 the Bureau of Land Management, a partner to the Forest Service, had its headquarters moved “out West” to Grand Junction, even though 97% of BLM staff were already in the western United States. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported that nearly half of the relocated staff declined reassignment, effective reforms were not achieved, and the BLM was practically decimated by the move. Now it seems the Forest Service is headed down the same path.

“They will be hamstrung forever, because they won’t have the right people, the right research capability at the right research stations,” writes Reyes. “We’ll always be feeling these effects, probably for multiple generations.”

Favoring industry

There’s also reason for concern that the new USFS may favor timber and other extractive industry interests over ecology and science. The administration has already moved to eliminate decades-old public participation requirements for environmental reviews, effectively fast-tracking bids for mining, drilling, logging, and other commercial projects on Forest Service lands. It also wants to repeal the “roadless rule” that’s been in place for 25 years. Around 58 million acres, or 30 percent of national forest lands, are inventoried as roadless areas. The rule blocks logging and construction on 44.7 million acres. Without it, that acreage opens to extractive industries.

Tom Schultz

Beyond those rule changes, Trump has appointed Tom Schultz, a man with deep roots in the logging and timber industry, as Chief of this new Forest Service. The administration has made it clear that its priority is the increase of timber harvests by any means possible, from the Allegheny National Forest of Pennsylvania, to Shawnee National Forest in Illinois, to millions of acres of Forest Service lands in Oregon, Wisconsin, and Alaska.

“The biggest change [from the plan] will be that the agency seems to be shifting toward more extraction and development, and away from conservation and recreation,” commented Tania Lown-Hecht of the public lands advocacy group Outdoor Alliance.

What this means for Americans

While the Forest Service’s founding ethos favored providing resources found on public lands for economic growth, in the intervening 121 years the conservation of public lands has become nearly if not equally central to its mission and there has also been a measurable move towards expansive and sounder science conducted on those lands.

Given the scale of Forest Service lands and its research remit, changes to the agency will impact hundreds of millions of Americans, even those who have never stepped foot on Forest Service lands. Some of the effects may not be seen for years, including forest closures; fewer local, community-based conservation and research projects; more cases of contamination in US drinking water due to unregulated chemicals from increased industry in forests; and less scientific research overall.

Rather than chasing the “greatest good for the greatest number,” the Trump administration’s vision for the Forest Service increasingly resembles the pursuit of a more expansive, more profitable path for a few special interests (especially extractive industries) through the exploitation of public goods like our national forests. And it is those public lands and the American people who will ultimately pay the price.

WHCD Shooter Charged

The 31-year-old man accused of targeting the White House Correspondents’ Dinner armed with guns and knives has been charged with attempting to assassinate President Trump and other crimes.

Cole Tomas Allen, a California tutor, is accused of exchanging fire with the Secret Service at a security checkpoint outside the ballroom of the Washington Hilton. No attendees were seriously hurt, and one agent who was hit was reportedly saved by his bulletproof vest.

Investigators say Allen sent family members a long note minutes before the attack that read as a mix of grievance, confession, and farewell, apologizing to relatives while trying to justify what he was about to do.

The note does not name Trump, but in a 60 Minutes interview that aired last night, Norah O’Donnell read Trump one of its lines: “I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes.” Trump denied the descriptors and called O’Donnell “a disgrace” for reading the words on air. “Oh, do you think he was referring to you?” O’Donnell asked. Trump again denied being a pedophile, and criticized O’Donnell for reading part of the manifesto on air. “You should be ashamed of yourself reading that because I’m not any of those things,” he said.

Trump, Allies Push to Kill Ballroom Lawsuit

The Trump administration is using the attack on the White House Correspondents’ Dinner to argue that the lawsuit blocking construction of the president’s $400 million White House ballroom should be dismissed.

In a letter posted on X by the acting attorney general, Todd Blanche says, “in light of [Saturday] night’s extraordinary events,” the Washington Hilton is “demonstrably unsafe” for events with the president, making construction of the ballroom on White House property that much more important.

President Trump demolished the East Wing of the White House last year to make way for the 90,000 square foot ballroom. The National Trust for Historic Preservation has sued to stop its construction, arguing that Trump didn’t get the necessary sign-off for the project from the National Capital Planning Commission and Congress.

A judge halted above-ground construction last month, allowing only work on an underground bunker. The DC Circuit has scheduled oral arguments for June 5.

Supreme Court Lets Texas Map Stand

The US Supreme Court reversed a lower-court order today that had blocked Texas’s redrawn congressional map. The decision clears the way for the state to use its newly-drawn lines in the 2026 midterms.

The case, Abbott v. League of United Latin American Citizens, grew out of a mid-decade redistricting effort Texas Republicans pushed through at the urging of President Trump, who wanted more Republican-leaning seats to protect the party’s narrow majority in the House of Representatives.

A federal court in El Paso blocked the map, saying it violated the Constitution and the federal Voting Rights Act. Texas appealed to the Supreme Court.

The justices reversed the lower court’s ruling without holding a hearing or asking lawyers to file written arguments — a fast-track move the court uses infrequently. They issued a brief, unsigned order, noting there was dissent from Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

The map could give Republicans up to five additional House seats.

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Geofencing at SCOTUS

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments today on whether police can use “geofence warrants” — court orders compelling Google and similar companies to identify every phone in a defined area at a defined time — without violating the Fourth Amendment.

The case, Chatrie v. United States, involves a 2019 robbery of a credit union in Midlothian, Virginia, in which the suspect made off with $195,000. With no leads, police served Google with a warrant covering a 150-meter radius around the bank for the hour of the robbery.

Google came back with 19 phones — those of users who had turned on Location History, the only people Google could track. The police narrowed the list to nine accounts, asked Google for more details, then asked Google to identify three of those people by name.

One of the three names was Okello Chatrie. He was arrested and eventually pleaded guilty to the robbery.

In their Supreme Court appeal, Chatrie’s lawyer told the justices that the police violated the Fourth Amendment by searching first, and deciding who was a suspect later. The Justice Department argued that when Chatrie turned on Google’s location tracking, he gave up any expectation that what he did with his phone in public would stay private.

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Neil Gorsuch and Sonia Sotomayor — often on opposite ends of the bench — warned that allowing broad access to location data could open the door to sweeping surveillance of other personal digital information, such as emails, photos, and documents.

Justices Samuel Alito and Brett Kavanaugh focused on the practical consequences for policing. Kavanaugh, in particular, questioned whether investigators had actually done anything improper.

Meanwhile, Chief Justice John Roberts suggested that users can simply disable location tracking. But he also asked about the implications of performing sweeping searches of everybody present at particularly sensitive locations, like a church or a political organization.

A ruling is expected by the end of June.

Florida and Virginia Redistricting

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis released a proposed state congressional map today, a day before the legislature’s special session on redistricting. The map would create the potential for four additional Republican seats in Congress.

Virginia’s redistricting battle is continuing after voters approved a referendum that could give Democrats four additional House seats in the state. The Virginia Supreme Court heard oral arguments today on a Republican challenge to the new map. Republicans argue the legislature broke procedural rules in placing the amendment on the ballot.

Virginia’s constitution requires a constitutional amendment to clear two consecutive legislative sessions with an election in between. Republicans argue this standard wasn’t met. Several justices — though not the majority — signaled today they thought the timing was a problem, and the court has not said when it will rule.

Iran Talks

Iran is now proposing reopening the Strait of Hormuz now if the US ends its naval blockade, saying a deal on its nuclear program can wait until later.

The White House has not formally responded to the offer.

Accepting Iran’s proposal would mean a faster end to the war but would cost Trump his biggest piece of leverage — the blockade — without securing the two things he said he needed: a suspension of Iran’s uranium enrichment and the removal of its enriched-uranium stockpile from the country.

Meanwhile, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi met Vladimir Putin in St. Petersburg today, where the Russian president told him Moscow would do “everything that serves your interests” so that “peace can be achieved as soon as possible.” Russia has previously offered to store Iran’s enriched uranium as a way to defuse the standoff — an offer Washington has not taken up.

The trip to Russia followed Araghchi’s weekend stops in Pakistan and Oman.

Court: Trump’s Asylum Ban Illegal

Last week, an appeals court blocked President Trump’s proclamation suspending asylum at the US-Mexico border. The president issued the order on the first day of his second term last year, barring entry to asylum seekers until such time he determined that “the invasion at the southern border has ceased.” The Immigration and Nationality Act says any person physically present in the US — regardless of how they entered — has the right to apply for asylum, get a screening interview to show a “credible fear” of persecution, and have their claim heard by an immigration judge before being deported.

In its opinion, a three-judge panel said Trump’s order ignored long-standing federal laws outlined by Congress and probably endangered migrants’ lives.

The court concluded that the INA doesn’t authorize the president to remove immigrants like the plaintiffs under “procedures of his own making,” or allow him to suspend their right to apply for asylum. The plaintiffs include those removed or marked to be removed from the US.

The Trump administration is expected to appeal.

Senate Budget Reconciliation

Senate Republicans are moving forward with a new plan to fund ICE and CBP, which will allow them to send $70 billion without any support from the Democrats.

Republicans are using budget reconciliation, which is a process that allows Congress to pass bills related to revenue in the Senate with a simple 51-vote majority instead of the usual 60 needed to break a filibuster.

The reconciliation process requires both the Senate and the House to pass a budget resolution, or budget framework. It tells specific committees how much they have to spend, and then those committees write a budget that sticks to the framework. Then, the committees in both houses of Congress reconcile those budgets, working to agree on final numbers, and the bill can be passed with a simple majority in each chamber. The budget reconciliation process can only be used once per year per topic.

The Senate cleared the budget reconciliation proposal 50-48 last week, with two Republicans joining all Democrats in opposition, while the House has not yet taken it up. The temporary DHS funding is running out this week, and several agencies, including TSA, say they won’t be able to continue to pay employees unless Congress acts.

Although the president and several cabinet members attended the dinner, the event reportedly had a lower level of security than usual for events with high-ranking officials. Officials haven’t named the gunman, but the press has identified the shooter as a 31-year-old man named Cole Tomas Allen. Early details from the investigation suggest he was acting alone, and that the attack may have been politically motivated. The Preamble will continue to cover this story as more details come to light.

What happened at the correspondents’ dinner is the latest in a string of incidents of political violence in the US, including multiple assassination attempts on President Trump, the murder of the former Speaker of the Minnesota House and her husband, and more. As these moments become increasingly common, it’s important that we as a people stand firm in the idea that no matter how much we might disagree with each other, violence should have no place in our politics.

—Sharon

March 4, 1841, came to Washington under a lid of cloud and a hard, restless wind. The cold carried up the streets and climbed the Capitol steps. Wool felt thinner than it should.

Tens of thousands of Americans lined the streets that day — banners flapped in the breeze as a procession of bands and replica log cabins (a symbol of the Harrison campaign) made their way down the route.

William Henry Harrison — “Old Tip” — rode from his hotel to the Capitol on a white horse, wearing no overcoat and no gloves, despite the relentless cold.

At 68, he was the oldest president the country had sworn in so far. Chief Justice Roger B. Taney administered the oath that transforms an ordinary citizen into a president.

The next part of the inauguration ritual usually offered a tidy shape: an inspirational short address, a set of presidential priorities, and a closing line people could tuck into their pockets to carry home.

Harrison chose something else.

When he began to address the nation for the first time, the speech kept unfolding –– dense, sweeping, packed with history and warning. It took nearly two hours to deliver the 8,445 words.

A month later, Harrison was dead.

Four years earlier, Americans had watched the economy seize up. The Panic of 1837 triggered bank failures, collapsing credit, business closures, and deep insecurity. Martin Van Buren had inherited much of that crisis, and the Whig Party –– of which Harrison was a part –– treated the economic pain as a moral indictment of Van Buren, mocking him as “Van Ruin.” They offered Harrison as a kind of national reset — an old soldier with a simple image –– maple syrup and a catchy slogan –– and a promised return to balance.

The campaign itself carried a hint of the political future: mass rallies, merch, songs, spectacle. The country learned that elections could be won through story as much as through argument.

