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Did Trump reach for the nuclear codes?
Donald Trump’s story on Iran changes by the hour. In less than forty-eight hours this weekend, he swung from claiming Iran “agreed to everything” to threatening that the whole country’s getting blown up. He told ABC that Vance wouldn’t fly to Pakistan. Then his UN Ambassador and Energy Secretary said yes he would. Staff scrambled to clean up the mess. Trump claimed Iran promised never to close the Strait of Hormuz. Iran promptly announced they’re closing it. He told The Hill that gas prices will drop the minute this war ends. A week earlier he told Fox News they’d stay about the same. Iran’s Foreign Ministry flatly denied they’d agreed to hand over enriched uranium. Vance proposed a twenty-year nuclear moratorium at the talks. Trump rejected his own VP’s offer, saying “I don’t like the twenty years.” And now retired CIA analyst Larry Johnson alleges on the Judging Freedom podcast that Trump reached for the nuclear codes on Saturday, and General Dan Caine stood up and said no. That’s unconfirmed but deeply troubling. This is who’s got the button.
Are Trump’s scandals drowning out democracy?
Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer resigned yesterday. And what a greatest-hits list she leaves behind. She allegedly had an affair with her own security detail. She kept bourbon, Kahlua, and champagne in her office. She took staff to a strip club on a government trip. She used taxpayer dollars for fake official trips to visit friends. Her husband got banned from Labor Department headquarters after two female employees accused him of sexually assaulting them. And she reportedly retaliated against those women. Meanwhile her elderly father was texting young female staffers asking them to keep their meetings “private.” She’s the third woman Trump has pushed out of his cabinet in seven weeks. Kristi Noem gone in March. Pam Bondi gone earlier this month. Meanwhile cabinet men with worse track records keep their jobs. And that’s just one scandal. Steve Witkoff ran Signal chats from Russia. Nvidia got cleared to sell chips to China for a twenty-five percent kickback. Trump tried to fire Fed Governor Lisa Cook over bogus mortgage fraud claims. Vance is meddling in prosecutions. Steve Bannon once said the way to beat the media is to flood the zone. It’s working. Democracy dies when nobody can keep track.
Does this administration’s cruelty have any bottom?
Meet Sergeant First Class Jose Serrano. Twenty-seven years in the Army. Deployed to Afghanistan. On April 14th, his wife Deisy walked into an El Paso immigration office for her Parole in Place interview, the program designed to protect military spouses. ICE arrested her on the spot. A federal judge granted her protection from deportation to El Salvador back in 2019 under the Convention Against Torture. So Stephen Miller’s ICE plans to ship her to Mexico instead, a country she’s never lived in. Serrano can’t visit her because active-duty soldiers can’t travel to Mexico. And this is the policy. The administration’s already spent forty million dollars shipping migrants to places like the Congo, Uganda, and South Sudan. Over a hundred thirty-three thousand per person. This is what cruelty as policy looks like.
Are Israeli soldiers using rape as a weapon in the West Bank?
A new report from the West Bank Protection Consortium says yes. Researchers interviewed eighty-three Palestinian communities and documented sixteen cases of conflict-related sexual violence over three years. And those are just the cases survivors were willing to report. Palestinian men, women, and children describe forced nudity, invasive body cavity searches, Israeli soldiers exposing themselves to minors, and threats of rape. In Wadi as-Seeq, settlers and soldiers stripped villagers, urinated on them, and attempted to assault one man with a broom handle. They photographed it and shared the pictures. Girls are quitting school. Parents are marrying off daughters as young as fifteen to protect them. More than two thirds of families surveyed said rising sexual violence was the breaking point that made them leave their land. That’s ethnic cleansing by humiliation. And we’re funding it.
Will Silicon Valley turn your nurse into a gig worker?
A report just out from the Roosevelt Institute sounds the alarm on what they’re calling Uber for Nursing. Companies like ShiftKey, ShiftMed, CareRev, and Clipboard Health have raised hundreds of millions from venture capital to turn bedside nursing into piecework. Nurses bid against each other for shifts by offering to work for less. One nurse’s twenty-three dollars an hour ends up at thirteen after the app’s safety fee, insurance fees, payday fees, and shift fees. No supervisor. No accountability. No training at the facility. And now these companies are running the Uber playbook in state legislatures, lobbying to get nurses classified as independent contractors with no labor protections. Colorado already passed it. Your loved one’s nurse could be a stranger who just bid lowest on an app. That’s not healthcare. That’s a race to the bottom with your life.
And that’s the way it is, Today Tuesday April 21st. I’m Thom Hartmann.
