Welcome to Sunday, April 5, 2026, and it’s Easter, which gives me a chance to tell my Jewish Easter joke.  My records say “It comes from the site Southern Jewish Humor, which gets the story from Eli N. Evans, who wrote The Provincials: A Personal History of Jews in the South: Evans said he searched for the best example he could find of Southern Jewish humor. ”

He told the story of a Jewish storekeeper in a small town who was approached by the Christian elders to show solidarity for their Easter holiday.

Mr. Goldberg was chagrined but when Easter came, after sunrise services on a nearby hilltop, the mayor, all the churchgoers, and the leading families in the city gathered in the town square in front of his store.  The store had a new sign but it was draped with a parachute.

After an introduction from the mayor, at the appointed hour, the owner pulled the rope and there it was revealed in all its wonder for all to see: “Christ Has Risen, but Goldberg’s prices remain the same.”

And, since it’s still Passover (until April 9).  I hope you get this:

It’s also First Contact Day from Star Trek (humans contacted aliens on April 5, 2063 when the Vulcan ship T’Plana-Hath landed in Bozeman, Montana), National Baked Ham with Pineapple Day, National Caramel Day, and National Deep Dish Pizza Day (the best kind, but best only in Chicago).

Today’s Google Doodle marks the holiday; click to see where it goes:

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the April 1 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*BREAKING NEWS (relevant to first post below). The missing U.S. airman has been rescued in a daring night commando raid in Iran.

An Air Force officer whose fighter jet had been shot down in Iran was rescued by U.S. Special Operations forces in a risky night mission deep inside Iranian territory, President Trump said on social media early Sunday.

The rescue followed a life-or-death race between U.S. and Iranian forces that stretched over two days to reach the injured airman, a weapon systems officer, officials said. The operation took commandos deep inside Iran and involved hundreds of special operations troops.

There were no U.S. casualties among the rescue team, Mr. Trump said. The rescued officer had “sustained injuries, but he will be just fine,” Mr. Trump added.

Finding the downed airman had been the U.S. military’s top priority since Friday, when Iran’s military shot down the F-15E Strike Eagle. It was the first known instance of a U.S. combat aircraft being shot down by Iran since the war began more than a month ago. The two members ejected from the cockpit and the pilot was quickly rescued.

Of course the NYT, which wants America to lose the war, had to qualify the above by adding this right after:

The incident underscored Iran’s ability to fight back despite weeks of attacks on its military arsenal. On Sunday, Israel and Gulf nations reported attempted drone and missile strikes they attributed to Iran. Kuwaiti officials said Iranian drones significantly damaged two power and water desalination plants, and sparked a fire at the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation’s oil complex.

This is excellent news for several reasons: the man is alive and apparently well, and Iran, who was using hundreds of forces to find him (plus offering a $60,000 bounty), would have used him as a bargaining chip to settle the war, much as the Palestinians do when they capture an IDF soldier or take civilian hostages.

*An airman shot down over Iran in an F15 fighter bailed out on Friday along with a fellow crewman. One has been rescued, but the other airman is somewhere in Iran, with the military doing a lot of sorties to find him.

The U.S. military was racing on Saturday to find an American airman who ejected from a fighter jet that was shot down over Iran, even as President Trump said time was “running out” on his ultimatum to escalate U.S. attacks unless a deal was reached in two days.

The White House has mostly been silent about the downing of the U.S. F-15E fighter jet by Iranian forces since it was first reported more than a day ago, as well as about the attempts to recover its two crew members. U.S. officials said one had been rescued, but the status of the second was unknown as of Saturday.

In a social media post on Saturday morning, Mr. Trump did not address the airman’s status. Instead, he reiterated that the deadline for his threat to massively bombard Iranian power plants would expire in 48 hours unless Iran agreed to stop blockading the Strait of Hormuz, a critical waterway for Persian Gulf oil and gas.

Mr. Trump has already delayed the ultimatum twice, saying that there were ongoing talks between the United States and Iran. Iranian officials have publicly dismissed U.S. demands, however, and continued to voice defiance after the two airmen were shot down on Friday.

. . . The downing of the fighter jet on Friday was the first time U.S. personnel and combat aircraft have been shot down in Iran since the U.S.-Israeli war began in late February. Iranian forces were also seeking to capture the missing American, Iranian officials said, speaking anonymously to discuss ongoing operations.

I can’t help but imagine what that pilot, who is likely still alive, is doing. The television news last night said he had been trained in how to survive in enemy territory, and I presume he has at least some food and water with him (I’m presuming that it’s a male). But Iran has offered a $60,000 bounty for anyone who turns the pilot over to the police, and I can only imagine what they’d do to him if they caught him. (Do no presume that Iran adheres to the Geneva Convention for POWs!).  Sometimes I fantasize that he’ll be taken in by anti-regime civilians, who will forego the bounty, and endanger their own lives, by harboring an enemy airman.

*The Wall Street Journal discusses Trump’s attempts to open the Strait of Hormuz, a task that the WSJ calls “mission impossible”:

President Trump has called on allied nations to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, to allow a fifth of the world’s oil to flow again through the passageway that Iran has effectively shut since the war started.

The problem: Naval escorts for tankers through such a narrow waterway in a war zone would be nearly impossible, say allied officials and military experts. Reopening the strait would more likely come after a cease-fire and through international pressure on Iran, they say.

Forcing open the strait militarily is unrealistic, French President Emmanuel Macron said Thursday. “It would take forever and would expose all those crossing the strait to risks” of Iranian attack, he said.

“Iran is trying to hold the global economy hostage in the Strait of Hormuz,” U.K. Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper said Thursday after convening a meeting of more than 40 countries seeking to reopen the strait. They discussed political and diplomatic steps, including potential sanctions, she said. Military intervention wasn’t on the list of options discussed.

Trump said Wednesday that strikes on Iran would continue for more than two weeks. During that time, shippers are unlikely to risk sending commercial vessels through the combat zone, analysts say. The question is what level of assurance they need to start sailing again in large numbers.

U.S. and Israeli strikes have badly damaged Iran’s regular naval assets. Yet the main threat to shipping in the Strait of Hormuz comes not from Iran’s conventional navy but from its arsenal of land-based antiship missiles, drones, swarms of small attack craft, midget submarines and various types of mines.

Geography complicates defending ships. The strait is roughly 20 miles wide at its narrowest point and divided into lanes to separate marine traffic, forcing merchant ships to travel along predictable routes. The warning time of a potential attack, and the chance to respond, would be exceedingly brief.

Iran has nearly 1,000 miles of coastline along the Persian Gulf, which it can use to launch attacks against ships, such as the drone strike that earlier this week hit a fully laden Kuwaiti oil tanker off the coast of Dubai. The coastline is dominated by mountains and coves, allowing Iranian forces to launch surprise attacks with swarms of speed boats. Tunnels under the rock, or ones hidden by mangroves and in salt caves, shelter boats that can either be launched directly into the water, or from trailers.

If we need a cease-fire and negotiated settlement with Iran to open the Strait, then everything becomes a mess, as a negotiated settlement that leaves the theocracy in power doesn’t solve any problem except the transit of oil. It doesn’t solve the oppression and murder of Iranian civilians, the dictatorial nature of the government, and the government’s drive to produce nuclear weapons. The war is a mess, and I worry that Trump will just tire of it, let Iran go the way of Venezuela (no real change in leadership), and move on to his next “project.”

