Stack the Week

Another experiment

Welcome everyone to Stack the Week, another one of my journalism experiments.

Some of you may remember the Face the Nation Diary. Same instinct, new form. I think it’s probably best experienced as an audio product. (So just press play below to hear my office recording; don’t listen to the funerial AI voice of Substack.{

Please let me know what you think — and what you like and don’t like relative to the daily Stack Stories experiment.

A war declared victorious that still might have required wiping out a civilization, a peace deal that meant something different to every party that claimed to have won it, nine policemen sentenced to death for injuries they swore the victims caused themselves, an erased contempt of Congress conviction, a suppressed study showing the Covid-19 vaccine worked — the moon turns out to be the only reliable record of what actually happened.

So let’s take it day by day.

Monday, April 6

Iran:

The workweek started on Monday — about the only normal thing that happened this week. It was a day to mark the pause between presidential threats to Iran.

On Easter Sunday, President Trump posted:

“Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell — JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah. President DONALD J. TRUMP”

Madman or strategy? The week would offer clues. But when Monday cracked the skyline, we knew that whatever the president did he had played footsie with war crimes– the indiscriminate bombing of civilian targets.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth spent Easter differently — casting the rescue of a downed American airman as a resurrection narrative. The F-15E was “shot down on a Friday — Good Friday.” The pilot ejected and hid “in a cave, a crevice, all of Saturday” — Hegseth’s analog to the tomb. Then the airman was rescued, “flown out of Iran as the sun was rising on Easter Sunday.” “A pilot reborn.” Praying is one thing; conflating a military mission with Jesus’s mission, which was to save everyone. Even Iranians, is the departure here. Earlier in the war, Hegseth had asked Americans to pray for victory in the Middle East “in the name of Jesus Christ” — the Prince of Peace. The same Jesus.

Artemis

Secretary Hegseth was looking to the heavens. So were the rest of us — though for a different reason.

The four astronauts traveling aboard Artemis II flew farther from the earth than any other humans have traveled ever. Four people, not that different from you and me, experiencing what no other human in the history of humans has ever experienced.

The EPA Watch List:

We know the water filters can’t catch everything. But until Monday, the government wasn’t even measuring how much of what they can’t catch is in there. The Environmental Protection Agency added microplastics and pharmaceuticals to its official “watch list” — meaning the agency will now study how much of Johnny’s toy hammer or birth control medicine or heart meds is in the water supply, how harmful it is, and what, if anything, to do about it.

The College Data Injunction:

A federal judge blocked the Trump administration from forcing universities to hand over detailed admissions data on the race of their applicants.

The administration wanted the data to verify compliance with the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling banning race-conscious admissions. The judge ruled that the order went out without clear guidance on what schools were actually required to produce or how. The legal process for imposing new federal requirements exists precisely to prevent that kind of confusion — even when the underlying purpose is legitimate, you don’t get to skip the steps. The judge said: go back and do it right. Until then, schools don’t have to hand over anything.

SCOTUS: Bannon ruling.

Speaking of going back and undoing things…

Steve Bannon defied a congressional subpoena to testify about Donald Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election. A jury convicted him. He served four months. The Trump Justice Department then asked the Supreme Court to throw the conviction out entirely — not to relitigate the facts, but to make the whole thing disappear. The Court said fine.

This was a technical ruling. The justices didn’t say Bannon was innocent. They said the executive branch gets to decide which prosecutions to pursue, and if it wants to walk away from a finished case, it can. The conviction vanishes. The lower court ruling that produced it vanishes with it.

Here’s what else vanishes: the legal finding that “I was just following my lawyer’s advice” is not a valid defense for ignoring Congress. That argument failed at trial. But because the trial has now been erased, the argument is available again — for Bannon, or for anyone else who finds themselves in the same position.

The ruling doesn’t say you can defy Congress. It says that whether defying Congress has consequences depends on who’s in the White House.

As the Bannon conviction vanishes, the NYT reports that the DOJ is now investigating Cassidy Hutchinson (the key Jan 6 witness) for “lying to Congress.” If you defy a subpoena for the President, the conviction vanishes; if you testify against him, you get investigated by the Civil Rights Division.

