Speaker Johnson calls for redistricting Southern states before November

After the Supreme Court limited the Voting Rights Act, Johnson said states should consider redrawing House maps before the midterms.

New boundaries would help the GOP
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/04/30/speaker-johnson-redistricting/

New polling indicates that most Americans are opposed to Donald Trump’s vanity projects,
including his plans to reshape the look of Washington, D.C. and to put his name on U.S. currency

https://truthout.org/articles/new-poll-shows-americans-reject-trumps-plans-to-redesign-washington-dc/

US defense secretary Pete Hegseth’s attempt to put a positive spin on the ongoing US war on Iran was immediately challenged,

first by the ranking Democrat on the armed services committee, senator Jack Reed, who lambasted his “dangerously exaggerated” claims,

and then by a protester who shouted, “you’re a war criminal!”

A Reuters photograph of the protester from the activist group Code Pink showed that he stood up in the audience behind Hegseth and held a sign reading
“No War on Iran”,
as a colleague recorded and Capitol Police officers quickly converged on him.

That video, recorded and posted online by fellow activists from the group Code Pink, showed that the protester shouted at Hegseth, as he being bundled away by Capitol Police officers:

“You should be arrested. What you’re doing is despicable.
The American people do not want to go into this war.
We don’t want to fight a war for Israel!”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2026/apr/30/donald-trump-pete-hegseth-iran-war-oil-king-charles-latest-news-updates?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

The world is threatened by a
“suicidal” model of capitalism
that is leading to war, fascism and the potential extinction of humanity,
Colombia’s president has said,
as he convened 57 governments to address the climate crisis.

Gustavo Petro blamed fossil fuel interests for taking ever more desperate measures to prevent a transition to green energy.
“There is inertia in the power and the economy of this archaic form of energy
– fossil fuels – that lead to death.
Undoubtedly, that form of capital can commit suicide,
taking with it humanity and [other] life,” he said.

“The question that needs to be asked is whether capitalism can truly adapt to a non-fossil energy model.”

Colombians will head to the polls next month to elect a new leader,
with Petro, who was elected the country’s first leftist president in 2022, barred by the constitution from seeking a second consecutive term.
The former economist and guerrilla member said the world was in a perilous position:
“We are heading towards barbarism.
And barbarism is the prelude to, or the very essence of, fascism.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/apr/29/capitalism-colombia-climate-summit-gustavo-petro?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

California Is About to Set a Dangerous Precedent for Online Censorship

California lawmakers are fast-tracking A.B. 1709
—a sweeping bill that would ban anyone under 16 from using social media and force every user,
regardless of age,
to verify their identity before accessing social platforms.

That means that under this bill, all Californians would be required to submit highly sensitive government-issued ID or biometric information to private companies
simply to participate in the modern public square.
In the name of “safety,” this bill would destroy online anonymity,
expose sensitive personal data to breach and abuse,
and replace parental decision-making with state-mandated censorship.

A.B. 1709 has already passed out of the Assembly Privacy and Judiciary Committees with nearly unanimous support.
Its next stop is the Assembly Appropriations Committee, followed by a floor vote
—likely within the next week.

By banning access to social media platforms for young people under 16,
California is emulating Australia,
where early results show exactly what EFF and other critics predicted:
overblocking by platforms, leaving youth without support and even adults barred from access;
major spikes in VPN use and other workarounds ranging from clever to desperate;
and smaller platforms shutting down rather than attempting costly compliance with these sweeping bills.

California should not be racing to replicate those failures.
After all, when California leads
—especially on tech
—other states follow.

There is no reason for California to lead the nation into an unconstitutional social media ban that destroys privacy and harms youth
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/04/act-now-stop-californias-paternalistic-and-privacy-destroying-social-media-ban

On Monday Vegas will welcome crypto CEOs, Trump family members and administration officials and more than a few members of Congress for the
2026 bitcoin conference.

For those interested in what lawmakers are pledging allegiance to the industry, we’ve made a helpful guide:

https://therevolvingdoorproject.org/maga-reaffirms-allegiance-to-crypto/

ICE is attempting to build new detention centers across the country.