Harrison, perched above the crowds at his inauguration, didn’t offer an auspicious vision of the future. Instead, he issued a series of constitutional warnings. Undergirding them all was a broader lesson that would continue to reverberate throughout the nation’s history: a republic, he cautioned, endures only when the people are loyal to the principles of democracy rather than the interests of political parties.

“The great danger,” Harrison told the country, “does not appear to me to be in a usurpation… of power not granted,” but in “the accumulation in one of the departments of that which was assigned to others.” He meant the executive branch in particular, and described a system of democracy that stays free only when each branch’s power is limited — when Congress acts like Congress, courts act like courts, presidents act like presidents, and none of them swallow the rest.

That is a lesson that does not expire. A republic survives by distributing power so broadly that no single person can hold it all.

Harrison paired that warning with a second, equally durable claim: democracy carries limits.

He praised the foundations of the American constitutional republic as a government resting on the people, but he refused to treat “the people” as an unlimited force. Sovereignty, he argued, does not mean the majority can do whatever it wants. Americans possess “power precisely equal to that which has been granted” in the constitutional compact, and individual citizens retain rights they never surrendered — some they could not surrender because they are unalienable. He anchored liberty in something sturdier than public mood.

Read in plain language, his claim is simple: rights do not become real because they are approved by the public, they remain protected regardless of which way the political winds might blow.

Listen to the story here:

Harrison’s third lesson comes with a sharper edge: he wanted his listeners to recognize a particular kind of political fraud.

He described what he called “the old trick of those who would usurp the government of their country.” The trick wears a familiar costume: leaders speak “in the name of democracy,” stirring fear about aristocracy and wealth, framing themselves as the people’s only defender.

He gave his listeners a way to tell the counterfeit from the real thing. He described liberty as “mild and tolerant and scrupulous as to the means it employs,” while the spirit that impersonates liberty is “harsh, vindictive…intolerant, and totally reckless.” A movement that claims it protects freedom while discarding restraint announces its destination long before it arrives.

The fourth warning runs straight into the modern bloodstream.

Harrison turned, near the end, to political parties. He accepted that parties can produce vigilance to keep the government in check. Then he drew a boundary: past that point, parties corrode liberty, the very thing they claim to defend. According to Harrison, parties “become destructive of public virtue… and eventually its inevitable conqueror.”

Harrison’s words were carried into the cold wind at the exact moment he acquired the most power a citizen could hold.

Then history delivered its own ending. Harrison would become ill — historically attributed to being outside without a coat, but perhaps a combination of pneumonia and sepsis from Washington’s contaminated drinking water. A month after taking office, he died.

His death forced the country to face the kind of institutional stress he had been describing: a sudden vacancy, a republic asked to keep functioning despite the loss of its leader, a Constitution asked to do its work while citizens watched. Vice President John Tyler stepped into the role. The nation learned, in real time, that continuity mattered as much as charisma.

Harrison’s inaugural address endures for a reason that has little to do with policy or even length. It outlined a set of civic instincts that keep a country free.

Power belongs in more than one set of hands. Rights sit above majority impulse. Beware anyone who uses the language of democracy as a mask for domination. Parties can replace the common good with permanent factions.

Those lessons do not require agreement about the issues of the day, they require agreement about the kind of country we intend to remain.

Harrison stood on the Capitol steps that blustery March afternoon and warned Americans that the republic’s greatest threats often arrive dressed as familiar things: urgency, righteousness, loyalty, victory. His presidency vanished almost as soon as it began. His warnings stayed.

This article was originally published as part of the In Pursuit project by More Perfect.

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The gap between what I said and what I did grew so slowly I didn’t notice it. No single broken promise felt like a big deal. Instead, it was the accumulation that did the damage, like a credit score dropping, invisible until the day you actually need it. I never would have described myself as someone who didn’t follow through. But at some point, I had to confront the fact that I’d stopped making plans with any real expectation of keeping them.

We live in a culture that celebrates the announcement of change. The January reset, the “day one” post, the morning routine filmed before sunrise. There’s an entire economy built around becoming a new person. But what happens when you’ve done “new month, new me” every month for the past 36 months? At some point, your brain stops taking you seriously.

Contrary to popular belief, your brain doesn’t have special insight into who you really are. It doesn’t even remember everything you’ve done (memory is selective and skewed toward what’s happened recently). So it’s constantly making a judgment call based on whatever evidence it has on hand. Psychologists call this self-perception theory: your brain figures out who you are by observing your actions. You can boldly proclaim you’re a morning person (and buy a sunrise alarm clock and morning journal to prove it), but your brain isn’t listening. It’s watching.

That constant assessment is what self-trust actually is — whether your words and your actions line up enough that your brain takes you at your word. It’s what most of us are really after when we say we want more confidence. When you trust yourself, positive self-talk actually works. You can encourage yourself through something hard and know you’ll show up for it. You can also be honest with yourself when you’ve messed up, without taking it as proof that you’re a bad person.

Without it, only the shame lands. You can tell yourself you’re going to be okay and feel nothing. You can tell yourself you’re failing and feel it all the way down. Your brain believes the bad things and dismisses the good ones, because the evidence has tilted that way.

So how do you build self-trust? You pick something embarrassingly small that you can do every single day, no matter where you are or how bad your day is. Don’t even start with a habit you really care about changing. The first thing you work on is just an opportunity to practice keeping your word. Make your bed. Drink a glass of water before coffee in the morning. Stretch for 5 minutes. Write down one thing you are grateful for. It must be specific enough that you couldn’t argue with yourself about whether you did it.

You also have to stick with it for longer than you want to. Most people quit right before the evidence tips. They pick something, do it for three weeks, don’t feel transformed, and decide it was a fine thing to do but wasn’t worth the effort. But remember the goal. You’re trying to teach your brain that your words have meaning. Three weeks is where your brain starts to consider that you might be serious. The real rebuild takes months of the same boring thing over and over.

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When I finally got sober at 24, I had to rebuild my life from scratch. It was tempting to commit to all the big things that would make a big difference. Instead, I focused on one thing: being on time. Arriving late had just cost me a job and felt like something I could actually work on. So before every AA meeting I attended, I sat outside in my car for 10 minutes, just to make sure I wasn’t late. If I told someone I’d call at 5 p.m., I called at 5 p.m. exactly. (I would try to call as soon as the clock moved from 4:59.) Over a decade later, being on time is second nature to me, but it’s something I still take immense pride in.

Of course I am not perfect. I still break promises to myself and question myself. But the doubt is smaller and more specific now. It’s about whether this particular thing will work, not whether I’m the kind of person who follows through on anything. Confidence will come and go. But self-trust is a foundation you can build your life on.

Welcome back to our weekend open thread. We built this community for you, to create space to get to know each other, chat about this week’s news, and share what’s on your mind. Head down to the comments below to join the conversation.

This community is for paid subscribers, and we’d love to have you join us! The goal is to create a safe and welcoming environment for everyone, which means speaking to and treating each other with respect in the comments.

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US-Iran Peace Talks

The US and Iran are set to meet in Pakistan to resume talks aimed at ending the war that has stretched on since the end of February.

Trump’s lead negotiators on Iran, special envoy Steve Witkoff and the president’s son-in-law and informal advisor Jared Kushner, will travel to Islamabad tomorrow for the talks, administration officials said, adding Vice President JD Vance is ready to travel to Pakistan if the talks progress.

Negotiations had stalled due to the ongoing US naval blockade of Iranian ports. In response, Iran has continued to restrict traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, attacking commercial vessels there as recently as yesterday.

The two sides remain far apart on Iran’s nuclear program, the reopening of the strait, and the lifting of sanctions.

DOJ Recommends Bringing Back Firing Squads

The Justice Department is recommending adding firing squads, electrocution, and gas asphyxiation to the federal government’s options for executing people, according to a report released today by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche.

Currently, the only allowed federal execution method is lethal injection, but the required drugs have become difficult to obtain. The report cites that difficulty as a reason the federal Bureau of Prisons should modify its execution protocol to include the older methods of firing squad and electrocution, along with the nitrogen-gas method Alabama first used in 2024.

The federal government has used firing squads only in rare military cases, never as a standard method in the civilian system. It used the electric chair from 1927 through the early 1960s, but then stopped carrying out executions for nearly four decades. When federal executions resumed in 2001, lethal injection was the established method.

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There are currently three people on federal death row, each of whom is responsible for a mass-casualty attack: Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (2013 Boston Marathon bombing), Robert Bowers (2018 Tree of Life synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh), and Dylann Roof (2015 Emanuel AME Church shooting in Charleston, South Carolina). President Biden put a moratorium on federal executions while in office, and commuted the sentences of the 37 other people who had been on federal death row before he left office.

President Trump rescinded the moratorium and has sought to restart executions, with the DOJ authorizing prosecutors to seek death sentences against nine new defendants since Trump took office.

Justice Dept. Drops Powell Probe

The Justice Department dropped its criminal investigation of Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell today, removing the last obstacle to confirming Kevin Warsh as the new Fed Chair when Powell’s term is up. Previously, at least one Senator said they would not vote to confirm Warsh until the DOJ ended their investigation into Powell.

US Attorney Jeanine Pirro, the top federal prosecutor in DC, announced the decision on X, saying she was deferring to the Fed’s inspector general — who has been reviewing the same renovation since July 2025 and has so far found no wrongdoing. Pirro said she would not hesitate to reopen the case “should the facts warrant doing so.” IGs typically launch internal audits to investigate any waste and fraud.

Powell’s term as chair ends May 15, but he is slotted to remain on the Fed board through 2027, and he had said he would stay until the Senate confirmed his successor.

Trump nominated Warsh, a former Fed governor, in January after months of publicly attacking Powell for refusing to cut interest rates as quickly as Trump wanted.

Newsbreak

There’s still time to sign up for Sharon’s private book club — Governerds Insider — but don’t wait too long. Doors only open three times a year, and Season Two is 98% full. This season we’re reading Jill Biden’s memoir and Marjan Kamali’s The Lion Women of Tehran, and both authors are joining us live.

Ibram X. Kendi and Bob Crawford will also be here for private author talks, and Steve Vladeck will teach workshops on the major Supreme Court cases of the term. Registration closes as soon as the seats are full. Click here to enroll.

Pentagon Fires Stars and Stripes Ombudsman

The Pentagon has fired the ombudsman of the military newspaper Stars and Stripes, the latest move in the months-long effort by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to take control of the newspaper.

Jacqueline Smith, who has been ombudsman since December 2023, said she was fired for speaking out. In a column published yesterday in the newspaper, she said she had warned the House and Senate Armed Services committees in recent months of her “great and growing concern about attempted control of the newspaper by the Pentagon.” Her last day will be April 28. The Defense Department confirmed her dismissal but gave no reason.

Congress created the ombudsman position in 1991 to safeguard the paper’s editorial independence and report directly to lawmakers on any Pentagon interference. Stars and Stripes has been published continuously since World War II; its staff are Defense Department employees, but it has operated without Pentagon interference in its editorial decisions for decades.

The Pentagon has been trying to reshape the paper for months. On Jan. 15, Pentagon Spokesperson Sean Parnell wrote on X that the department would “modernize” Stars and Stripes and refocus its coverage away from “woke distractions that syphon morale.” The same day, the Pentagon rescinded the federal regulation that had given Stars and Stripes legal protection from interference, replacing it last month with an interim policy that the Defense Department can change at will.

US Weighs Punishing NATO Allies Over Iran War

An internal memo prepared by the Pentagon’s top policy advisor for senior staff outlines proposals to punish NATO allies that refused to back the US war on Iran, Reuters reported today.

The memo, described to a US official on condition of anonymity, expresses frustration that some allies refused to grant the US “access, basing and overflight rights” for operations against Iran.

The email lists the options for punishing allies, including suggestions of suspending Spain from NATO, and reviewing US support for Britain’s claim to the Falkland Islands, which is contested by Argentina.

Spain has been the most vocal European critic of the war and refused to let US military aircraft use its airspace. The email is said to describe “decreasing the sense of entitlement on the part of the Europeans.”

