Data journalist and pollster Elliott Morris was taken aback on Friday after new polling showed President Donald Trump receiving his single-lowest favorability rating of his political career, and the lowest of any past president at this point in their term since the 1940s.

According to the polling aggregator FiftyPlusOne, as of Thursday, Trump’s net approval had sunk to -21.4, with 37.2% approving of his job performance and 58.6% disapproving.

“That’s the lowest mark of his second term,” Morris wrote in an analysis published Friday on his Substack, Strength In Numbers.

“How bad is -21.4? When compared to past presidents, Trump’s ratings are the lowest of any president at this point in their term, going back to [former President Franklin D. Roosevelt]. Fourteen months in, no one else was this far underwater. Only Joe Biden, at the beginning of the 2022-23 inflation crisis, was close – and Trump is outrunning him by about 10 points.”

Historically, Trump has only outperformed former President Richard Nixon at the height of the Watergate scandal in terms of net favorability, but only if treating Trump as a second-term president, which some may dispute due to the president’s two non-consecutive terms.

Unlike Nixon, however, Trump’s waning favorability did not appear attributable to one specific scandal, Morris noted, but instead, “several negative shocks to his presidency,” including “fallout from his tariffs, mass deportations, the Oct. 2025 government shutdown, and an unpopular war.”

“Trump’s approval ratings slide doesn’t look like the result of one isolated crisis so much as the cumulative effect of a presidency that keeps making voters feel not listened to and less economically secure,” Morris wrote.

“Again and again, the biggest drops in his standing follow events that raised costs, heightened uncertainty, or reinforced a sense that the country is off track. And because the president has shown almost no ability – or interest – in winning back support, his unpopularity looks less like a purely political or economic liability and more like a defining feature of his second term.”

Donald Trump has fired two high-profile Cabinet members over the last month, and it could be because a crucial aide is absent, a political analyst has claimed.

Both the Department of Homeland Security head Kristi Noem and Attorney General Pam Bondi were shown the door in quick succession, with the latter fired by Trump earlier this week. Trump has turned over fewer staff members in his second term as president, but an increase in high-profile firings may be because the aide keeping him in check is less present than usual.

Slate columnist Jill Filipovic suggested Susie Wiles' absence may have given Trump free rein to clean house, as he does not have any opposition to firing members of his administration.

Filipovic wrote, "The second Trump administration has seen far less churn than the first. That’s in part because, this time around, Trump appointed a slate of hardcore loyalists. Those include Noem and Bondi, who bent over backward to serve the president, even when it meant bending the law, too.

"And the lack of churn has also been credited to White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, who by most accounts has enforced significant restraint from a famously chaotic leader. Wiles, though, was recently diagnosed with breast cancer, and while she has remained in her role, her influence may not be quite as forceful as it once was."

Filipovic went on to note several other high-profile staff members had been ousted from their positions in recent weeks, with Border Patrol head Greg Bovino dismissed in late January.

"Even after all of that, he was simply moved back to his previous role in California and allowed to quietly retire," Filipovic noted. "National Security adviser Mike Waltz accidentally added the editor in chief of the Atlantic to a private Signal chat about bombing Yemen; he was removed from his national security post, but made ambassador to the United Nations.

"Other men who have made colossal errors have retained their posts. Pete Hegseth is the one who decided to send war plans and other sensitive classified information to his colleagues, his wife, and his brother on Signal in the first place, and he remains in charge of the Department of Defense (and continues to insist on calling it, ridiculously, the Department of War).

"Stephen Miller is one of the administration’s most odious members and a near-constant source of public embarrassment; he was also, by most accounts, the one actually pulling the strings at Noem’s Department of Homeland Security and setting the administration’s immigration policies, including spreading the lie that Alex Pretti, the U.S. citizen who was gunned down in the street by ICE agents, was an 'assassin' planning a 'massacre.'

"And if Miller is the administration’s most odious, FBI Director Kash Patel is its most buffoonish."

Ousted Attorney General Pam Bondi was hit with a fierce reminder Friday that, despite being fired by President Donald Trump this week, she still had a legal obligation to testify before Congress on the Justice Department’s handling of its release of files on Jeffrey Epstein.

Bondi was axed by Trump earlier this week over what reports suggest was the president’s frustration with both her handling of the DOJ’s release of files on Epstein and her inability to secure criminal convictions of his perceived enemies. However, Todd Blanche – who Trump named as Bondi’s temporary successor – has refuted the claim that Trump fired Bondi over matters related to Epstein.

On March 17, Bondi was scheduled to testify before the House Oversight Committee on April 14 regarding her agency’s handling of its release of files on Epstein. While Bondi is now headed to a job in the private sector, Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-NM), who sits on the House Oversight Committee, said Friday that Bondi was not off the hook.

“Let us be clear: AG or not – Pam Bondi is still legally required to appear for her deposition under oath in front of the Oversight Committee on April 14th,” Stansbury wrote in a social media post on X. “We will be expecting you. And we will be holding Bondi and Todd Blanche accountable for their handling of the Epstein case.”

Donald Trump publicly reversed himself on a key endorsement after an army of lobbyists and Republican insiders convinced him his vindictive primary challenge was a political blunder heading into the midterms. The result: a humbling walk-back and a cushy administration job for the candidate he'd thrown overboard.

According to The Washington Post, Trump had viciously turned on first-term Rep. Jeff Hurd (R-CO) after Hurd dared to criticize his tariff policies and join Democrats in voting to rescind Trump's Canada tariffs. In a fit of retaliation, Trump endorsed Hurd's primary challenger, Hope Scheppelman, a critical care nurse.

But an unprecedented coalition of tech and energy sector lobbyists, along with current and former lawmakers, descended on the White House with a clear message: this primary was a catastrophic mistake that could cost Republicans the seat in November.

In a rare moment of capitulation, Trump reversed course entirely.

On social media, he announced Hurd once again had his "Complete and Total Endorsement" — effectively putting an end to Scheppelman's campaign.

To soften the blow of publicly abandoning Scheppelman, Trump offered her and her husband positions in his administration. Scheppelman will become a senior adviser at the Department of Health and Human Services, according to a White House official speaking anonymously.

It's a transparent acknowledgment that Trump's impulse for political revenge undermines his party's electoral interests — and that even Republicans are willing to override his instincts when they threaten midterm control.

GOP strategist Dick Wadhams explained the political reality: "Hope is way out of the mainstream of the 3rd District, and she would have been a terribly weak candidate."

Former Rep. Charlie Dent, who said he didn't lobby the White House but supported Hurd, was direct about the problem. "It is a terrible mistake to primary a member of your own party over a rather simple policy disagreement, in my view," Dent said, adding he was "pleased the president reversed himself."

In February, Hurd joined five other House Republicans and most Democrats in voting to rescind Trump's Canada tariffs. Trump responded by denouncing him as a "RINO," a biting acronym for "Republican in name only."

"Any Republican, in the House or the Senate, that votes against TARIFFS will seriously suffer the consequences come Election time, and that includes Primaries!" Trump had threatened on social media.

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito was taken to a hospital last month after falling “ill” in a previously unreported incident, CNN reported on Friday.

Citing "people with knowledge of the incident,” CNN reported that on March 20 during a Federalist Society dinner in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Alito had fallen “ill” and was taken to a nearby hospital. He was evaluated and treated for dehydration before returning home that same night. The incident has not been previously reported, and Alito declined to comment on the matter when pressed by CNN.

Alito, 76, has contemplated retirement, according to his “close friends” who spoke with CNN on the condition of anonymity.

The Republican Party's internal warfare over the DHS shutdown has exposed a stunning divide between Senate and House leadership, with Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) cutting a deal that left House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) completely out of the loop — and fuming.

According to MS NOW's Mychael Schnell, Thune won the political war, but both leaders emerged from the funding battle bruised and bloodied, with Donald Trump wielding his unpredictable power to destabilize the process at will.

Early last Friday morning, the Senate unanimously backed a compromise to fund most of DHS while leaving the most contentious provisions for a future reconciliation bill. It appeared to be a workable solution. At 2:41 a.m., Thune sounded cautiously optimistic about Trump's support.

Then everything fell apart.

