April 16, 2026

02b U.S. Politics – Left

Blurb:

A psychotherapist has explained Donald Trump’s recent controversial actions are driven by his need for stimulation, visibility and control of narrative rather than institutional restraint

President Donald Trump speaks to members of the press before boarding Marine One (Image: Getty Images)

A psychotherapist has exposed the grim motivation behind Donald Trump’s series of erratic actions throughout his presidency.

In recent weeks, he’s said Norway are responsible for him not winning the Nobel Peace Prize, overseen a major US military operation capturing Venezuela’s president, and unveiled proposals for a government-enforced ban preventing college football matches clashing with the annual Army-Navy fixture.

Blurb:

Democrats are launching a new effort to impeach Donald Trump as they claim the president is “mentally unwell.” Insisting the US president is “putting all of our lives at risk”  Congresswoman Yassamin Ansari, Representative for Arizona’s Third Congressional District, issued a scathing attack on X.

Congresswoman Ansari said: “The president of the United States is extremely mentally ill and it’s putting all of our lives at risk. The 25th Amendment exists for a reason—we need to invoke it immediately.” The tweet prompted thousands of comments, one X user said: “Him and the rest of his administration need to be impeached and removed.”

Blurb:

AMERICAN forces have seized a seventh oil tanker linked to Venezuela as President Donald Trump ramps up his campaign to choke off illicit crude exports from the country.

US Southern Command said the Motor Vessel Sagitta was boarded and taken under control “without incident” in the Caribbean after operating in defiance of Trump’s quarantine on sanctioned ships.

Blurb:

Tuesday on MS NOW’s “The Beat,” former White House special counsel Ty Cobb claimed President Donald Trump had “dementia.”

Cobb said, “I suspect one of the key guardrails this week, where I hope there is vigorous debate is with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the military over what Trump intends to do in Greenland. You know, today, he said he wouldn’t take, force off the table. They asked him how far he was prepared to go. He said, you’ll find out. You know, those are not the comments of a rational human being and certainly not presidential at all. Likewise yesterday you had the clearly deranged, demented and insane note that he sent to the to the leaders of Norway saying that because Norway, which has no control over the Nobel Peace Prize, hadn’t given it to him that he was free to disregard peace and very interested in Greenland. You know, I don’t think there’s anybody outside of the United States who believes that Trump is sane.”

Blurb:

Blurb:

 

Trump’s Greenland obsession didn’t emerge from nowhere. Behind the rhetoric sits a constellation of tech billionaires eyeing the island’s mineral wealth and regulatory vacuum, ZNetwork reports.

KoBold Metals, an AI-powered mining company backed by Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Sam Altman, raised $537 million in early 2025 to hunt for copper, cobalt, nickel, and lithium — minerals critical for AI data centers and batteries. — Read the rest

The post Behind Trump’s Greenland obsession: tech billionaire mineral hunger appeared first on Boing Boing.

Blurb:

The White House notified reporters that Donald Trump would be speaking at the press briefing to discuss his accomplishments during the first year of his second administration.

Any other president might have issued a statement or gathered reporters for a press conference. Trump spent nearly two hours torturing the world with his broken and depleted mind.

This is a sample of what Trump showed the world as he read from a book to reporters and held up made up wanted posters of immigrants:

These are rough characters. These are all criminal, illegal aliens. Set. In many cases, they’re murderers, they’re drug lords, drug dealers. They’re the mentally insane. There’s some of them who are brutal killers. They’re mentally insane. They’re killers, but they’re insane. These are just in Minnesota and California.

It’s worse. In other states it’s worse. No, Minnesota, the crime is incredible. The financial crimes are incredible. And the problem is because of the agitators and insurrectionists, whatever you want, troublemakers, but they’re paid agitators and insurrectionists. Nobody talks about the fact that $19 billion at a minimum is missing in Minnesota, given to a large degree by Somalians.

Blurb:

 

Former Attorney General Eric Holder spoke at the National Action Network event for Martin Luther King Jr. Day on Monday and said that there is a concerted effort to re-segregate America.

In the clip, which you can watch below, Holder invokes every anti-Trump and anti-ICE talking point you can imagine in under three minutes, but it is his remarks on re-segregation that truly boggle the mind.

Blurb:

Less than three weeks after Zohran Mamdani’s rousing inauguration speech, his supporters are expressing concern over his administration’s first major compromise: the reappointment of Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch, an architect of the New York Police Department’s repressive surveillance policing apparatus who has shown a willingness to work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Opponents of Tisch’s role in the administration have been vocal since the decision was made to reappoint her on Nov. 19. In early December, a coalition of more than 120 organizations called on the mayor-elect to “drop Tisch,” citing a range of issues “from New York to Palestine.” They were joined by the Association of Legal Advocates and Attorneys – UAW Local 2325, representing over 3,500 legal services workers in the New York City metro area, which published a statement urging Mamdani to “drop Tisch immediately.”