*Luana sent this NYT headline (article archived here):

An excerpt:

Syracuse University is closing or halting enrollment in about 20 percent of its academic programs, in a move that the school’s provost said was designed to create a university that would be “more focused, more distinctive and more aligned with student demand.”

The overhaul was revealed in a letter from the provost, Lois Agnew, that was sent on Wednesday to students and faculty members. And while the letter did not list the cuts, a spreadsheet provided by the university showed that the humanities and the fine arts represented the largest share.

Classics and ceramics are out as majors, along with a host of others that had attracted few students.

In all, 93 of the 460 academic programs at the school will be closed or paused, meaning that no new students will be able to enroll in those majors. Coursework in the areas will still be offered, and minors in many of the subjects will continue to be available.

Similar changes are happening at universities around the country, as students seek out fields that they believe will more directly translate into higher-paying jobs, a recent analysis by the American Enterprise Institute showed. College administrators, following the market, have been reducing humanities offerings.

Among the 17 majors ending in the College of Arts and Sciences are the undergraduate degrees in classical civilization, classics, German, Italian, Middle Eastern studies and Modern Jewish studies, the spreadsheet showed.

Students will still be able to study German and Italian — as well as Arabic, Chinese, French and Spanish — as tracks in a new world languages and cultures bachelor’s degree program or as minors, a website detailing the changes showed.

In the College of Visual and Performing Arts, it will no longer be possible to major in ceramics, jewelry and metalsmithing, sculpture, painting or art video, though coursework in those areas will remain. Instead, students will be channeled into a broader bachelor of fine arts degree that will offer those fields as concentrations.

You can see the full list of programs cut by Syracuse here. This has also happened, though on a smaller scale, at the University of Chicago:

The University of Chicago’s Division of the Arts & Humanities is preparing for a significant reorganization to cut administrative costs, with proposed changes expected to be presented to Provost Katherine Baicker by late August.

Citing new federal policies and shifts in the “underlying financial models” for higher education, the division is considering consolidating its 15 departments into eight, reducing language instruction, and establishing minimum class and program sizes.

This is also solely in the humanities, and undoubtedly for the same reason: students aren’t majoring in those areas because you can’t get a job with a major in, say, languages or fine arts.  I find this all very sad, because consolidating departments inevitably means cutting courses that were essential for a major but not sufficiently attractive to be part of a liberal education.  And that inevitably means cutting faculty lines. What’s essential is to maintain courses that would be pivotal for a liberal education, and I’m sure that at least Chicago will do that. I am surprised that gender studies has not been on the chopping block, but that may be for ideological rather than for enrollment reasons.

*Elliott Abrams, who served in foreign-policy positions under three Republican Presidents, has a critique in the National Review of Trump’s latest update on Iran: “The President’s not-so-reassuring Iran address.” with the subtitle, “President Trump could have done a better job assuaging the concerns of the American public.”

 . . . as a performance, it was unimpressive. The president read his lines too fast, and instead of emphasizing the key words or passages, he added comments that were sometimes irrelevant, other times disturbing, and often inaccurate. Do Americans really want to bomb Iran or anyone else “back the Stone Ages where they belong”? Does anyone believe the second-level Revolutionary Guard officers who’ve replaced those killed are actually “less radical and much more reasonable”? In what possible sense was Iran trying to build “a nuclear weapon like nobody’s ever seen before”?

It would have been far better for the president to speak more plainly about the great achievements of these four weeks of combat. And the best parts of the speech were his explanations of our purpose: to prevent the world’s greatest state sponsor of terrorism from developing a nuclear weapon and from threatening its neighbors — and us — with intercontinental ballistic missiles and other growing military assets.

What did the president say about the future? Many predictions had suggested he would announce ending the war quickly, due to fear of the political effects of high oil prices and the falling stock market. But Donald Trump is always unpredictable and always thinking about bargaining to come. In the speech, he seemed to promise two to three more weeks of even heavier bombing, and by mid-April, it appears that both we and Israel will be getting to the bottom of our target lists. In early March, the White House and the Pentagon predicted the war would take four to six weeks, so they are pretty much on schedule.

And the war may end sooner. Pakistan is sending messages back and forth about a cease-fire. In my view, there will be no peace treaty to end the war, for two reasons. The two sides are too far apart in our demands, and there’s no individual or structure now in Tehran able to make the compromises any such multi-page agreement would require. So the likely end will come in a simple deal to stop shooting.

That leaves the Strait of Hormuz, and here the president is saying “don’t look at me, it’s an international responsibility.” He’s at least partially right: Why can’t there be an international maritime force protecting the strait from Iran? The European Union navies combine in EUNAVFOR Atalanta and the Maritime Security Centre Indian Ocean, joint efforts against piracy and to enhance maritime security off the Horn of Africa, in the Red Sea, Gulf of Aden, and Persian Gulf. The Combined Maritime Force is a 46-nation effort led by the United States with similar goals.

It is regrettable that instead of urging (or leading) pragmatic, positive action, the president most often turns to insults of allies and threats to leave NATO. On Wednesday, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer invited more than 35 countries to a meeting on strait security, in London. That’s a start. There is no reason why a large multinational naval coalition cannot patrol the strait once this war ends, presumably in April.

As I’ve written elsewhere, the president’s kind words about those who are actually fighting on our side (he mentioned Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, Kuwait, and Bahrain, though except for Israel they are actually doing nothing but self-defense) makes his coldness to Ukraine even more indefensible. Ukraine is on our side too, helping our allies defend against the Iranian drones they know so well because Iran sells them to Russia. And like Israel, they fight patriotically and effectively. It is long past time for the president to square up who’s on our side and who’s against us, and to see Ukraine as a key ally and Russia as one of our worst enemies.

The speech seemed more like an effort to silence the critics who kept asking “why doesn’t the president speak to the nation?” than an important message he felt compelled to deliver on all the networks. Given that he speaks to the press almost every day, this kind of set speech may be superfluous in getting through to the public. And reading speeches isn’t his forte anyway.

I have to say that I didn’t listen to Trump’s bombast, as I simply forgot, but I know what he said from the news.  As far as defending the Strait of Hormuz as an international responsibility, I can see why European countries don’t want to put their military in service defending commercial ships, because if Israel and the U.S. had not started the war, there would be no need to defend the Strait.  Trump’s performance was lame, as Abrams says,  and I always worry that regime change in Iran is not a priority. For several years I’ve been posting Masih Alinejad’s tweets about public opposition to Iran’s theocracy, and Iran seems second to only North Korea in oppressing its people. If the theocracy stays in power, my verdict will have been that we lost the war—especially if Iran doesn’t promise to end it’s nuclear problem, which it won’t. But, as I always say, I’m just a simple country geneticist, not a political pundit.

*Hooray! (Not!) Yet another book on why sex isn’t binary is coming out, and the good news is that you don’t have to waste your money on it (h/t Krzysztof ).  Click on the cover photo below if you want to see the Amazon blurb, which includes this bushwa:

Biological sex is as nuanced as gender. Many of us are biologically more typically masculine in some ways and more typically feminine in others. The constellation of traits that make up our sex identity are wide-ranging and often overlap. Height, strength, body hair, genitalia, hormonal balances—these are all part of the picture. How should we think about this kind of variation?