Minutes after the Senate passed its bill, Johnson called Trump to say his House conference would reject the deal. Later that morning, Johnson told his members that Thune had cut them out entirely.

"They cut off communications with us last night," Johnson said on the Friday conference call. "The Senate did this without informing me or even all of their members or the White House. No one was involved."

But Thune's account contradicted Johnson's narrative. The Senate leader said he had texted with Johnson overnight, going "back and forth a little bit" about the deal. Multiple sources confirmed Thune had given Johnson advance notice, suggesting Thune was actually shocked by Johnson's sudden opposition — not the other way around.

House Republicans were livid about the method of notification. One GOP member, speaking anonymously, complained that Thune had texted Johnson instead of calling about a deal of such magnitude.

"When you do something like that, you don't f------ text. You pick up the phone and call," the Republican said.

The clash exposes fundamentally different political realities facing the two leaders. Thune operates in the Senate, where the 60-vote threshold forces bipartisan compromise and gives him flexibility to cut deals. Johnson commands a paper-thin House majority under constant threat of revolt — with hard-liners wielding the motion to vacate as a weapon that could cost him his job.

"There are different dynamics," one Senate Republican explained. "Johnson has to contend more with his right flank. Thune has to deal with senators in the middle. They're playing to different bases."

But both leaders now face an unpredictable third force: a president whose shifting positions can upend the entire process overnight, leaving everyone scrambling.

U.S. Attorney for D.C. Jeanine Pirro, a candidate for President Donald Trump's next attorney general, once forced an author to clean her home, including her dog's feces.

In a Friday profile of Pirro, writer Lisa DePaulo told Intelligencer that the former judge had asked her to move in while writing her latest book.

"It was going to be a great experience. And it wasn't," the author recalled.

"DePaulo moved into the basement of Pirro's sprawling Westchester home. When she was getting her makeup done, DePaulo says, Pirro would pad around the house wearing nothing but 'panties, high heels, and these little stickers that she put on her nipples,'" Intelligencer reported. "But her stay turned out to be a less-than-comfortable experience. DePaulo had to deal with mice in the basement (a problem that, according to DePaulo, Pirro demanded she keep to herself since Pirro was trying to sell the house); seven guns stashed around, which, DePaulo recalls Pirro saying, were all loaded; Pirro barring her from touching the Fiji water in the pantry, saying it was for guests only; and Pirro's obsession with keeping household expenses down (DePaulo says Pirro once berated her for leaving a hallway light on overnight)."

Eventually, Pirro began to treat DePaulo like the help, according to the new reporting.

"There were numerous times, she says, when Pirro asked her to clean up dog feces deposited by Pirro's enormous poodles. ('My dogs, when they poop, it's, like, sick,' Pirro tells me,)" the profile recounted. "According to DePaulo, there was also the time that she was invited to a wedding held at the house and told to clean the windows before the guests arrived. 'That was demeaning,' DePaulo says. 'I was dressed for the wedding, and she hands me this big thing of Windex and paper towels, pushed them into my hands, and said, 'Do it!''"

The speed at which the Department of Justice employees literally threw away Pam Bondi tells you everything you need to know about how despised she was by career officials.

According to reporting from Ken Dilanian and Carol Leonnig obtained by MS NOW, "Within hours of the news that President Donald Trump had fired Pam Bondi as attorney general, images began circulating of her framed portrait, unceremoniously removed from its place of honor near the president and vice president on the walls of Justice Department offices."

One photo showed Bondi's portrait directly in a trash bin.

The swift disposal isn't coincidental. Current and former DOJ officials confirmed it reflects how deeply unpopular Bondi had become — so much so that thousands of career employees left the department rather than follow her orders, with dozens more forced out.

The animosity stems from an incident early in her tenure that crystallized her contempt for DOJ's professional workforce. Bondi entered a secure area of the national security division and discovered that portraits of President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and former Attorney General Merrick Garland were still hanging on the walls after Trump's inauguration.

She demoted a respected career veteran over the pictures.

Bondi later recounted the episode on Fox News, painting it as evidence of Democratic disloyalty among DOJ employees.

"I went up on the seventh floor, which is the national security division. The entire floor is a SCIF, so no one can get in there. So I was able to get the code, open the door, and I look on the wall and see President Biden, Kamala Harris, and Merrick Garland's paintings still hanging."

"I personally took all three photos down," she boasted. "I put them in front of someone who said to me, 'Oh well, maintenance is really slow here.' I said, 'Well it took me about 30 seconds to get them off the wall.'"

The irony is searing: nearly all of the senior career officials Bondi suspected of disloyalty had served loyally and ably throughout Trump's first term without incident. They viewed her power play over portraits as petty vindictiveness masquerading as loyalty testing.

Now that Bondi has been shown the door, many DOJ veterans are quietly celebrating — and literally throwing away the evidence of her tenure.

GOP representatives do not have long to pass a funding bill for ICE, and doing so may prove impossible, according to party members.

The Republican Party cannot muster the votes necessary to pass a funding bill for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, with the Democratic Party standing in the way of a funding measure. The bill would see the Department of Homeland Security reopened after a record-breaking shutdown, though Republican representatives fear there will be no middle ground between the two parties.

Speaking to Politico, Senator John Hoeven of North Dakota claimed the GOP simply has no choice when it comes to securing ICE funding. Donald Trump previously issued a June 1 deadline for a bill that would fund the government agency.

Trump took to Truth Social earlier this week and posted, "We are going to work as fast, and as focused, as possible to replenish funding for our Border and ICE Agents, and the Radical Left Democrats won’t be able to stop us."

Sen. Hoeven believes it is not as easy as Trump portrays it, saying, "Democrats have put us where we are, and we have to deal with it. We don't have a choice."

Further complaints from the Democratic Party over funding of the Iran war will cause further issues for the GOP, with Sen. Chris Coons speaking of how he and his colleagues view the problems for the party in power.

Sen. Coons, the Democratic Party's senator for Delaware, said enacting funding through reconciliation "requires no compromise with the other party. And if that becomes the sole way we fund the core functions of government, that is a bad idea."

Even some Republicans aired their concern about a funding bill for the Iran war being backed by the Democratic Party. House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole said, "I would prefer not to. We'll wait and see. A lot of that depends on what the Democrats want to do."

Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) believes the Democrats' refusal to pass the Border Patrol and ICE funding bill would come back to haunt them. Collins warned it "sets a precedent that they may one day come to regret."

Conservative pastor and former GOP lawmaker Tony Perkins lashed out at Pope Leo XIV recently over the religious leaders’ comments against the U.S. war against Iran, telling the head of the Catholic Church that he “needs a history lesson,” and sparking outrage in the process.

In an apparent response to the Trump administration’s ongoing war against Iran, Pope Leo said last week that God “does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war,” according to The New York Times. The remarks apparently didn’t sit well with Perkins, who has been among President Donald Trump’s fiercest defenders.

Perkins shared a clip this week on social media of his show “Washington Watch,” in which religious ethic scholar Marc LiVecche also criticized Pope Leo’s remarks.

“His rhetoric distances himself from both Catholic tradition and biblical tradition,” LiVecche said, arguing that Pope Leo’s remarks misunderstood the premise of “just war.”

Christopher Hale, a former Democratic Party congressional candidate who worked in the Obama administration, was taken aback by Perkins’ “attack.”

“Tony Perkins is attacking Pope Leo XIV during Holy Week,” Hale wrote Friday in a social media post on X. “MAGA anti-Catholicism knows no bounds.”

Massimo Faggioli, an Italian Catholic theologian and historian, was also stunned by Perkins’ remarks.

“The backlash against Pope Leo XIV is beginning,” Faggioli wrote in a social media post on X, according to an automated X translation of his post. “Now we will see whether the majority of American bishops will stand by and watch as they did with [Pope] Francis, or whether something will change."

As President Donald Trump’s war in Iran goes further off the rails, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth carried out a “purge” of US Army leadership on Thursday, ousting its most senior general and two other top officers and reportedly leaving many senior officials stunned.

