It's called 'Being in the shitter..."

Trump approval is falling into George W. Bush territory

Analysis by Aaron Blake

It was almost exactly this time 20 years ago that the bottom began to fall out on George W. Bush’s approval ratings. And as Bush’s numbers in most polls fell into the 30s for the first time in late winter and early spring, the culprit was clear: the Iraq war.

History could be repeating itself with President Donald Trump in 2026. Just swap Iraq with Iran.

Two new polls released Tuesday morning showed Trump’s approval rating in the mid-30s: 36% in a Reuters-Ipsos poll and 35% in a Strength in Numbers-Verasight poll. They follow an NBC News poll over the weekend that showed Trump hitting a new low of 37%.

Over the past month now, eight of nine quality polls tracked by CNN have shown Trump in the 30s.

The only exception was a Fox News poll pegging Trump at 41%, but even that showed Trump with his worst numbers in its polls since 2017.

Let’s put those numbers in context.

Trump’s disapproval is hitting new highs

Not every poll shows Trump plumbing new depths with his approval rating.

Some pollsters showed him slightly lower in his first year in office in 2017, or after the January 6, 2021, Capitol attack.

But Trump’s 62% average disapproval rating in the CNN Poll of Polls — which averages the quality surveys mentioned above — is higher than just about any pollster indicated in either of those past instances.

Trump’s highest disapproval ratings in individual polls in 2017 were as follows: 63% in a Pew Research Center poll, 61% in a Quinnipiac University poll and 60% in Reuters-Ipsos polls. After January 6, he hit 62% in a CNN poll, 61% in a Quinnipiac poll and 60% in a Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Trump is now averaging those kinds of numbers across all polls, suggesting more Americans than ever are opposed to Trump.

The trendline is consistent

And perhaps more troubling for Trump, the trendline in his second term has been remarkably consistent — consistently down.

While there may have been a general perception that Trump was pretty unpopular in his first term as president, he recovered from the lows of 2017 to spend most of his presidency with an approval rating in the low 40s, which is somewhat normal for a president these days. That included ahead of the 2018 midterm elections and in his 2020 reelection race.

Trump’s approval rating in his first term was, for the most part, pretty flat.

But in his second term, those numbers have trended slowly but steadily downward.

That trend predated the Iran war. But the war also appears to be solidifying some of Trump’s major liabilities, costing him the support of the kinds of people who hadn’t ditched him before.

New lows on the economy

A big reason for that appears to be views of his handling of the economy, which the Iran war — and the rising gas prices that have accompanied it — has sent to new lows.

Trump’s disapproval on inflation is now routinely around 70%.

Inflation has long been Trump’s worst issue, with voters often saying he has neglected concerns about rising costs. But increasingly, polls show it has some competition for that mantle from the Iran war.

The NBC poll showed two-thirds of Americans disapproved of Trump on the Iran war — just a tick less than the 68% who disliked how he’s handled inflation.

And the earlier CNN poll showed 67% disapproved of Trump’s handling of Iran, compared to 69% for the economy and 72% for inflation.

He’s getting into Bush territory

It’s certainly possible that the trend line could change and that a resolution to the Iran war could help Trump.

But if the president’s approval rating solidifies in the mid-30s, he would be in some pretty rare company. It would be territory mostly inhabited in recent decades by just one man: George W. Bush.

When Bush dropped into the 30s two decades ago, he was the first president to spend a sustained period there since Jimmy Carter, according to Gallup data. Joe Biden, like Bush, spent some significant time in the 30s, but generally in the high 30s.

It’s not unusual for presidents to be unpopular these days; in fact, it’s kind of the norm.

But Trump is teetering into some pretty unusual and dangerous political territory.

Sun is tearing an asteroid to pieces

The sun is tearing an asteroid to pieces, and Earth is now flying through the fallout

by Patrick M. Shober, The Conversation

Across Earth, every night, thousands of automated stargazers are waiting to take pictures of shooting stars. I am one of the scientists who study these meteors.

Most movies and news alerts focus on large asteroids that could destroy Earth. And your phone notifies you every few months that an object nine washing machines wide is going to just narrowly skim past. However, the small dust and rubble that enter our atmosphere daily tell an equally interesting story.

My planetary science colleagues and I use camera observations of the night sky to better understand dust, car-sized asteroids and debris from comets in our solar system.

In a study published in March 2026 in the The Astrophysical Journal , I searched through millions of meteor observations collected by all-sky camera networks based in Canada, Japan, California and Europe and found a small, recently formed cluster. The 282 meteors associated with this cluster tell the story of an asteroid that got a little too close to the sun.

Meteor formation

When a sand-sized crumb of space rock hits our atmosphere, it heats up almost instantly, vaporizing its surface layer and turning it into an electrically charged gas. The whole fragment starts to glow—this is what we call a meteor. If the object is larger, like a boulder, and brighter, it's called a bolide or a fireball. On average, these objects hit our atmosphere going over 15 miles per second. For small dust or sand-sized objects, the whole process lasts only a fraction of a second before they completely disappear.

Most of these sand-sized fragments in the solar system originate from comets—cold, icy objects from the outer reaches of the solar system. As comets pass by the sun, their icy components turn to gas, releasing tons of dust. This is why comets are often called "dirty snowballs" and appear fuzzy in telescopic images.

Asteroids, on the other hand, are leftovers from the early solar system that formed closer to the sun. They are dry and rocky, and do not have the same ices that give comets their characteristic tails.

What does it mean to be active?

Astronomers call an asteroid or comet "active" when it sheds dust, gas or larger fragments. This activity is caused by some external force on the object in space, like heat from the sun, a small impact, or when asteroids spin too fast and fly apart.