India Death Penalty Ruling:

On a humid night in June 2020, inside a police station in southern India, a father and son named Jayaraj and Bennix were beaten to death with wooden batons. Their crime: a brief verbal spat with officers over COVID closing times. The judicial magistrate who signed their detention orders did it from a balcony, without looking at the men or their wounds. The police later claimed the pair had “rolled on the ground” to cause their own fatal internal injuries.

What broke the case open was a woman constable named Revathy. She had shared tea and shifts with the men who did this. She testified anyway.

On Monday, six years later, nine policemen were sentenced to death.

What holds the system together when it fails? Not the officers. Not the magistrate on the balcony. But the woman who decided she couldn’t live with what she knew.

The Mediterranean Shipwreck:

On Monday, rescuers searched for survivors after a boat from Libya capsized in the Central Mediterranean. 120 people launched, 32 were rescued, including two men filmed clinging to the overturned hull in the open sea where weather had crushed their vessel. The majority are feared dead, pushing the 2026 Mediterranean death toll toward a grim 1,000-fatality milestone in just over three months. Despite arrivals to Italy dropping 42% this year, the mortality rate has spiked. The true toll is likely higher due to “ghost shipwrecks”—entire boatloads that vanished without distress signals during mid-January’s Cyclone Harry. That storm alone is linked to 380 deaths, evidenced only by bodies washing onto the white-sand beaches of Southern Italy and North Africa.

Driven by intense fighting in Sudan, escalations in Afghanistan, and extreme poverty in Bangladesh and Pakistan, migrants continue to risk these crossings. However, as European governments tighten patrols and impound rescue ships —in one recent case leaving 44 people stranded on an offshore oil platform for five days—migrants are forced onto even more dangerous, unmonitored routes.

Tuesday, April 7

Iran

Tuesday — Power Plant Day, Bridge Day, as the president had named it — broke with Trump promising to wipe out Iranian civilization by 8 p.m.

“A whole civilization will die tonight” he threatened.

The United States launched more than 90 strikes on Kharg Island, Iran’s oil export hub, sending prices skyrocketing again. But the strikes raised a question the president hadn’t answered: he had already declared the war won. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth claimed the U.S. has had a “historic and overwhelming victory” that achieved “every single objective.” If that was true, why did a whole civilization need to die tonight? And if it wasn’t true — if victory wasn’t at hand as he’d claimed — why take his word about anything?

Ninety minutes before the deadline, he called it off.

The president thinks he compelled Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. The regime thinks that its threats to attack power plants and water-desalination facilities across the Gulf made Mr. Trump blink. .

The questions that will hang over this war for years were not changed by the pause: Was the threat real? Was military force the only answer? What was the objective — and did it change? What did it cost, in lives and missiles and global chaos? Is the world safer than it was?

Economic Impact of the War

Delta raised checked bag fees Tuesday, joining JetBlue and United, which did the same last week. American would follow Thursday. The reason is the same across all three: jet fuel costs have surged since the war began and someone has to pay for it. That someone is you.

Southwest, reading the room differently, announced it will soon let flyers check a case of wine for free when flying out of wine country. The program is called Sip and Ship. It starts April 24. The airline burning the same expensive fuel as its competitors has decided the move to make is: free wine.

Oil CEOs

Oil CEOs will have an easier time paying for an extra checked bag. The Wall Street Journal’s Tuesday headline reports: Oil CEOs Raked in Money From Trump’s Iran War Executives sold stock worth $1.4 billion in the first quarter as their companies’ share prices soared during the historic shock to global crude supplies.

Many of the sales were the result of pre-arranged trading plans, which would make the timing more coincidental than suspicious. Nevertheless: war was good business for some.

Farmers and Drought:

The Washington Post reported Tuesday: Epic winter drought creates a bleak situation for farmers — and your food. Nearly 60 percent of the U.S. was in drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. For some farmers life is doubly difficult. The sky won’t give them water, and the war in the Gulf just made it 70% more expensive to grow what they’d like to put in the ground because of the rising cost of fertilizer. In Vietnam, home to one of the world’s most productive agricultural regions, skyrocketing oil and fertilizer prices, driven by the war, have brought the rice industry to a near standstill, the New York Times Reports.

Labor Force Participation.

The share of working-age Americans either employed or looking for work dropped in March to its lowest level since 1977, outside of the pandemic years. A growing economy needs one of two things: more workers, or greater output per worker. When participation falls, you’re betting everything on the second option.