The Binary Delusion explores the actual diversity of our biological sex characteristics, from genitals to brains. Some people may have typically female genitals and a Y chromosome and testes, rather than ovaries. This anatomy is intermediate, not completely male and not completely female, and it occurs in nature all the time. Depending on how you choose to count, up to 6% of the population—about 20 million people in the US or 500 million worldwide—likely have sex traits that aren’t exactly male or exactly female.

As a biologist, Dr. Berkowitz worries that more people aren’t aware of this fundamental fact of human life. Nearly all of us manipulate our bodies in one way or another to make them appear more typically masculine or feminine. The only way to make sense of these apparent contradictions is that our society insists—regardless of our biology—that each body look a specific way from infancy until death. It’s a disturbingly limited view of self-expression, and Dr. Berkowitz argues that it’s worse than that: it’s unscientific.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, it’s a typical holiday:

Hili: That Easter breakfast was wonderful.
Andrzej: I share your opinion, but we still have a lot of work today.

In Polish:

Hili: To wielkanocne śniadanie było wspaniałe.
Ja: Podzielam twoje zdanie, ale i tak mamy dziś dużo pracy.

*******************

From The Language Nerds:

From Stacy:

From Jesus of the Day, another medieval painting:

From Masih, who presents another human-rights activist imprisoned in Iran:

First, Narges Mohammadi, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, nearly suffers a heart attack in prison, denied proper medical care.
Now, Nasrin Sotoudeh, a lawyer and another human rights defender is arrested in Iran.

When a regime shows no mercy to those who speak the language of peace,… pic.twitter.com/ELcXW7984y

— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) April 4, 2026

From Emma, describing A Very Bad Idea:

I attended a scientific conference a few years ago where we were invited to cycle at the side of the platform, to power – at least – the energy costs of the visuals.

Nobody needs to see a panting developmental biologist alongside someone who is changing the face of cancer… https://t.co/bbRfA1DjQi

— Emma Hilton (@FondOfBeetles) April 3, 2026

From Simon: the NYT screws up big time (they say they’ll publish a correction):

Can you imagine how many people approved it before publishing? Shameful.

— Olga Nesterova (@onestpress.onestnetwork.com) 2026-04-03T19:20:19.097Z

Two from my feed. First, boat cats (they all need lifejackets):

I didn’t know this life was an option pic.twitter.com/irtyM7zUIk

— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) April 3, 2026

For some reason I love these repetitive foreign sentences:

Spanish is confusing: 😵‍💫pic.twitter.com/yrvyb687DJ

— AlphaFox (@alphafox) April 4, 2026

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

This Jewish girl was gassed as soon as she arrived in Auschwitz. She was two years old, and would be 84 today had she lived. https://t.co/qIfD6CF4Tz

— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) April 5, 2026

Two from Dr. Cobb.  The first one is amazing.

While you slept last night: ~100 million birds took to the skies 🐦 The Mid-Atlantic saw heavy traffic moving north/northeast, with migration hotspots from the Southeast to Ohio Valley and Southern Plains. The overnight rush continues this weekend.Details at cwg.live

— Capital Weather Gang (@capitalweather.bsky.social) 2026-04-03T18:25:53.051Z

And Matthew sent me this NYT headline, saying, “If this were a UK newspaper you’d know they were taking the piss. In the case of the NYT, not.”  (They’ve changed the headline to reflect that nobody at the Waffle House remembers this guy.)

Welcome to the first TGIF of April: Friday,  April 3, 2026, and it’s Good Friday, the day on which, as the story goes, Jesus was crucified.  I don’t believe a word of that story (your mileage may differ), but it was the subject of nearly all of the art of medieval Europe. Here’s a later painting of the crucifixion (1632), but a good one, and one by one of my favorite artists: Diego Velázquez. They sure took the trouble to make a fancy sign for the cross—in three languages!  Later today I’ll post a discussion between Ross Douthat and Bart Ehrman where they differ on whether Jesus was the son of God, divine, and worked miracles.

It’s also the second full day of Passover, and I need to get some matzos, stat! (I eat them thickly slathered with butter, the only way they’re edible.) Further, it’s Fish Fingers and Custard Day (explained below, n.b. for Doctor Who fans), National Chocolate Mousse Day, and Tweed Day.

Fish Fingers and Custard Day commemorates the introduction of the Eleventh Doctor on the television series Doctor Who, as well as the memorable fish fingers and custard scene from the episode in which he arrives. The episode, which was released on April 3, 2010, is the first from Series 5 of the show, and is titled “The Eleventh Hour.” BBC declared the first Fish Fingers and Custard Day to take place on the second anniversary of the release of the episode. The following year, Birdseye even put the Doctor, who was played by Matt Smith, on their boxes. The day is marked by people eating fish fingers and custard and sharing photos and videos of them doing so.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the April 3 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Breaking news (well, sort of): Attorney General Pam Bondi has been deep-sixed by Trump—another cabinet member gone.

Attorney General Pam Bondi had a pretty good idea her days were numbered.

President Trump had complained too freely, too frequently, to too many people about her inability to prosecute the people he hates. She was falling short of Mr. Trump’s unyielding, unrealistic demands for retribution against his enemies. She had made mistake upon mistake in her handling of the Epstein files. Her critics were in the president’s ear.

Last month, Ms. Bondi told a friend that Mr. Trump’s willingness to fire Kristi Noem from her post as homeland security secretary meant she might be in jeopardy too.

But Ms. Bondi had not expected Mr. Trump, the man responsible for elevating her to one of the most powerful positions in the country, to drop the curtain quite so soon, according to four people familiar with the situation.

On Wednesday, the 60-year-old Ms. Bondi, downcast but determined, joined Mr. Trump for a glum crosstown drive to the Supreme Court, where they watched arguments in the birthright citizenship case. In the car, Mr. Trump told her it was time for a change at the top of the Justice Department.

Ms. Bondi hoped to save her job or, at the very least, buy a little more time — until the summer — to give herself a graceful exit.

She ended up with neither, and grew emotional Wednesday in conversations with friends and colleagues after she realized she was out. The next morning, Mr. Trump made it official, and fired her via social media post.

She is being replaced temporarily by Todd Blanche, Trump’s personal attorney who has defended him in several criminal cases.  Neither Bondi nor Blanche has the qualifications to be an Attorney General, but so it goes.

*Yesterday morning’s NYT newsletter summarizes what Trump said in his speech about Iran, and I quote:

Here’s what he talked about:

The end of the war. Trump did not offer a clear timeline for that. He said that “discussions are ongoing” but that in the meantime, the U.S. would continue to bomb Iran. “We are going to hit them extremely hard,” he said. “Over the next two to three weeks, we’re going to bring them back to the Stone Ages, where they belong.” He also threatened to strike “each and every one” of Iran’s power plants, an act widely considered a war crime, if Iran refuses a deal to end the fighting. (Iran has said there are no direct talks with the U.S.)