Understanding and identifying activity helps scientists better understand how these objects change over time.

For comets, sublimation of ices—when solid ice turns directly into gas, skipping the liquid phase—is the primary culprit. However, for asteroids, the reason for activity can vary greatly.

For example, NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission, which launched into space to study an asteroid named Bennu, saw activity from its surface, with heat stress and small impacts among the leading explanations.

Other sources for asteroid activity include breakup when an asteroid spins too fast, tidal forces ripping apart asteroids during close encounters with a planet, or gas release.

Researchers most commonly search for activity using telescopes. Astronomers can look for a "tail" or fuzziness around the object. This tail is a clear sign that there is gas and dust around the body. But there is another way to search for activity—meteor showers.

Finding hidden asteroids via meteor showers

The most famous active asteroid is 3200 Phaethon. It is the parent body of the Geminid meteor shower that occurs every year in mid-December. During past close approaches with the sun, Phaethon released vast amounts of dust and larger fragments. These morsels of Phaethon have spread out along its entire orbit over time, leading to the present Geminid meteor stream.

Each meteor shower we observe occurs when Earth passes through one of these debris streams. So if astronomers can detect meteor showers, they can also be used to find active objects in space.

At first, debris shed by an asteroid or comet travels closely together. Imagine squeezing a single drop of food dye into a moving stream of water: Initially, the dye stays in a tight, concentrated cloud. But as it flows, the water's swirling currents pull at the dye, causing it to spread out and fade.

In space, the gravitational tugs from passing planets act like those currents. They pull on the individual meteor fragments in slightly different ways, causing the once-tight stream to gradually drift apart until it completely dilutes into the background dust of our solar system.

This diagram shows the radiant—the point in the night sky from which meteors of the newly discovered shower appear to originate. Credit: Patrick Shober—NASA JSC

The discovery of a rock-comet

In a study published in March 2026 in the Astrophysical Journal, I used millions of observations of meteors to search for recent, unknown activity from asteroids near Earth. I found one clear cluster of 282 meteors that stood out.

What makes this discovery so exciting is that we are essentially witnessing a hidden asteroid being baked to bits. This newly confirmed meteor stream follows an extreme orbit that plunges almost five times closer to the sun than Earth does.

Based on how these meteors break apart when they hit our atmosphere, we can tell they are moderately fragile, but tougher than stuff from comets. This finding tells us that intense solar heat is literally cracking the asteroid's surface, baking out trapped gases and causing it to crumble. This is likely a major source of past Phaethon activity and the main reason the meteorites on Earth are so diverse.

The search for the source

Why does finding a hidden, crumbling asteroid matter? Meteor observations act as a uniquely sensitive probe that lets us study objects that are completely invisible to traditional telescopes.

Beyond solving astronomical mysteries, analyzing this debris helps us understand the physical evolution of asteroids and comets in our solar system. More importantly, it reveals hidden populations of near-Earth asteroids, which is vital information for planetary defense.

The new meteor shower's parent asteroid remains elusive. However, NASA's NEO Surveyor mission, launching in 2027, offers a promising solution. This space telescope, dedicated to planetary defense and the discovery of dark, hazardous, sun-approaching asteroids, will be the ideal tool for searching for the shower's origin.

Planet-building disks around newborn stars

Astronomers crack a decades-old mystery, catching gas morphing into planet-building disks around newborn stars

by Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics

An international team led by Dr. Indrani Das of Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics (ASIAA) has shown, for the first time, how infalling gas from star-forming cores gradually transitions into planet-forming disks. Their findings, combining numerical simulations with Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) observations, are published today in The Astrophysical Journal.

Protoplanetary disks form around young stars when dense molecular cloud cores collapse under their own gravity. An outer shroud of gas and dust, known as the envelope, surrounds and feeds both the young star and the forming disk. While it is well understood that planets eventually form within these disks and follow Keplerian orbits, the mechanism that transforms rapid infalling gas motion from the envelope into ordered Keplerian motion within the disk has remained a mystery for decades.

Based on both theoretical and observational evidence, the recent study discovered that there exists a distinct transition zone at the envelope-disk interface of a young star-disk system, which Das named ENDTRANZ (Envelope Disk Transition Zone). The findings have established that infalling gas motions gradually transition into Keplerian motions across this transition zone. Crucially, this transition is far from abrupt and contradicts earlier infall models that are based on classical test-particle dynamics.

"The existence of ENDTRANZ naturally results from the redistribution of mass and angular momentum during the formation of disks around young stars. This process ultimately governs how infalling material from the envelope, which rotates more slowly than the Keplerian speed, spreads out to form the disk and gradually settles into ordered Keplerian rotation," explained Das, emphasizing that the discovery of ENDTRANZ is a major step forward in understanding how stars and planetary systems—including our own solar system—form.

To determine the physics of ENDTRANZ, the team first ran the numerical simulations using FEOSAD, a code that models the star-disk system starting from the collapse of a starless cloud core. Their results showed that the transition from the infalling-rotating envelope to the spinning disk gradually unfolds through a "jump" across a finite thickness in the radial profile of specific angular momentum, which they identified as a novel signature of ENDTRANZ.

Specific angular momentum is defined as the total angular momentum per unit mass, describing how fast and how far out a mass parcel orbits regardless of its mass. Thus it serves as a powerful tool for understanding how material rotating at different rates reorganizes during the evolution from collapsing gas clouds to disks. This systematic reorganization is analogous to atmospheric convection, where circulation occurs in an organized way, with warm air rising and cool air descending while exchanging heat.