Two things are pulling the number down that don’t necessarily signal weakness: the Baby Boom generation is retiring, and lower immigration plus deportations have reduced the pool of people arriving to work. Among prime-age workers — 25 to 54 — participation remains near multidecade highs.

How does output per worker look? Productivity has been rising, but…

… the portion of those gains going toward wages has fallen to its lowest level since 1947. The economy is getting more efficient. The people making it more efficient aren’t seeing it in their paychecks.

Bessent and Powell

The idea that increased productivity is not leading to broad prosperity spoils what was once considered a solid bet in economics. Productivity increases, everyone wins. Bloomberg reported there was another sign of how this isn’t always so. Treasury Secretary Bessent and Fed Chair Jay Powell summoned several Wall Street chiefs on Tuesday to discuss a new model from Anthropic named Claude Mythos Preview. The men wanted to make sure the banks were aware of the cybersecurity risks that Mythos and similar A.I. models in the future could pose — and that the banks were safeguarding against them.

During Anthropic’ s testing, its in-house security team found that Mythos, its next new powerful offering, was capable of identifying and then exploiting vulnerabilities “in every major operating system and every major web browser when directed by a user to do so,” according to a blog post. The hope, according to Anthropic, is a narrow release will allow companies to use Mythos to find their own cybersecurity vulnerabilities before hackers do.

Mythos is so powerful one Anthropic employee said Mythos “should feel terrifying.”

Of all the items in this digest this may be the one that we remember as we’re standing in the smoldering rubble of our civilization.

ICE Shooting in California

On Tuesday, ICE officers shot 36-year-old Carlos Hernandez during a traffic stop in Patterson, California. DHS claims Hernandez, an alleged gang member wanted for murder in El Salvador, “weaponized his vehicle” against agents. However, his attorney contends Hernandez is a local laborer previously acquitted of the Salvadoran charges. Dashcam footage of the encounter—which shows Hernandez reversing and hitting a car behind him before veering away—remains under review by the FBI to determine if the car’s movements were an attempt to attack or a panicked response to being fired upon. Governor Gavin Newsom has launched a state-level investigation, as local protests highlight mounting tensions over federal enforcement.

GA Congress

Clay Fuller, a Republican endorsed by Donald Trump, won Tuesday’s special election for the Georgia congressional seat vacated by Marjorie Taylor Greene. However, the victory came with a significant political warning: Fuller’s 12-percentage-point margin over Democrat Shawn Harris represents a massive leftward swing compared to 2024, when Greene won by 29 points and Trump carried the district by 37. This 25-point shift from the presidential baseline marks the largest Democratic improvement in a special election since the start of 2025.

Across all congressional special elections in the 2025/2026 cycle, Democrats have overperformed their 2024 baselines by an average of 17.1 points. Since January 2025, Democrats have flipped 30 state legislative seats while Republicans have flipped zero. In 96 monitored state-level special elections, there has been an average shift of 5.6 points toward Democrats. In special elections this year, Democrats have retained about 38% of their 2024 general election turnout, while Republicans have only retained 28%.

Artemis Photography

On Tuesday the Artemis II crew became the first human beings to photograph the far side of the Moon — not the dark side, a misnomer, since it receives just as much sunlight as the hemisphere we see. It simply always faces away from Earth. The crew described what they saw as “islands of light” and “black holes.”

I learned from Dr. Kelsey Young, briefing from Earth for NASA that the best way to think about what the crew was looking at is to remember that the Moon is a witness plate — a permanent, unweathered record of the entire solar system’s history. No tectonic plates, no atmosphere, no erosion. Four billion years of asteroid impacts preserved on the surface, impacts that Earth long ago swallowed and forgot. The human eye catches what cameras flatten: subtle color variations, the texture of ancient rock, the depth of a crater’s far wall — details that help scientists reconstruct the early development of Earth and the solar system. The Moon remembers what Earth erased.

They were also, in a more practical sense, scouting parking spots — providing the ground truth that will determine where Artemis III sets down when it lands.

DOJ v. Russia.

The Justice Department and FBI announced they had shut down a Russian military hacking operation that had secretly taken over home and small-business routers across the United States. Since 2024, Russian intelligence agents had exploited security flaws to hijack these devices — using ordinary Americans’ internet connections to steal passwords and private emails from government and military targets. They were, in effect, living in thousands of American homes without anyone knowing.