The NATO treaty doesn’t contain a provision for suspending or expelling a member state. The only path out is voluntary withdrawal, so it’s unclear how the US could force Spain out.

Wisconsin Sues Online Betting Platforms

The Wisconsin Department of Justice sued five online prediction-market platforms yesterday, accusing them of running illegal sports betting in the state.

Attorney General Josh Kaul filed lawsuits asking a court to bar Kalshi, Robinhood, Coinbase, Polymarket, Crypto.com, and their affiliates from offering sports betting for customers located in Wisconsin.

The platforms market their “event contracts” as financial instruments that pay out based on real-world outcomes, including who wins a game or covers a point spread. Kaul’s office argues the contracts are functionally identical to traditional sports bets and therefore violate state gambling law.

Sports betting has been legal in Wisconsin since 2021, but only in person at tribal casinos. Gov. Tony Evers signed a law on April 9 that legalized online sports betting statewide, but only if the servers processing the bets are physically located on tribal land.

The companies have signaled they will fight the lawsuits.

Trump Administration Reclassifies Medical Marijuana

The Justice Department reclassified state-licensed medical marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act yesterday, which gives state-licensed medical marijuana operators a major federal tax break and also eases restrictions on cannabis research.

Moving medical marijuana to Schedule III places it alongside drugs like ketamine, Tylenol with codeine, and anabolic steroids — categories the federal government considers to have accepted medical use and a lower potential for abuse than Schedule I drugs like heroin. Scientists who study the medical effects of cannabinoids have been requesting reclassification for a long time.

The change does not legalize marijuana for medical or recreational use under federal law, and it does not affect anyone incarcerated on federal marijuana charges.

The DEA will hold an administrative hearing beginning June 29 to consider whether to reschedule marijuana more broadly, beyond just the medical category.

We’re getting ready to kick off Season 2 of my private book club and community, Governerds Insider, and we’re almost at capacity. Over the next few months, we’ll read two books together — The View from the East Wing by Jill Biden, and The Lion Women of Tehran by Marjan Kamali — and talk live with the authors. If you join, you’ll also get access to expert workshops, weekly historical deep dives, and our private Instagram community.

The doors will close as soon as all seats are filled, so sign up now to make sure your spot is secured.

Enroll now

Now, on to today’s piece.

—Sharon

For generations, political corruption followed a familiar script.

A scandal would break. Evidence would emerge. Public outrage would build. And eventually the politician at the center of it would fall — through resignation, pressure from colleagues, or defeat at the hands of voters.

From Richard Nixon and the Watergate scandal to the criminal prosecution of former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich for trying to sell the open Senate seat after Barack Obama’s election to the White House to former New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez’s conviction for accepting bribes — including gold bars stashed in his home — in exchange for selling political influence, corruption was treated as unacceptable and disqualifying. A violation of the rules. A reason to remove someone from power and bar them from holding public office again.

That script still exists. But it no longer explains what we’re seeing in all cases of lawmaker wrongdoing.

In today’s politics, scandal, corruption, or wrongdoing doesn’t always end careers. Sometimes, it doesn’t even weaken them. And in certain cases, it can do the exact opposite — reinforcing a politician’s image, strengthening their connection with supporters, and even becoming part of the appeal.

Which raises a deeper question: If corruption is supposed to be politically damaging and potentially disqualifying, why does it sometimes work?

Here, “corruption” isn’t just bribery or envelopes of cash. It’s broader and includes any abuse of public office for personal or political gain. That can mean financial self-dealing, using insider information, sexual scandals, or leveraging power to shield misconduct or avoid consequences. In other words, the kinds of behavior voters are routinely asked to judge, even when they don’t all fit neatly into criminal statutes.

The assumption that no longer holds

The traditional view of corruption rests on a simple assumption: voters won’t tolerate it and will punish it.

For that to happen, voters have to learn about the misconduct, agree that it matters, and conclude that it disqualifies the politician. Only then does accountability follow.

But in the last few decades, each link in that chain has weakened.

Information about corruption (and everything else under the sun) is no longer scarce — it’s constant. Allegations, investigations, and reports of questionable ethics now circulate nonstop, particularly in our social media algorithms. Rather than shocking the system, they often blend together. It becomes harder to distinguish between serious misconduct and routine political attack.

At the same time, partisanship filters how that information is received — much more than in the past. As voters have sorted into more ideologically consistent camps, politics has taken on a sharper us-versus-them dynamic that shapes how people interpret political news. Voters are less likely to accept damaging information about politicians they support and more likely to dismiss it as exaggerated or politically motivated. What once might have produced consensus outrage now produces disagreement over whether there’s anything to be outraged about.

And, perhaps most important, many voters no longer begin from the assumption that the system is clean. If politics is already viewed as rigged, transactional, or corrupt beneath the surface, then individual acts of corruption don’t necessarily stand out as exceptional. They can feel expected, par for the course.

Once that expectation sets in, the political meaning and consequences of corruption begin to change.

When breaking the rules signals competence

In a system perceived as unfair, rule-following can look naïve. Rule-breaking, by contrast, can look like skill.

That inversion helps explain the political resilience of figures like Donald Trump. Across multiple investigations, lawsuits, and controversies, Trump has not simply survived — he has, at times, used those challenges to reinforce his political identity and energize his followers around the idea that he’s being unfairly targeted by “hoaxes” and “witchhunts.”

What’s more, rather than treating legal scrutiny as a liability, Trump has framed it as evidence of effectiveness. Whether the investigations focus on financial crimes, political misconduct, or even sexual assault, the message is the same. The system is corrupt; the fact that it’s targeting him is proof that he’s fighting it successfully, and doing so on behalf of all law-abiding citizens who may soon find themselves wrongfully accused and investigated. “They’re not after me, they’re after you” reframes investigations as a kind of political validation.

For supporters who already trust Trump and distrust institutions, that argument resonates. The scrutiny doesn’t disqualify the politician — it confirms their role as someone willing and able to navigate, and even exploit, a broken system. Donald Trump leaned into this logic as early as the 2016 campaign, arguing that not paying more in federal income taxes simply meant he was “smart,” a reframing that turned what critics saw as avoidance — despite being a billionaire, he only paid $750 in 2016 and 2017 — into proof of competence.

Closer to home, Marion Barry, former mayor of Washington, DC, was reelected after serving prison time for possession of crack cocaine. He was buoyed by a coalition of voters who saw him as both effective and unfairly targeted, and his famous line “I may not be perfect, but I’m perfect for Washington” captured something deeper than forgiveness. It reflected identification.

In each case, the alleged or proven misconduct didn’t erase political support. It coexisted with it, and in some cases reinforced it.

The “Catch Me If You Can” effect

Corruption has traditionally been something politicians try to hide. But, increasingly, the boundary between concealment and performance is blurring.

When politicians push against ethical or legal limits and survive, the survival itself becomes part of the message.

It signals power: I can do this, and I’m still here.

It signals resilience: they tried to take me down, and they failed.

It signals insider knowledge: I understand how the system works better than the people trying to enforce it.

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That dynamic turns accountability into a kind of test. The question becomes not whether a politician crossed a line, but whether the system can enforce consequences. If the answer is no — or even a yes delayed long enough for the news (and people) to move on — it can strengthen the perception that the politician is operating at a level beyond ordinary constraints.

You can see a version of this dynamic in the ongoing debates over congressional stock trading. Members of Congress from both parties, including high-profile figures like former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, have faced scrutiny over whether lawmakers should be allowed to trade individual stocks while having access to nonpublic information.

The issue led to the passage of the STOCK Act of 2012, which was designed to limit insider trading by members of Congress. But the persistence of perceptions that lawmakers continue to benefit from informational advantages has fed the broader narrative that the system is rigged.

Even when no law is clearly broken, that perception reinforces cynicism. And in a cynical environment, exploiting the advantages of holding office can look less like corruption and more like competence. Or at the very least, it reinforces the already assumed stance that “everyone is doing it,” so it’s just another day in politics.

The takeaway isn’t that voters approve of corruption. It’s that surviving it — especially in visible ways — can carry its own political and economic value.

Why outrage doesn’t always translate into consequences

If corruption can sometimes help rather than hurt, part of the explanation lies not just with politicians but with the public.

Four dynamics, in particular, help explain why outrage often stalls before it becomes true accountability:

• First, partisan filtering. Information about corruption doesn’t land on neutral ground. It is interpreted through political identity. Allegations against one side are more likely to be dismissed as overblown or politically motivated, while similar behavior on the other side is treated as clear evidence of wrongdoing. The result is not shared outrage but competing narratives.

• Second, diffuse harm. Most corruption doesn’t produce a single, visible victim. Its costs are spread across taxpayers, institutions, or future policy outcomes. That makes it harder to generate the kind of focused anger that demands political consequences.

• Third, information overload. The volume of political information — scandals included — has increased dramatically. New revelations quickly displace old ones. Voters are asked to process more than they can reasonably keep track of, which reduces the staying power of any single controversy.

• Fourth, whataboutism. In an environment where both parties can point to examples of misconduct, the conversation often shifts from “Is this wrong?” to “What about [fill in blank with someone on the other side]?” That comparison doesn’t resolve the issue — it neutralizes it.

The result is a kind of equilibrium. Corruption generates attention, but not always consensus. And without broad agreement, the political consequences become less predictable and less achievable.

Corruption as political utility

Taken together, these dynamics help explain a shift that would have been harder to imagine in earlier eras: corruption can have political utility.

It can mobilize supporters, reinforcing a narrative that a politician is being targeted by a hostile system.

It can differentiate candidates, allowing them to present themselves as more aggressive, more effective, or more willing to do what others won’t. And in an environment where all politicians are fighting for attention, focusing on them — even for the wrong reasons — raises their name recognition and pumps up their national brands. This is why you’ve heard of relatively junior lawmakers like Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO). She didn’t get her huge following because of her legislative accomplishments; it was because of a steady stream of high-profile disruptive confrontations, conspiracy theorizing, and public incidents — including video of her and her date groping each other at a very public performance of Beetlejuice — that raised questions about judgment and conduct. In a crowded political environment, that kind of boundary-pushing can be politically valuable.

And finally, it can build credibility within a cynical electorate, where acknowledging, even embodying, the system’s flaws can feel more honest than pretending they don’t exist.

This doesn’t mean that voters are embracing corruption as a value. It means that, under certain conditions, the signals attached to corruption — power, defiance, insider knowledge — can outweigh the traditional costs.

In that sense, corruption is not just a legal or ethical issue. It’s a political one. Its impact depends on how it is interpreted, framed, and incorporated into a broader narrative about what politics is and how it works.

When corruption still backfires

None of this means corruption or wrongdoing no longer matters. It does, as we’ve seen with recent resignations of lawmakers Eric Swalwell (allegations of sexual assault), Tony Gonzales (affair with a staffer who later committed suicide), and Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (under criminal indictment for financial crimes).

But the effects of the misdeeds are at least conditional.

Corruption is still politically damaging when it clearly contradicts a politician’s image, when it produces direct and visible harm, or when the evidence is both overwhelming and widely accepted.

The case of Richard Nixon remains instructive not just because of the wrongdoing itself, but because of the collapse of support that followed. As evidence mounted during Watergate, political allies withdrew, public opinion shifted, and the cost of staying in power exceeded the benefits. (But, don’t forget, Nixon’s resignation didn’t come until August of 1974, over two years after the Watergate break-in occurred. Oh, and he also won reelection in a landslide after the public knew about the break-in.)

Similarly, the prosecution of Rod Blagojevich involved a form of corruption — attempting to sell a Senate seat — that was concrete, easy to understand, and undeniably illegal. The clarity of the misconduct and the irrefutable evidence, including hours of FBI tapes showing Blagojevich was shopping the seat, made it impossible for him to deny or reframe his intent.

These cases highlight important distinctions: not all corruption is equal in political terms, nor does accountability come as quickly as we may wish. The severity of the act matters, but so does its visibility, its simplicity, and its compatibility with the politician’s image.

The system that rewards it

It’s tempting to treat corruption as a problem of individual behavior; a matter of ethics, character, or personal decision-making.