"This ENDTRANZ tracer, in the form of a jump in the specific angular momentum profile, essentially manifests from the gradual transition in the rotational velocity. This change in rotational behavior offers a diagnostic framework for understanding the physical processes at play that drive the disk evolution," said Shantanu Basu, a co-author of the study.

The team also studied L1527 IRS, a young star located about 450 light-years from Earth in the Taurus molecular cloud, which hosts a disk with a radius of approximately 70 astronomical units. Using the high-resolution ALMA Large Program eDisk (Embedded Disks in Planet Formation) observations, the researchers, for the first time, identified a similar jump in the radial profile of the specific angular momentum at the envelope-disk transition of L1527 IRS. Spanning a radial width of about 16 astronomical units, this observed jump confirmed the existence of a transition zone.

"At first, I did not believe that the observational data of L1527 IRS showed evidence of ENDTRANZ, but surprisingly, it was there! A careful inspection and comparison of the radial dependence of specific angular momentum between the observational data and the simulation helped identify the evidence of ENDTRANZ in L1527 IRS," said Nagayoshi Ohashi, the principal investigator of the ALMA eDisk large program and another co-author of this study.

"Interestingly enough, model ENDTRANZ exhibits significant local variations in kinematics around the disk circumference and, when combined with observations, can offer insights into the complex spiral structure of a protoplanetary disk," commented Eduard Vorobyov, another co-author of the study.

This pioneering work establishes ENDTRANZ as a new frontier in star and planet formation studies, opening the door to deeper exploration of its complex physics and to searching for its signatures in other young stellar systems. In many ways, the team believes this is just the beginning.

Little Red Dots

Webb's Little Red Dots may reveal how giant black holes formed soon after the Big Bang

by Jorge Salazar, University of Texas at Austin

The launch of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) in 2021 pushed the horizon of seeing the early universe, unveiling cosmic events just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang. Among the most striking discoveries are supermassive black holes—some reaching 100 million times the mass of our sun.

"Finding black holes in the early universe is such a surprise because it goes against the standard model of how the universe is building structure from small pieces, or 'light seeds,' to big pieces or 'heavy seed,'" said Volker Bromm, a professor of astronomy in the College of Natural Sciences and co-director of the Cosmic Frontier Center at The University of Texas at Austin.

Bromm has co-authored a study on curious astronomical objects discovered by the JWST called Little Red Dots (LRD), published in the Astrophysical Journal.

LRD are extremely compact, emitting highly-redshifted light with unusual spectral characteristics that defy easy explanation. Bromm and colleagues compared and found good agreement with JWST LRD data to models that employed a "heavy seed" hypothesis of black hole formation.

Black hole 'heavy seeds'

Astronomers call the heavy seeds direct collapse black holes (DCBH), hypothesized to form from the speedy collapse of huge primordial clouds of hydrogen and helium gas. This line of thought contrasts the "light seed" hypothesis of black hole formation, a slower process where a massive star burns out all its nuclear fuel and collapses into a remnant black hole, with a mass a few tens to 100 times that of the sun.

The Little Red Dots appear at the tail end of DCBH formation.

"Little Red Dots are now thought to be powered by supermassive black holes surrounded by a massive cocoon, a gas cloud of high-density material," Bromm said.

Launched in 2021, NASA's James Webb Space is an orbiting infrared observatory that complements and extends the discoveries of the Hubble Space Telescope, with longer wavelength coverage and greatly improved sensitivity. Credit: NASA

Supercomputing behind the breakthrough

Bromm secured allocations on the Lonestar6 and Stampede3 supercomputers at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) through the University of Texas Research Cyberinfrastructure program, opening the door for researchers across UT System to harness world-class advanced computing power.

Volker used the supercomputers to develop the models that started with initial conditions of what the universe was like about half a million years after the Big Bang, gleaned from prior data on the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation.

"Lonestar6 and Stampede3 were absolutely key to this modeling and achieving this level of realism," Bromm said. "The moment you couple dark matter with baryons (luminous materials), you get into a realm that is completely nonlinear. These facilities support the only way to solve this super complex problem."

Bromm and colleagues used the galaxy formation code Ancient Stars and Local Observables by Tracing Halos (A-SLOTH) to populate the early universe with DCBHs and compare that to standard stellar remnant star seed models. They found better agreement with DCBH models vs. stellar remnant seeds in matching observed LRD population statistics and host dark matter halo properties.

Little Red Dot genetics

The researchers deconstructed the observational data from JWST on LRD using what they called a "genetic technique," where the data is broken up into its progenitors.

"We do a merger tree of the LRD history from the very beginning. It's like constructing the history of one person, going back millions of years and tracking all descendants," they noted.

Building on this, Bromm and colleagues incorporated key astrophysical objects and processes, such as dark matter halos, adding primordial gas to elucidate questions on how the gas forms stars, their life cycle and energy output, supernova feedback, and the resulting enrichment with heavy chemical elements.

This is analogous to modeling the deep history of a person living today, tracing every ancestor and the defining moments that shaped their lives to understand who that person is today.

While not directly used in the simulations, Bromm acknowledged that artificial intelligence played a supporting role in the larger effort to extract the key properties of the Little Red Dot population from JWST imaging data.

Cosmic challenge

"The big challenge now is intricately a supercomputing problem—to understand the data coming from the JWST on the first galaxies, starting with the primordial universe, and moving time forward to solve this coupled set of differential equations," Bromm said.

He added that another great challenge for theoretical astronomers is connecting data from JWST on the "luminous universe," matter we can see, with the properties of dark matter: "To make this connection between the visible and the underlying dark matter universe, supercomputing is key."

