“Almost exactly a month after introducing Nicole Shanahan as his vice-presidential pick in a carefully choreographed Bay Area extravaganza, independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. still seemed a bit unclear on exactly how his running mate was spending her time,” the Washington Post reports. “He offered some vague reassurances that the woman he had recently chosen to potentially sit just a heartbeat from the presidency was ‘working on every issue’ and ‘doing a lot of podcasts’ — and that while he couldn’t say ‘exactly what her schedule is,’ he was ‘very happy with what she’s doing.’”
When you’re the king — uh — president, you’ve got it made.
On your birthday you want your might and power displayed.
Hey, you’re turning 79,
So you think it’s just fine
To grift — uh — gift yourself a $100 million military parade.
“Trump intends to send those he hates to foreign prisons beyond the reach of U.S. law. He does not care — he will not even seek to discover — if those he sends into these foreign hells are guilty of what he claims. Because this is not about their guilt — it is about his power. … And if he is capable of that, if he wants that, then what else is he capable of? What else does he want? And if the people who serve him are willing to give him that, to defend his right to do that, what else will they give him? What else will they defend?”
“It is difficult in some cases to get to the very heart of the matter. But in this case, it is not hard at all. The government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the assemblage of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order. Further, it claims in essence that because it has rid itself of custody, there is nothing that can be done. This should be shocking not only to judges but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from the courthouse still hold dear.”
— Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson, a Reagan appointee and conservative icon, in an opinion about the Maryland man wrongly-deported to El Salvador.
“Canadians—40 million Canadians—are at a fever pitch right now. They’re willing to sacrifice. They’re patriotic, like patriotism I’ve never seen. We always say how Canadians are so polite. Well, they’re at a fever pitch right now and willing to do anything and sacrifice anything to protect their sovereignty.”
— Ontario Premier Doug Ford, in a conversation with David Frum.
”What distinguishes a concentration camp from a prison (in the modern sense) is that it functions outside of a judicial system. The prisoners are not indicted or convicted of any crime by judicial process.”
“We are living in a moment of extraordinary danger, and how we respond to this moment will not only impact our lives but it will affect the lives of our kids and future generations. We are living in a moment where a handful of billionaires control the economic and political life of our country.”
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) “raised nearly $10 million in the first three months of 2025, a stunning total for a House member and almost two-thirds of what she raised total in 2023 and 2024 combined,” the Daily Beast reports. “These funds came from more than 250,000 individual donors, with an average contribution of $21. Know what that sounds a lot like? The fundraising haul of a presidential candidate.”
Americans’ religious preferences have generally held steady in the past five years, after a sharp increase in the percentage of Americans with no religious affiliation and concurrent declines in Protestant and Catholic identification over the prior two decades, according to Gallup. In 2024, 45% of Americans identified as Protestant or nondenominational Christian, 21% as Catholic and 10% as another religion, with 22% not identifying with any religion. Those figures are each within one percentage point of their 2018-2020 levels.
Bloomberg: “Arrivals of non-citizens to the US by plane dropped almost 10% in March from a year earlier… Goldman Sachs Group Inc. estimates in a worst-case scenario, the hit this year from reduced travel and boycotts could total 0.3% of gross domestic product, which would amount to almost $90 billion.”
“Beijing punched back with its own tariffs of 125 percent on all U.S. goods on Friday in response to President Donald Trump’s tariff increases, sharply escalating the spiraling trade tensions between the U.S. and China,” the Washington Post reports.