Big news on the "I've been standing in front of the mirror practicing saying YOUR HONOR, I OBJECT!" front. Does that mean you can try cases in federal court as a United States attorney, even if you are not one?

What if you had been calling yourself a US attorney, but a judge found you and your Baywatch whistle had been illegally appointed, which really threw a wrench in your plan to make a name for yourself as the US attorney with the utter lack of shame required to prosecute all of Donald Trump's political enemies for fake crimes that didn't even fake happen in your fake jurisdiction?

What if a judge just in the last week demanded you explain why your calling yourself a "US attorney" in his courtroom wasn't grounds for disciplinary action, and you'd better cut that fucking shit out, Lindsey Halligan?

It turns out the answer to all these questions is You can't fire me two months ago, Judge Not-My-Dad, I QUIT!

And then you drive off in your Barbie dream-lawyer-mobile and Attorney General Pam Bondi is like "OMG I have one of those too!" but then the judge makes you give it back because for God's sake, Lindsey Halligan.

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Well, well, Usha Bala Chilukuri Vance and her husband JD have announced they are expecting a fourth child, a boy, in late July! That means either Usha spatchcocked herself on a wet spot on the couch, got an embryo transplanted, or that she and JD Vance engaged in penetrative vaginal sexual intercourse with his penis and/or a turkey baster sometime in mid-September. Right around when Charlie Kirk's widow stroked JD's hair!

And after their romantic family vacations getting booed together in Vermont and the Cotswolds.

From Vance's X account:
We're very excited to share the news that Usha is pregnant with our fourth child, a boy. Usha and the baby are doing well, and we look forward to welcoming him in late July. During this exciting and hectic time, we are particularly grateful for the military doctors who take excellent care of our family and the staff members who do so much to ensure that we can serve the country while enjoying a wonderful life with our children.

. . .

Anyway, here is hoping for a healthy and safe delivery for Mrs. Vance, even though she and her husband endorse other women being sentenced to death for the crime of being pregnant.

May their baby be so adorable it melts all the racists' frozen little hearts, and they embrace multiculturalism and denounce the terrorism of brown people on our American streets, AMEN.

On Tuesday, USA Today published a new mini-documentary in its Extremely Normal series -- which examines how groups and ideas previously considered "extreme" have found their way into the mainstream -- about "crunchy MAHA moms" who love natural foods and hate vaccines. To absolutely no one's surprise, these "crunchy MAHA moms" spent a lot of time talking about how they just wanted more research to "prove" vaccines are safe, only to admit at the end that even if they had all the proof in the world, they still wouldn't get their kids vaccinated, because they "haven't dealt with any of the diseases" their kids were not vaccinated against.


Probably because, you know, other people did get their kids vaccinated.

Well, a whole lot of people are now dealing with a pretty serious outbreak of one of those diseases in South Carolina right now. Six-hundred forty-six people, to be exact(ish), have been diagnosed with measles, with 88 new cases confirmed on Tuesday. And it's not just children. Eighty-four students at Clemson and Anderson Universities are currently being quarantined with the vaccine-preventable virus -- a pretty serious situation given that, the older you are, the more deadly the disease can be.

Tuesday also happened to be the one-year anniversary of the first reported case of measles last January. If it turns out these cases are linked, that would mean the US has had a straight year of continuous measles infections. What does that mean? Well, it means that, for the first time since the year 2000, measles will no longer be considered eradicated in the United States.

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Those of you who read this blog regularly will recognize this analysis by JV Last since it's one that I've been discussing ever since Trump won back in 2016. This was not inevitable but the writing was on the wall from the beginning:

We are witness to something rare in human history: Abdication by the leader of the global order.

We have seen empires fall and civilizations crumble. But we've almost never seen a people renounce their leadership of the world--all at once, in full public view. That is what has happened in the 365 days since January 20, 2025.

Here's what comes next.