"Philosophically, it's fantastic that now humans are in a position to understand the entirety of nearly 14 billion years of cosmic history," Bromm concluded. "This is a breathtaking extrapolation of our own lifetimes, and ultimately a gift from supercomputing to put this all together."

Getting Tariff Refunds?

Corporations Are Getting Tariff Refunds. Americans? Not So Much.

People who shouldered higher prices thanks to Trump-imposed fees likely won’t see the cash anytime soon. 

Sophie Hurwitz

The Trump administration has officially begun the process of repaying up to $175 billion in illegally collected tariffs, following a February Supreme Court ruling. It’s the biggest such repayment program in history, and over 330,000 businesses stand to benefit. But American consumers—that is, the people who ended up shouldering higher prices thanks to these fees—likely won’t see the cash anytime soon. 

Justin Wolfers, a professor of economics at the University of Michigan, told Mother Jones the tariffs—a vast set of taxes Trump imposed on imports—“haven’t achieved what they were meant to achieve.”

“They were meant to onshore manufacturing—it’s continued to shrink. They were meant to lead to new factories being built—that hasn’t happened. They were meant to lead to an increase in government revenue—but the government’s about to write a whole bunch of checks. They were meant to lead to the US having leverage and signing new trade deals. We have effectively done none of that. So at a minimum, it achieved nothing positive.” 

The refunds, then, might seem like a step towards minimizing the economic damage of “Liberation Day.” But Wolfers said that’s not how he’d put it in his Economics 101 class. “Often in economics, what we’ll do is we’ll try to subsidize something that we want more of, or we’ll tax something that we want less of”—a basic incentive structure. These tariff refunds don’t incentivize much, because “they’re purely tied to what you did in the past, which means [companies] have no incentive to do anything.” 

“This is more like when your grandma sends money for your birthday,” he said. Smaller companies that folded entirely after the onset of Trump’s tariffs—think women selling handmade earrings on Etsy from their living rooms—won’t be refunded. Consumers, too, will likely miss out. 

In February, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told reporters at the Economic Club of Dallas, “I’ve got a feeling the American people won’t see” the money. “My sense is this could be dragged out for weeks, months, years, so … we’ll see what happens there,” Bessent added. 

“So, nothing here has helped American consumers,” Wolfers said. “If Costco raised the price of olive oil, I paid that higher price, and now I’m poorer. Costco, now, gets a refund. So what we did is, we took money out of the government coffers and gave it to Costco. Costco is not going to write me a check, it has no reason to. And now there’s less money in the government coffers, so eventually they’re going to tax me some more.” Theoretically, shoppers could benefit from lower prices after the tariffs—but the Budget Lab at Yale suggests that’s not the case, and that corporations haven’t stopped passing costs on to consumers.

One group of Costco-shoppers is attempting to sue the supermarket chain for collecting tariff prices from consumers, “while simultaneously seeking refunds of the same tariff payments from the federal government.” So, they’d be repaid by the government for costs that have already been passed on to shoppers.

“Costco stands to recover the same tariff payments twice” if the court doesn’t intervene, the customers wrote in their complaint. As of April 9th, over 56,000 importers had already completed the necessary steps to get an electronic refund—but they aren’t required to pass any of that money onto consumers.

Fuel Prices Soar

As Fuel Prices Soar, Climate Leaders Urge Democrats to Tie Clean Energy to Affordability

“I don’t think they’ve grasped the political opportunity yet.”

Oliver Milman and Dharna Noor

Democrats should get louder in championing clean energy’s affordability and resilience from global shocks, according to some of the party’s leading voices on the climate.

As the Iran war roils economies by raising the cost of oil and gas, countries are aiming to accelerate their shift to cleaner energy. But in the US, Donald Trump has sought to kill off any alternative to fossil fuels while opposing Democrats have been reluctant to tie the conflict to any action on the climate crisis.

The closure of the Strait of Hormuz, where one-fifth of the world’s oil and gas normally travels, in the wake of the US and Israel’s attack on Iran caused energy costs to spike around the world. In the US, gasoline has soared above $4.10 a gallon nationally, with Trump admitting the costs could even be “a little bit higher” by November.

Democrats have pointed to this as further evidence of the US president’s broken promises to lower the cost of living for Americans. But there have been few calls for a pivotal switch away from the volatility of fossil fuels in favor of clean energy in response to the conflict, to the frustration of those who support action on the climate crisis.

“There’s a timely clash on climate and costs that Democrats can win, as long as we have the nerve to actually show up to the fight,” said Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democratic senator, who added “true energy independence will be achieved by powering our economy with renewable energy, the fuel sources for which are unlimited, free and independent of geopolitical events.”

“Democrats will continue to lose the righteous and winnable fight over the future of clean energy if we cede the battlefield to fossil fuel liars and our own party’s misguided climate-hushers,” Whitehouse said.

Climate “hushing,” in which politicians and businesses downplay or ignore the need to cut planet-heating emissions, has been prevalent in the US during Trump’s second term. A bruising 2024 election loss and ongoing inflation concerns—polls show gasoline costs are Americans’ top concern about the Iran war—have left Democrats wrestling with a critique of affordability rather than the imperiled livability of the planet, despite the clear link between the two.

The Iran war provides a “unique moment of opportunity” for Democrats to extol the advantages of lower-pollution options like electric cars but the focus should be on “reducing consumer costs, which should’ve been the message over climate protection all along,” according to Paul Bledsoe, a former climate adviser to Bill Clinton’s White House.

“I don’t think they’ve grasped the political opportunity yet,” Bledsoe said. “They have to stay really focused on how these next-generation technologies will provide a consumer benefit. When you pitch clean energy as cutting consumer costs first and improving the overall economy second, people are happy to cut emissions third.”