Blurb:

Humans are using more water than Earth can support, with many water sources already damaged beyond repair, a report from the United Nations found

Humans use more water than the planet can support, entering an era of “global water bankruptcy,” a new report from the United Nations warns. Almost 75 percent of the world’s population now lives in countries that are experiencing significant water insecurity, according to the report.

Rivers, lakes, wetlands and other water sources are already “damaged beyond realistic prospects of full recovery,” the report states.

The report compares the situation to a bank account going into the red: humans are using more water than our planet can produce and using more water that is stored in sources such as glaciers, wetlands and aquifers.

Blurb:

Kendra Pierre-Louis: For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, I’m Kendra Pierre-Louis, in for Rachel Feltman.

Over the past couple of weeks oil—specifically, Venezuelan oil—has been all over the headlines.

It started late on January 2, when President Donald Trump ordered U.S. military forces to enter Venezuela and capture the country’s president, Nicolás Maduro, which they did early the next morning. Last week the country’s interior minister said the action killed 100 people.

Blurb:

 

At least a half-dozen states applied to be in the early nominating window for 2028’s Democratic presidential campaign, kicking off a contentious battle for securing an influential perch inside the primary calendar.

The usual suspects — New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina and Michigan, who made up the early states in Democrats’ 2024 primary calendar, though not in the order set out by the Democratic National Committee — are all back, per their state parties. So is Iowa, hoping to reinsert itself into the process after it was bounced four years ago. Georgia also applied.

Blurb:

BEIJING — Faced with new global challenges, the leaders of China and Canada pledged Friday to improve relations between their two nations after years of acrimony.

Xi Jinping told visiting Prime Minister Mark Carney that he is willing to continue working to improve ties, noting that talks have been underway on restoring and restarting cooperation since the two held an initial meeting in October on the sidelines of a regional economic conference in South Korea.

“It can be said that our meeting last year opened a new chapter in turning China–Canada relations toward improvement,” China’s top leader said.

Carney, the first Canadian prime minister to visit China in eight years, said better relations would help improve a global governance system that he described as “under great strain.”

He called for a new relationship “adapted to new global realities” and cooperation in agriculture, energy and finance.

Blurb:

One Maryland lawmaker has a great idea: Ban Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents hired to enforce President Donald Trump’s deportations from ever getting jobs in state law enforcement.

“It says something about the morals of the person—the character of the person—if they see what’s happening on TV, they see what happening in the streets and say, ‘You know what? I want to join that,’” Democratic Del. Adrian Boafo, the bill’s sponsor, told The Washington Post

Good start, but I’d go even further.

Blurb:

A Virginia state delegate has introduced legislation that would bar the hand-counting of machine-readable ballots in most circumstances.

Delegate Marcia S. Price introduced HB 968 on January 13 which would prohibit ballots “from being counted by hand for any reason or purpose not specifically authorized by law.”

The legislation would amend the state code to add that, “In ascertaining the vote, the officers of election shall use ballot scanner machines to count machine-readable ballots and shall not count machine-readable ballots by hand for any reason or purpose not specifically authorized for by law.”

Blurb:

“CNN NewsNight” host Abby Phillip allowed a former Biden administration official to claim riots in Minneapolis were a “peaceful protest” Wednesday night.

The Department of Homeland Security confirmed in a Wednesday night post on X that an agent from United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) shot an illegal immigrant from Venezuela after being ambushed. Former Biden White House aide Daniel Koh claimed that the response in the streets of Minneapolis was “peaceful,” despite Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara saying crowds were engaged in “unlawful acts.”

Blurb:

Many media outlets slimed Dilbert comic creator Scott Adams after his death from cancer on Tuesday, labeling him “controversial” and “racist.”

The New York Times, for instance, pushed out a breaking news alert reading that Adams, who passed away on Tuesday, “made racist comments on his podcast.”

The Times obituary carried that attack on by portraying Adams, who announced his cancer diagnosis in May, as furious that he lost friends and opportunities because he supported Donald Trump.

 

Blurb:

President Donald Trump warned he may invoke the Insurrection Act to deploy U.S. military forces into Minnesota as violent protests flare around federal immigration enforcement in Minneapolis.

The Insurrection Act allows a president to send military troops onto U.S. soil to restore order during civil unrest. It was first used by President Thomas Jefferson in 1807 to stop an attempt to break off part of the American West and was last invoked by President George H.W. Bush during the 1992 Los Angeles riots.