This is the same unit responsible for the 2016 hack of the Democratic National Committee and attacks on infrastructure across the globe.

Usually the FBI issues a warning. This time the threat was significant enough that they got a court order to break into the infected routers themselves, remotely wipe out the Russian settings, and harden the devices so the hackers couldn’t simply log back in.

Oh, and while you’re scratching your head about why the US seems so favorable to Russia, who is constantly trying to commit espionage, you can add this: According to a Ukrainian intelligence assessment, Russian satellites have made dozens of detailed imagery surveys of military facilities and critical sites across the Middle East to help Iran strike US forces and other targets.

Wednesday April 8

Iran

A day after the ceasefire, Israel launched its largest attack on Lebanon on Wednesday, killing at least 112 people and wounding 830 others. The Lebanese Health Ministry said the airstrikes hit Beirut without warning, killing more than a dozen medics. The Israeli military stated the operation targeted 100 Hezbollah command centers and military sites across the region.

Iran said Lebanon was part of Tuesday’s truce. Pakistani officials, who helped broker the deal, said so too. President Trump and Israeli officials said it was not. Vice President Vance said it was a legitimate misunderstanding. The Pakistanis pointed to the English-language framework, which mentions a “cessation of hostilities among all regional parties.” The U.S. argues that since Hezbollah is a non-state actor and not a signatory, the “parties” refers only to sovereign nations.

Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also claimed on Wednesday that Iran will surrender its uranium and end all enrichment. Tehran says it will not give up its right to produce uranium for energy, which was their position before the bombs started falling.

Wednesday I finally got around to the sweeping New York Times story by Maggie Haberman and Johnathan Swan detailing Trump’s decision to go to war. It painted a picture of a president convinced that the operation would be quick and decisive, encouraged at every step by the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who argued that Iran was ripe for regime change and that a joint U.S.-Israeli mission could finally bring an end to the Islamic Republic.

It’s a different argument than the one the administration has offered in public. That case has been built on the idea Iran was an imminent threat. The idea that the system of government would change entirely– the actual definition of regime change– either through a popular uprising or some other method was labeled “farcical,” by the CIA director, according to the Times. So far he has proved to be correct.

As Jim Geraghty of the national review points out, Hegseth said Iran had a “new regime.” The new Supreme Leader is the son of the old one, running the same system. Geraghty’s line is clean: a regime means a system of government, not just the particular guy in charge.

General Caine, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs appears to have been proved correct too. He worried, according to the New York Times reporting, that the conflict would drastically deplete stockpiles of American weaponry, which are not easily replenished and that Iran would block the Straight of Hormuz. The president decided otherwise. After the bombing started, the presdient told the public Caine had called the war “something easily won,” which is not supported by the reporting.

Economic Response

On news that the president had reached a truce with Iran, Oil prices fell Wednesday, while stock markets around the world jumped for joy.

No jumping at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issued an urgent advisory on Wednesday, warning that Iranian hackers are actively exploiting vulnerabilities in software used by U.S. water and energy utilities.

In related news, Reuters reports the FBI warned US state and local law enforcement of an elevated threat posed by Iran’s government to targets in the United States last month even as ‌the White House sought to downplay the likelihood of an attack.

DHS and Sanctuary Cities

Wednesday, the DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin said that customs officials may stop processing international arrivals at airports in “sanctuary cities” that refuse to co-operate with the Trump administration’s immigration-enforcement policies. This would force international flights and critical cargo to divert to cooperative states. The administration frames this as a necessary response to the DHS funding deadlock in Congress. Democrats have refused to fund ICE and CBP without scaling back aggressive enforcement tactics. The timing is particularly volatile: with six of the 11 U.S. host cities for the June World Cup located in targeted jurisdictions, the move threatens to create a logistical nightmare for hundreds of thousands of international fans.

Greece and Social Media

Greece became the latest country to ban children from social media. Under-15s will be blocked from sites such as Instagram and TikTok from next year. In a message on TikTok, Greece’s prime minister, said screen-time did not allow minds to rest. The Greek government specifically cited a recent study from the University of Athens showing a 30% spike in teen anxiety and sleep disorders over the last three years, which the Prime Minister used to frame the ban as a “public health necessity” rather than just a social policy.

Australian Special Forces Solider Convicted.