Translating this into a winning political message has been a struggle for Democrats who in Joe Biden’s administration passed sweeping climate legislation to spur new jobs in the clean energy sector, only for the bill to be gutted by Republicans now in control of Congress. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has proposed a partial resurrection of incentives for clean energy should his party regain power.

But Democrats must do better to pitch solar, wind, and battery technologies as a way to reduce US exposure to international fossil fuel costs dictated by global events, according to Ro Khanna, a leading Democratic member of Congress. “I really believe we missed a moment to do that with the Ukraine war,” he said. “We should have been linking the clean energy agenda to Americans’ economic security and our national security, and we should do that again.”

Longer term, Khanna added, the US needs to “wean ourselves off the petrostates. We need a moonshot for clean technology.”

Such a shift from fossil fuels, which scientists say is imperative if the world is to avert catastrophic climate impacts, has been stymied by Trump, who has implemented a “drill, baby drill” approach to oil and gas extraction and has taken extraordinary measures, even amid the Iran crisis, to halt domestic clean energy generation that he has called a “scam” and a “con job.”

The soaring price of oil may even be beneficial, Trump has suggested, because “when oil prices go up, we make a lot of money.” This money is mostly flowing to large fossil fuel corporations, with the world’s largest 100 oil and gas companies making more than $30 billion every hour in unearned profit during the first month of the war.

Trump’s approach differs starkly from that of other countries that have sought to rapidly reduce their exposure to a faraway conflict. Electric car sales have boomed in South Korea and Malaysia, while in Pakistan electric rickshaws have been selling out. “This is a wake-up call,” Indonesian president Prabowo Subianto said recently. “We will convert all motorcycles into electric motorcycles. All cars, all trucks, all tractors must [also] be electric.”

The European Union, too, plans to accelerate clean energy deployment to help alleviate electricity bills. “Every delayed investment in the energy transition risks greater cost for society at a later stage,” a draft European Commission proposal states. The plan comes ahead of a conference in Colombia this month where representatives from 85 countries will gather to craft a roadmap on how to move beyond the fossil fuel era.

The Iran war is a case study for the need to make this transition, according to the United Nations. “Clean energy is the antidote to fossil fuel cost chaos, because it is cheaper, safer, and faster to market,” said Simon Stiell, the UN’s climate chief. “Wars don’t disrupt the supply of sunlight for solar power, and wind power does not depend on vulnerable shipping straits.”

The mounting toll of the climate crisis, though, is the primary reason to ditch coal, oil and gas, advocates argue. Such impacts are increasingly apparent in the US, as well as the rest of the world, with the country enduring its hottest and driest start to a year in recorded history, with record-breaking March heat and punishing bouts of drought, heat and wildfire strafing much of the US west.

Despite the Trump administration’s dismissal of climate science, two-thirds of Americans are worried about global heating, polling has shown, with most people in the US underestimating how concerned others are about the topic as it has receded from coverage in many media outlets.

There has been “a surprising silence” from Democrats and climate activists on how clean energy is cheaper, inexhaustible and more locally controlled compared with fossil fuels, according to Anthony Leiserowitz, an academic at Yale University who studies public perceptions of the climate crisis. “And, oh by the way, it reduces the carbon pollution causing global warming,” he added.

Quash the Epstein investigation

This is how Democrats say Oversight Republicans are trying to quash the Epstein investigation

The committee chair has started hosting frequent “roundtables,” where his members can’t force subpoena votes.

By Riley Rogerson and Hailey Fuchs

Members of both parties have for months been hijacking House Oversight Committee business to call votes on subpoenas for high-profile figures in the Jeffrey Epstein investigation — and Democrats say chair James Comer has quietly instituted a new strategy to contain the practice.

The Kentucky Republican’s workaround, they allege, is to hold “roundtables” on various issues within the panel’s jurisdiction rather than hearings. Roundtables are more informal and don’t permit members to offer motions to subpoena witnesses during unrelated committee business, as is allowed during hearings.

Over the past year, some GOP members have joined with Democrats to take advantage of the panel’s subpoena rules. In July, they voted on a surprise motion to release the full Epstein files when top congressional Republicans were dragging their feet. Lawmakers also compelled now-former Attorney General Pam Bondi to testify and were prepared to haul in Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, too, before he said he would appear before the committee voluntarily.

This trend is outlined in a new memo prepared by Oversight Democratic staff, obtained by POLITICO, which claims that by moving to roundtables, Republicans “are avoiding the only forum where Democrats can force votes, demand documents, and hold the majority accountable.”

“We’ve heard from committee members, both Republicans and Democrats, that they are frustrated,” Rep. Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the committee, said in an interview Monday. “We have important investigative work, and they want to do this right as we are in the middle of this single, largest government cover-up in the modern history of the Congress. And they want to neuter the Oversight Committee. Give me a break.”

A spokesperson for Oversight Republicans, when reached for comment, did not address a question about whether the uptick in roundtables was intended to prevent subpoena votes. The spokesperson said the panel “continues to hold many hearings” and will host a markup on fraud prevention legislation next week.

“Roundtables provide opportunities to have more substantive and direct conversations with ordinary Americans about issues facing communities across the U.S.,” the spokesperson said.

But the members’ subpoena free-for-all over the past nine months has undoubtedly created a complicated political dynamic for Comer. He has become the de facto leader of the congressional Epstein probe, forcing him to balance calls for transparency with the political fallout of Trump’s onetime relationship with the late, convicted sex offender.

Republicans have noticed the connection between the spike in subpoenas and the subsequent increase in roundtables in lieu of hearings.

Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-Wis.), during a March subcommittee roundtable on mental health issues, at one point said, “It’s no secret why we are not doing a formal hearing today. We’d like this hearing to be solely focused on the issue before you, and there is some concern that — both parties are guilty of this — that they make motions in the middle of the hearing and try to bring up unrelated topics.”

Republicans have also gone on subpoena sprees of their own, most notably by forcing the February depositions of Bill and Hillary Clinton.

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) suggested she wasn’t happy about the new status quo.

While stopping short of criticizing roundtables directly, she said in an interview, “I am a fan of committees that like to do the motions to subpoena.”

The last full-committee hearing convened by House Oversight was in March, on fraud in Minnesota. At that hearing, Republican Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina forced a vote to subpoena Bondi for her handling of the federal Epstein investigation. Five Republicans joined all Democrats present in voting for the subpoena motion, and Bondi’s recent ouster isn’t quelling calls for her to appear before the panel under oath.

Since that time, first lady Melania Trump delivered a public statement denying she was ever victimized by Epstein and urging Congress to hold hearings with true victims — an entreaty that could resonate with Mace and others who are bought into the subpoena exercise, though Comer has indicated he plans on having such hearings.

In the meantime, Oversight subcommittees have held five roundtables this year alone on topics such as artificial intelligence and the Internal Revenue Service. The full committee is scheduled to convene a sixth roundtable Tuesday morning addressing “lawfare against American agriculture.”

That’s compared to the two subcommittee roundtables listed for all of 2025; Comer hosted no full committee roundtables since becoming chair in 2023, the panel’s website shows.

Several Oversight Republicans said in interviews they appreciate the opportunity to examine policy areas without the partisan mudslinging and subpoena distractions that Oversight has become known for this term.

“When you’re really trying to get to the bottom of something, it’s a much more conducive way of doing it,” said Rep. Eric Burlison (R-Mo.).

Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.) argued during a recent committee hearing on the misuse of federal funds in Minnesota that the subpoena-happy approach taken by his colleagues is undermining the seriousness of the panel’s work.

“Listen to your Uncle Clay, America — you don’t just normally start out with a subpoena introduced as a vote by a member,” Higgins said. “I object to this process that is false and not reflective of the serious investigative work that the Oversight committee performs day in and day out.”

Sheinbaum demands explanation

Mexico’s Sheinbaum demands explanation after US officials die after operation in Chihuahua

The fatal vehicle crash followed an operation to destroy a clandestine drug lab in a rural area.

By Associated Press

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said Monday she would demand explanations over what U.S. and Mexican officials were doing in northern Chihuahua when they died in an accident over the weekend, noting that any joint collaborations between the local government and the U.S. without federal permission would be a violation of Mexican law.

The crash, following an operation to destroy a clandestine drug lab in a rural area, has reignited a debate over the extent of U.S. involvement in Mexican security operations. Speculation was only fueled by Sheinbaum, local officials and the U.S. Embassy appearing to contradict each other and at times themselves, and offering sparse details about the U.S. officials who died.

“It was not an operation that the security cabinet was aware of,” Sheinbaum told journalists. “We were not informed; it was a decision by the Chihuahua government.”

It comes at a key moment for the relationship between the two neighboring nations as Mexico faces escalating pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump crack down on cartels and Sheinbaum underscores Mexico’s sovereignty.

Sheinbaum said her government would investigate the incident to ensure no laws were broken after the deaths on Sunday, adding that state governments must have authorization from Mexico’s federal government to collaborate with U.S. and other foreign entities “as established by the Constitution.”

A mountainside car crash

Chihuahua Attorney General César Jáuregui said Sunday the officials died while returning from the operation to destroy labs of criminal groups. They were driving in the middle of the night through rugged mountain territory connecting Chihuahua to the state of Sinaloa, when the truck “appears to have skidded at some point and fell into a ravine, exploding.”

He said the four who died were two local Mexican investigative officials and two U.S. Embassy instructors who were participating in routine “training work.”

The U.S. Embassy on Monday declined to identify who the U.S. officials were or which entity of the U.S. government they worked for, but said the officials were “supporting Chihuahua state authorities’ efforts to combat cartel operations.” U.S. Ambassador Ronald Johnson expressed his condolences on social media but he and other officials provided few details of the incident.

Jáuregui said that the operation came following months of investigation by state prosecutors and Mexico’s federal military, indicating there was at least some level of involvement in the operation from Sheinbaum’s security forces. Hours later, the Mexican Security Cabinet confirmed that the army and state prosecutor’s office carried out a joint operation over the weekend in Chihuahua dismantling drug labs in the same location, Morelos.

After locating the labs using drones, officials found tons of material to manufacture drugs but no people, who were likely alerted beforehand and fled, the prosecutor added.

The local official later backtracked and clarified to press that there “were no U.S. agents in the operation to secure the narco-lab,” and said the embassy officials joined the group after the operation and were several hours away from where the action took place.

A resurfaced debate

Sheinbaum said her government would provide more information when it has more details, but insisted Monday that “there are no joint operations on land or in the air” in Mexico. She said there is only sharing of information between her government and the U.S., carried out within a “well-established” legal framework.

While U.S. officials’ training of Mexican security forces is common, their presence on Mexican territory has been the subject of ongoing debate, which has intensified after Trump’s military actions in Venezuela and Iran.

Trump has repeatedly offered to take action on Mexican cartels, intervention which Sheinbaum has said was “unnecessary. ” The Trump administration has already launched joint military operations in Ecuador, a country that has been roiled by violence by drug gangs in recent years.

Last year, Sheinbaum said the U.S. had conducted surveillance drone flights at Mexico’s request after a series of conflicting public statements on the issue, also sparking alarm among observers.