But the patterns suggest something more structural.

Political corruption and wrongdoing are nothing new. They persist because some politicians believe they are above the law and are willing to risk breaking it, calculating that the odds of getting caught aren’t high enough to stop them. But more bluntly, corruption persists because the system doesn’t punish it consistently enough or hard enough.

And in some cases, it does the opposite.

When voters are divided over what counts as corruption, when information is filtered through partisan lenses, and when surviving scrutiny can enhance a politician’s image, the incentives begin to shift.

The question, then, is not simply why politicians are corrupt. At least some of them always have been and always will be. No, the scarier question is why the political system increasingly makes that behavior rational or beneficial.

Until corruption reliably costs politicians power — until it consistently weakens rather than occasionally strengthens them — it won’t disappear. It will evolve, adapt to the incentives around it, and, in certain moments, become something more than a liability. It will become part of the pitch.

Iran War

The US military boarded another tanker that it said was carrying Iranian oil near the Strait of Hormuz today, and the president ordered the navy to “shoot and kill” any Iranian boats trying to place mines underwater. The US-Iran ceasefire Trump unilaterally extended on Tuesday still holds, but barely.

Iran hasn’t committed to a second round of negotiations because of the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.

Meanwhile, President Trump announced this afternoon that the Israel-Lebanon ceasefire has been extended by three weeks after he hosted talks between Israeli and Lebanese representatives at the White House. “The Meeting went very well! The United States is going to work with Lebanon in order to help it protect itself from Hezbollah,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

Warner Bros. Shareholders Approve Paramount Deal

Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders approved an $81 billion takeover by Paramount Skydance this morning, handing CNN — a network Trump has long attacked — to a media company run by the Trump-aligned Ellison family. The deal still needs federal regulatory approval and is expected to close by year’s end.

Paramount Skydance already controls the Paramount Pictures studio, Paramount+ streaming service, and CBS News. Netflix had been the frontrunner to buy the film studio, but ultimately walked away after saying it was “no longer financially attractive.”

Journalists at CNN, speaking to NBC News, said they are fearful and concerned about the potential loss of editorial independence if Paramount owns the cable news network. After the Ellisons took over CBS news, staffers at “60 Minutes” have reported editorial interference, particularly on stories critical of Trump.

Senate Passes $70B for ICE and CBP

The Senate approved a budget resolution for $70 billion in funding for ICE and Customs and Border Protection through 2029 after an overnight session. Since Senate Republicans used budget reconciliation — a process that bypasses the 60-vote filibuster threshold and allows spending bills to pass on a simple majority — they didn’t need Democratic votes.

The vote was along party lines with two defections: two Republicans crossed over to vote no, joining all Democrats.

DHS funding lapsed in mid-February. The most visible fallout has been at airports, where thousands of TSA officers either quit or called in sick once paychecks stopped. Trump ordered the DHS secretary to pay TSA agents using money that was appropriated last year. Homeland Secretary Markwayne Mullin warned that payments to TSA would stop beginning next month if Congress does not resume funding.

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Hegseth Fires Secretary of the Navy

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth fired Navy Secretary John Phelan yesterday — while the Navy is actively blockading Iran’s ports. Phelan’s deputy, Hung Cao, has replaced him as acting Navy secretary.

Hegseth and Phelan had been feuding for some time now. Hegseth believed Phelan was going around him to talk to Trump directly about military matters; Phelan and Trump are Palm Beach neighbors. “Phelan didn’t understand he wasn’t the boss,” a source told Axios. “His job is to follow orders given, not follow the orders he thinks should be given.”

Before being ousted, Phelan was managing the biggest Navy shipbuilding expansion since 1962 — Trump’s “Golden Fleet,” including two planned “Trump-class battleships” and 34 other new ships at a projected cost of $65.8 billion in the next fiscal year.

The day before he was fired, Phelan told reporters the Navy was studying whether to build some of those ships in South Korea or Japan because US shipyards can’t keep up, essentially suggesting outsourcing American warship construction to foreign allies. Less than 24 hours later, he was out.

Phelan, a billionaire and major Trump donor, lasted 13 months. Hegseth has now dismissed more than half a dozen senior military leaders, including Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George three weeks ago.

Kalshi Suspends Three Candidates for Betting on Their Own Races

Prediction market Kalshi banned three congressional candidates from its platform yesterday for betting on their own elections — what the company called “political insider trading.”

All three are running in 2026: Mark Moran, an independent Virginia Senate candidate; Matt Klein, a Minnesota state senator running for Congress as a Democrat; and Ezekiel Enriquez, a former Republican House candidate in Texas. Kalshi fined them between $539 and $6,229, and banned them for five years. Klein acknowledged the bet, saying he put $50 on himself to win his primary.

Prediction markets like Kalshi, Polymarket, and PredictIt — where users bet real money on elections, sports, weather, and more — are currently under scrutiny from lawmakers after a pattern of unusually well-timed trades ahead of major Trump announcements.

Meanwhile, a US Army Master Sergeant involved in the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was arrested and charged today with betting on that operation, netting him $400,000 in profits on Polymarket. According to the indictment, Master Sergeant Gannon Ken Van Dyke, opened a Polymarket account in late December and wagered about $32,000 that Maduro would be “out” by January.

EU Clears $106B for Ukraine After Hungary Stands Down

The European Union approved a $106 billion, two-year financial and military package for Ukraine. The package was made possible after the Hungarian election that ousted Viktor Orbán from power. Hungary had previously vetoed the assistance.

EU decisions require unanimity among the 27 member states, so a single holdout can stall any package.

The EU also cleared a new round of sanctions that Hungary had been blocking: a ban on servicing ships that move Russian oil, plus new sanctions on more than 40 vessels tied to Russia’s fleet. A separate set of sanctions targets Russian energy flowing through Eastern European pipelines.

House GOP Split on Pardon for Ghislaine Maxwell

Republicans on the House Oversight Committee are divided over whether Ghislaine Maxwell should be pardoned in exchange for testimony about Jeffrey Epstein’s network and crimes. Maxwell is the former girlfriend and accomplice to convicted sex trafficker Epstein, and is currently serving a 20-year sentence that began in June 2022.

Maxwell invoked the Fifth Amendment and declined to answer questions when she was deposed over video by the committee earlier this year. Her lawyers have since said she’ll testify if Trump pardons her. Short of that, they’ve rejected further committee appearances otherwise.

The president has the power to pardon people convicted of federal crimes. Trump — whose name appears thousands of times in the released Epstein files — has said he’s open to pardoning Maxwell.

Committee Chair James Comer said “a lot of” members want the pardon to happen but that he’s not one of them. “I think it looks bad,” Comer said. “Honestly, other than Epstein, the worst person in this whole investigation is Maxwell.”

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Now, for today’s story.

—Sharon

Ardent readers of The Preamble will recall that some months ago I wrote an article about the different ways to understand how religious the US is compared with other countries. According to many metrics, such as how important religion is in our daily lives, Americans are, on balance, more religious than our counterparts in other developed democracies around the world.

That pattern shifts, however, depending on how we define “religious.” If we think of it as simply being affiliated with a particular religion (religion might not be important in my daily life, but I still might identify as Christian), then the US is about on par with other developed democracies. If we think of it as a broader kind of spirituality, we’re about level with the entire world. If we think of it as the extent to which religion guides our life choices, the US falls just outside the lowest third across 22 countries globally (among those measured, we’re comparable to Poland, Israel, and Argentina).

Today, we are going to continue our quest to understand religion in America. But this time we are turning a lens inward. In particular, I’m proud to embark on a sacred rite of passage as an elder Millennial: judging the generation after me. What the heck is going on with the kids these days?! (And why won’t they get off my lawn? Lol JK I don’t have a lawn; I bought too much avocado toast.)

A few national trends

Before we start fretting about the youngins, let’s consider some high-level national trends. According to a Gallup survey that’s been running since the 1950s, the importance of religion in our daily lives has slowly been declining, from a high of 75% of respondents indicating it’s very important in 1952 to a near-record low of 47% in 2025 (it hit 46% in 2022 and 2023).

The importance of religion in daily life has been on a long, slow decline among Americans for decades

Percentage of respondents who said religion is “very important,” “fairly important,” or “not very important” in their daily life since 1952. (This question has been asked at least annually, and sometimes more often, since 1980; the dotted lines represent estimated trends between the three times it was asked before then, in 1952, 1965, and 1978.)

The other trend in this graph that’s gotten a lot of attention is the increase in the percentage of respondents who say that religion is “not very important” in their daily lives. After tying with the “fairly importants” in 2013, the “not importants” overtook the “fairly importants” for the first time in 2016 and have outpaced them for most years since.

Of course, we already know this isn’t the only way to think about religiousness. Here’s another lens, this time tracking the religious affiliation among Americans.

The percentage of Americans who are not affiliated with any religion has been fairly steadily increasing since 2005

Percentage of respondents who identify as Christian (in this case the category includes Protestant, nondenominational Christian, or Roman Catholic), other religions, or none

The rise of the religious “nones” has been another closely watched trend. According to a Pew analysis in 2023 that took a close look at this group, most of these “nones” (63%) identify as “nothing in particular,” with a smaller proportion identifying as agnostic (20%) or atheist (17%). Nearly 70% of “nones” still believe in some kind of God or higher power, but very few go to religious services. While a small proportion of “nones” think religion can do more good than harm in society, most either consider it to be more harmful than good or equally good and harmful. In general, they also question a lot of religious teachings and are skeptical of organized religion.

One other small point of interest is that the percentage of Americans who identify as Roman Catholic has held steady at around 20% since the survey began in 1948 (they are folded into “Christian” in the above graph). So the decline in Christianity is due almost entirely to the departure of non-Catholic Christians.

Breaking down some national trends

Whenever we’re working with quantitative data, particularly about complex and abstract topics like religion, it’s good practice to consult multiple sources.

Thus you can imagine my thrill when I found out about the release of brand new findings from the Public Religion Research Institute’s Census of American Religion. PRRI is particularly interested in exploring religious identity along demographic lines like race, party, age, and gender. First, let’s inspect some trends in religiosity by race and by party.

The percentage of Americans who identify as white Christians has declined over the last 12 years among both Republicans and Democrats

Percentage of respondents who identify as white Christians, Christians of color, adherents of non-Christian religions, and having no religious affiliation in 2013 and 2025, nationally and then broken down by political-party identity

There’s a lot going on in the above chart, but the way to think of it is that the leftmost graph is all Americans in PRRI’s study (about 40,000 people nationally). In 2013 (the first year of this particular study), 45% of respondents indicated they identified as white Christians, while 25% identified as Christians of color.

By 2025, this number was down to 40% for white Christians and holding steady at 25% for Christians of color. This suggests that the decline in Christianity we saw overall might be mostly among white Americans rather than Americans of color (I say “might” because things get a little tricky when we compare across datasets with varying methodologies, question wordings, and survey contexts).

As with our previous national look, we also see a rise in “religiously unaffiliated” — again, this is not quite the same thing as “none” or “not very important,” but seeing this decline across multiple conceptualizations of “no religion” can help us be more confident that, indeed, something is afoot in terms of Americans turning away from at least formal religion.

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Iran Seizes Non-US Ships

Iran seized two cargo ships — neither of them from the US — in the Strait of Hormuz today and fired on a third just hours after President Trump extended the US-Iran ceasefire indefinitely. A UK maritime monitoring center said gunfire caused “heavy damage” to one vessel, and the third ship is now stranded off Iran’s coast. Crew on one ship were reported safe; the status of the others is unknown at this time.

About a fifth of the world’s oil passes through the strait. Iran has largely kept it closed since the war began, allowing ships through only after collecting tolls of up to $2 million. It was briefly reopened last week after a ceasefire with Israel and Lebanon, but it was then shut again after the US began a blockade of all of Iran’s ports.

Trump said he was extending the ceasefire to give Iran time to submit a proposal to end the war. A second round of peace talks was supposed to begin in Pakistan this week with Vice President JD Vance representing the US, but was postponed after Iranian negotiators pulled out. The two sides remain far apart on Iran’s nuclear program, reopening the strait, and the lifting of sanctions.