Blurb:

It was probably no surprise that Rep. Ilhan Omar, arguably the most corrupt of Minneapolis’ Somali community, announced the Congressional Progressive Caucus has “adopted an official position” to defund Immigration & Customs Enforcement.

“Our caucus members will oppose all funding for immigration enforcement in any immigration enforcement bills until meaningful reforms are enacted to end militarized policing practices,” said the woman accused of marrying her brother to evade U.S. immigration laws. Omar’s message was praised by radical groups everywhere, many tied to the left’s “defund the police” movement amid 2020’s Black Lives Matter riots.

 

Blurb:

Former CNN host Jim Acosta furiously cursed over “CBS Evening News with Tony Dokoupil” stating “We love America” as one of its “five simple principles” during a Thursday episode of “I’ve Had It.”

“[W]e make no apologies for saying so,” the show’s X account posted on Jan. 2. Acosta suggested on the podcast that the statement should go without saying and used variations of the F-word five times in under one minute. (RELATED: Jim Acosta Invokes Trump’s Deceased Ex-Wife In Rant About Immigration Raids)

Blurb:

Scores of people are once again taking to their streets this weekend to protest the Trump administration’s ongoing offensive against immigrants and those who attempt to stand up for them.

More than 1,000 demonstrations are slated for Saturday and Sunday after federal immigration agents shot three people in the past week. On Wednesday, ICE agent Jonathan Ross shot and killed Renée Nicole Good in Minneapolis in her vehicle, and on Thursday US Border Patrol shot a man and a woman in a car in Portland.

“The murder of Renée Nicole Good has sparked outrage in all of us,” Leah Greenberg, co-executive director of Indivisible, one of the organizations spearheading the nationwide demonstrations, told Mother Jones. “Her death, and the horrific nature of it, was a turning point and a call to all of us to stand up against ICE’s inhumane and lawless operations that have already killed dozens before Renee.”

Blurb:

Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Speaker Mike Johnson voiced skepticism Tuesday on President Donald Trump’s move to temporarily cap credit card interest rates.

“I think that would probably deprive an awful lot of people of access to credit around the country,” Thune told reporters. “Credit cards would probably become debit cards.”

“That’s not something I’m out there advocating for — let’s put it that way,” he added.

Thune’s comments come after Trump posted on Truth Social that he was calling for a one-year cap of 10 percent interest on credit cards starting Jan. 20.

Blurb:

The Left is going to try and make the ICE shooting in Minnesota something more than it is, and they’re going to fail miserably at it. It’s not just that they’re liberal and that liberals are usually wrong about everything, but the facts simply take an axe to this narrative. Guest Julie Roginsky decided to toss the first pitch, and it was a bit outside.

The former Fox News liberal opted to claim that the American people might see this as a breaking point in so far as they view the incident involving Renee Nicole Good as someone who could be them. Good was shot and killed on January 7 after she accelerated her vehicle toward an ICE officer.

The local Democrats were off to the races with the ‘she was murdered’ narrative that imploded when the ICE officer’s cellphone footage was released. Good was a professional activist who had participated in previous activities to disrupt ICE raids. She trained others in that regard. She was not afraid, not was she just driving home. So, no, this is very avoidable, Ms. Roginsky. It was preventable—it’s called not driving your call into federal officers. Also, nothing has been adjuctated yet in court as Noah Rothman pointed out:

Blurb:

These are the best liberal media stories. The ones where the publication unintentionally exposes the opposite of what they’re trying to argue. Of course, The New York Times wanted to drum up some narrative about the Trump administration’s struggles with the courts. The funny part is a) Trump knew this beforehand, which is why his legal team is prepared to appeal all the things, and b) it showed that the lower courts are stacked with illiberal radicals, some of whom think they are the executive.

Twitchy had it first yesterday, and, well, have a laugh:

Blurb:

CBS’s host of The Late Show, Stephen Colbert, and ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel lamented that the Justice Department is “investigating the victims” of the Minneapolis shooting involving Renee Good and ICE agent Jonathan Ross. However, neither host provided their audience with the key detail that Good’s wife, Rebecca, told her to “drive, baby, drive” after Good herself was told to get out of the car.

Colbert certainly wasn’t interested in narratively inconvenient facts when he huffed, “Now, it’s not just a surge of goons. In order to justify the unjustifiable gunning down of an American citizen in her car, the Trump administration is trying to smear Renee Good’s family now. Reportedly, senior Justice Department officials have pressed for a criminal investigation into Good’s widow, which today prompted both six federal prosecutors in Minnesota to resign and the resignation of five senior prosecutors in the criminal section of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.”