The blinding of Five Eyes. The UKUSA intelligence sharing agreement--informally known as Five Eyes--has been in danger since Tulsi Gabbard was appointed director of national intelligence. But we've gone further than the possibility of having a Russia sympathizer atop the U.S. intelligence community: America's allies now understand that we are--at best--a strategic competitor to Canada and the United Kingdom and at worst a threat to the other English-speaking countries. The days of intelligence sharing between America and our former allies are drawing to a close.

The death of NATO. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was conceived as a way to tame Europe. By establishing the United States as the strategic counterweight to the continent, NATO (a) held the Soviets in check but also (b) removed the need for Germany to re-arm at a scale sufficient to tip the local military balance and menace its neighbors.

NATO is now a zombie organization. America has progressed from unreliable ally to overt threat to European sovereignty. Europe will re-arm. There is no longer any question on this point.

The new nuclear age begins. The world's three largest nuclear powers are now expansionist predator states. This leaves the lesser nuclear powers no choice but to create their own umbrellas while buying time for smaller allies to join the nuclear club. Germany, Poland, and Canada will acquire nuclear weapons. So will Japan. Sweden, Australia, and South Korea may develop nuclear capabilities as well.

Europe + China. The Chinese communist regime is authoritarian. It does not adhere to the rule of law in any meaningful way. But while it is ambitious, it is stable, and it understands that stability is its biggest advantage. China does not threaten Europe as acutely as Russia and the United States do, and Europe needs some stability undergirding the next world order. Europe will draw closer to China and supplant the United States as China's main trading partner.

Ukraine will join Europe. As Europe rearms it will need Ukraine's defense industrial base; therefore it will draw Ukraine into its collective security arrangement (the EU's, not NATO's) once the Russo-Ukraine war draws to a close.

Greenland will become disputed territory. Greenland is about to become, like Crimea or Kashmir or the little islands in the South China Sea, disputed territory. The Republican party has made an unmistakable, irrevocable territorial claim on Greenland. There are only two possible ways to resolve this question.

There is much more at the link and I urge you to click over if you have a sub or get one if you have the means. I think many of the former conservatives are the most clear-eyed about what Trump is doing to us on the world stage right now and their alarm is palpable.

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During the second Trump administration, the population of migrants held at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities has exploded -- from below 40,000 in January 2025 to over 73,000 today. Under the law, ICE is required to provide necessary medical care for this population.

While ICE employs some of its own medical staff, it often uses third-party providers. ICE's Buffalo Federal Detention Facility, for example, houses over 500 detainees and has no doctor or dentist on staff.

ICE, however, has not paid any third-party providers for medical care for detainees since October 3, 2025. Last week, ICE posted a notice on an obscure government website announcing it will not begin processing such claims until at least April 30, 2026. Until then, medical providers are instructed "to hold all claims submissions."

ICE's failure to pay its bills for months has caused some medical providers to deny services to ICE detainees, an administration source, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press, told Popular Information. In other cases, detainees have allegedly been denied essential medical care by ICE.

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Abigail Spanberger was sworn in Saturday -- wearing Suffragette white, her hand on her grandmother's Bible -- as Virginia's first woman governor, though she's the 75th person to hold the office. She quickly made clear that with a Democratic trifecta in the commonwealth, elected by far larger margins than outgoing Gov. Glenn Youngkin, it's time to stand up to the authoritaran regime that's taken over the federal government. She didn't name Donald Trump, and didn't have to. Everyone knows who eliminated the jobs of roughly 23,000 federal workers who live(d) in Virginia (plus layoffs of another 7,000 private jobs, many with companies that contracted with the federal government).

It was a good speech! Here, have a video and a transcript!


Spanberger briefly emphasized that when she talks about the potential for government to improve people's lives, she means all the people: "in Virginia, our hardworking, law-abiding immigrant neighbors will know that when we say -- we'll focus on the security and safety of all of our neighbors, we mean them too."

Then she got right to work making it so.

After the speech, Spanberger signed a package of 10 executive orders aimed at reversing some of Youngkin's policies, and at shielding people from the economic impact of the dog's breakfast that Trump is making of federal tax and funding policy.

. . .