As a reminder, that wars are hell: Something called the Brereton Report, a four-year inquiry into Australian Special Air Service (SAS) conduct, found evidence of 39 murders of civilians and prisoners by (or at the instruction of) members of the Australian special forces.

In the highest-profile prosecution resulting from that report, Ben Roberts-Smith, a decorated Australian special forces veteran– holding the Victoria Cross (the highest award for gallantry)-- was charged with war crimes related to the killing of five unarmed Afghans in 2009 and 2012 during the Afghanistan war. In 2023 Roberts-Smith lost a landmark civil defamation case in which a federal judge ruled there was “substantial truth” to allegations that he murdered unarmed prisoners, including an instance where he kicked a handcuffed man off a cliff. The 2020 Brereton Report didn’t just find individual “bad apples”; it identified a “warrior culture” and a “blooding” ritual where junior soldiers were allegedly pressured by superiors to execute prisoners to achieve their first kill.

North Korea’s Sixth Missile Launch of the Year

North Korea fired multiple ballistic missiles on Wednesday, marking its sixth launch in 2026. Earlier in the week, Kim Jong Un’s sister, Kim Yo Jong, had praised South Korean President Lee Jae Myung for his “honesty” regarding civilian drone incursions, but the regime quickly pivoted back to hostility, deriding Seoul’s hopes for dialogue as “wishful thinking.” Regional experts believe the frequency of these tests, which include new solid-fuel technology and AI-linked systems, is aimed at perfecting a nuclear arsenal capable of overwhelming modern missile defenses.

Reuters reports that South Korea’s spy agency now believes North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s teenage daughter has been positioned as his successor, citing a recent public display of her driving a tank that was likely intended to dispel any doubts.

Wisconsin Supreme Court

Wednesday morning confirmed that liberal Judge Chris Taylor won her seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. a year ago Republicans lost a similar Wisconsin court race by 10 points. Tuesday it was 20. This win solidifies a liberal majority on one of the country’s most consequential state courts until at least 2030, creating a massive judicial “check and balance” against the Trump administration’s agenda in a pivotal swing state. The court is now positioned to decide the fate of Wisconsin’s 1849 abortion ban, union collective bargaining rights, and the state’s highly contested congressional maps.

Bondi Will Not Testify.

The abrupt removal of Pam Bondi as Attorney General has left a critical void in upcoming congressional proceedings, as she will no longer testify before the House Oversight Committee as previously scheduled. She had been subpoenaed to address allegations that she botched the release of millions of documents in violation of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, specifically by failing to redact victim names while protecting high-profile associates and shielding powerful figures from scrutiny. By removing Bondi just before her scheduled testimony, the administration has effectively shielded her from public questioning.

One person who will be testifying is Bill Gates, who is slated to appear on June 10.

U.S. Journalist Released

The Iran-aligned Iraqi armed group Kataib Hezbollah has released abducted US journalist Shelly Kittleson. In exchange, the Iraqi government agreed to free the detained KH members.

The “Grandmother Hypothesis” & Human Evolution

At a time of war, it is useful to learn that we may have survived as a species through cooperation and elder wisdom, not just combat.

Kristin Hawkes, a Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the University of Utah, delivered a lecture Wednesday on the Grandmother Hypothesis at the American Museum of Natural History. Hawkes has spent decades studying the Hadza hunter-gatherers and arguing that the real engine of human evolution wasn’t big-game hunting — it was grandmothers. Post-reproductive women foraging for food gave weaned children a reliable source of nutrition, which selected for longer lives, bigger brains, and the social instincts that define us. We didn’t evolve to fight. We evolved to need each other.

Flying Fish

Finally on April 8th, When Nate Wallick takes his kids tubing on the Illinois River near their home in Peoria, he makes them wear football helmets because of the flying fish. Go check out this story from the Wall Street Journal, you have to see it to believe it. When my colleague Annie Cohen suggested it to me I thought how good could the images be. I was wrong!

Thursday April 9

Iran

While the ceasefire was technically holding Thursday, Trump added a new layer of tension by warning Iran that he will order “large-scale attacks” if they don’t comply with his specific interpretation of the deal. The point of friction is the Strait of Hormuz: Iran is currently demanding that all vessels “seek permission” for transit and is attempting to impose tolls on oil tankers. Iran is reportedly demanding tolls of up to $2 million per ship paid in cryptocurrency for passage through the Strait.Trump counter-warned on Thursday that any attempt to “tax” the strait would be met with immediate force.