The economy. “Remarkably, Trump barely acknowledged the economic consequences of his war, as Americans around the country continue to feel the sting of high gas prices,” wrote Tony Romm, an economics reporter. Trump’s sanguine about that: “This is a true investment in your children and your grandchildren’s future,” he said of the war.

Iran’s remaining nuclear material. Trump indicated that he was in no hurry to retrieve it after bombing Iran’s nuclear sites into dust. As my colleague David Sanger put it: “Perhaps this is deception, and he will attempt to seize that cache. If not, he will have left the nuclear material exactly where it was before the war started — underground, and within Iran’s reach.”

Venezuela. Trump recalled how well the operation to unseat President Nicolás Maduro had gone. It’s his model for success in Iran. “That hit was quick, lethal, violent and respected by everyone all over the world,” he said in the speech, adding that the United States and Venezuela were now “joint venture partners” and “getting along incredibly well.”

The Strait of Hormuz. That waterway is not America’s problem, Trump said, because our oil and gas does not move through it. He urged those nations that depend on oil moving through the strait to just go take it. “We will be helpful, but they should take the lead in protecting the oil that they so desperately depend on,” he said.

For context, it’s worth comparing those talking points with the five objectives for the war that Trump laid out on its first day. My colleague Ed Wong has an assessment of where the war stands based on those goals.

Here’s Wong’s summary of the regime-change goal:

This came near the end of Mr. Trump’s video address. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel had promised Mr. Trump in the run-up to the war that his country could help galvanize a popular uprising that would lead to the overthrow of the Iranian government. That revolt has not materialized.

Mr. Trump said he had carried out “regime change,” and pointed to airstrikes that have killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, and other senior officials.

However, the newly appointed supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of the deceased cleric, is a hard-liner aligned with a powerful arm of the Iranian military. The current government remains theocratic, authoritarian and anti-American, and continues to wage a war of resistance.

Of course the NYT would promote a negative view about how the war is going, and I didn’t hear Trump’s speech, but if he sees the present hard-line theocratic regime in Iran as “regime change” simply because the ‘Ayatollahs aren’t in control, well, he’s distorting things completely, and the Iranian people still aren’t free.

*The WaPo reports on a Republican plan to end the Department of Homeland Security shutdown without having to get Democratic approval.

President Donald Trump endorsed a plan Wednesday to end the nearly seven-week-old shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security by going around Democrats to fund parts of the agency.

Trump urged Republicans to send him a party-line bill by June 1 to fund two agencies within the department — Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol — using the reconciliation process.

The approach would allow him to bypass Democrats, who have spent weeks demanding new guardrails on those agencies in exchange for voting to fund them. Instead, Republicans could pass a funding bill with a simple majority and avoid a Democratic filibuster.

“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,” Trump wrote in a social media post.

Lawmakers have been at an impasse over DHS funding for 47 days in the longest partial shutdown on record, which the public has mostly encountered through long security lines at airports. Pressure has been building to resolve the shutdown, with polling indicating that Republicans are shouldering more of the blame.

Democrats had been demanding new restrictions on federal immigration agents operating in major cities, after they killed two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis in January.

The approach that Trump endorsed Wednesday would also fund the rest of DHS — which includes the Transportation Security Administration, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Coast Guard — through September. Then Republicans would start work on the reconciliation process to fund ICE and Border Patrol, which would take weeks.

This circumvention going to get the Democrats hopping mad if it works (Republicans will still need a majority in both houses of Congress), but some of the Democrats’ proposed restrictions on ICE, like bodycams and not wearing masks, were fine with me. Remember, the government was not shut down as a whole—just the DHS part.  But my friends who are flying say that those 5-hour security lines are gone now, for TSA workers are already back on the job.

*If you’ve been conditioned by the MSM to think that we’re mired in another Vietnam in Iran, the Free Press has a counterargument, “Victor Davis Hanson: The war—and the war on the war,” with the subtitle, “Militarily, the war is going as well as could be envisioned, yet Democrats seek to turn it into another Vietnam or Afghanistan—hoping to win control of Congress at the expense of national security.” (Hanson is identified as “an American classicist, military historian, and conservative political commentator.”) Trigger warning: overt conservatism. A few excerpts:

Are we “losing”?

This is the claim made by Trump’s political opponents. It is absurd, Orwellian.

Most of the military objectives are already met or soon will be. The campaign has been brilliantly conducted without substantial casualties. So popular outcry from Democrats and the global left arise not from military realities of the war, but mostly from both politics and existential hatred of Donald Trump.

The midterms are just seven months away. Historically, they should see the incumbent administration lose seats in the House and Senate, if not control of Congress. The left seeks to create such abject chaos that it can only be alleviated by the political destruction of Donald Trump. So the anti-war hysteria follows the pattern of the left’s embrace of Tesla vandalism, violent demonstrations against ICE, the incoherent “No Kings” protests, and three government shutdowns. Such nihilism shares a common trait of offering no positive counter-agenda.

What about regime change?

Critics are claiming that for all that ostensible American success, the regime remains defiant and in control. Indeed, the war’s opponents further state that the bombing only made popular protests more difficult.

Some supporters of the war argue that any cessation without the elimination of the mullahs would prove the war effort was all in vain, or at best is but a brief interlude in the Iranian theocracy’s otherwise long march to control the entire Middle East and blackmail the West with nuclear weapons.

But regime change was never listed as a Trump administration war aim. The reason was ostensibly our poor record at nation-building in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, as well as our more recent success at removing Nicolás Maduro from Venezuela and leveraging the remnants of his dictatorship, without prompting an invasion or civil war.

That said, the continual Israeli elimination of dozens of theocratic and military officials has in itself been a regime change, at least in the sense that anyone associated with the regime who identifies himself is likely to be dead within days.

BOGUS!  Regime change means a democracy with the Iranian people free. And Trump explicitly told the Iranian people in his initial statement that the government was theirs to take—and that they should go ahead and take it. I think he said that again the other night. At the end Hanson says that we don’t have regime change, but it’s more likely than before. True, but how much more likely?

What about the closing of the Strait of Hormuz?

War critics argue that without the American-Israeli bombing, the Strait would still be open for business. That simplistic rationale ignores the reality that Iran’s prewar non-harassment of Western shipping was implicitly predicated on appeasing the theocracy—mostly by Westerners staying quiet when Iran staged or funded terrorist attacks, or flagrantly multiplied its ballistic missile fleet and upped its uranium enrichment with impunity.

If the U.S. decided that Iranian control of the Strait is too egregious a danger to global commerce, then as it leaves the theater, it can threaten Parthian shots at Iran’s easily combustible oil industry to ensure they back off the Strait.

Or alternatively, America can tell our Western allies (who made it evident they want no part in demilitarizing Iran) that the hard work of neutering the Iranian military is now over. And as importers of Iranian oil, Europe and the Asian democracies must handle the easier task of internationalizing the Strait.

The other two questions asked and answered are, “Is Israel using Trump?” and “What about NATO?” You’ll have to see the answers for yourself. Here’s the pro-Trump ending:

In the end, we are left with an indisputable truth. Prior presidents all warned about the dangers of a theocratic Iran’s mounting efforts to become nuclear, witnessed its incessant terrorism, and feared its apocalyptic aims. And yet they did little or nothing.