The most recent controversy surfaced in January over the detention in Mexico of former Canadian athlete Ryan Wedding, one of the United States’ most wanted fugitives. While Mexican officials claim he surrendered at the U.S. Embassy, U.S. authorities have described his capture as the result of a binational operation.

The recent debacle comes at a pivotal time in U.S.-Mexico relations. The second round of negotiations between the United States and Mexico on the United States-Mexico-Canada free trade agreement, the USMCA, was slated to begin in Mexico City. The U.S. delegation is led by Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, who was scheduled to meet with the president on Monday.

That same day, the Trump administration also announced it was imposing visa restrictions on family members of the Cartel de Sinaloa.

Breakup with the world

Iran war accelerates America’s breakup with the world

President Donald Trump’s erratic moves aren’t helping.

By Nahal Toosi, Zack Colman and Paul McLeary

The Iran war is damaging America’s influence around the world and exacerbating tensions with countries already whipsawed by President Donald Trump’s second term — an erosion of power that could be tough to reverse as U.S. adversaries such as China take advantage.

From Bangladesh to Slovenia, fuel rationing has throttled transportation, frustrating leaders dealing with the fallout of a war they did not want. In Muslim-majority countries, anti-U.S. narratives are flooding the airwaves, often with tacit permission from governments. Even America’s allies in NATO have limited their help to the U.S., with some stressing the Trump administration did not consult them before launching the fight with Iran.

The war appears to be accelerating what some see as a U.S. break-up with much of the rest of the planet since Trump returned to office and began flexing U.S. economic and military might in haphazard ways, including tariffs.

“A lot of people are fed up with how chaotic this war has been and scared of the potential economic impact, but I haven’t seen any major protests in response,” a Washington-based Asian diplomat said, having been granted anonymity because the topic is sensitive. “If a more reasonable person becomes the next president, the image of the U.S. might improve, but for policymakers this raises some tough long-term questions about the alliance, how far we can go to stay aligned with the U.S. and what we should do if we can’t rely on the U.S. anymore.”

In the latest sign of foreign powers distancing themselves, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney described his country’s economic ties with the U.S. as “weaknesses” to correct in a video message released Sunday.

“We have to take care of ourselves because we can’t rely on one foreign partner,” said Carney, who has been increasingly critical of Trump due in part to his threats to Greenland. “We can’t control the disruption coming from our neighbors. We can’t bet our future on the hope that it will suddenly stop.”

Trump’s constant vacillation on what he wants to accomplish in Iran hasn’t inspired confidence, some former U.S. officials say.

“Allies don’t know what to believe, adversaries don’t know what to fear, and his own Cabinet do not know what his strategy or intentions actually are,” said Thomas Wright, a former National Security Council official in the Biden administration who focused on long-term strategy. “The long-term prognosis isn’t terminal. But the question is what China, Russia, North Korea and Iran do with the next two years and nine months if this drift continues.”

Asked for comment, White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said Trump’s America First approach has translated to better trade deals, enhanced partnerships for combating drug trafficking and increased defense spending by allies.

“World leaders have talked about the threat posed by Iran for 47 years, but no one had the courage to address it,” Kelly said. “Once all of our objectives are met, including eliminating Iran’s nuclear threat for good, the entire world will be safer, more stable, and better off.”

Sparks fly over energy prices

Since the U.S. and Israel launched the war with Iran on Feb. 28, the global energy sector has been walloped by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and Iran’s attacks on Middle Eastern energy facilities.

The U.S., which already was the world’s top oil and gas producer, has seen its influence over energy markets bolstered in the near term, but those gains may be short term.

Asian countries most exposed to volatile energy prices — some of whom mandated working from home or halted exports to conserve fuel — have vowed to accelerate renewable energy installations and restart nuclear power plants. Europe, keen to heed its lesson from the Russian invasion of Ukraine, wants to avoid depending on a single energy supplier. It instead plans to expand energy efficiency and renewable power programs and deploy more electric vehicles.

Nations that want to limit the shocks from fossil fuels like shortages and sudden price spikes — all of which have led to dreadful stagflationary scenarios of slow growth and rising costs — have come to view alternatives like solar power, batteries and electric vehicles as necessary. Many may turn to China, which controls an overwhelming majority of the solar energy supply chain. Beijing is producing electric vehicles at cut-rate prices and controls the bulk of minerals for clean energy and batteries.

“The goal here is not just to survive the shock. It is to use this period of uncertainty to build a foundation for more durable stability,” Asian Development Bank President Masato Kanda said last week at a Council on Foreign Relations event in Washington.

Energy Department spokesperson Ben Dietderich referred POLITICO to comments Energy Secretary Chris Wright made in a Sunday appearance on CNN. Wright criticized the effectiveness of subsidies to promote renewable energy and said the U.S. would maintain its influence through oil and gas.

“We’re a net exporter of oil to the world and we’re by far and away the world’s largest net-exporter of natural gas,” he said.

Fewer friends on the battlefield

The strain on America’s military alliances has been impossible to ignore as the war continues.

In previous wars in the region, U.S. presidents have managed to rally even reluctant allies to the cause. That included the Trump administration asking for help in defending Israeli cities and civilian infrastructure in the region from Iranian attacks last year.

This time the Trump administration didn’t brief even its closest allies beforehand, according to two diplomats from European countries, and hasn’t made clear asks of them since.

That has had an effect. In response to the closure of the strait, the U.K. and France have convened several meetings with dozens of allied states, but not the U.S., to devise a plan to keep the strait open after the war ends.

The European initiative will be aimed at conducting defensive operations to protect commercial shipping in the strait, but timing, and the forces to be involved, remain a work in progress.