In Lebanon, Israeli strikes have continued despite a separate ceasefire between the two countries, with three people killed in two strikes in the south on Wednesday.

Virginia Voters Approve Mid-Decade Redistricting, but Judge Blocks It

Virginia voters gave Democrats the green light yesterday to redraw the state’s Congressional map for the 2026 midterms — but a state judge blocked the results from being certified hours later, calling the referendum unconstitutional.

Over 51% voted yes on an amendment to the state constitution, which temporarily strips map-drawing power from the bipartisan commission that voters installed in 2020. Authority to redraw the maps will revert to the commission after the 2030 census.

Right now Virginia’s delegation is 6-5 Democrats. The new map would potentially push the ratio 10-1 in favor of Democrats.

The judge who blocked certification had already ruled twice to stop the referendum from going forward — and the Virginia Supreme Court overruled him both times. Attorney General Jay Jones has said the state will appeal again.

Virginia is the latest front in a national redistricting fight that started last July, when Trump asked Texas Republicans to redraw their map to favor the GOP. Six states have since changed theirs.

Georgia Democrat Scott Dies

Rep. David Scott, a Georgia Democrat who represented the Atlanta-area 13th District for more than two decades, died today at 80. He was planning to seek a 13th term.

Scott was the first Black lawmaker to chair the House Agriculture Committee, a job he held from 2021 to 2023. He was first elected to the House in 2002, after nearly 30 years in Georgia’s state legislature. In recent years his health had visibly declined, and Democrats replaced him as the committee’s top Democrat in 2024.

His Congressional seat is safely Democratic and is expected to stay that way. Under Georgia law, the governor has 10 days to call a special election.

With Scott’s death, the House now stands at 217 Republicans, 212 Democrats and one independent, with five vacancies.

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Supreme Court Hears Green Card Case

The Supreme Court heard arguments today in a case that will decide how much evidence immigration officers need before stripping a returning green card holder of their legal status at the airport.

The case is about Muk Choi Lau, a lawful permanent resident of the US, who traveled through a New York airport in 2012 while facing criminal charges for trademark counterfeiting. Officers at the airport saw the pending charges, treated him as if he were arriving for the first time, and placed him on “parole” — an immigration status that only grants temporary permission to be in the US.

When Lau was convicted a year later on the counterfeiting charges, the government then moved to deport him, but a federal appeals court stopped it. The court said that to strip him of his green card protections at the airport, officers needed actual proof he had committed a crime, not just charges that hadn’t yet been proven.

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The Trump administration wants the Supreme Court to reverse the lower court ruling. The administration’s lawyer argued that parole is just “hitting a pause button” on a green card holder’s status, and that all an officer needs is “satisfaction” that something might disqualify the person. The court’s liberal justices pressed the government on whether the power to strip green card holders of their status could be abused. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson asked whether a future anti-immigrant administration could use it to block large numbers of green card holders from coming back into the country. Justice Samuel Alito pushed back, asking if the court really had to accept Jackson’s “conspiracy theory” to decide the case.

An estimated 12.8 million lawful permanent residents could be affected if the Trump administration wins. A ruling is expected by July.

Appeals Court Clears Ten Commandments Law

Texas can require public schools to display the Ten Commandments in every classroom, a federal appeals court ruled yesterday. In a 9-8 decision, the court said that doing so doesn’t violate the First Amendment’s ban on the government establishing an official religion.

Texas passed the law last year. Fifteen multifaith families sued, arguing the government can’t require every classroom to display a religious text. They pointed to a 1980 Supreme Court ruling that struck down a nearly identical Kentucky law, but Texas argued the commandments are part of America’s historical and legal heritage, and that a poster doesn’t force anyone to believe anything.

The 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals majority accepted Texas’s argument. It said the 1980 ruling relied on an old legal test the Supreme Court has since abandoned, and that under the current interpretation of the First Amendment, a classroom poster doesn’t cross the constitutional line.

The dissent, written by Judge Irma Ramirez, argued that only the Supreme Court can overrule its own past decisions, and that Stone still stands. The American Civil Liberties Union, which represents the multifaith families in the case, said they will ask the Supreme Court to take the case.

DOJ Indicts SPLC Over Informant Program

The Justice Department yesterday indicted the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) on federal fraud charges, alleging the civil rights group secretly paid more than $3 million between 2014 and 2023 to informants inside the Ku Klux Klan and other extremist groups and misled donors about how their money was used.

Founded in Montgomery, Alabama in 1971, the SPLC tracks hate groups, turns over evidence of crimes to law enforcement, and files lawsuits about their activity. For decades, it also paid confidential sources inside Klan chapters, neo-Nazi groups and militias which the SPLC says it passed along to the FBI and local police. SPLC has not disputed making the payments and said the program has been disbanded. Interim CEO Bryan Fair said the program “saved lives.”

The Justice Department says donors were told their money would dismantle hate groups, and instead it was funneled, through bank accounts opened in fake names, to the leaders of those groups. SPLC calls the charges false and says it will fight them.

The FBI cut ties with SPLC last October, calling it a “partisan smear machine.” The FBI’s specific complaint was about SPLC’s “hate map,” a list of organizations it labels as extremist — which has grown in recent years to include conservative groups like Turning Point USA, Moms for Liberty and the Family Research Council. The ACLU called yesterday’s indictment “McCarthy-era” weaponization of the Justice Department.

Mace Moves to Expel Fellow Republican Cory Mills

Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) filed a resolution earlier this week to expel fellow Republican Cory Mills from the House. The House Ethics Committee has been investigating Mills since August 2024 over allegations of sexual misconduct, domestic violence, violating campaign finance laws, and profiting from federal contracts while in office.

A Florida judge issued a restraining order against him last October after his ex-girlfriend said he threatened and harassed her. Mills denies everything and has not been charged with a crime. He says he’s not resigning from Congress.

“Any Member who votes to keep him here is voting to protect a woman beater and a fraud,” Mace said. Expelling a House member requires a two-thirds vote — a very high bar.

Mace herself is under an Ethics Committee investigation over allegedly overbilling Congress for Washington housing costs; she has denied wrongdoing. Mills is reportedly drafting his own expulsion resolution against her.

UK Passes Generational Smoking Ban

The United Kingdom just passed a law that will permanently ban anyone born on or after January 1, 2009 from ever buying cigarettes — even after they turn 18. The minimum purchase age will rise by a year every year, so the ban expands as that generation ages.

The Tobacco and Vapes Bill now goes to King Charles III for his signature, the final step that turns a parliamentary bill into law.

The new rule takes effect Jan. 1, 2027 across the United Kingdom.

The law also restricts vaping in response to a sharp rise in youth using e-cigarettes and vape pens.

About 5.3 million adults in the UK — more than one in ten — were smokers in 2024. Smoking causes roughly 64,000 deaths and 400,000 hospital admissions in Britain each year. The government called it “a historic moment for the nation’s health.” Critics say it undermines the freedom of choice.

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We’re 96% full for Season Two, and doors close this week. This season Jill Biden and Marjan Kamali are joining us live. Ibram X. Kendi is teaching on Replacement Theory. Steve Vladeck is coming twice to walk us through what the Supreme Court did this term — the cases, the rulings, and what it all means going forward.

If you’ve been waiting for the right moment, this is it. The next one won’t come around until September.

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— Sharon

Now, on to today.

American and Iranian negotiators are trying to hammer out a deal to end the war between their nations. But a smaller, no less combustible front in Lebanon is testing whether that is possible.

Six weeks of renewed Israeli assaults on Hezbollah — Iran’s most powerful proxy force — have left more than 2,100 people dead and over a million displaced, roughly a quarter of Lebanon’s population. Southern Lebanon has been effectively cut off from the rest of the country after Israeli forces destroyed key bridges over the Litani River, isolating entire communities and complicating any return to normal life.

Amid that wreckage, President Donald Trump announced on April 16 a 10-day ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon to improve the chances of reaching a diplomatic solution with Iran to end the war. It is the latest in a long line of ceasefires that have paused the conflict between Israel and its northern neighbor. The question now is whether anything about the conditions that have broken every previous deal has actually changed.

A state that cannot disarm itself

To understand why this ceasefire is so fragile, it helps to understand what Hezbollah is — and why the Lebanese state has never been able to dismantle it.

Over the past four decades, Iran systematically built a network of proxy forces across the Middle East by embedding itself in poor, marginalized Shia communities in Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, and elsewhere that Sunni Muslims were in power. These groups were not constructed as traditional militias. They were designed as hybrid entities: political parties, social service providers, and armed forces operating simultaneously.

In Lebanon, the result is Hezbollah, a governing authority in parts of the country. It holds seats in parliament, runs hospitals and schools across the Shia south, and has built an arsenal once estimated at more than 150,000 missiles, hiding them in schools, behind UN posts, in people’s homes. It answers not to Beirut but to Tehran — functioning as Iran’s most powerful foreign legion, fighting Israel on Iran’s behalf and serving as the tip of what Iran considers its “axis of resistance.”

Lebanon’s sectarian system made this possible. Power is divided among religious communities in a delicate balance that has repeatedly proven unstable, most violently during a civil war from 1975 to 1990 that killed roughly 150,000 people. Hezbollah emerged from that period as the armed representative of Lebanon’s Shia population — the country’s largest and historically most marginalized group — backed by Iranian funding, training, and strategic direction.

That combination is what makes Hezbollah so resilient. It is not an external force imposed on Lebanon; it is deeply embedded within it. Asking the Lebanese government to dismantle Hezbollah is not simply a question of political will. It is like asking someone to remove part of their own skeleton.

“The pathway towards dismantling Hezbollah goes through the Israeli military or a civil war in Lebanon,” Avner Golov, a former Israeli national security official, said recently.

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A history of temporary solutions

Israel and Lebanon have technically been at war since Israel’s founding in 1948, but the conflict with Hezbollah took shape following Israel’s 1982 invasion of southern Lebanon, which was aimed at expelling Palestinian militants operating from Lebanese territory. In the aftermath of that occupation, and amid Lebanon’s broader civil war, Hezbollah was formed with Iranian backing as both a resistance force and a political movement.

Since then, the pattern has been consistent. Israel withdraws or pauses. Hezbollah regroups and rearms. Fighting resumes under slightly different conditions, but with the same underlying structure intact: Israel is in active conflict not with the Lebanese armed forces, but with Hezbollah fighters not under the government’s control.

A 2006 war triggered by a Hezbollah cross-border raid ended with UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which required Hezbollah to disarm south of the Litani River. Hezbollah ignored it.

That pattern held until October 7, 2023, when Hamas’s attack on Israel triggered a broader regional confrontation. Hezbollah opened a front on Israel’s northern border almost immediately, framing it as a support operation for the Palestinians. What followed was an escalation that eventually expanded into full-scale conflict.

Israel responded differently this time. Rather than containing Hezbollah, it sought to degrade it systematically.

One of the most striking examples came in September 2024, when thousands of pagers used by Hezbollah operatives exploded across Lebanon. The devices, which Hezbollah had adopted after concluding that cellphones were being used to track its fighters, had been quietly manufactured by Israeli intelligence. Within seconds of receiving what appeared to be routine messages, the pagers detonated, killing at least a dozen people and wounding thousands more. The explosions, followed by similar attacks on walkie-talkies, demonstrated that Israel can target Hezbollah’s internal communications using sophisticated technology.

For more than 30 years, Hezbollah had been led by Hassan Nasrallah, a calculating, charismatic figure who transformed the group from an Iranian-funded militia into the most formidable non-state military force in the Middle East, one that fought Israel to a standstill in 2006 and became Tehran’s indispensable instrument of regional power. Eight days after the pager attack, he was dead — killed in a massive Israeli strike on a Beirut underground bunker where he was meeting with senior commanders and an Iranian general.

The loss of Nasrallah, combined with the systematic targeting of Hezbollah’s leadership and infrastructure, significantly degraded the group’s capabilities. But it did not eliminate it.

Hezbollah today is weaker than it was a year ago — its leadership thinned, its arsenal reduced, its vulnerabilities exposed in ways that would have been difficult to imagine even a few years ago. But it remains intact, and still deeply embedded in Lebanon’s political and social fabric.