The Pentagon has not provided an official explanation for the sudden firing of Army Chief of Staff General Randy George, who was jettisoned along with another four-star general, David Hodne, and Major General William Green Jr., the top Army chaplain. But speculation was rampant Thursday as the White House continued to insist its war on Iran is going as planned.

Tom Nichols wrote for The Atlantic on Thursday that those dismissed were likely casualties of “Hegseth’s vindictive struggles with the Army... as he struggles in a job for which he remains singularly unqualified.”

Nichols suggested the latest firings were part of an effort to eliminate allies of Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, who has reportedly pushed back against Hegseth’s attempt to enforce rigid ideological conformity and excise what he views as “wokeness” from the military.

Most recently, Driscoll reportedly objected to Hegseth’s demands that he remove four Army officers—two Black men and two women—from a list of those to be promoted to brigadier general, while allowing the other mostly white male officers to be promoted.

NBC reported on Thursday that they were among more than a dozen Black and female officers that Hegseth has attempted to block from advancement across the four branches of the military.

Just before his firing, George—once an aide to former President Joe Biden’s Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin—had reportedly asked to meet with Hegseth about his demotions of the four Army officers, but Hegseth refused.

The Atlantic reported that Driscoll, who has been rumored as a possible replacement for Hegseth amid embarrassing bungles like last year’s “Signalgate” scandal, could be shown the door next.

Rep. Pat Ryan (D-NY), a US Army combat veteran who serves on the House Armed Services Committee, described George as “a Patriot who has served our nation honorably and bravely for decades” and said his firing was “a huge loss for our Army and our country.”

He added that “Hegseth and Trump firing the highest ranking Army officer, in the middle of a war they started, shows you exactly where their priorities are.”

While these sorts of petty grudge matches and power struggles have been a hallmark of Hegseth’s term at Defense, Nichols remarked that “dumping the Army chief of staff in the middle of a war, without explanation, is a reckless move even by Hegseth’s standards.”

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, theorizes that Hegseth’s purge—which is one of the biggest wartime leadership shakeups in recent memory—did not happen in spite of the Iran war, but because of it.

According to White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, who was quoted by TIME on Thursday, Trump’s inner circle—including Hegseth and other military and foreign policy officials—has formed a sort of information bubble around the president, giving him a “rose-colored view” of the war, even as it grows more unpopular by the day with the American public.

The high-level firings come as Trump and Hegseth are beginning what they said would be a multi-week campaign of bombing Iran “back to the Stone Ages.”

Hegseth has also continued to float the possible deployment of ground troops, potentially to invade and occupy critical strategic areas, like Iran’s oil export hub Kharg Island, which analysts have warned would be unworkable and put thousands of US troops in harm’s way.

“It’s likely that experienced generals are telling Hegseth his Iran war plans are unworkable, disastrous, and deadly,” Murphy said.
“Also, Hegseth is firing a ton of experienced generals right now.”

According to Jennifer Griffin, the Chief National Security Correspondent for Fox News, Hegseth’s most recent firings “[add] to a long list of Secretary Hegseth asking senior military officers to step down with no reason given,” including Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., and Adm. Alvin Holsey, the commander of US Southern Command, both of whom were also Black men.

Dan Lamothe, a military affairs correspondent for The Washington Post, added that Hegseth has now almost totally remade the Joint Chiefs of Staff since taking over as defense secretary and that only two original members, Gen. Eric Smith of the Marine Corps and Gen. Chance Saltzman of the Space Force, remain from the original team.

“The American people deserve to know why so many of their top officers are being tossed out of their jobs,” Nichols said.

Noting the defense secretary’s penchant for secrecy, he suggested that now that George and other senior officers pushed out by Hegseth are considered civilians, “maybe they can step forward and tell their fellow citizens what on Earth is going on in Hegseth’s Pentagon.”

Donald Trump's decision to remove Attorney General Pam Bondi — despite her loyalty to the president — has reportedly revealed how he really sees even the most supportive women around him: disposable.

Salon's Amanda Marcotte described how even "the most faithful MAGA acolytes" could be cut from their Trump administration jobs. And for Bondi, even after years of service to Trump, she was the "latest victim of her own hubris."

"Trump has surrounded himself with people who had little to no chance of rising to high levels of power in Washington on their own merits, and certainly not in a traditional Republican administration," Marcotte wrote. "He has no use for expertise or talent; he prefers people who will grovel before him. But because most of Trump’s appointees are talentless hacks, they are disposable. Losing them causes no problems for the president, who can easily replace them with other mediocrities who may not know how to do the job, but are gifted at debasing themselves for the boss."

But Bondi's ousting added another layer of complications, Marcotte explained.

"Bondi’s firing, though, is an especially brutal heave under the MAGA bus," Marcotte wrote. "As the former attorney general of Florida, the president’s adopted state, she has one of the longest histories of Trump staffer at pleasing him."

Trump has made it clear that removing women from the top administration roles doesn't cause a problem for him, especially if he's feeling "grumpy" or frustrated, Marcotte added.

"If she weren’t such an indefensible character, Bondi’s efforts to save her job would be sad," Marcotte wrote. "At congressional hearings, she avoids answering real questions by yelling a lot and heaping embarrassing, disingenuous praise on the president. Trump has reportedly enjoyed these performances, but that’s all water under the bridge now. He had a bad day on Wednesday, where both his sit-in at the Supreme Court during arguments over birthright citizenship and his big White House speech on the Iran war backfired horribly. He needed a whipping post."

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has announced a new policy on the protection of the women’s category that will force thousands of elite women athletes from around the world to undergo genetic sex testing in order to compete.

Critics argue the policy is based on weak science and raises urgent and important questions about fairness and human rights. It requires athletes seeking to participate in the women’s category at IOC events, such as the Olympic Games and the Youth Olympic Games, to undergo screening for the sex-determining region Y (SRY) gene.

The IOC’s policy is an extension of the genetic sex testing practices recently adopted by international sport federations for athletics, swimming, boxing and skiing and snowboarding. It also encourages other international sport federations to implement similar exclusionary policies for competitions outside the Olympics.

The purpose of the test is to identify and exclude transgender women and women with sex variations due to the perception that they threaten the integrity of women’s sport. Athletes who test positive for the SRY gene are ineligible for the women’s category, unless they can demonstrate complete insensitivity to testosterone through clinical evaluations.

Global backlash raises red flags

While groups advocating to restrict eligibility in women’s sport are celebrating this return to genetic screening, the implications are deeply troubling. The use of genetic sex testing in sport was discredited and abandoned in the 1990s due to scientific, ethical and legal concerns — all of which remain relevant today.

The IOC moved ahead with its new policy despite stern warnings and petitions from United Nations experts, 140 human rights and sport advocacy organizations and more than 90 legal experts worldwide.

These groups noted that the intrusive and exclusionary practices now codified in the IOC’s policy are rooted in stereotypes and generalized assumptions of performance advantage rather than robust, sport-specific evidence. They also noted that the practices risk violating the human rights principles of non-discrimination, bodily and psychological integrity, dignity and privacy for all women athletes.

Ethics, flawed evidence and cost

According to the IOC, the new policy is informed by consultations with experts, reviews of scientific evidence and input from the IOC’s “Protection of the Female Category Working Group.” Yet, the identities of these experts and members of the working group have not been revealed, and the alleged scientific evidence relied upon by the IOC has not been cited.

Determining eligibility in women’s sport based on the presence of a single biological marker, such as the SRY gene, ignores the complexity of biological sex and the many other factors that influence sport performance but are not regulated.

The truth is that there is no independent, high-quality evidence showing that women with the SRY gene and sex variations have an athletic advantage. Similarly, for transgender women, the scientific research is inconclusive and recently led a Belgian court to conclude that a ban on transgender women in international cycling was unlawful.

Contrary to the IOC’s assertions, genetic sex testing is highly invasive, which is why it is strictly regulated under various laws.

In many jurisdictions, it can only be conducted for clear medical purposes, after an individual has provided free and informed consent, and where the processing of genetic data is subject to adequate safeguards. Yet, genetic sex testing in sport violates these requirements.

The IOC’s response to this illegality is that athletes can simply travel to other countries without such laws to take the test.

Pragmatic questions about the costs of genetic sex testing have not been addressed in the IOC policy and cannot be ignored. It is estimated that the cost to test an athlete could exceed US$10,000 in some cases, and it is not clear who will finance these costs.