And in the most significant departure from her predecessor, she threw out Youngkin's executive order requiring state and local law enforcement agencies to cooperate with ICE.

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It happens to us all. One day, your mom is telling you to be careful when climbing a tree, and the next day, she's a seventy-five-year-old standing on top of a wobbly fifteen-foot ladder, dusting a chandelier with an old TV Guide. "It's fine," she yells, "I've been doing this for over sixty years."

From there, it's just a short, spiteful ride to the orthopedist with repeated mutterings of "I told you a million times to stay on the ground, didn't I? DIDN'T I?" while googling "best medical alert bracelets" and wondering when the hell you became the cautious, sensible one in this family dynamic.
Dave Eggers silkscreen prints to benefit the new International Library of Youth Writing! Purchase your own unique piece of art and check back regularly for more.

But now there's a better way to deal with senior citizens that won't wait just a goddamn hour until you're there to help them get something from the top of the closet.

Introducing Elder Cushion, the bubble wrap designed to keep the stubborn, obstinate loved ones in your life safe from injuries caused by climbing things they never should have been climbing in the first place.

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In 2025, Donald Trump scared people. And institutions. Go back in your mind to the way he came out of the gate, gunning the accelerator on every front. Pardoning the insurrectionists. Dismantling the executive branch. Firing inspectors general and heads and members of independent commissions. Arresting people for writing op-eds. Threatening universities and law firms. Shipping people off to El Salvador.

That was Round One in the Trump boxing match against reality, and for a time, Trump was winning. The shock felt from his attacks on political opponents and institutions left them flat-footed. Some prominent law firms caved to Trump's threats and agreed to do pro bono work for his pet causes. Universities cut deals to stay out of his gunsights. Media companies capitulated. Amazon decided to make a movie about Melania (it debuts at the end of the month at--you guessed it--the "Trump-Kennedy Center" ). Trump's power reached from the normal political realm down into the culture itself. A number of firms and universities and others fought him, but the general cultural vibe was very much in the direction of trying to stay in line--the better to avoid the tyrant's attention--or actively trying to win it with embarrassing acts of sycophancy.

Now we're at the start of Round Two of the boxing match, and I smell something changing. Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey have been impressively uncompromising--and uncompromised, which is more important--in their public statements since ICE hit town and executed a blameless U.S. citizen. Trump and the cowardly Pam Bondi (does she understand how the history books will treat her?) launched investigations into the two men. Walz and Frey responded by saying, in essence, Bring it on. Said Walz: "Two days ago, it was Elissa Slotkin. Last week, it was Jerome Powell. Before that, Mark Kelly. Weaponizing the justice system and threatening political opponents is a dangerous, authoritarian tactic. The only person not being investigated for the shooting of Renee Good is the federal agent who shot her." (Hey, good idea, governor: How about the state of Minnesota or the city of Minneapolis arrest Jonathan Ross?)

Over the weekend, three high-ranking American Catholic cardinals denounced Trump (not by name) and his imperial bullying in what was, for cardinals, a strongly worded statement. "Our country's moral role in confronting evil around the world, sustaining the right to life and human dignity, and supporting religious liberty are all under examination," they wrote. That followed statements by Pope Leo criticizing Trump for his treatment of immigrants.

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However old we are, we all have a tendency to grow irritated if our body lacks enough fuel. But while humans have experienced this for as long as we have been on the planet, a specific word to describe the phenomenon only entered the Oxford English dictionary in 2018. "Hangry: to be bad-tempered or irritable as a result of hunger."

A Pallas's cat (also known as a manul) gets increasingly hangry as it hunts for food. Credit: BBC

Perhaps more surprising is the scarcity of research into how hunger affects people's everyday moods. Most studies on food and mood have focused on patients with metabolic or eating disorders--perhaps because many psychologists have traditionally understood hunger to be such a basic physiological process.

So, with colleagues from the fields of psychology and mental health, I decided to investigate how different people respond to feeling hungry. We wanted to see if (and why) some people are better at reacting calmly when hunger strikes. Perhaps there would be some lessons for those of us with young children, too.

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