A ceasefire without a negotiation

The ceasefire now in place between Israel and Lebanon almost unraveled before it began. Iranian officials initially appeared to believe that their own ceasefire with the US would extend to Lebanon and Israel. Israeli officials quickly made clear that it did not. For a brief moment, the discrepancy threatened to derail the larger diplomatic track, with Iran insisting on including Lebanon in the agreement. What it revealed was not simply miscommunication, but the existence of overlapping negotiations, each with different participants and assumptions about what had been agreed.

There were, in fact, discussions in Washington between Israeli and Lebanese officials — a rarity given that the two countries remain technically at war. Those conversations produced a framework for de-escalation. But the ceasefire itself was driven by President Trump, who announced it publicly before Israel’s security cabinet had fully convened.

The following day, Trump posted that Israel would “not be bombing Lebanon any longer. They are PROHIBITED from doing so by the USA. Enough is enough.”

The statement was extraordinary in both tone and implication. It showed a level of direct US pressure on Israeli military operations that is rarely confirmed so bluntly in public. At the same time, the White House clarified that Israel retained the right to self-defense, leaving considerable room for continued military activity under the ceasefire’s terms if Hezbollah launched any attacks against Israel. Netanyahu agreed to the deal but made clear that Israeli forces would remain inside Lebanon in an expanded security zone. Hezbollah, for its part, has not disarmed, and has given no indication that it intends to do so.

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In northern Israel, residents living under the rockets weren’t celebrating. Maor, a 32-year-old truck driver in Nahariya whose house was hit by a rocket last year, had heard all of this before when the Lebanese armed forces were repeatedly unable to curb Hezbollah’s attacks against Israel. “We gave the Lebanese government a chance and they failed to uphold the agreement; they didn’t disarm Hezbollah,” he said. “If we don’t do it, no one will.”

A truce built on the same fault lines

This is the central problem. Every major attempt to stabilize the Israeli–Lebanese border over the past four decades has relied on agreements between Israel and the Lebanese state — and every one has been constrained by the same reality: the Lebanese government does not control Hezbollah.

In 1983, Israel and Lebanon signed an agreement that collapsed within months. In 2006, Resolution 1701 called for Hezbollah’s disarmament; it was never implemented. More recent ceasefires have followed the same pattern, producing temporary reductions in violence without altering the underlying balance of power.

Hezbollah was not part of the talks in Washington that preceded this latest ceasefire and was not part of the announcement. A Hezbollah lawmaker said the group learned of the truce through Iran’s ambassador. Its official statement was unequivocal: the presence of Israeli troops on Lebanese soil grants Lebanon and its people “the right to resist.”

This is the contradiction at the heart of the current arrangement. The agreement depends on the restraint of an actor that did not negotiate it, is not obligated by it, and has often ignored similar truces.

What has changed is the context. Hezbollah has been weakened, even if it has not been dismantled. And inside Lebanon, there are early signs — however tentative — of pressure building in a different direction.

Previous Lebanese governments have avoided confronting Hezbollah for a simple reason: disarmament is not merely a policy decision, it is a potential trigger for collapse. Any attempt to forcibly dismantle Hezbollah would almost certainly mean turning the Lebanese army against one of the country’s most powerful and deeply rooted constituencies in society, raising the risk of a return to civil war. It would also require overwhelming force far beyond the capabilities of the army.

The alternative — voluntary disarmament — is even less likely. Hezbollah defines itself as a “resistance” force, justified by the ongoing conflict with Israel and backed by Iran as part of its regional strategy. Giving up its weapons would mean abandoning both its military leverage and its political identity.

President Joseph Aoun’s government has signaled a willingness to move toward a state monopoly on arms. Whether that translates into meaningful action is an open question. It reflects a shift in tone.

Even so, the underlying constraint remains: the Lebanese state can agree to terms, but it cannot, on its own, enforce them.

None of this means the ceasefire is meaningless. It may provide temporary relief for civilians on both sides of the border, allow displaced populations to return, and create space for further diplomacy.

But the conditions that have repeatedly driven this conflict remain in place. Israel continues to face an armed force on its northern border that it views as an existential threat, because it views Hezbollah as an arm of Iran, which has called for Israel’s destruction. Lebanon continues to host that force without the capacity to fully control it. And Hezbollah continues to operate as part of a broader Iranian strategy that extends beyond Lebanon itself.

The ceasefire temporarily contains those dynamics. It may hold for now. It may even hold longer than expected. But it only manages the conflict the same way every ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon has: buying time without deciding the outcome.

US-Iran Talks in Doubt Ahead of Ceasefire Deadline

President Trump said today he is extending the ceasefire with Iran until Tehran has submitted a proposal to end the conflict permanently. The ceasefire had been set to expire tomorrow. Trump also said the US would not attack Iran, upon Pakistan’s request, until the talks conclude one way or another. Meanwhile, the second round of peace talks scheduled for tomorrow in Islamabad remains in doubt.

Iran has not confirmed it will send a delegation. Pakistan, which is hosting and mediating the talks, said earlier today that it was still awaiting a “formal response from the Iranian side.” Vice President JD Vance, who led the US delegation at the first round, was expected to depart Washington this morning but instead remained in the capital for meetings, US officials said.

Earlier today, US forces boarded an Iranian oil tanker, which Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said was an “act of war.” Iran has also cited seizure of a ship on Sunday and the ongoing US naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz as breaches of the truce and of international law.

The sticking points in US-Iran negotiations remain unchanged from the first round of talks, which ended without a deal on April 12: Iran’s nuclear program, its frozen assets in European banks, and US and EU sanctions.

Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick Resigns

Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick resigned from the House of Representatives today, effective immediately, minutes before the House Ethics Committee was set to recommend disciplinary action against her — a punishment lawmakers from both parties expected would include expulsion.

Cherfilus-McCormick, a three-term congresswoman, was indicted in November on federal charges of allegedly stealing $5 million in FEMA disaster relief funds for her campaign. She has pleaded not guilty.

The Florida Democrat announced her resignation in a statement posted on X. She called the House ethics probe “not a fair process” and said the committee’s decision to proceed while she faces a pending federal criminal indictment “prevented me from defending myself.”

She is the third House member to resign since April 13, following Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) and Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-TX), who both stepped down over sexual misconduct allegations. Her seat in Florida’s 20th Congressional District will remain vacant until a special election.

Labor Secretary Chavez-DeRemer Resigns

Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer resigned yesterday, becoming the third Trump cabinet member to leave in seven weeks.

Chavez-DeRemer had been under investigation by the Labor Department’s inspector general — the department’s internal watchdog — since January. The probe began after a complaint filed with the IG’s office in early January alleged she was having a sexual relationship with a member of her security detail and directing aides to fabricate official trips so she could spend time with family and friends. She was scheduled to be interviewed by investigators in the coming days.

Earlier this month, three employees filed formal civil rights complaints accusing Chavez-DeRemer of fostering a toxic workplace and retaliating against women who reported misconduct by her husband, Shawn DeRemer. In February, he was barred from entering the Labor Department’s headquarters after two women said he sexually assaulted them at the office. At least one of those incidents was caught on a security camera.

Employees also accused Chavez-DeRemer of drinking on the job and giving grants to political operatives.

Four members of Chavez-DeRemer’s team were placed on leave during the probe, including the security detail member with whom she was accused of having an affair. Three of the four — the security staffer, her chief of staff, and her deputy chief of staff — resigned in early March; the fourth, director of advance Melissa Robey, was fired the day after sitting for a four-hour interview with the inspector general.

Deputy Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling will now serve as acting secretary.
Chavez-DeRemer, a former Republican congresswoman from Oregon, will “take a position in the private sector,” White House communications director Steven Cheung said in an X post.

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Fed Chair Hearing

Kevin Warsh, President Trump’s nominee to chair the Federal Reserve, told the Senate Banking Committee at his confirmation hearing today he would not take orders from the White House on interest rates. But he repeatedly refused to tell senators what is actually inside roughly $100 million in investment funds he holds — saying a confidentiality agreement prevents him from naming the underlying assets — and would say only that he has agreed to sell them if he is confirmed.

Warsh said Trump never asked him to commit to any interest rate decision in any of their discussions, “nor would I ever agree to do so.” Trump has publicly pushed the Fed to cut rates and criticized current Chair Jerome Powell, whose term ends May 15.

During the hearing, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) asked Warsh several times about his financial disclosures, which list more than $100 million in holdings connected to his work for investor Stanley Druckenmiller — the largest labeled only as the “Juggernaut Fund,” which is managed by Druckenmiller’s firm. Warsh has said confidentiality agreements prevent him from naming the underlying assets.

Warren asked directly whether any of the assets involved Trump or his family, Chinese-controlled companies, money laundering, or vehicles linked to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, since Warsh’s name appears in the publicly released Epstein files. Warsh did not answer the senator, saying only if he is confirmed, he would divest most of the assets before confirmation and the rest within 90 days.

Warsh’s confirmation before Powell’s May 15 exit is uncertain. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) has said he will block the nomination in committee until the Justice Department drops its criminal investigation into Powell over cost overruns at the Fed’s headquarters renovation.

SCOTUS on FCC Fines on AT&T, Verizon

The US Supreme Court held oral argument today on a case to decide whether to uphold more than $100 million in fines the Federal Communications Commission imposed on AT&T and Verizon.

At issue is the FCC’s practice of issuing “forfeiture orders” — binding fines assessed through internal agency proceedings rather than a trial — for alleged violations of federal communications law. The agency fined AT&T $57 million and Verizon $46.9 million in 2024 for selling customer location data to third-party aggregators allegedly without adequate safeguards. The companies argue the Constitution’s Seventh Amendment entitles them to a jury trial before the FCC issues a fine.

The government countered that FCC forfeiture orders are not final unless enforced in court — a company can refuse to pay, and the DOJ must then sue before a jury to collect, which means the company still gets a jury trial.

A majority of the justices seemed skeptical that the FCC’s process denies the companies their right to a jury trial.

Justice Samuel Alito said the agency’s process — created by Congress in 1960 — looked “quite different” from what the Constitution’s framers would have recognized as a lawsuit requiring a jury.

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Justice Brett Kavanaugh suggested that the jury-trial right is preserved at the DOJ collection stage. But the companies’ lawyer, Jeffrey Wall, replied that in practice, companies facing an adverse FCC finding choose to pay the fine immediately to avoid the reputational damage of an unresolved federal enforcement action — and once they pay, no DOJ collection suit is ever filed, which means the jury trial the government points to never happens. “When your main regulator tells you you owe hundreds, maybe even billions of dollars, you can’t sit around and do nothing,” Wall said.

ATF Probes How Louisiana Gunman Got Assault Gun

Federal agents are investigating how the Louisiana man who fatally shot eight children on Sunday, seven of them his own, obtained the assault-style pistol he used. Shamar Elkins, 31, had a 2019 felony conviction for illegal use of a firearm that likely barred him from owning guns, according to Shreveport police. Relatives said he had attempted suicide in February and, three years ago, had threatened to kill his wife, their children and himself.

Elkins shot the children at a home in the Cedar Grove neighborhood of Shreveport, police said. Many of the victims, ages 3 to 11, were asleep and most were shot in the head. Elkins also shot his wife, Shaneiqua Pugh, and a woman believed to be his girlfriend; both are in critical condition. A 12-year-old girl jumped from the roof of one of the homes to escape and suffered non-life-threatening injuries.

Elkins was killed in an exchange of gunfire with police during a vehicle chase into neighboring Bossier City.Louisiana State Police are investigating whether he died by suicide or police fire, while the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives — the agency that enforces federal firearms laws — is investigating how Elkins got the gun.

The incident was the deadliest US mass shooting since January 2024.

If you’re experiencing thoughts of self-harm, help is available through the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.

Jury Awards $5,000 in Second Uber Driver Sexual Assault Verdict

Yesterday, a federal jury in Raleigh, North Carolina, ordered Uber to pay $5,000 to a woman who said an Uber driver sexually assaulted her in 2019. The company is facing more than 3,300 similar cases pending in federal court.