South Africa’s Caster Semenya, centre, answers reporters with lawyers Gregory Nott, left, and Shona Jolly KC after Semenya won a partial victory at the European Court of Human Rights on in her seven-year legal fight against track and field’s sex eligibility rules, in July 2025 in Strasbourg, France. (AP Photo/Antonin Utz)

Two days earlier, the Future of Sport in Canada Commission released its final report. The report recognizes the precarity of Canada’s sport system and the need for a massive infusion of funding to maintain safe sport standards for all athletes.

Given this national focus, the genetic screening of women athletes seems far from a priority.

What’s at stake for the future

While the IOC has said its new policy only applies at the international level, there are concerns that this narrowing of the women’s category will filter down to lower levels of sport.

Without a change in course, genetic sex testing could become commonplace, and many women and girls may choose to leave sport to avoid having their bodies policed and their identity questioned.

To truly protect women’s sport, we believe that governments, athletes and other members of civil society must strongly oppose the exclusionary and rights-infringing policies of the IOC and international sport federations.

The outcome of a recent privacy complaint in Canada that will limit the use of certain sensitive personal data for sex testing provides a glimpse of the resistance that is possible.

U.S. officials reportedly confirmed that one of two pilots who were downed in Iran has been rescued.

Officials told CBS News that an F-15E fighter jet went down in Iran on Friday. U.S. forces later rescued a crew member, the officials said.

Search-and-rescue operations were continuing for the second crew member.

The labor union leading the fight for California’s billionaire tax on Wednesday pointed to recent reporting about hospital layoffs to make the case for the ballot measure, which would impose a one-time 5% tax on state billionaires’ wealth to fund healthcare.

The Orange County Register reported last week that “the more than 400 hospitals statewide have already laid off more than 3,400 healthcare workers as of mid-March, with as many as 1,600 coming from Santa Barbara to Orange County and the Inland Empire area, according to a tally of layoffs provided by the state’s Employment Development Department and data collected by Paul Young, senior vice president of public policy and reimbursement with the California Hospital Association of Southern California.”

As the newspaper detailed, hospital executives “are hinting of a second wave of layoffs,” citing the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, or HR 1, that congressional Republicans passed and President Donald Trump signed last summer. The law will cut about $1 trillion from Medicaid over the next decade, which is expected to significantly impact the state’s Medi-Cal program that covers more than 15 million lower-income residents.

The Center for Labor Research and Education at the University of California, Berkeley “estimates the Medi-Cal cuts could lead to a loss of 72,000 to 145,000 healthcare jobs throughout California, representing 3% to 5% of the state’s 2.65 million healthcare positions,” the Register noted. “These job losses include positions in hospitals, clinics, and home care.”

The Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West, the lead sponsor of the ballot measure that Californians are set to vote on in November, highlighted the reporting in a Wednesday statement. SEIU-UHW chief of staff Suzanne Jimenez declared that “this is a direct threat to patient care across California.”

“When hospitals lose funding, they lose staff,” Jimenez said. “And when they lose staff, patients face longer wait times, fewer services, and reduced access to lifesaving care. Without urgent action, communities across California will lose access to the care they depend on.”

In the union’s statement, Mayra Castañeda shared concerns about losing her job as an ultrasound technologist at a hospital in Lynwood, California. She said: “Every day I come to work thinking about my patients, making sure they get the care they need, that they feel safe, that they’re not alone. Now, I’m also thinking about whether I’ll still have a job next month.”

“We’re already stretched thin, and the idea that more staff could be cut is terrifying,” Castañeda continued. “It doesn’t just impact us as staff. It impacts every patient who walks through our doors. You can’t keep taking resources out of healthcare and expect people not to suffer.”

Experts estimate that, if passed, the billionaire tax ballot measure would raise about $100 billion from 2027-31 from California’s 200 richest residents. Recent polling suggests the proposal is on its way to success.

It’s drawn support from national progressive figures such as US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who last month partnered with Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) to introduce the Make Billionaires Pay Their Fair Share Act. The bill would impose a 5% annual wealth tax and direct the revenue toward reversing GOP healthcare cuts from HR 1, expanding Medicare, building affordable houses, helping families pay for childcare, boosting teacher salaries, and sending direct payments to members of households making $150,000 or less.

Unlike the California ballot measure, that federal “tax the rich” bill and another introduced last month by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) have no clear path to passage in the Republican-controlled Congress. However, hospital layoffs as a result of HR 1—which featured more tax giveaways for wealthy Americans—aren’t limited to California.

According to a Public Citizen report released Tuesday, 446 hospitals across the United States could close or reduce services due to HR 1’s cuts to Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program. The publication notes that these “hospitals collectively have 68,986 beds and served approximately 6.6 million patients in 2024. They employ approximately 275,458 direct patient care workers (this does not include nonmedical workers, such as administrative staff).”

Public Citizen researcher and report author Eileen O’Grady stressed that “Trump’s cuts to Medicaid will hurt millions of low-income and disabled Americans, and will deepen financial strains that are already plaguing rural and safety-net hospitals—compromising their ability to deliver care, potentially leading many to close.”

“Congress should take urgent action to restore all Medicaid funding cuts enacted by Trump and Republicans in Congress,” O’Grady argued, “and should extend the enhanced premium tax credits for coverage through the Affordable Care Act marketplaces.”

An ocean conservation ship operated by anti-whaling campaigner Paul Watson collided Tuesday with a commercial krill trawler off Antarctica in what the fishing vessel’s owner described as a “deliberate attack,” but activists called “a David-and-Goliath battle against an industrial giant.”

The Captain Paul Watson Foundation (CPWF) said on Facebook that, as part of its Operation Krill Wars campaign, the Bandero is currently targeting “two of the largest Norwegian trawlers operating in Antarctic waters, the Antarctic Endurance and the Antarctic Sea,”—both of which are owned by Aker QRILL Company of Lysaker, Norway.

“Earlier today, both trawlers released lines into the water to move the Bandero, a dangerous maneuver that could have disabled our ship,” the foundation alleged. “In response, the Bandero delivered a gentle but deliberate nudge to the stern of the Antarctic Sea, accompanied by a message: Stop despoiling the ecological integrity of the Southern Ocean.”

Aker QRILL is owned by New York City-based American Industrial Partners and Norwegian billionaire Kjell Inge Røkke, and calls itself “the world’s leading krill company.”

Company CEO Webjørn Barstad responded to the incident by claiming in an interview with Reuters that “our crew were put at risk in some of the most remote waters on Earth, and only luck avoided potential environmental damage.”

“If the steel plates... had ruptured, it could have caused a spill,” Barstad added. “It was probably just luck that it didn’t cause more damage.”

CPWF scoffed at the company’s claims of danger, saying on Facebook that “I understand your need to play the victim while you scoop life from the sea.”

As the Operation Krill Wars campaign explains:

Krill is the keystone species of the ecosystem in Antarctica. The majority of Antarctic species are reliant on krill as their primary food source or krilI is the the food source of their prey. From the great whales down to the penguins, seals, and seabirds, all rely on an abundance of krill to survive.

Currently the quota set by the Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources is 620,000 tons which is said to represent 1% of the total biomass of krill. However the fishing of krill is in concentrated areas, meaning that the likelihood of ecological collapse in those areas is far more likely.

After the near extinction of several large whale species in the 19th and 20th centuries, conservation efforts in the later half of the 20th century and 21st century have seen whale populations recovering. Though not back to their pre-commercial whaling numbers, this increase in whale populations obviously requires a greater amount of krill for food. Yet what we are seeing is a greater extraction of krill by human commercial enterprises.

“If the ocean dies, we die,” Paul Watson said in a statement. “Krill are the blood of the sea. Without them, the whales, penguins, fish, and birds will starve, and the ocean will fall silent.”

Watson is best known as the co-founder of Greenpeace and, later, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. He has dedicated his life to defending marine wildlife—especially mammals like whales—from harm. A controversial figure, Watson was arrested and jailed in Greenland in 2024 on an international warrant issued by Japan over his anti-whaling activism. However, he was freed after Denmark—which controls Greenland’s foreign affairs—refused Japan’s extradition request.