Donald Trump did, and did so successfully, convinced alone among Western leaders that it was a now or never moment, and the U.S. military was more than up to the risky endeavor.

And history will likely prove him right.

*My friend the Belgian philosopher Maarten Boudry reports on Facebook that three Belgian universities, including the one he studied and worked at (U Ghent), have given honorary degrees to an odious woman, Francesca Albanese, the blatantly antisemitic and pro-Hamas UN Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories. His post (I’ve added the tweets he interpolated):

Three Flemish universities are disgracing themselves today by awarding an honorary doctorate to a mendacious antisemite. That’s what happens when academia gets hijacked by far-left ideologues. As Holocaust historian Norman Goda writes:

“The Flemish universities, whether they admit it or not, will convey the sanction of university-recognised expertise to a deeply dishonest and fraudulent individual who has vilified an entire society as well as those persons, including many in Belgium who view themselves as connected to it.”

And yes, I don’t shy away from the word “antisemite” this time. Before she was appointed UN rapporteur, Albanese liked to fantasize about how the world was “subjugated by the Jewish lobby”. She just learned not to say the quiet part out loud since her UN mandate. And of course, the blatant double standards she applies to the only Jewish state in the world is damning in its own right.

As I predicted yesterday on the Belgian TV shows De Afspraak, the ceremony is descending into farce. Albanese openly contradicts the rector’s assurance that the award is “not against Israel,” to loud hoots and cheers. Meanwhile, the usual anti-Israel activists—more emboldened than ever—are shouting over any speaker whenever anything falls short of their maximalist demands: “Stop funding genocide! Stop funding genocide!”

The rector was openly humiliated on the stage by Albanese and the audience. Well, what did they expect? Didn’t I warn them this was exactly what was going to happen?

Let’s hope the Flemish rectors will not be so inconsiderate as to say anything critical about Hamas in the presence of their Honorary Dr. @FranceskAlbs. An Italian mayor tried it once—and got eye rolls, facepalms, and a stern reprimand: “Don’t do it again.” https://t.co/TAYvZrEHFy

— Maarten Boudry (@mboudry) February 27, 2026

I didn’t watch the whole speech, but of course Albanese repeats the same litany of distorted quotes from Israeli leaders allegedly proving genocidal intent: the “human animals” quote (which was about Hamas, not Palestinians), the Herzog line about “an entire nation that is responsible” (which is exactly what Holocaust historians say about Germany regarding the Holocaust, and in eveny event Herzog insisted that there are many innocent civilians who will NOT be targeted). See my piece here..

More outrageously still, Albanese claims that casualties in Gaza are “75%-80 women and children”, a complete lie. Not even Hamas has ever claimed such a high figure, and its own fabricated “70% women and children” has been widely debunked and officially retracted by Hamas itself. Deaths are overwhelmingly male and combat age. None of the distinguished rectors and academics batted an eye. Pure desinformation again, certified by three universities.]

Did you notice that the myth of “70% women and children” has been quietly retreated, just like every other Hamas claim parroted by Western media, without any correction or accountability? Even according to Hamas’ (updated) lists, fatalities are overwhelmingly male and combat age. https://t.co/jARig0PkYc pic.twitter.com/M1qAtJ2aV9

— Maarten Boudry (@mboudry) September 27, 2025

And of course we only got obsequious softball questions from the interviewer. “How were you so right and prescient from the beginning?” “How is it so difficult for people to agree with you?” (I’m paraphrasing) Well, I sympathize with the interviewer. Any genuinely critical question would’ve been met with deafening jeers and shouts from the audience.

Honestly, I’ve never been more ashamed to be a UGent alumnus. This honorary PhD is a craven and foolish decision that will be ruinous to our international reputation.

Maarten also tweeted that “I just got a heartbreaking message from a Jewish professor who says that she will leave Antwerp and possibly the country. The hatred is too overwhelming, and even targeting young children.” (Have a look at the rest of the tweet.)

I hope you’re aware what’s happening in the Low Countries.

*Finally, there’s good news today—well, not really good but not dreadful.  The AP’s Odd News tells us that a famous surfing dog—the first canid inducted into the Surfer’s Hall of fame—has died. But she had a good long life (16 years), and a good run in the waves:

Sugar The Surfing Dog, the first canine inducted into the Surfer’s Hall of Fame, who spent her days outside the water comforting veterans as a dedicated therapy dog, died Monday after battling cancer.

The 16-year-old rescue dog from Huntington Beach, California, who was a five-time dog surfing world champion, died “in her daddy’s arms,” a post on her Instagram said.

“She lived to put smiles on faces, volunteer, to send it !! to change dog surfing forever !!! thank you for loving Sugar,” the post said. “Good bye my Sugar., i can’t believe in writing this .. i’m going to miss you so much.”

Sugar was found as a stray and over the years her love of the waves and natural talent took dog surfing to new heights.

Dressed in a life jacket, spectators would watch the furry white canine in amazement as she balanced on her surfboard, riding wave after wave back to the shore, sometimes with her owner, Ryan Rustan, by her side and other times all on her own.

In 2024, her paw prints joined the hand and footprints of many other renowned surfers immortalized in concrete in Huntington Beach when she was inducted into the hall of fame.

“This is just incredible. Dreams do come true even for a surfing dog and guys like me,” Rustan said at the ceremony.

Here’s a video from better days:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Andrzej doesn’t like Hili trying to catch birds (note the extruded tongue; I’ve made this image into my Twitter avatar):

Hili: A sparrow has made a nest in the hedge.
Me: Fortunately, you can’t reach it.
Hili: And that’s a bit of a problem.

In Polish:

Hili: Wróbelek założył w żywopłocie gniazdko.
Ja: Na szczęście tam się nie dostaniesz.
Hili: I to jest pewien kłopot.

*******************

From Terrible Maps: the countries in red are anagrams. For example, “Spain” can be rearranged to “pains”. Figure out the rest of them!

From This Cat is Guilty:

From The Language Nerds:

From Masih: Iran hanged an 18-year-old protestor:

Heartbreaking 💔
This morning, right after President Trump’s speech, the Iranian regime moved fast and hanged 18-year-old protester.

Yes, Mr. President @realDonaldTrump, there are no “less radical” leaders in Iran.

From the courtroom to the prison cell, from the interrogator to… pic.twitter.com/fk0gF6p1NQ

— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) April 2, 2026

From Luana, and verified by CNN, who published this:

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said Tuesday she would vote against sending any military aid to Israel, including defensive supplies, a marked shift from a Democrat deemed a potential 2028 presidential candidate.

Ocasio-Cortez told members of the New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America Tuesday that she would commit to voting no on any military aid spending for Israel, a spokesperson for the lawmaker told CNN.

I will never vote for her; I would write in some other Democrat instead (remember, I live in a reliably Democratic state).

Her remarks, first reported by City & State, were made at a private forum as members considered whether to endorse her re-election bid.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez just committed to voting to strip civilians in Israel of protection from rocket attacks.