We must stop these modern day concentration camps.

https://gtfoice.org/

Amnesty International
and dozens of U.S. civil and human rights groups issued a
“World Cup travel advisory” Thursday,

warning tournament visitors of
“rising authoritarianism and increasing violence” in the United States
during Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration enforcement.

https://apnews.com/article/amnesty-international-world-cup-travel-advisory-df0893a26006ae6594dc39fac53a78e4

Nicolas Enrich's new memoir,
"Into the Wood Chipper: A Whistleblower’s Account of How the Trump Administration Shredded USAID",
is named after one of Elon Musk’s social media posts from that period,
when the South African billionaire wrote,
“We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper.”

Since its establishment in 1961,
USAID has saved the lives of tens of millions around the world by treating and preventing serious health issues such as HIV/AIDS, malnutrition, malaria and more.

By slashing the agency, the U.S. “pulled the rug out from under people around the world,” says Enrich.

“We broke promises to millions who were relying on USAID services,
and left them hanging out to dry.

We broke promises to governments and broke partnerships that will have lasting effects for years to come.”

https://www.democracynow.org/2026/4/16/usaid_whistleblower

Kangxi, the great 17th-century emperor of China,
owed his throne to smallpox.
His father had died of the disease at just 22 years old in 1661.
Kangxi, only 7 years old, had been chosen over his older brother
because Kangxi had already survived smallpox
—an epidemic that was cutting a scythe through the ruling elite.

Kangxi’s dynasty, the Qing, were Manchu, a steppe people who had conquered China in 1644.
They had no concept of germ theory,but they could observe that the Chinese, living in far more crowded settlements than the northern nomads, often got the milder form of smallpox when young.
Kangxi arranged for his whole family to be variolated, an early form of immunization in which healthy individuals were deliberately inoculated.
In 1681, he ordered the same for the Manchu armies, eventually immunizing more than 4 million troops and their relatives.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2026/04/23/pete-hegseth-pestilence-vaccine-mandates-disaster-military/

The Heritage Foundation,
author of the Project 2025 roadmap guiding the second Trump administration’s legislative agenda,
has a new policy platform chock-full of ideas that could steer mothers out of the paid workforce.

In January, the right-wing organization released a 168-page report called
“Saving America by Saving the Family: A Foundation for the Next 250 Years,”
which suggests that U.S. women have gotten a raw deal thanks in large part to contemporary feminists who, the group argues,
treat “marriage and motherhood as traps created by men, not gifts by God.”

Social benefits programs are also blamed for incentivizing “unwed childbearing” and making it possible for families to raise children without a male breadwinner.
Heritage’s solution?
Entice people into early marriages through a variety of individual policy prescriptions:
making college financial aid less available;
gutting social welfare programs,
including the subsidized child care, that families rely on;
and providing limited material benefits to those who procreate early and often.

https://truthout.org/articles/heritage-foundation-wants-to-save-the-family-by-further-undermining-child-care/

A group of Ecuadorian fishers have described how they were attacked in a double drone strike

and then detained at gunpoint by soldiers on a US-flagged patrol vessel,

in a rare first-hand account by victims of Donald Trump’s militarized campaign against alleged drug-trafficking boats off South America.

“We were just working, waiting for the last trawler to return,”
said Jhonny Sebastián Palacios, one of the fishers.
“Everything was perfectly fine.”

From nowhere, an explosion ripped through the boat.
“There was a sudden crash – boom!
It came from a drone,” he said.
The blast tore through the vessel, shattering glass, and injuring several crew members.
“I ran upstairs and saw the boat destroyed … The whole ship was stripped bare,” he said.

At least 178 people have been killed in US military airstrikes in the Caribbean and Pacific since the offensive began in September,
according to a tally by the Washington Office on Latin America (Wola).

The US has provided no evidence that any of the vessels were involved in drug trafficking,

and legal experts and rights groups say the attacks amount to extrajudicial killings

as they apparently target civilians who do not pose any immediate threat.

The White House insists the killings are lawful.
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2026/apr/21/ecuador-us-boat-strike-survivors?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other