CPWF said that the issue of ocean exploitation must be “confronted legally and brought to global attention.”

“We are here in the Southern Ocean to oppose a crime against nature and humanity—aggressively, but nonviolently,” the group said Wednesday. “We welcome the opportunity to defend our actions in court and expose the true cost of krill fishing to the world.”

The Bob Brown Foundation, an Australian green group, defended CPWF in a statement Wednesday calling “for the complete end to krill fishing in Antarctica.”

“The krill fishing industry is fully aware of the damage they cause, such as killing whales in their nets, yet they do all they can to greenwash krill products,” said Bob Brown Foundation Antarctic and marine campaigner Alistair Allan. “We applaud the brave actions of the Captain Paul Watson Foundation, who are ensuring that the plunder of krill does not go unchallenged.”

“Krill is violently sucked out of Antarctica’s fragile wilderness all for products we don’t need, such as fish farm feed, pet food, and supposed health products,” Allan added. “It’s time for the world to boycott all products with krill in them.”

WASHINGTON - Gulf and environmental groups sued the Trump Administration today over its decision to strip Endangered Species Act protection from imperiled species threatened by oil-and-gas offshore drilling activities in the Gulf of Mexico. The unprecedented blanket-exemption would leave numerous Gulf species and ecosystems unprotected and vulnerable to extinction, including the critically endangered Rice’s whale, sea turtles, fish, rays, corals, and birds.

• Read the complaint: https://earthjustice.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/1_complaint-for-declaratory-and-injunctive-relief-4.2.26.pdf

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth invoked a 1978 Endangered Species Act provision that allows an Endangered Species Committee (commonly known as the “Extinction Committee” or “God Squad”) to wipe out protections for imperiled species. Secretary Hegseth directed the small group of President Trump’s appointees to grant the free pass for offshore drillers, citing “national security” reasons even though no oil and gas industry proposals or permits have been denied due to the Endangered Species Act. Offshore drillers even recently told a federal court that current species protections (which still enable imperiled marine life deaths, injury, and harassment) are not disrupting their operations.

The groups — Healthy Gulf, Turtle Island Restoration Network, Friends of the Earth, and Sierra Club, represented by Earthjustice — are suing the Trump Administration for abusing the national security exception under the Endangered Species Act, which does not allow the robust review process required under the law to be forfeited or voided.

The groups filed their lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

QUOTES FROM ADVOCACY GROUPS

“The Trump administration is playing god with our most vulnerable wildlife by deciding which endangered species are worth saving and which can be sentenced to extinction to pad oil and gas profits. The Endangered Species Act and the long-needed protections it requires to prevent species’ extinction do not disrupt oil production in the Gulf. We are suing to stop the Trump administration from abusing national security concerns to seek politically motivated exemptions that weaken protections for endangered species nationwide,” said Devorah Ancel, senior attorney with the Sierra Club’s Environmental Law Program.

“In a moment of self-made crisis, the Trump Administration has decided to manipulate the law to entrench offshore oil drilling in the Gulf for decades to come, even if it destabilizes entire ecosystems that communities and businesses depend on,” said Steve Mashuda, Managing Attorney for Earthjustice’s Oceans Program. “This ‘go-ahead’ to offshore drillers to extract oil and gas in extremely sensitive ocean areas while killing whales, turtles, and many other species is unnecessary and shameful. This abuse of the law won’t lower gas prices, and it will only sell out the Gulf to an industry that has left some of the worst environmental scars our country has ever seen. We are asking the court to stop this illegal order.”

“The Extinction Committee’s vote to absolve oil and gas companies from adhering to the Endangered Species Act is an unprecedented act that will have disastrous consequences for the Gulf,” said Martha Collins, Healthy Gulf Executive Director. “Communities want greater protections for Gulf species, and this is a clear attempt by the Trump administration to silence those voices.”

“Using war with Iran as cover, the Trump administration has invoked the rarely-used Endangered Species Committee ‘God Squad’ to wage a new war — on endangered sea turtles and whales in the Gulf of Mexico,” said Todd Steiner, founder of Turtle Island Restoration Network.

“The Trump Administration’s unprecedented use of the God Squad is rife with illegalities,” said Hallie Templeton, Legal Director for Friends of the Earth. “Public participation has been evaded and a baseless national emergency has been declared without evidence of need or urgency. Meanwhile, the critically endangered Rice’s whale – of which only 51 remain on the planet – has been placed in the administration’s crosshairs, all to benefit oil and gas interests. The buck stops here: we are holding the Extinction Committee and involved officials accountable in court and are confident that justice will continue to carry the day.”

BACKGROUND

The Endangered Species Committee has only convened three times since Congress amended the Act in 1978 to allow for exemptions in extreme circumstances where species protection was irreconcilable with a particular project. Only twice has it decided to exempt specific projects from Endangered Species Act protections — and one of those decisions (regarding spotted owls) was subsequently overturned in court.

In every prior case, there has been a singular project up for consideration by the committee, and a single species whose fate was hanging in the balance. Yesterday’s meeting marks the first time the committee has ever considered a request based on “national security” concerns. It is also the first time that an exemption has been granted for an entire industry, for sweeping actions that have the potential to affect at least 20 endangered and threatened species. Rice’s whales, the only whales that live year-round in the Gulf, have already diminished to around 50 individuals and could become the first human-caused extinction of a whale species in recorded history.

The Endangered Species Act has long served as a bulwark against rampant destruction of species habitat, preserving ecosystems that keep marine life alive and that humans rely on for everything from food to economic security to recreation to cultural practices.

President Trump has repeatedly attacked or attempted to circumvent the Endangered Species Act. Just this week, a federal court struck down a series of regulations from the first Trump administration, restoring key values of the bedrock environmental law.

By Christine Keiner, Rochester Institute of Technology

With the world struggling to get oil supplies moving from the Middle East, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich raised eyebrows with a social media post highlighting a radical idea: Use nuclear bombs to cut a new channel along a route that would avoid Iranian threats in the Strait of Hormuz.

Gingrich’s March 15, 2026, post linked to an article that labeled itself as satire. Gingrich has not clarified whether his endorsement was serious. But he is old enough to remember when ideas like this were not only taken seriously but actually pursued by the U.S. and Soviet governments.

As I discuss in my book, “Deep Cut: Science, Power, and the Unbuilt Interoceanic Canal,” the U.S. version of this project ended in 1977. At the time, Gingrich was launching his political career after working as a history and environmental studies professor.

Improving global trade and geopolitical influence

The idea for a new canal to move oil from the Middle East had emerged two decades earlier, in the context of another Middle East conflict, the Suez crisis. In 1956, Egypt seized the Suez Canal from British and French control. The canal’s prolonged closure caused the price of oil, tea and other commodities to spike for European consumers, who depended on the shipping shortcut for goods from Asia.

But what if nuclear energy could be harnessed to cut an alternative canal through “friendly territory”? That was the question asked by Edward Teller, the principal architect of the hydrogen bomb, and his fellow physicists at the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory in Livermore, California.

Scuttled ships block one end of the Suez Canal in 1956, sparking an international outcry and conflict.Horace Tonge/NCJ Archive/Mirrorpix via Getty Images

President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s administration had already begun promoting atomic energy to generate electricity and to power submarines. After the Suez crisis, the U.S. government expanded plans to harness “atoms for peace.”

Project Plowshare advocates, led by Teller, sought to use what they called “peaceful nuclear explosions” to reduce the costs of large-scale earthmoving projects and to promote national security. They envisioned a world in which nuclear explosives could help extract natural gas from underground reservoirs and build new canals, harbors and mountainside roads, with minimal radioactive effects.

To kick-start the program, Teller wanted to create an instant harbor by burying, and then detonating, five thermonuclear bombs in an Indigenous village in coastal northwestern Alaska. The plan, known as Project Chariot, generated intense debate, as well as a pioneering environmental study of Arctic food webs.

Teller and the Livermore physicists also worked with the Army Corps of Engineers to study the possibility of using nuclear explosions to build another waterway in Panama. Fearing that the aging Panama Canal and its narrow locks would soon be rendered obsolete, U.S. officials had called for building a wider, deeper channel that wouldn’t require any locks to raise and lower the ships along its route.