This is not a vote against the government of Israel, or Netanyahu. This is collective punishment against ten million civilians, Jews, Muslims, and Christians.… https://t.co/wjvjnAoUz9 pic.twitter.com/lVO8mTv7Ez

— Eric Adams (@ericadamsfornyc) April 1, 2026

A funny tweet from Larry the Cat:

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I present exhibit A pic.twitter.com/QA7Vw8sGaO

— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) April 2, 2026

Two from my feed. First, a singing raven:

Ravens can talk but sometimes they even know how to sing, like this one trained by Giuseppe Cassini.pic.twitter.com/fRyhwSp8ym

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) April 2, 2026

. . . and a wonderful plane’s-eye-view of the Artemis II launch:

Passengers on a commercial flight captured the launch of Artemis II on camera

The plane happened to pass near the launch trajectory at the exact moment of liftoff, giving passengers a rare view of the rocket launch right from their windows.pic.twitter.com/8Bewtm8aFg

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) April 2, 2026

One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

This Czech Jewish girl was gassed as soon as she got to Auschwitz She was 14 years old.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2026-04-03T10:19:18.342Z

Two from Dr. Cobb. This is from a site that gives people’s favorite tweets from Twitter, though it’s on Bluehair:

MASSIVE fan of this one:

— Altrincham Dry Cleaners (@altydrycleaners.bsky.social) 2026-04-02T13:27:33.632Z

Be sure to check out the Science paper to see some lovely and bizarre animals, including the first bilaterians. For a quick link, go see the blurb and photos at the Oxford University site. The “Cambrian Explosion” of animals has been shifted back 4 million years, to the tail end of the Ediacaran.

At last! Ediacarans and Cambrian animals in the same site! Amazing! http://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/…

— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2026-04-02T18:11:56.569Z

Welcome to a Hump Day (“Haftanın Ortası” in Turkish): Wednesday, April 1. Don’t worry, I’m not going to fool you even though it’s April Fools’ Day. Instead, I’ll show below the lovely April page from the fifteenth-century Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, showing elegant people at The Château de Dourdan.  A University of Chicago site describing the depictions says this about the page:

The arrival of spring, hope and new life – the grass is green and a newly betrothed couple are exchanging rings in the foreground, accompanied by friends and family. The chateau is another one of the Duc’s, that of Dourdan.

You can see what remains of the château in this article.

It’s also Holy Wednesday, National Sourdough Bread Day, National One Cent Day (but the pennies are gone! Bring ’em back!), Poetry and the Creative Mind Day, National Trombone Players Day, and, most important, Atheist Day (who is the one atheist they’re celebrating? Let us raise a glass and a middle finger to all those blockheads who tell us that New Atheism is dead).  And don’t forget that Passover begins at sundown tonight. Stock up on matzos while you can.

Here’s a short video of my favorite jazz trombonist, Jack Teagarden, playing “Basin Street Blues” with his band:

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the April 1 Wikipedia page.

And there’s a Google Doodle today marking the expected launch of the Artemis 2 crewed moon-circling voyage, expected to launch at about 6:24 Eastern US time today. The mission has a two-hour luanch window with backup windows through April 6. The mission will last ten days.  Click below to see where the Doodle takes you:

A notice: AT 85, Richard Dawkins refuses to slow down. He’s traveling to both New Zealand and Australia in November, and his schedule is below. Click on the screenshot to go to the page where you can buy tickets:

Da Nooz:

*Yesterday’s war news from It’s Noon in Israel, called “The IDF’s accidental game changer.”

It’s Tuesday, March 31, and the thirty-second day of Operation Roaring Lion. The global price of oil has reached $113, up less than one percent since yesterday. Here are the latest developments while you were asleep:

• Last night, Donald Trump shared a clip of a massive strike on Isfahan on social media. According to Ynet’s Ron Ben-Yishai, what initially appeared to be a strike on ballistic missiles may have in fact been the burial of enriched uranium deep underground in a way that will prevent the Iranians from accessing it. The U.S., it seems, has given up on prolonged ground action that would also entail many casualties.
• According to the AP Lebanon has requested that Ukraine’s embassy in Beirut hand over a Syrian-Palestinian man with Ukrainian citizenship suspected of working for the Mossad. The man was originally detained by Hezbollah in September after allegedly parking a motorbike rigged with an explosive device near Beirut airport. He escaped to the Ukrainian embassy on March 6 after an Israeli airstrike on an adjacent building gave him an avenue of escape.
• Four soldiers from the Nahal Reconnaissance Unit were killed yesterday evening after their force engaged terrorist cells in close-range combat in southern Lebanon. Capt. Noam Madmoni, 22, from Sderot, was the team commander. Sgt. Maj. Ben Cohen, 21, was from Lehavim; Sgt. Maj. Maksim Antis, 21, was from Bat Yam; and Staff Sgt. Gilad Harel, 21, was from Modi’in-Maccabim-Re’ut all fell in the engagement. IDF fatalities rise to 11.
• Internal Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir’s law supposedly mandating the death penalty for terrorists convicted of deadly attacks passed the Knesset 62–48 last night. In reality, the law achieves little and is more a political stunt than a meaningful step toward the implementation of capital punishment.

Now, on to the details.

“If you had a time machine,” I ask the senior Israeli minister, “and you knew a month ago that this is what would happen, would you still vote in favor of war?”

“First of all, yes,” he replies. “You have to understand, this was a cold and calculated gamble. The Iranians were planning to move their entire nuclear and missile industry underground, in a way that would have made it nearly impenetrable. In any case, we would have attacked this year—but with the Americans by our side, there was no dilemma.”

“The main achievements of the war are the severe damage to ballistic missiles and their production. This time, after hitting the entire production chain, it will be much harder for them to recover.”

“It’s also worth remembering,” the official added, “that for years, the nightmare scenario in Israel was a multi-front war with hundreds of casualties on the home front. Last year, in ‘Rising Lion,’ in 12 days of war against Iran alone, there were 30 fatalities. Now, in a war with three times as many fronts and three times as many enemies, there are 20. What is that if not proof that ‘Rising Lion’ was not in vain—and neither was ‘Roaring Lion’?”

. . .According to IDF intelligence, the regime’s political leadership now believes there is no way to repair the war damage; Iran simply lacks sufficient funds.

It reportedly has broken the spirit of many in the regime. The assessment is that, given a prolonged economic recovery after the war that will inevitably consume the vast majority of state budgets, massive protests will erupt.

It appears that Trump is reading the same intelligence, which may explain why the threats in his ultimatums have shifted from military targets to the gray area of civilian/military infrastructure, specifically Iran’s energy and oil facilities.

Still, as the minister told me regarding regime change at the outset of the war, “there were more optimistic and less optimistic assessments, but no one could guarantee that while bombs were falling on Tehran, the masses would take to the streets. There is no doubt that the war has brought the regime closer to its end—but I cannot tell you whether that will happen before Trump finishes his term, or before Netanyahu finishes his.”

I suspect we all want a regime change in favor of more democracy, but it’s certain that we differ in whether we think that will ever happen. I don’t think the people will take to the streets so long as the government threatens to kill them if they do, and that is still an active threat.

*Given that the negotiating positions of Iran and the U.S. are far apart, and apparently widening, the Free Press prepares us for what’s to come in a piece called, “The Battle of Hormuz Approaches.”