One of the observations in the New York Times reporting by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan Was that Vice President Vance had argued that a war in Iran could break apart Mr. Trump’s political coalition and would be seen as a betrayal by many voters who had bought into the promise of no new wars. Thursday evening, the President issued a 482-word attack on those former allies who had taken the position precisely as Mr. Vance had predicted.

Despite Vance’s skepticism about the war, he will lead the U.S. delegation at peace talks with Iran in Islamabad on Saturday. Trump’s adviser and son-in-low Jared Kushner, who has significant private business interests in the region, and White House envoy Steve Witkoff will also participate in the negotiations.

Britain, France, The EU, Germany and Spain condemned the Israeli strikes on Lebanon and demanded it be included in the ceasefire. He said he explicitly asked Netanyahu to “low-key it,” adding, “I just think we have to be sort of a little more low-key.” This is a significant pivot from his previous “finish the job” rhetoric and suggests he is trying to de-escalate the regional noise before Saturday’s talks. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday he had approved direct negotiations with Lebanon, to take place in Washington, D.C.

During the pro-forma session, Representative Chris Smith (R-NJ)—acting as Speaker pro tempore—literally gaveled the session to an end as Representative Glenn Ivey (D-MD) stood up to introduce the war powers resolution. By ending the session within seconds of opening it, Republicans prevented the resolution from even being read into the record, sparking “Shame!” chants on the House steps from Democrats who claim they have enough GOP support to pass it if a formal vote is ever allowed.

China Activity Picks Up

Two Taiwanese security officials told Reuters that China has deployed nearly 100 naval and coast guard vessels in and around the South and East China Seas this week — roughly double the usual 50-60 ships. One official called the buildup “very rare,” particularly because this time of year typically sees little Chinese naval activity. The other noted the timing: Washington is fixed on Iran, Taiwan’s opposition leader is visiting Beijing, and China appears to have done the math.

JD Vance in Hungary

Vice President JD Vance concluded a two-day visit to Budapest on Thursday, where he broke diplomatic norms by openly campaigning for Viktor Orbán’s re-election at a Trump-style rally. The five term, twenty year Prime Minister is a favorite among some American conservatives who view Orbán’s Hungary as a blueprint for subduing internal political enemies and reclaiming cultural institutions, but his model, labeled “illiberal democracy,” by Western critics, is facing its first serious threat at home. Ahead of Sunday’s April 12 election, Orbán’s party trails the opposition by as much as 10 points in recent polls. Vance used the platform to criticize the EU and frame the Hungarian leader, also a Putin ally, as a defender of Western civilization against a “small band of radicals” who wish to manage the “decline” of the West. His rhetoric took a sharp, culture-war turn, accusing Western critics of rejecting “fatherhood and motherhood” and practicing “institutional murder” via end-of-life planning. The visit underscores a deepening alliance between the Trump administration, Moscow, and Orbán’s Fidesz party—which remains hostile to Ukraine—marking a significant shift where American executive power is being used to bolster a foreign leader whose primary antagonism is directed at the European Union.

U.S. Fertility Rate Drops to New Low Again

If you meet a 30-year-old woman in America today, what do you think the chances are that she has a child? What do you think the chances were in 1978? For the first time, almost half of American 30-year-old women are childless — in 1976, it was 18 percent. The CDC reports Thursday that there were 3.6 million births in 2025, down 1 percent from 2024 and nearly 20 percent below where it was two decades ago. People are marrying later and less often; doctors report patients citing economic anxiety, climate change, and AI as reasons to wait or forgo children entirely. The cohort to watch is Americans born in the 1990s, now in their late 20s and early 30s, whose birth rate dropped sharply in their teens and has stayed low — some models suggest they would need an unprecedented surge of births in their late 30s and 40s just to catch up. A shrinking birth rate weakens the economy and strains a government system built on the assumption that future generations will cover the debts of the present one.

Oh and remember that Labor Force Participation report from Tuesday? Participation in the labor force for prime age women hit an all-time high of 78.1% in early 2026. Women are working in record numbers.

Selective Service Sign Up

The Selective Service System plans to automatically register eligible American men between 18 and 26 for a military draft by December. This hasn’t happened since 1973.