A sea-level canal would not only fit bigger vessels; it would also be simpler to operate than the lock-based system, which required thousands of employees. Since the early 1900s, U.S. canal workers and their families had lived in the Canal Zone, a large strip of land surrounding the waterway. Panamanians increasingly resented having their country split in two by the racially segregated, colony-like zone.

A not-so-hot idea, in retrospect

As explored in my book, marine and evolutionary biologists of the late 1960s sought to study the project’s less obvious environmental effects. Among other potential catastrophes, scientists warned that a sea-level canal could unleash “mutual invasions of Atlantic and Pacific organisms” by joining the oceans on either side of the isthmus for the first time in 3 million years.

Plans for the nuclear waterway ended by the early 1970s, not over concerns about marine invasive species but rather due to other complex issues. These included the difficulties of testing nuclear explosions for peaceful purposes without violating the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of 1963 and the huge budget deficits caused by the Vietnam War.

Despite the geopolitical and financial constraints, the sea-level canal studies employed hundreds of researchers who increased knowledge of the isthmus and its human and nonhuman inhabitants. Ironically, the studies revealed that wet clay shale rocks along the Darién route meant nuclear explosives might not work well there.

There are growing concerns among liberal advocacy groups that Donald Trump is going to be afforded a chance to put two more of his appointees on the Supreme Court, maintaining a 6-3 conservative majority and, more importantly, a 5-4 Trump majority for decades to come.

Trump has already installed three justices — Neil Gorsuch (2017), Brett Kavanaugh (2018) and Amy Coney Barrett (2020). Now, progressive groups are preparing for the distinct possibility that Justices Clarence Thomas, 77, and Samuel Alito, 76, could step down during Trump's term, giving him the opportunity to reshape the court to a radical degree.

Demand Justice, a leading progressive legal advocacy group, is launching a multimillion-dollar preemptive campaign to oppose potential Trump Supreme Court nominees before vacancies even occur. The project will cost $3 million initially, with an additional $15 million allocated if Trump actually nominates replacements for Thomas or Alito.

Josh Orton, president of Demand Justice, invoked the cautionary tale of Ruth Bader Ginsburg to explain the stakes to the New York Times.

"If you think that Trump is willing to leave two of the three justices he thinks are most loyal on the court in their 80s past when he leaves office, you are not paying attention," Orton said. "There is no way that Donald Trump and Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito would ever commit the fundamental miscalculation about power that we saw from Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Barack Obama and we as a movement."

Ginsburg infamously refused to retire during the Obama presidency despite pressure from allies who warned of her mortality. She died during Trump's first term, and was replaced by the far more conservative Amy Coney Barrett — a decision progressives view as the original sin of judicial miscalculation.

Orton's research identifies three categories of potential Trump Supreme Court nominees: conservative judges from lower courts, political allies and elected officials, and what he described as committed Trump loyalists with a "vulgar equivalent for 's---- you'" — essentially ideological warriors willing to do Trump's bidding.

Blocking a Trump Supreme Court nominee would require extraordinary political conditions. If all Senate Democrats opposed a nominee, four Republican senators would need to defect to block confirmation. Orton believes as many as six Republican senators could vote against Trump under the right political conditions, though such unanimity is unlikely.

The political landscape could shift dramatically if Democrats flip at least four Republican-held Senate seats in November, gaining control of the chamber. That outcome would make confirming Trump nominees substantially more difficult — though Trump could still push nominations through before any Democratic administration takes over.

Ezra Levin, co-executive director of Indivisible, a liberal partner organization in the Demand Justice effort, framed the challenge starkly.

"If Trump is handed another Supreme Court vacancy, we must be clear-eyed and ready to make it an uphill battle. This will be a defining political battle, and we intend to make sure the stakes are clear to everyone."

MAGA influencer Steve Bannon suggested downed pilots were the price of fighting a war with Iran.

After reports said that the U.S. military was searching for the pilots of a crashed F-15 on Friday, Bannon noted that CENTCOM had flown around 12,000 sorties during the war.

"First off, that's an extraordinary amount just in the time we've been there," he explained. "These things are going to happen. You're going to get some people shot down. That's just the reality."

Author Brandon Weichert told Bannon that he hoped the downed jet was a "wake-up call" for the White House.

"But I'm still watching these troops flowing into the region," he noted. "So to me, this looks like we're plussing up. Doesn't look like we're de-escalating."

"Unfortunately, again, it looks like Trump is still tempted to, to climb that escalation ladder," Weichert added. "And I can't stress enough how significant of a problem this will be for the United States if we get bogged down in a ground war."

MAGA women in the Trump cabinet were reportedly "on edge" Friday after President Donald Trump fired Attorney General Pam Bondi.

Bondi's ousting followed the removal and demotion of former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem as questions arise over who might get the axe next, according to The Swamp, the Daily Beast's Substack.

"Pam Bondi’s ouster has sparked a mild panic across Washington as officials and aides wonder: Who’s next? And will it be another woman?" The Swamp reported. "While Bondi’s sacking was somewhat inevitable after her botched handling of the Epstein files and her failure to successfully prosecute Trump’s enemies, the fact it comes merely weeks after Kristi Noem was replaced by Markwayne Mullin hasn’t gone unnoticed. Now, the rumor mill is swirling over Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer."

It's unclear whether Trump intends to cut Gabbard or Chavez-DeRemer — but both members of the administration have come under scrutiny over different concerns.

"Gabbard has been at odds with Trump over Iran, while Trump is reportedly unhappy with Chavez-DeRemer’s performance," according to The Swamp.

Those weren't the only Trump administration officials in hot water.

"But there have also been other women in Trump’s orbit who haven’t fared well — just ask Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, who was forced to give up a plum post as UN ambassador so Trump could keep his razor thin GOP House majority," The Swamp reported. "Or MAGA loyalist Kari Lake, who wanted a senior role in Trump’s cabinet and ended up with the headache of trying to overhaul The Voice Of America. Even Education Secretary Linda McMahon has effectively been hobbled given the dismantling of her department. Coincidence or trend?"

With Pam Bondi out as Attorney General, her eventual replacement is expected to meet several requirements, one of which will likely be "impossible for anyone” to meet, former U.S. attorney Elie Honig said on Friday.

Bondi was ousted as the nation’s top law enforcement official this week by President Trump, who reportedly was dissatisfied with her inability to secure criminal convictions for his perceived political adversaries. Trump appointed Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche as acting attorney general in the immediate aftermath of Bondi’s firing.

Bondi’s eventual successor, however, is likely to leave Trump equally dissatisfied, Honig theorized Friday during an appearance on CNN, given what he believed were Trump’s requirements for the role.

“It appears there are basically two qualifications for the job: one is easy to find, one is really hard. The easy one, in Donald Trump's mind, is somebody who is 100% loyal to him, who will not hesitate to carry out his political agenda – Pam Bondi certainly met that qualification,” Honig said.

“The second one though is that you need someone, in Donald Trump's view, who can actually succeed on these prosecutions, who cannot just investigate, but successfully indict and convict, and Pam Bondi was 0% in doing that. All of the cases that she tried to bring that were political failed – rejected either by judges or by grand juries.”

The Justice Department under Trump has sought to criminally convict a number of the president’s perceived enemies, including former FBI Director James Comey, New York Attorney General Letitia James, former National Security Adviser John Bolton, and Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis, all of whom Trump has publicly smeared.

Those efforts have all failed, however, and for one reason, Honig explained.

“I don't know that there's a human being alive who can satisfy that second criteria because it doesn't matter who you are – if the evidence isn't there, you're just not going to get an indictment!” he said.

By Austin Sarat, William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science, Amherst College

After President Donald Trump fired Attorney General Pam Bondi on April 2, 2026, news reports suggested that she fell from grace, not for being too independent, but for not being effective enough at defending him and prosecuting his political enemies.

As The New York Times reported the previous day, Trump was disappointed with “Ms. Bondi’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files, which has become a political liability for Mr. Trump among his supporters. He has also complained about her shortcomings as a communicator and vented about what he sees as the Department of Justice’s lack of aggressiveness in going after his foes.”