The anonymous plaintiff in the North Carolina trial said that when her Uber arrived at her Raleigh destination just before 2 a.m. on a night in March 2019, the driver grabbed her inner thigh and asked if he could “keep it with him.” She then fled the vehicle. Uber did not dispute that the assault occurred, but argued it is a technology platform, not a “common carrier” like a taxi service with a legal duty to protect passengers under North Carolina law. Uber argued that the company is not responsible for the conduct of drivers, whom it classifies as independent contractors rather than employees.

This is the second sexual assault case that Uber has lost. In February, an Arizona jury awarded $8.5 million to a woman who said an Uber driver raped her when she was 19.

Virginia Redistricting Referendum

Virginia voters head to the polls today to decide whether to amend the state constitution to let the Democratic-controlled General Assembly redraw the state’s 11 congressional districts ahead of the November midterms.

Virginia’s current House delegation is six Democrats and five Republicans, based on a map drawn in 2021 by a bipartisan redistricting commission. The map on the ballot today — already passed by the legislature and signed by Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger — would take effect only if voters approve the amendment and would likely give Democrats a 10-1 seat advantage. The legislature’s redistricting power would expire October 31, 2030, returning authority to the bipartisan commission after the 2030 census.

Virginia’s referendum is part of a nationwide mid-decade redistricting fight that began in July 2025, when Trump asked Texas Republicans to redraw their map to favor the GOP. Six states have since changed their congressional maps; California Democrats passed a similar mid-decade map through Proposition 50 last November.

My private book club — Governerds Insider — opens three times a year, and Season Two is 94% full. This season we’re reading Jill Biden’s memoir and Marjan Kamali’s The Lion Women of Tehran, and both authors are joining us live.

Ibram X. Kendi and Bob Crawford will be here for private author talks, and Steve Vladeck is teaching workshops on the major Supreme Court cases of the term. Registration closes as soon as the seats are full.

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Now, on to today’s story.

— Sharon

At a time when faith in the Supreme Court is at record lows, attorney and legal analyst Sarah Isgur says many Americans are blaming the wrong branch for the nation’s woes.

Isgur, who has previously worked on Republican presidential campaigns and in all three branches of the federal government, is the host of the legal- and Court-focused podcast Advisory Opinions. She is also the author of the new book Last Branch Standing, in which she argues that the Supreme Court is the branch of government most resembling what the Founders intended.

To Isgur, SCOTUS is meant to be an anti-majoritarian institution that doesn’t bend to the whims of culture or politics. And despite the perception that the Court votes along lines of partisan ideology, she argues that looking beyond sensational cases reveals balance in the ways justices are approaching judgments.

I spoke with Isgur about her motivation for the book and which of its arguments will most challenge conventional wisdom.

(The following interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.)

Natasha Alford: Let’s start with the title. What does “Last Branch Standing” mean to you?

Sarah Isgur: To understand why so many are frustrated with the Supreme Court, you have to understand that the other two branches are failing — you have Congress not doing its job, and you have the president doing every job.

We are basically living under government by executive order. That’s not the way it’s supposed to work. And so instead of feeling like the Supreme Court is part of an ongoing conversation between Congress or the constitutional amendment process and the president, instead we feel like the Supreme Court is the last word. So when a headline reads, “Supreme Court strikes down Biden’s student loan forgiveness,” or “Supreme Court strikes down Trump’s tariffs,” we think, “Well, then that’s the answer.”

What the headline should read is, “Supreme Court says Congress can pass student loan debt forgiveness, but a president acting alone cannot,” or “Supreme Court said only Congress can implement worldwide tariffs, not President Trump.” Because we don’t see it that way, we blame the court when we should actually be blaming Congress or blaming ourselves for not voting for people who will actually legislate.

Alford: You open the book with the idea that the way we talk about the Court is not grounded in data or fact, and that the Court is not the 6–3 conservative monolith that people assume. Break that down for people.

Isgur: Let’s start with the statistics. In the last 20 years, 90+% of cases at the Supreme Court have been decided with at least one liberal justice in the majority. The most likely outcome of any case at the Supreme Court is that it’ll be unanimous. Last term, the number of cases that had all the liberals in dissent together was the same as the number that were decided with all the liberals in the majority and conservatives in dissent, whether it was 6–3 or 5–4. The problem is that we never hear about those cases where the conservatives lose because it doesn’t fit our narrative.

Last term there were three big cases — one on gun manufacturer liability, one on religious liberty for tax exemption in Wisconsin, and one on reverse discrimination involving sexual orientation — that all came out unanimously. Each of the opinions was written by a liberal justice.

Alford: Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson gave a speech at Yale recently in which she called her fellow conservative justices’ emergency orders “scratch paper musings.” She also noted that the Court has sided with the Trump administration in 80% of emergency applications this term.

Does that change anything in terms of understanding the 6–3 framing, or even just how these justices are relating to each other right now?

Isgur: We have to explain what this emergency docket or interim docket is. This is when the Supreme Court is asked to decide whether a policy will go into effect during the litigation of the case before it comes back up to the Supreme Court. Donald Trump has won a lot at the interim stage.

But what’s interesting is that all four of his major policy cases so far — the Alien Enemies Act, federalizing the national guard in Chicago, the tariffs case, and certainly what we think will happen in the birthright citizenship case — he’s lost in the end. So when you look at statistics that say he has won 80% of these interim cases, it’s important to put that in the context of waiting for the final decision.

Also, we should look at the denominator. Beyond the 27 interim cases that the administration has appealed to the Supreme Court, there are another hundred that they didn’t appeal and just took the “L” on. So you can say they’ve won 80% of the cases they chose to appeal. But if you include all of the cases that they didn’t even try to appeal, the percentage is much smaller.

Alford: You mentioned that Presidents Obama, Biden, and Trump all had something in common in terms of bypassing Congress and using executive orders. Talk to me about why that’s a problem for the average person who might be thinking, “Oh, I’m just glad something is being done.” Does it undermine what the Founders had in mind?

Isgur: It undermines us as voters. A hundred years ago in the Progressive Era — with both Republicans and Democrats, it’s Woodrow Wilson and it’s Teddy Roosevelt — they had this idea that voters are pretty dumb and members of Congress didn’t know about all the science and new discoveries.

So what we really needed, the presidents thought, is to leave these questions of public policy to experts and to ensure that voters can’t mess with those experts. So they created all these agencies within the executive branch and made them independent so that they couldn’t be voted out. Now a hundred years has gone by and — slowly but surely — Congress has learned that they don’t have much of a job anymore. They haven’t really been exercising their legislative muscles. Some members aren’t even hiring legislative staff. They’re just hiring communication staff, bookers to put them on TV, or social media gurus.

As presidents saw that Congress wasn’t legislating, they stepped in and said, “Aha, I’ll just solve this through executive order.” Then Congress learned, “Oh, this is even better. Because now the president, when he’s in my party, I’ll get everything I want and I don’t have to compromise anything.” That made it even more impossible to compromise, since one side knows the president will sign an executive order and the other side knows when they get the power, they can just undo that executive order and sign a new one.

Alford: What can the Supreme Court do about that?

Isgur: What the Court can do is make the president more accountable for the decisions being made within the executive branch. They can make him a more powerful president over a less powerful presidency. For instance, no more independent agencies, and the president has hiring and firing power. No more experts shielded from political accountability, but they also don’t have the power to make all of these decisions that they’ve been making in these agencies. Instead Congress has to do that. The Court can’t make Congress legislate, but it can strike down all these executive orders.

Biden’s student loan debt forgiveness, the eviction moratorium, the vaccine mandate, Trump’s bump stock order, his tariffs, his birthright citizenship order, federalizing the National Guard, all of those [were] presidents not working with Congress, even though their party controls both houses. And the court can simply say, “The president can’t do that.” Then our problems will continue to exist, and the hope is that voters will start to elect members of Congress who will compromise and address those problems.

Alford: With public trust in the Supreme Court at historic lows, what do you think Americans should know that could change perceptions of it?

Isgur: The Court is a counter-majoritarian institution. It’s the only branch that is supposed to rule against the majority of Americans. That’s why it exists, actually. If the other two branches were always doing their job constitutionally, we would never need a judicial branch to check them.

The justices on the Court spend a lot of time thinking about John Marshall Harlan. He’s the sole dissenter in Plessy v. Ferguson, which upheld racial segregation. His portrait sits in their conference room when they vote on cases. They sign the flyleaf of his Bible before they take their seat on the Court.

He was the sole dissenter because he stood against the majority of Americans, the majority of the Court, the culture in which he grew up — because his job, as he saw it, was simply to say the Constitution demands the equal protection of the laws, regardless of your race. While he was alone, that is an opinion that we hold quite dear today. History thinks he’s right, posterity thinks he is right. If you’re a justice on the Supreme Court, you’re not supposed to care about your approval numbers. In fact, having a high approval number might mean the Court isn’t doing its job right.

Alford: There’s a whole chapter in your book about the Court taking fewer and fewer cases. Should we interpret that as a good or a bad thing?

Isgur: The Court doesn’t take enough cases. At the beginning of my lifetime, they took 150 cases a term. We’re down to 60 now. And I think we all know it’s not because there aren’t things that need to be solved in our law.

Let’s say the Court took five Second Amendment cases in a single term instead of one — they wouldn’t all turn out the same way, and it’d be much harder for partisans to say we are always losing or we are always winning at this Court.

Alford: You wrote about how the Federalist Society has shaped the modern Court more than any president, but you also argue that it may be on the brink of collapse. Why is that significant?

Isgur: The Federalist Society started in 1982 as a response to the Warren Court and the belief that the Supreme Court justices were simply giving policy pronouncements as if they were a super-legislature. The Federalist Society has three pillars: (1) the state exists to preserve freedom; (2) separation of power is essential to our system of government; and (3) it is emphatically the duty of judges to say what the law is and not what it should be — that’s where you get originalism and textualism. It wasn’t about outcomes. It was about process, and conservatives believed if judges used the correct process, it would result in better outcomes for the country and preserve the Constitution.

Well, here we are in 2026, and the political right is now quite different from when conservatives had a real seat at the table with the Republican Party. The current political right is like, “Why do I care about process? I want the outcomes that I want.” In that sense, there is no more purpose for the Federalist Society for the political right. It’ll be very interesting to see, if Donald Trump were to get another pick for the Supreme Court, does he choose a judicial conservative who cares about process, or does he choose a political-right judge who’s only interested in outcomes? Do we start to head back to that Warren Court era when judges were acting as a super-legislature?

Alford: I also wanted to ask you about term limits, which people can read about in Last Branch Standing. Could you give a quick note about why you are against term limits for justices?

Isgur: Imposing term limits and guaranteeing each president two Supreme Court nominations sounds nice, right? It gets rid of the randomness. But whenever we’re talking about policy, the question should always be: what are the trade-offs? You’re fixing this problem, but what does it cost?

In this case, you’re fixing a randomness problem. But let me tell you about the cost. If every president knows they get two picks, eventually they will name who their picks are while they are candidates. Eventually those two people will run as a ticket with the president. You will have the president, the vice president, and two Supreme Court nominees. How independent will we think this branch is when a justice just got off the stump, took off his red hat, and put on a black robe? Will you trust the justices’ decisions when they keep ruling in favor of the president they want to appoint them to a cabinet position? Or if the justices know that they’re getting a new colleague in six months, and they know who that justice will be, what if they just wait out the tenure of a justice they don’t like?

Term limits would also change who presidents pick as justices. They’re not going to pick some legal nerd to do this — they’re going to pick someone who’s good on the campaign trail.

This will all undermine the independence of the judiciary and our belief in its legitimacy. So with the idea of term limits, we are solving one problem, but I think we’re causing much greater ones.

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Vance to Lead US Team in New Islamabad Talks

The United States and Iran will meet again soon in Pakistan to resume negotiations on ending the war. Vice President JD Vance will be joined by special envoy Steve Witkoff and President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.

JD Vance

A first round of face-to-face talks in Islamabad on April 11–12 broke down after 21 hours, with Vance saying Iran refused to accept the terms on nuclear enrichment that were proposed by the US.