That comes as the European Union is also exploring ways to beef up the bloc’s collective defense mechanism, Article 42.7, should it be tested in a move that can be seen as a response to Trump administration threats to take Greenland by force.

Still, U.S. defense relationships run deep around the world and are hard to unravel. Trump has repeatedly threatened to unwind some of them (including leaving NATO), but he has not taken any serious steps in that direction. Many countries, while frustrated by Trump, still want U.S. military prowess on their side.

On Monday, the U.S. and the Philippines kicked off major military exercises that are expected to include Japan and Canada and serve as a warning to China.

In the Middle East, the U.S. attacks on Iran have produced mixed responses.

Israel has been a stalwart partner in the fight against Iran, and it appears intent on weakening the Islamic Republic as much as possible if it can’t outright overthrow the regime.

While Persian Gulf countries tried to dissuade the U.S. from its first attacks on Iran, many have since been incensed by Iranian retaliatory strikes on their soil. The United Arab Emirates, for one, has increasingly sided with the U.S.-led war effort, even as it reportedly has raised the possibility it might need a financial lifeline from Washington.

Diplomatic debacles

The war in Iran has also damaged America’s reputation and sway in countries where U.S. efforts to strengthen relations face tough competition.

In an excerpt of a State Department cable dated Thursday, U.S. diplomats at the American Embassy in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, warned that “the conflict in Iran has led to the emergence of a persistent anti-American narrative in Tajikistan’s heavily constrained media environment as foreign actors deepen their influence and local outlets chase clicks and external funding.”

The excerpt, newly obtained by POLITICO, added, “Our competitors are expending resources to ensure narrative dominance in a country that sits at the intersection of China, Afghanistan, Russia and Iran.”

Similar cables sent from U.S. diplomats in Bahrain, Indonesia and Azerbaijan — and previously reported upon by POLITICO — also described a proliferation of anti-U.S. messaging and warned that, in some cases, America’s security and diplomatic ties were at risk.

Asked for comment, State Department spokesperson Tommy Pigott shared a stock statement he’s used before: “President Trump’s actions are making the United States, future generations, and the entire world safer by preventing the Iranian regime from obtaining a nuclear weapon. That’s the reality, and the entire administration is lockstep in that effort.

Trump’s moves in Iran have compounded alienation some U.S. allies felt when he launched a “Board of Peace” that was conceived as a body to help implement an agreement between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, but that critics grew to suspect was designed to supplant the United Nations. Hungary and Bulgaria were the only two EU members to formally join the board by the time it launched in February. Other EU countries stayed at arms length by sending observers only, and Belgium underscored its hesitation Monday.

Belgium’s Foreign Affairs ministry spokesperson David Jordens told POLITICO his country does not intend to donate funds via the Board of Peace.

Still, Trump backers argue any current pains resulting from the U.S. president’s actions in Iran will be worth it in the long run.

Alexander Gray, who served as a top National Security Council official in Trump’s first term, said the decision to go after Iran and its destabilizing activities now will “pay dividends for future presidents.”

Petro-Imperialism

Trump’s “Petro-Imperialism” Is Pushing the US and Iran to the Brink

A botched bombing campaign, a naval blockade, and threats against civilian infrastructure have cornered Iran into a fight it can’t back down from.

Alex Nguyen

Petro-imperialism is back in a big way.

On Monday, Iran’s military vowed to execute “necessary action” against US forces after it fired at and seized an Iranian-flagged ship the day before—destroying any hope for renewed peace negotiations in the near future.

While a spokesperson for Iran’s military called the US’ capture of the Iranian cargo ship trying to pass through a US blockade “blatant aggression,” they said the country’s first priority was to ensure the safety of crew members and their families on board. These developments are a drastic escalation of the fight for control over the Strait of Hormuz.

The Strait of Hormuz is a key waterway in the Persian Gulf through which approximately 20 percent of global crude oil and natural gas flowed—at least before the US and Israel launched strikes on Iran starting in February. Iran announced the re-opening of the strait after a 10-day truce between Israel and Lebanon. (Israel continued its indiscriminate bombing campaign against Lebanon even after the ceasefire agreement between the two countries).

But according to Al Jazeera, Iran reversed its decision on Saturday, stating that the strait will remain closed until the US withdraws its blockade on all ships entering and leaving Iranian ports. Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran’s parliamentary speaker, said in a television interview that the blockade, which began last Monday, was “a clumsy and ignorant decision” and violated their ceasefire agreement with the US.

Since then, Iran has reportedly fired at ships with Indian flags attempting to cross the strait and President Donald Trump has threatened to commit war crimes against Iran again by decimating civilian infrastructure—including power plants and bridges—if Iran didn’t agree to re-open the strait in a new deal to end the war. Iran is, of course, not cooperating as the US has persisted with their naval blockade on their shipping ports. 

Thus, the two countries are at a stalemate. According to CNN, JD Vance is expected to travel to Pakistan on Tuesday to discuss next steps with Iran, but the vice president isn’t exactly a skilled negotiator. 

As Jeff Colgan, a political science professor and Director of the Climate Solutions Lab the Watson Institute for Public and International Affairs at Brown University, told me last month, during which the US and Iran were largely in the same place regarding control of the strait, the Trump administration’s poor planning and foresight to the lasting impacts of their bombing campaign with Israel has brought us to this situation.

More than 3,000 people in Iran have been killed as of April 9 and Iran’s “backs are to the wall”—they have no other realistic option to defend themselves, especially as the US has intervened in Iran’s oil trade since the 1950s.

The Trump administration has returned to what Colgan calls “petro-imperalism,” interventionist policies that not only affect Iran but have also led to the recent attacks on Venezuela.