The president has long indicated that whoever served as attorney general in his administration should see themselves as his lawyer rather than as someone representing the U.S. government.

During his first presidential term, Trump was gravely disappointed with Jeff Sessions, his first attorney general, who recused himself from the investigation into alleged political interference in the 2016 election. He replaced Sessions with William Barr, who abandoned Trump when the president did not accept the results of the 2020 election.

Having learned from those mistakes, Trump set out to find a political ally and loyalist to take the helm at the Justice Department in his second administration.

As a scholar of law and politics, and someone who has written about the role of the attorney general, I think Trump’s desire has a familiar ring to it. It is not unusual for presidents to put people who share their views and policy preferences into the role. But Trump has gone far beyond what is usually done.

Bondi’s ascent

Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz was Trump’s first choice for attorney general during the president’s second term. Many commentators viewed Gaetz as a firebrand who was temperamentally unsuited for that position. Some criticized him for calling the president an “inspirational leader of a loving and patriotic movement” in the aftermath of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. In the face of growing opposition generated in part by allegations of his misconduct, Gaetz withdrew.

Trump turned to Bondi a few hours later. She had served as Florida’s attorney general and drawn praise from across the political spectrum for her professionalism.

A bipartisan group of former state attorneys general wrote a letter attesting to their “firsthand knowledge of her fitness for the office” and her “wealth of prosecutorial experience and commitment to public service.”

In addition, as PBS noted at the time of her appointment, Bondi was “a longtime Trump ally and was one of his lawyers during his first impeachment trial, when he was accused — but not convicted — of abusing his power as he tried to condition U.S. military assistance to Ukraine on that country investigating then-former Vice President Joe Biden.”

She also showed her loyalty by attending Trump’s New York trial for paying hush money to porn actor Stormy Daniels, with whom he allegedly had an affair.

At the time of her nomination, Bondi seemed to have the attributes of an attorney general. She had the credentials to take on the job of running the DOJ and the confidence of the president who appointed her.

From confirmation to downfall

During her confirmation hearings, Bondi promised to safeguard the Justice Department’s independence and bolster its transparency. She also vowed to not serve as the president’s personal attorney.

And in response to a question from Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, she pledged in January 2025 that “there will never be an enemies list within the Department of Justice.”

But she also showed her willingness to joust with Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee. She hewed to the MAGA script by refusing to say that the president had lost the 2020 election. And she mounted a spirited attack on the Biden Justice Department, which she claimed had been “weaponized for years and years and years.”

Once in office, Bondi took on the difficult task of leading the Justice Department while also pleasing the president. She stood by when Trump used an appearance at the department to give, according to The New York Times, a “grievance-filled attack on the very people who have worked in the building and others like them.” The Times added: “He appeared to offer his own vision of justice in America, one defined by personal vengeance rather than by institutional principles.”

Bondi apparently did not do enough to deliver on that version of justice.

Last year, Trump had to urge Bondi to take action against his political enemies, including former FBI Director James Comey, California Senator Adam Schiff and New York Attorney General Leticia James.

“They’re all guilty as hell,” Trump posted on his social media platform, Truth Social, “but nothing is going to be done. "We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility,” he added. “They impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!”

Bondi took her marching orders and launched investigations of those the president named. However, she was not able to secure any convictions. NBC News quoted a former official in the Trump White House who said that failing to secure indictments “is a problem for job security with the president.”

If that wasn’t enough, Trump was also reportedly frustrated with the way Bondi had handled the release of the Epstein files, first promising full disclosure and then botching the rollout of the files.

Contending visions of the attorney general’s job

Bondi’s tenure illustrates the conflicting visions of what an attorney general should do that animate today’s American politics.

The questions Democrats asked her during her confirmation were designed to get her to commit to their view of what the attorney general should do. Those questions signaled their belief that anyone occupying that office should maintain their distance from the president and uphold the Justice Department’s independence.

But right from the start of the republic, presidents have chosen close political allies to serve as attorney general.

It’s common for presidents to appoint their friends and supporters to be attorneys general. Since Franklin D. Roosevelt, many presidents have chosen their campaign manager or their party’s national chairperson to be attorney general of the United States.

But even compared with this history, Trump and his allies have a radically different vision, seeing the attorney general as just another Cabinet member whose responsibility is to carry out the president’s policies and implement his directions. As Trump put it in a 2017 interview with The New York Times, he has the “absolute right to do what I want to do with the Justice Department.”

In the end, it seems that Bondi was fired for her failure to be effective in the political role assigned to her. It is likely that the president will want to replace her with someone even more political than she was, who promises to deliver more of the results he wants.

Austin Sarat, William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science, Amherst College

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

Donald Trump ignored a war games scenario that predicted the Strait of Hormuz would be closed following strikes on Iran, an analyst has claimed.

David Rothkopf, speaking to The New Republic's Greg Sargent, says the president was made aware of a scenario in which the United States would likely suffer the impact of the Strait of Hormuz's closure. Trump's administration struck Iran in early March, with the stated objective being regime change, though analysts questioned whether the administration had a comprehensive long-term strategy beyond the initial military operation.

A war games plan seen by Trump should have been enough to convince him not to strike Iran, Rothkopf says, but action was taken against the Middle Eastern country.

Rothkopf said, "That’s why the National Security Council was created. Well, we effectively don’t have an NSC now because he doesn’t listen to advice. And so you have this ignoramus who ignores the fact that when war games like about this were conducted, we lost.

"Okay, there was a big famous war game that was conducted a number of years ago about the U.S. attacking Iran—we lost because they leveraged the Strait of Hormuz. And he ignores that. He didn’t consult the allies. He thought they would just go along with him.

"And frankly, he thought it would be over in a minute because he didn’t sort of think through 92 million people, 50 years of history, deeply ingrained institutions in that country. He thinks he’s Superman. And of course, that’s fine when you jump off the building. It’s just a problem when you hit the ground."

Rothkopf went on to suggest some of Trump's alleged targets in Iran would, should they be struck, constitute a war crime.

"They went in, they bombed a bridge," he wrote. "We can debate whether that’s a war crime because it’s civilian infrastructure. He threatened now to go in and bomb their electrical systems. That is a war crime. That is punishing civilians.

"Obviously, this is going to harden resistance. It’s going to have an effect on how the Iranians handle, for example, the Strait of Hormuz."

Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) has become the "most despised" Republican senator, according to Puck News. He has surpassed previous antagonists like Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Rand Paul (R-KY).

"John Thune needs to shove Mike Lee in a locker," one Trump ally in the Senate said. The comment captures the depth of animosity toward the Utah Republican.

Lee has relentlessly pushed for the SAVE America Act. This is Trump's voter ID bill. He wants to eliminate the filibuster to pass it. He's willing to implement a weeks- or months-long talking filibuster.

Senate Majority Leader Thune has repeatedly stated he lacks the votes. "He doesn't have the votes for that," sources confirmed. Yet Lee continues to fundraise off the issue. He attacks his colleagues through constant online trolling.

Lee has convinced his base that passing the bill is possible. Senate Republicans are enraged by this. Virtually no senator believes either the filibuster can be changed or the bill can pass.

The disconnect between Lee's public posturing and private inaction is stark. Colleagues are convinced his crusade is purely cynical. "It's a money-driven publicity stunt," sources say. He is trying to raise his profile.

Lee has called for the Senate to remain in session during recess. He wants to pass the SAVE America Act. He wants to pass Department of Homeland Security funding. Yet Lee himself has left town.

One Trump ally speculated Lee wants a Supreme Court nomination. A GOP aide joked about the confirmation prospects. "That would be a unanimous confirmation," the aide said. "People want him out of the Senate."

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's top aide reportedly gossiped with his colleagues that he and the Pentagon boss had worn disguises and went out for drinks together — an alleged plot to try to discover potential leakers inside the department, according to a report Friday from The New York Post.

Ricky Buria, Hegseth's chief of staff, started spreading the rumor in early 2025 and created a story that he and Hegseth had evaded the secretary's security detail while at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Pentagon City, the outlet reported.