. . .And should it refuse to agree to terms acceptable to Trump, the president could conceivably attempt to declare victory while leaving Iran with de facto control of the Strait of Hormuz and in possession of its “nuclear dust,” as he likes to put it. But after all his past rhetoric about Iran’s nuclear ambitions, the idea of allowing Iran to retain a nuclear stockpile will be a hard sell—and leaving Tehran in effective control of the Strait is simply not strategically feasible. After all this, the Iranians would retain the ability to torture the global economy with mischievous glee.

Enter the Marines—and elements of the 82nd Airborne Division plus, reportedly, Army Rangers and Navy SEALs. The exact numbers of elite American ground troops being sent to the region are only beginning to come into focus, and we could see a head count in the five figures in the days to come. This is not enough troops to “invade Iran” in the sense that we invaded Iraq in 2003. It is not even enough to seize and hold terrain on the Iranian mainland for more than a limited period of time, even given conditions of near–air dominance.

But islands are a different story. The principal goal of a battle to control the Strait of Hormuz and its flanking seas will be to flip the current economic situation, where the world’s commercial traffic is restricted while Iran’s flows with few obstacles. Iran should have to fight for its economic life, while the world gets to use the Strait for free commerce.

It would be preferable, for political reasons, to accomplish such a task through air and sea power alone. It is possible that military planners have no intention of putting these troops in combat in the Gulf, and the deployments to the region are simply to provide options for emergency scenarios, or are in service of a potential raid targeting nuclear sites on the Iranian mainland. But military planners may have concluded that the Iranians must be denied the use of terrain that they have been using to control maritime traffic in the Strait, and that they need boots on the ground to accomplish that. Larak Island, a piece of rock and sand that in recent weeks has gained the nickname of the “Tehran toll booth” due to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) reported use of it to manage the Strait, is an obvious potential target. Nearby Qeshm Island is also strategically relevant to the movement of traffic, but quite large, and putting troops there would run greater risks than seizing smaller islands like Larak. And there are numerous other small pieces of land relevant to questions of sea control: Abu Musa, Lesser Tunb, and Greater Tunb to the west, and Hormuz Island itself at the top of the Strait.

There’s also Kharg Island, but destroying or attacking that could have substantial effects on world oil prices, as Kharg is the principal exit point of Iranian oil.  More:

. . .Such ground deployments, should they occur, would supplement a broader naval and air campaign to reassert control of the waters stretching from Kuwait to the Arabian Sea—a major undertaking for any navy. And while the risks to American forces doing limited ground operations on islands would be less than those for operations on the Iranian mainland, there would still be very significant risks.

It is not clear that our military has yet learned the lessons of warfare being taught in Ukraine since 2022. That we are slow students is most apparent in our unpreparedness for defending economically against cheap Iranian drones, with which we can be sure any troops fighting in the Gulf will be targeted. (This, despite the fact that the drones being used by Russians in Ukraine originated in Iran.) The failure to be attentive students, tied to an ideologically driven dismissiveness of the cause of Ukraine and an arrogant belief that we will just fight differently (and better) than the Ukrainians—an oft-encountered view in the Pentagon—may not look so defensible in hindsight.

The advantages of a successful Battle of Hormuz would be the restoration of regular shipping through the Strait and some calming of markets, plus the reduction of Iranian revenue to the point where it is hard to see how the regime could survive in the middle to long run. The best-case outcome is an Iran so weakened that it can no longer cause America and its allies strategic dilemmas as we (finally? maybe?) shift our focus to China.

. . .The disadvantages of even a successful fight are that it could be costly, could produce casualties, and could have a protracted tail—the escort operation to keep the Strait of Hormuz open in the 1980s lasted over a year. And there remains the question of what to do about Iran’s nuclear stockpiles, buried deeply in the interior of the country, the military options for which are even riskier than anything involved in operating along Iran’s coast.

You can see why President Trump would prefer a deal.

To me, a deal that leaves the present Iranian regime (or even part of it) in power is not a successful outcome to the war. And I suspect Trump knows that. But what do I know: I’m just a humble country biologist, not a political pundit.

*Speaking of negotiations, Iran is denying virtually everything Trump has said about negotiations.

The United States is in direct talks with Iranian leaders over terms for ending the war, including exchanges with parliamentary Speaker Mohammad Ghalibaf, President Donald Trump said Monday.

Asked if Ghalibaf was someone the U.S. could work with, Trump said in an interview with the New York Post, “We’re gonna find out … in about a week.”

In a flurry of claims over the past two days, Trump also said that Tehran has agreed to many of the 15 demands he transmitted last week through Pakistani mediators.

. . .Iran denied virtually all of Trump’s assertions. There have been no “direct” talks, Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei said Monday in Tehran, only messages sent through intermediaries. He described U.S. demands, which include an end to Iran’s uranium enrichment program, the surrender of more than 900 pounds of highly enriched material and strict limits on ballistic missiles, as “very excessive, unrealistic and irrational.”

In a social media post, Ghalibaf, who has previously denied reports that he was speaking to the U.S., derided the president’s claims as “so-called ‘news’ or ‘Truth’” and “just a setup” to lower the rising cost of oil.

Amid widely disparate accounts of who is talking to whom about what, both sides have begun targeting each other’s energy facilities in a significant escalation of the conflict. Iranian strikes hit Israel’s largest oil refinery in Haifa early Monday, while Iran acknowledged Sunday night attacks on its electricity grid that temporarily disrupted power in Tehran and nearby areas.

As Trump continued to weave between threats to extend the war and reassurances that it was close to ending, he said in a Monday morning post on his Truth Social platform that “great progress” had been achieved in “serious discussions” with a new, “more reasonable” collection of leaders in Iran.

But if a deal was not reached “shortly” and the Strait of Hormuz was not opened, he threatened, “we will conclude our lovely ‘stay’ in Iran by blowing up and completely obliterating all of their Electric Generating Plants, Oil Wells and Kharg Island (and possibly all desalinization plants!), which we have purposefully not yet ‘touched.’” Kharg Island, off the Iranian coast in the Persian Gulf, is Iran’s main oil shipping terminal.

Trump’s view that there is a pressure point at which Iran will capitulate is not universally shared.

Intelligence analysts have assessed that Iran’s view is that it has the upper hand in the conflict and therefore is not likely to respond to U.S. threats of force, said two people familiar with the matter, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive information. The president has been briefed on that assessment, one of the people said.

As I said, I’m no pundit, but I think the war will go on so long as Iran has the enriched uranium, controls the Strait of Hormuz, and murderous theocrats are in power. He may ignore the last one, but he’s made very strong statements about the first two, and he’d look bad if he ended the war before they were resolved. I say this on the basis of Trump carrying not about what’s right, but about his own reputation.

*For some indiscernible reason, Trump, feeling his oats, is trying to destroy Cuba, largely by denying it oil.  On Monday, however, he allowed one measly oil tanker to bring about 730,00 barrels of oil to Cuba, which won’t much alleviate the tremendous hardships experienced by the Cuban people.

The United States Coast Guard is allowing a Russian tanker full of crude oil to reach Cuba, delivering a critical supply of energy to the island nation after months of an effective oil blockade by the Trump administration, according to a U.S. official briefed on the matter.

