Consumer Confidence Hits New Low

47.6

“Consumer confidence plunged to a record low in April as fears mounted over rising energy prices and the broader impact of the Iran war, according to a University of Michigan survey Friday,” CNBC reports.“The university’s headline index of consumer sentiment tumbled to 47.6, down 10.7% from March to its lowest on record. Current conditions and expectations indexes also saw double-digit monthly declines.”

We Lost the War

“So the world’s greatest military power went to war with a poor, medievalist theocracy. It was an incredibly uneven match … Yet Iran won. The Iranian regime has emerged far stronger than it was before, controlling the Strait of Hormuz and having demonstrated its ability to inflict damage on both its neighbors and the world economy. The U.S. has emerged far weaker, having demonstrated the limitations of its military technology, its strategic ineptitude and, when push comes to shove, its cowardice. … We’ve also destroyed our moral credibility: Trump may have TACOed at the last minute, but he threatened to commit gigantic war crimes — and for all practical purposes our political and civil institutions gave him permission to do so.”

— Paul Krugman

Will Trump Nuke Iran?

“The simple fact that we can’t say ‘definitely no, absolutely not, for sure’ is an astounding commentary on how unhinged and dangerous his presidency has become and how far off the rails the war with Iran has gone as Trump flails about with no plan, no strategy, no exit, and a global economy that day-by-day is reeling from the biggest geopolitical oil shock in history. … It sets the next 36 or so hours up as one of the weirdest and scariest moments in geopolitics of our lifetimes.”

— Garrett Graff

Pope Leo Calls for Peace in Easter Message

“Let those who have the power to unleash wars choose peace! Not a peace imposed by force, but through dialogue! Not with the desire to dominate others, but to encounter them! We are growing accustomed to violence, resigning ourselves to it, and becoming indifferent. Indifferent to the deaths of thousands of people.”

— Pope Leo XIV used his first Easter speech Sunday to deliver a resounding call for peace in times of renewed war, declaring, “Let those who have weapons lay them down!,” the Washington Post reports.