"There’s no proof that the great escape actually happened, but the tale has reverberated within the administration and stoked continued frustration with Buria’s powerful role leading US military policy," according to The Post.

"Many people close to or inside the Trump administration say they believe Buria, a Biden administration holdover who formed a fast friendship with Hegseth, was ham-handedly attempting to catch leakers — but put the secretary at risk of scandal in the meantime," The Post reported.

The tale was apparently shared so often that sources told the outlet they were unsure how they could actually track who disseminated the information.

Hegseth has been accused of alleged drunken misbehavior in the past and had publicly said before his January 2025 Senate confirmation that he vowed not to drink "a drop of alcohol" in order to have a "fully dialed-in Pete" in the nation's top defense role.

A source told The Post he was shocked when Buria told him the story at the Pentagon office just months later, in late March or April.

“My first impression of it was he was trying to figure out if I was going to tell other people. But then I come to find out a couple months later that he was running around telling people,” the source told The Post.

Former Marine fighter pilot and current Newsmax host Greg Kelly continued his war on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Friday morning over reports that the Donald Trump appointee has ousted another high-ranking Pentagon official.

On Wednesday, Hegseth countermanded an order that would have punished two Apache helicopter Army pilots for doing a fly-by above aging rocker Kid Rock’s estate in Tennessee, which drew Kelly’s ire and led him to write on X: “So what if those 'fly boys' flew by Madonna’s house and Took a Bow? Or Robert DeNiro. That would Not be cool, right? But it’s just fine for Kid Rockhead? What an amateur move, posting it on Social Media."

He then added, “Meanwhile, HEGSETH runs the Pentagon like he ran his phony 'non-profits' —RECKLESSLY. He has No business Micro-Managing Army Units. They MUST Discipline Hot Dog Pilots performing Unauthorized Stunts. Because Next Time something could go Very Very Bad."

On Friday morning, he continued his war on the DOD secretary by accusing him of “Weirdo DRAMA," tied to the firing of Army Chief of Staff General Randy A George, which was described by the New York Times as “a move that reflects growing hostility between Mr. Hegseth and the Army’s leadership, military officials said.”

The conservative Kelly, a longtime Trump apologist, seemed to agree in a very Trumpesque post on X where he made accusations against the former Fox News personality..“Hegseth….Weirdo DRAMA ‘somehow’ follows this guy everywhere he goes. The word is another General ‘looked at him funny’ so PETE (drunk on power-hopefully just power) Fired the guy. From ‘Fox and Friends’ Birthday Parties to the SITUATION ROOM, it’s always A Problem with this guy. He Lied to the Trump Admin about his extensive Personal Issues, and now he’s blowing up Army Careers of Good Men—because of his personal INSECURITY. Paranoid Pete!”

Even from a distance of several kilometres, the Artemis II rocket looked huge.

Then, there was a moment that felt like an eternity, as around 2,600 metric tons of spacecraft lifted off.

I was honoured to receive an invitation from the Canadian Space Agency to attend this historic launch at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. I am a professor, an explorer and a planetary geologist. As a member of the First Artemis Lunar Surface Science Team, I have been supporting NASA in developing the geology training for Artemis astronauts.

This launch was one of the most thrilling, but stressful few minutes of my life. Space missions are hard and can be dangerous, especially missions like this where there are so many firsts.

The final 10-second countdown seemed to come so quickly, and then at 6.35 p.m., EDT, on April 1, 2026, the NASA launch commentator uttered those famous words: “We have liftoff.”

NASA’s Artemis II moon rocket lifts off from the Kennedy Space Center’s Launch on April 1, 2026, in Cape Canaveral, Fla. (AP Photo/Chris O'Meara)

I think everyone around me held their breath for those first few critical seconds, and then the significance of the moment sank in. We had just witnessed history in the making. This was the launch of the first crewed flight of NASA’s Artemis program, and the first time since 1972 that humans have ventured to the Moon.

Jeremy Hansen will be the first non-American to fly to the Moon and will make Canada only the second country in the world to send an astronaut into deep space.

Christina Koch and Victor Glover will also make history as the first woman and person of colour to fly to the Moon.

Read more: Artemis II: The first human mission to the moon in 54 years launches soon — with a Canadian on board

The build up to launch

The first launch windows for Artemis II came and went earlier this year, following issues discovered during wet dress rehearsals. But this time felt different. NASA rolled out the SLS (Space Launch System) rocket on March 20 and decided to skip the wet dress rehearsal and go straight for launch.

You could sense the confidence building.

On the evening before launch day, the Canadian Space Agency held a reception for all the Canadian invitees, as well as several NASA guests. It was like a “who’s who” of the Canadian space program, including most of Canada’s retired astronauts.

There were some lighthearted moments — like when MDA Space CEO Mike Greenly announced there were the limited edition Tim Hortons “moonbits” for all — but you could tell there was also a lot of emotion in the room.

There were some tears as a video message from Jeremy Hansen’s son, Devon, was played. For me the moment came when I spoke with Jeremy’s parents, who I had met several years earlier. They still live in Ingersoll, not far from London, Ont., where Jeremy went to high school.

Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen greets family members on his way to the launch pad for liftoff on NASA’s Artemis II moon rocket at the Kennedy Space Center. (AP Photo/John Raoux)

Returning humans to the Moon

At the time of writing, the crew have now had their first sleep in Integrity, the name of their Orion spacecraft.

They are now in a high-Earth orbit, reaching a maximum of 74,000 km from Earth. This is already a huge distance when you consider the orbit of the International Space Station is only around 400 km.

During this first 24 hours, the crew are testing the environmental controls and life support systems, ensuring that everything they need to survive for the next 10 days in space works. If everything looks good, NASA will clear the crew to conduct the translunar injection, and send Integrity to the Moon.

While they won’t be landing, in addition to testing out the Orion spacecraft, the Artemis II crew will be conducting science. They will be working with scientists and engineers in a new science evaluation room in mission control at the NASA Johnson Space Center, to collaborate during operations in real time.

This builds on years of testing and simulations the teams have done together and lays the groundwork for the first surface Artemis mission.

Before the launch, NASA astronaut Christina Koch summed up the feelings of everyone I’ve met on the Artemis program: “It is our strong hope that this Artemis mission is the start of an era where everyone, every person on Earth can look at it and think of it as also a destination.”

I couldn’t agree more.

MAGA host Gina Loudon concluded that former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters was in a worse spot than ever after a court upheld her conviction on election tampering charges. However, she was also ordered to be resentenced.

"Yeah, well, I thought it was really good news, and I was really excited about it until I texted my Tina Peters, reliable people inside her camp," Loudon said during a Real America's Voice segment on Friday. "And they tell me this is, in fact, not a good thing at all and that this will mean that she's back in a court that will not rule in her favor, that if anything, this was a way to insulate her case from a pardon from Donald Trump."

"So this is not good. And this Good Friday, while we are all with our families, we need to be praying for this Gold Star Mom," she added.

Attorney General Pam Bondi was axed this week by President Donald Trump, and her eventual replacement, as predicted by a former U.S. attorney on Friday, is likely to face an “uphill battle” and a “heated” confirmation process.

“Whoever is appointed is going to have an uphill battle in confirmation because we're mighty close to the midterms, and you'll find that the senators who have to explain their vote get a little more careful on how they exercise that vote the closer they get to the ballot box,” said Michael Moore, a former U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Georgia, during an appearance on CNN.

“So it wouldn't surprise me to see a pretty heated confirmation process, or at least somebody who's seen as more qualified and moderate nominated to see if they can get confirmed.”

According to reports, Trump fired Bondi over the Justice Department’s (DOJ) handling of its release of files on Jeffrey Epstein, as well as what he viewed as insufficient action against his political opponents. However, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has refuted the claim that Bondi’s firing was in any way related to the DOJ’s release of files on Epstein.

Bondi’s roughly 15-month tenure as attorney general is the shortest in more than 50 years, having held the role for around two months longer than former Attorney General William Saxbe, who left his position after 13 months under the Nixon administration. As to her legacy as head of the DOJ, Moore predicted it would be one of “failure.”

“[History will] see her as a failure and somebody who has probably done irreparable damage to the department as a whole, both reputationally and I think professionally,” Moore said.