Now: what have I just told you? Not much. And I may have given you the impression that the military is reinstating the draft.

What’s actually happening is more incremental. For the last 46 years, it was your job to register within 30 days of your 18th birthday. If you didn’t, you were technically a felon. Men kept forgetting. The government is now just taking the responsibility off your plate. There has been no draft since 1973, and this is not one — an actual draft still requires an act of Congress and a presidential declaration of national emergency.

One thing that hasn’t changed despite years of attempts: the law still applies only to men aged 18 to 25. Several lawmakers tried to include women during recent defense bill debates. The proposal faces fierce opposition from conservative lawmakers. Opponents argued that drafting women would “destroy the family” or that the military should focus on lethality rather than “social engineering.”

CDC Report on COVID-19 Vaccine

Acting CDC Director Jay Bhattacharya has delayed a report showing the 2025-26 COVID-19 vaccine halved hospitalizations for healthy adults. Though scheduled for March 19, the study was halted over “methodological concerns.” CDC scientists argue the methods are standard, fueling claims that data is being suppressed to align with HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s skepticism toward vaccine benefits.

On Monday, a revised charter for the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) was published in the Federal Register. In March, a federal judge had blocked an earlier set of ACIP appointments backed by RFK Jr., finding that many of the proposed members did not meet the qualifications set out in the existing charter. The new charter updates and broadens the description of acceptable expertise for committee members, adding areas such as toxicology and biostatistics to the list of relevant disciplines. Supporters say the changes will diversify the committee’s perspectives and better reflect the range of scientific fields involved in vaccine policy, while critics argue that the revisions may open the door for Kennedy to nominate some of his previously rejected candidates under a more flexible standard.

Estrogen patch shortage

More than a million American women enter menopause each year. For decades, many avoided estrogen therapy because the FDA had attached a prominent safety warning to it. In November, the agency removed that warning. Patch use jumped 26 percent almost immediately.

Now there aren’t enough patches. CVS says manufacturers have been unable to deliver sufficient quantities in recent weeks. Major makers — Amneal, Zydus, Sandoz, Noven, Viatris — all have doses in shortage.

Melania and Jeffrey.

Pam Bondi isn’t testifying about Jeffrey Epstein but there was surprise testimony Thursday from Melania Trump. The first lady read a six minute statement in which she denied being a victim of Jeffrey Epstein’s or a witness to any of his crimes. She spoke behind the presidential seal, but didn’t mention the president, his innocence or repeat his claims that the investigation into the disgraced, predatory Epstein was just a hoax. Indeed, she said the victims deserved justice, something her husband has never said.

Friday April 10

Iran

Friday ended in a diplomatic deadlock as the U.S. and Iran traded threats over a crumbling ceasefire. In Islamabad, Vice President JD Vance arrived to lead negotiations, warning reporters that while the U.S. offered an “open hand,” they would not be “played.” He was met with immediate Iranian demands for a ceasefire in Lebanon and the unfreezing of assets as a prerequisite for talks.

On social media, President Trump labeled Iran’s actions “dishonorable,” specifically citing reports that Tehran is now demanding a “transit fee” paid in Bitcoin for ships crossing the Strait of Hormuz. Trump dismissed the move as “short-term extortion,” posting that Iran has “no cards” left to play.

The New York Times points out that with all the war talk and ceasefire fishtailing, lost in the madness is the story of the Iranian people, many of whom feel trapped: between their own leadership, which, according to Amnesty International, killed thousands of protesters in January, and Donald Trump, who went from promising that “help is on its way” to vowing to bomb Iran “back to the Stone Ages.” Imagine pushing your vital furniture to the middle of your apartment to stay away from the soon to be blown out windows and just waiting with no information. Roughly 99 percent of the country has been cut off from the internet since the first days of the war. Incoming international calls are blocked. “I feel as if we are not in control of our lives,” Yassi wrote in her diary, according to the Times “and none of the actors in this war, not the United States, not Israel, and certainly not the Iranian regime, care about the Iranian people.”

Difficult to Drone On.

President Zelensky confirmed Friday that Ukraine has deployed over 200 specialists to the Middle East, where they’ve been intercepting and destroying Iranian-made drones in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Jordan. Kyiv is trading expertise for equipment — securing energy aid and financial support while demonstrating that a $2,500 Ukrainian interceptor drone can do what a million-dollar Western missile does. Gulf states are paying attention: Saudi Arabia and the UAE are already exploring the Ukrainian model as their US-made stockpiles run thin.