The tanker, which is carrying an estimated 730,000 barrels of oil and is owned by the Russian government, was within several miles of Cuban territorial waters on Sunday evening, according to MarineTraffic, a ship-data provider. At its speed of 12 knots, it could reach its expected destination of Matanzas, Cuba, by Monday night.

The Russian ship’s arrival would shift the trajectory of a rapidly accelerating crisis in Cuba, buying the island nation at least a few weeks before its fuel reserves run out, analysts said.

It would also reduce pressure on a Cuban government facing a looming economic collapse and escalating threats from Washington, and show that, at least for now, the island can still depend on its longtime ally Russia.

The Trump administration had been enforcing what amounted to an oil blockade around Cuba since January, threatening nations that had been sending fuel to the country and, in one case, escorting a tanker heading toward Cuba away from the island.

The Coast Guard has two cutters in the region that could have attempted to intercept the Russian tanker. Yet the Trump administration did not order those vessels to act, according to a U.S. official briefed on the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss operations. Barring orders instructing it otherwise, the Coast Guard planned to let the tanker reach Cuba as of Sunday afternoon, the official said.

Cuba is in big trouble, and one tanker is not going to solve it. The country needs a continuous infusion of oil, and almost certainly will have to capitulate to Trump, even becoming a democracy, without that infusion.  I hope that is the case, for Cuba is full of good people under a bad regime.  But one has to ask what right Trump has to keep trying to effect regime change in country after country (he failed in Venezuela).  Cuba would be transformed if it were a democracy, but of course it would be transformed into a Caribbean vacation paradise, with all the charm it has ruined by tourism. But the people should be able to decide themselves what happens to their country.

*A federal judge has halted Trump’s construction of a huge ballroom on the site of the now-destroyed East Wing of the White House.

A federal judge ordered a halt to construction of President Donald Trump’s White House ballroom, ruling that Trump lacks authority to fund the estimated $400 million project through private donations.

U.S. District Judge Richard Leon disagreed with the Trump administration’s argument that the president has broad authority to make changes to the White House without congressional approval, including projects on the scale of his planned, 90,000-square-foot ballroom.

“The President of the United States is the steward of the White House for future generations of First Families. He is not, however, the owner!” Leon wrote in a 35-page ruling issued Tuesday afternoon.

“No statute comes close to giving the President the authority he claims to have,” he wrote.

Leon, an appointee of President George W. Bush, also wrote that Trump has not identified a law that allowed him to demolish the White House’s East Wing last year without congressional approval.

He stayed his order for two weeks and ruled crews could continue construction necessary to ensure the safety and security of the White House.

Within hours, the Trump administration notified the court it would appeal Leon’s decision, which the White House called “egregious.”

“President Trump clearly has the legal authority to modernize, renovate, and beautify the White House – just like all of his predecessors did,” White House spokesman Davis Ingle said in a statement, adding: “We … are confident we will prevail.”

And, according to the news last night, Trump isn’t just going to clean up the site until Congress weighs in: he’s going to keep the construction going:

Speaking in the Oval Office, Trump told reporters that Leon was “so wrong” for ruling that the ballroom needed congressional approval. He suggested that many parts of the project would move forward, such as the ballroom’s bulletproof glass and anti-drone installations on the roof, citing Leon’s decision that the White House could proceed on efforts to ensure safety and security.

“I’m allowed to continue building as necessary,” Trump said. He also attacked the group that brought the lawsuit, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, on social media.

So who’s going to stop him now? The Supreme Court?  According to his demented interpretation of the law, he could destroy and rebuild the entire White House (no doubt putting “TRUMP” in big letters over the door) if he so wished.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili has criticisms of the EU:

Hili: The State of Palestine nominated the European Union for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Andrzej: For what?
Hili: Formally for the obligation to attach caps to cartons of milk and other beverages, contributing to the preservation of the Earth and peace worldwide.

In Polish:

Hili: Państwo Palestyna wysunęło kandydaturę Unii Europejskiej do Pokojowej Nagrody Nobla.
Ja: Za co?
Hili: Fromalnie za ustawę o obowiązkowym  przymocowaniu zakrętek do kartonów z mlekiem i innymi napojami, co przyczynia się do ratowania Ziemi i pokoju na całym świecie.

*******************

From Now That’s Wild:

From Give Me a Sign:

From Jesus of the Day:

And from Norm. Clearly the Jews are the ones responsible for making gas prices go up! This was reportedly seen in Ohio, and appears to be real. Look at that schnoz!

Masih shows five more Iranian protestors set for execution:

The regime’s execution machine has sped up and is rapidly executing innocent prisoners.
With every additional day the terrorist regime stays in power, more people are executed and tortured.
In recent days, many people have been executed.

Five Iranian protesters sentenced to… pic.twitter.com/RikEFmsB45

— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) March 31, 2026

Luana contributes one highlight from the recent convention in Winnipeg of Canada’s New Democratic Party (NDP). I’ve watched some of the convention, mostly with my jaw hanging open. To read more about how a party for workers has been taken over by wokers, see the Quillette article, “The tragicomic death throes of Canada’s (former) workers’ party” (article archived here).

Currently in Taiwan, my favourite country on earth, thinking about how 16 years ago I made the decision to leave here and immigrate to a nation balanced on a precipice, about to plunge into total clown land and make itself an international laughing stock.
pic.twitter.com/fk8TRlk5dD

— Mia Hughes (@_CryMiaRiver) March 30, 2026

From Emma; “NGL” means “not gonna lie”. And you probably heard about the theft of 12 tons of KitKat bars somewhere between Italy and Poland. (What are the thieves going to do with them?)

NGL, I expected this to end in KitKats. https://t.co/JhT7mgwXZN

— Emma Hilton (@FondOfBeetles) March 31, 2026

Larry the Cat is clearly no fan of Trump:

Translation:
“I started something I can’t finish and broke something I can’t fix so I’m going to walk away and pretend it’s your fault” pic.twitter.com/mdd0aXwNCC

— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) March 31, 2026

One from my feed. I love quokkas (a marsupial), though I’ve never seen one:

Translation:
“I started something I can’t finish and broke something I can’t fix so I’m going to walk away and pretend it’s your fault” pic.twitter.com/mdd0aXwNCC

— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) March 31, 2026

One I retweeted from The Auschwitz Memorial:

A pair of Dutch twin girls, Jewish of course, were gassed to death as soon as they arrived in Auschwitz. They were fourteen years old. https://t.co/yNSCMZfTuG

— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) April 1, 2026

Two tweets from Dr. Cobb, still on hols. First, a book he recommended that I read (I don’t think he read it, but we’re both interested in the Amelia Earhart story:

What happened to Amelia Earhart? New book takes on the case.. Rachel Hartigan on her eminently readable new book, "Lost: Amelia Earhart’s Three Mysterious Deaths and One Extraordinary Life." arstechnica.com/science/2026…

— Jennifer Ouellette (@jenlucpiquant.bsky.social) 2026-03-30T13:46:37.291Z

This reminds me of a human log-rolling contest. Poor turtles!

Please enjoy the two minute crucible that is this turtle trying to get on to a log that other turtles are on.

— Chris Person (@papapishu.bsky.social) 2026-03-30T02:25:51.520Z