As negotiations resume, the sticking points remain the same: Iran’s nuclear program, the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, Iran’s frozen assets in European banks, and US and EU sanctions. The current two-week ceasefire expires Wednesday.

Trump warned on Truth Social that if Iran does not accept a deal, the US will “knock out every single Power Plant, and every single Bridge, in Iran.” International law experts have said that deliberately destroying civilian infrastructure can constitute a war crime under the Geneva Conventions. Trump has previously said he does not care about war crimes.

US Seizes Iranian Ship Off Oman Coast

The US Navy fired on and disabled an Iranian-flagged cargo ship near the Strait of Hormuz yesterday, and then sent Marines aboard to take custody of the vessel.

Ships and boats in the Strait of Hormuz

The US Navy fired several rounds into the engine room of the nearly 900-foot Touska after the ship ignored warnings over a six-hour period, US Central Command said. Iran’s state media said its military would “respond soon.” Iranian officials have termed it a violation of the ceasefire but did not elaborate on the nature of the threatened response.

Man Kills Eight Children in Louisiana

A 31-year-old Louisiana man shot and killed eight children — seven of them his own — early yesterday morning before police shot him dead during a chase into the neighboring parish. The children, five girls and three boys, ranged in age from three to 11. He also shot his wife and another woman.

A man lighting a candle during a prayer vigil for the victims

Police identified the gunman as Shamar Elkins, a former Louisiana Army National Guard member. He and his wife were in the process of separating and were due in court today, according to a relative of one of the wounded women. Elkins used an assault-style weapon.

Elkins first shot his wife at her home, police said. He then drove to a second home where he shot his seven children and a second woman believed to be his girlfriend. Both women survived. Elkins’s wife has “very serious” injuries and the second woman has life-threatening injuries, police said. The eighth child killed was a cousin of the others. A teenage boy who jumped from the roof of the second house to escape the shootings suffered non-life-threatening injuries.

The incident is the deadliest mass shooting in the US so far this year. The Gun Violence Archive, which defines a mass shooting as one in which four or more people are shot, excluding the shooter, has tracked114 in the US in 2026.

SCOTUS to Weigh Religious Exemption in Colorado Pre-K Case

The Supreme Court will decide whether Colorado can exclude two Catholic preschools from its publicly funded universal pre-K program because they refuse to admit children of same-sex or transgender parents.

Archdiocese of Denver campus

Colorado’s program pays families to send their children to the preschool of their choice, public or private, including faith-based ones, but participating schools must follow the state’s anti-discrimination rules. Two Catholic parish preschools in the Denver area sued when the state refused them an exemption and argue that admitting children from these families would violate their religious convictions. A federal district court ruled that the state had the authority to deny those schools an exemption, and the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals concurred.

The justices will hear the case after the next term begins in October. Religious groups have largely prevailed in similar cases before the Supreme Court in the last decade, including a 2018 ruling for a Colorado baker who refused to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple and a 2021 decision allowing a Catholic foster-care agency in Philadelphia to refuse to work with same-sex couples.

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FBI Director Sues the Atlantic for $250 Million

FBI Director Kash Patel is suing The Atlantic and reporter Sarah Fitzpatrick, seeking $250 million in damages over a story alleging Patel had “episodes of excessive drinking and unexplained absences” that colleagues feared were compromising the FBI during the war with Iran.

Kash Patel

Fitzpatrick, citing current and former officials, wrote that Patel “is known to drink to the point of obvious intoxication” at Ned’s, a private club in DC, and at the Poodle Room, a members-only club atop a hotel in Las Vegas. The magazine also reported that members of his security detail on multiple occasions had trouble waking him because he was apparently intoxicated, and that aides once requested “breaching equipment” — the tools SWAT teams use to force entry into locked rooms — because Patel was unreachable behind a locked door. The story said his “irregular presence” at FBI headquarters and field offices had delayed time-sensitive decisions requiring the director’s input.

Patel’s 19-page complaint lists 17 statements from the article his lawyers say are false and defamatory. It denies that he “drinks to excess” at those establishments “or anywhere else” and says that the director’s drinking “has not, and has never been, a source of concern across the government.” The suit says the April 10 incident Fitzpatrick opened the piece with — in which Patel was reportedly locked out of an FBI computer system and believed he had been fired — was a routine technical issue that was quickly resolved. The Atlantic called the suit “meritless” and said it stands by the reporting.

Businesses Can Start Claiming Tariff Refunds

Importers can begin filing today for refunds on tariffs the Supreme Court struck down in February — more than $166 billion plus accrued interest. Customs and Border Protection, the federal agency that assesses and collects tariffs, launched a refund portal this morning. It says processing will take 60 to 90 days after a claim is approved.

Shipping containers at a Los Angeles port

The tariffs were imposed by President Trump last April on imports from more than 100 countries, including several with which the US runs a trade surplus — meaning it exports more to those countries than it imports. Trump adjusted the rates repeatedly before the Supreme Court ruled that only Congress has the constitutional authority to impose tariffs under the legislation he’d used.

Refund claims must document payments tied to the invalidated tariffs. Consumers and retailers who paid higher prices on imported goods are unlikely to recover anything; only the importers of goods can file for reimbursement of tariffs paid.

The money comes from the US Treasury’s general fund, into which all tariff receipts flow. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was ordered to begin processing them after a federal judge and the US Court of International Trade ruled that companies that paid the invalidated tariffs are entitled to their money back. The tariffs were imposed by President Trump last April on imports from more than 100 countries.

LA Arrest in Alleged Iran–Sudan Arms Deal

A California resident was arrested at Los Angeles International Airport over the weekend, accused of brokering covert weapons deals worth $60 million between the Iranian government and Sudan’s defense ministry, both of which are under US sanctions.

Shamim Mafi being arrested outside LAX (USAO Central District of California)

Shamim Mafi, 44, was boarding a flight to Turkey when she was detained, said Bill Essayli, an assistant US attorney for the Central District of California. Federal prosecutors allege in a 69-page complaint that Mafi, a legal US resident originally from Iran, set up a front company and acted as a middleman between Tehran and arms buyers. Prosecutors describe her as a proxy for Iranian intelligence operating in Los Angeles.

DOJ Demands Wayne County Ballots From 2024

The Department of Justice has demanded all ballots and records from the 2024 elections in Michigan’s Wayne County, which includes Detroit and is a reliably Democratic stronghold. The April 14 letter, from Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who oversees the Civil Rights Division, threatens a court order if the records are not turned over within 14 days. Michigan Democrats released a copy yesterday.

Voting booth at a church in Detroit

Dhillon wrote that the DOJ wants the ballots, envelopes, and receipts to determine whether 2024 election laws were followed in a county with a “history of fraud convictions and other allegations.”

The letter lists eight specific items: three individual Michigan convictions and five allegations drawn from a single 2020 lawsuit. None of the three convictions are from 2024, and each involved a single family member or caregiver rather than anything systemic. The five other allegations in Dhillon’s letter are lifted directly from Constantino v. Detroit, a lawsuit filed days after the 2020 election and claiming that Detroit election workers had processed invalid ballots, backdated absentee ballots, and counted “tens of thousands” of unsealed ballots. A Wayne County circuit judge dismissed the suit, finding the claims “incorrect and not credible.”

A 2021 Republican-led investigation by a committee in the state senate later found “no evidence of widespread or systematic fraud” in Michigan’s 2020 election.

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said her office was “prepared to protect the people’s right to vote” if the administration pursues the request.

The move follows FBI seizures of ballots in Fulton County, GA, last year and a California sheriff’s seizure of more than 650,000 ballots from a 2025 redistricting-related special election. Both cases are in court. Trump and his allies have alleged widespread voter fraud without producing evidence; no federal or state investigation has substantiated the claims.

Trump Orders $50 Million for Psychedelics Research

President Trump signed an executive order late last week directing $50 million in federal funds toward expanding access to psychedelics, a class of drugs that includes LSD and psilocybin — the active compound in “magic mushrooms.”

President Trump signing an order to fund psychedelics research

The drugs are said to alter a person’s perception of reality and help in mental health treatment.

The money will largely flow through the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, a federal research-funding arm, to universities, hospitals, and pharmaceutical firms conducting the trials. The order also instructs the US Food and Drug Administration to fast-track the review of psilocybin and ibogaine, a plant-derived psychedelic studied for treating opioid addiction.

Under federal law, both substances are currently classified as Schedule I — the government’s most restrictive category, reserved for drugs it deems to have no accepted medical use. A 2025 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that a single dose of LSD eased anxiety and depression symptoms for months.

The order funds clinical trials and a review of regulatory barriers; it does not legalize recreational use.

It’s called Governerds Insider. It’s a private book club and community I run each season — we pick two books, read them together, and then sit down with the authors for a live conversation. This season that means Jill Biden and Marjan Kamali.

But it’s more than a book club. This season we also have live events with Ibram X. Kendi, Bob Crawford of the Avett Brothers, and law professor Steve Vladeck. Plus weekly historic deep dives, a private Instagram, and a community of people I genuinely look forward to talking to every day.

I’d love to show you what it looks like inside.

Click here to see everything.

Doors are open now, but enrollment closes when seats fill.

See you soon,

Sharon

Find out more here

Across the board, they performed worse than a control group who’d tried on sweaters, even the ones who were good at math. (When another group of researchers repeated the experiment with men in Speedos, the same thing happened.) Part of their brain had split off to watch their body from the outside, scanning and evaluating how they appeared in real time. The researchers called this self-surveillance, and it consumed so much mental energy that there was barely enough left for anything else.

I see versions of this in my office constantly, and they go far beyond swimsuits or body confidence. A client of mine can’t play with her son without grading herself in real time. Is this toy teaching him enough fine motor skills? I should find a better activity. No, I should put down my phone. Am I being present enough? By the time she’s finished evaluating whether she’s a good mother in this moment, the moment has passed.

Another client can’t enjoy being with friends because she is too focused on carefully managing how they perceive her. Was I talking too much? Did that joke land? Was I being weird? She wasn’t at dinner. She was hovering above it, surveilling her performance like she was watching a security camera pointed at her.

People have always been self-conscious. It’s natural to leave a party and wonder if you said something weird, or to feel guilty after losing your patience. But for the most part, people used to move on, because there wasn’t much else to do with the feeling. Now there’s a personalized algorithm ready to tell you what that feeling means, where it came from, and six more things you should be watching for. Number three is literally destroying your relationships! The awareness of what was wrong was supposed to help us — and it genuinely did in a lot of ways — but it also never turns off.

And in today’s world, self-surveillance isn’t just paranoia. Someone could pull out a phone and broadcast your worst moment to strangers. A parenting meltdown at Target, a badly worded joke, a reaction you wish you could take back. The threat is real, which makes the self-monitoring feel rational. But the cost is that we’ve internalized it so completely we don’t need an actual audience anymore. You’re performing for a camera that isn’t there, and sometimes the audience you’re performing for is just you.

Fredrickson and Roberts, the researchers behind the swimsuit study, found that self-surveillance erodes something deeper than attention. It actually diminishes your ability to sense what’s happening inside your own body. You get so busy watching yourself from the outside that you lose contact with the inside. Which means the more you monitor, the less you can feel. (And when you can’t feel what’s happening inside your body, you compensate by looking for answers from the outside — which means more monitoring.)

When you spend all day grading yourself, you start grading everyone else too. The same checklist you run on your own parenting, your own reactions, your own body becomes the one you use on the stranger at the gas pump or the friend who does things differently. We’ve become a culture of people surveilling ourselves and one another and wondering why everyone feels so exhausted and afraid.

The next time you catch yourself evaluating yourself, come back to your body. Take a breath. Feel your feet on the floor. Notice the temperature of the air or the weight of your kid in your lap. It’s hard to surveil yourself when you’re anchored in a physical sensation.

I spent most of my twenties so busy evaluating myself that I barely experienced anything in real time. A lot of my memories are tied to how I looked — physically, but also how I thought I was coming across. I know I will never get that time back. But I can do my best to be present for my life now.

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