There’s a catch. The small engines that power the best military drones are in short supply, which could constrain Ukrainian production and leave its own defenses exposed.

Hold that thought while you update your scorecard: Russia, a country the United States is currently treating as a partner, has been using its satellites to help Iran target American forces. Ukraine, a country the United States recently treated as a burden, is helping shoot down Iranian drones. If that section of the ledger looks messy, you’re not alone.

CPI

Friday new inflation numbers came out. If you’ve ever wondered why economists talk about core inflation excluding food and energy, this is the month to lock in on that jargon. Inflation was up. 3.3 % year over year. That’s as high as it has been since April 2024. You could imagine a market freak-out. But the number was pushed by a 10.9% surge in energy costs. Now, that’s real money to real people, so this is not good for those on an already stretched budget, but as a sign of the long-term inflation picture, the core inflation was below forecast, suggesting underlying inflation— despite Trump’s import taxes, has been contained. There even were even pockets of outright price declines, as medical care, personal care, and used cars and trucks all fell during the month.While energy spiked, grocery prices actually cooled. The index for “food at home” fell 0.2%, led by a 3.4% drop in egg prices.

China and Taiwan

Taiwan’s opposition leader, Cheng Li-wun, met with Xi Jinping in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People Friday — the first such meeting in over a decade. Both sides invoked “peaceful reunification” and the “1992 Consensus” — the deliberately ambiguous agreement that there is one China, with each side reserving the right to define what that means. It has held together because neither side has forced the question. Back in Taipei, President Lai Ching-te was simultaneously pushing a special defense budget to counter Chinese military pressure.

The Attack on Sam Altman

In a bizarre domestic story, a suspect was arrested after throwing a Molotov cocktail at the home of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in San Francisco. The device burned an exterior gate. The motive isn’t fully clear.

Artemis

And I learned this from listening to NPR’s Up First Friday morning:

The four Artemis II astronauts have spent nearly ten days looping around the moon and back. Getting home Friday night may be the hardest part. Reentry begins at 25,000 miles per hour, with temperatures at the heat shield reaching 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit — and that heat shield didn’t perform as designed on the uncrewed test flight, so NASA changed the approach: hit the atmosphere steeper and faster, which means a more violent entry but less time in it, as long as the angle is exactly right. Lead flight director Jeff Radigan: “We have to hit that angle correctly, otherwise we’re not going to have a successful reentry.” The whole sequence takes 13 minutes, six of which Mission Control spends with no contact with the crew. Parachutes slow them from 25,000 miles an hour to 20 for splashdown in the Pacific, where a recovery team will pull them out of the capsule and ferry them to the USS John P. Murtha. Mission pilot Victor Glover, who has been thinking about reentry since he was selected for the crew in 2023, calls it riding a fireball through the atmosphere.

Video Game Hirings

It all sounds like a video game, which is the dumb thing your parent says until you learn that the video game and reality line was long ago crossed, which is why To Fill Air Traffic Controller Shortage, F.A.A. Turns to Gamers, the new york times reports. They are welcomed for their hand-eye coordination, quick decision-making in complex environments and ability to remain focused on screens for hours on end. And those who live on Cheetos and Mountain Dew, are relatively inexpensive.

Arc de Trump

The Trump administration released designs Friday for a 250-foot triumphal arch to be built off Arlington Memorial Bridge, across the Potomac from the Lincoln Memorial. The arch, submitted to the Commission of Fine Arts — a federal design panel Trump has stacked with allies — features two eagles and a golden winged angel the president says is Lady Liberty. It bears a resemblance to the Arc de Triomphe.

The arch is framed as a celebration of America’s 250th anniversary. It is also the latest in a series of steps to remake Washington in his image: gold in the Oval Office, the Rose Garden paved over, the East Wing demolished for a planned 90,000-square-foot ballroom — that project currently halted by a federal judge pending congressional approval.

Whatever you may think of the Arch, it is our last item in this news roundup.

That’s the week. If you made it this far, thank you. Let me know what you think — what worked, what didn’t, what you’d like more or less of. And whatever you thought of it, at least you didn’t have to wear a football helmet.