Reason.com
Prohibition Didn't Stop Marijuana Use. It Stopped Marijuana Research.
Rescheduling marijuana will make it easier to study a drug that tens of millions of Americans already use.
Center Right
RealClearPolitics - Homepage
Can the Would-Be Revolutionaries Stop Subway Stabbings?
Center Right
Whoever figures out how to mobilize the folks fed-up with the current state of the city can make New York City great again.
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Found 8 stories
New York Post
An oil tanker navigates the Strait of Hormuz despite threats from Iran’s Revolutionary Guard
A Liberian oil tanker made its way out of the Strait of Hormuz on Thursday despite threats to shipping from Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard and using a new route close to Oman’s shore that has been promoted by a UN maritime agency.
Right
Bloomberg Politics
Sen. Cortez Masto: SAVE Act Would 'Rig' Election
Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, a Nevada Democrat and member of the Senate Banking and Finance Committees, reacts to President Trump's last-minute cancellation of a scheduled signing for a bipartisan housing bill as he pushes the SAVE America Act. She argues the SAVE America Act would disenfranchise voters and "rig" elections to the President's benefit. She speaks with Kailey Leinz and Joe Mathieu on the late edition of Bloomberg's "Balance of Power." (Source: Bloomberg)
Center
Axios
Americans say founders would give grim 250th report card: poll
Data: Gallup; Chart: Avery Lotz/AxiosBack in 2001, most Americans thought the Founding Fathers would be pleased with how our country turned out.Today, fewer than one in five agree, according to a recent poll.Why it matters: Few things unite Americans in its 250th year like their shared conviction — across party, age, race and income — that the country has let its founders down.By the numbers: More than three in four Americans (77%) say the signers of the Declaration of Independence would be disappointed by the United States we see today, the highest level of disappointment Gallup has ever seen.Just 19% say the founders would be pleased, down from 27% in 2013.Between the lines: Republicans (25%) are more likely than Democrats (13%) and Independents (21%) to say the founding fathers would be pleased. But in the 2026 and 2013 readings, the partisan gap flipped depending on who holds the White House: In 2013, with former President Obama in office, 42% of Democrats thought the founders would give a thumbs up, vs. just 12% of Republicans.Both the 2013 and 2026 sentiments were drearier than they were in 2003 and earlier, across political ideologies.Yes, but: On the sunnier side, Americans still largely think the country has succeeded at least a fair amount in achieving the ideals for which it was founded.20% say the country has succeeded a great deal, while 49% say it's progressed a fair amount.But that's still a smaller share than when Gallup first asked the question in 1976, the nation's bicentennial. Then, 77% said the country had succeeded a fair amount or great deal. After 9/11, an even greater share, 84%, said the same in 2002.The youngest age group polled (those 18 to 34) were less likely (8%) than their oldest peers (24%) to say the country has succeeded a great deal.The bottom line: At the turn of the century, Americans were far more likely than they are in the nation's semiquincentennial to say the founders would applaud the country their vision grew into. But despite that discontent at this point in time, Americans still see progress when reflecting on the founders' ideals. Methodology: Results are based on telephone interviews conducted by ReconMR May 1-17 with a random sample of 1,001 adults living in all 50 U.S. states and D.C. The margin of sampling error is ±4 percentage points at the 95% confidence level.Go deeper: America approaches 250 with its best days in doubt
Center Left
Alternet.org
Salty conservative can’t stop counting Trump’s 'swampy' metaphors
A conservative commentator says President Donald Trump’s algae-green renovations of the Reflecting Pool offer a slew of metaphors to define his entire presidency.“The reflecting pool is a microcosm of nearly everything that vexes people about the second Trump term,” wrote The Dispatch’s Jonah Goldberg on Wednesday. “We can start with the decision to ignore the usual rules and procedures to give a no-bid job to a contractor for the repair and paintwork. Trump said it would cost $1.8 million. The costs have grown nearly tenfold. To deal with the insurrectionist algae, he gave another no-bid job to a Mar-a-Lago crony, campaign donor, and convicted felon who looks like a villain from the old Dick Tracy comic strip.”Goldberg added that “The man who vowed to ‘drain the swamp’ of D.C.’s corrupt cronyism used figurative swampy means to deliver literal swampy ends.”Yet in addition to symbolically manifesting Trump’s failure to drain the swamp as he promised to do, Goldberg said that the “pool fiasco” also demonstrates Trump’s inability to deliver on what he promises.“A project Trump touted as proof of his genius and expertise becomes proof of unpatriotic enemies undermining him when it flounders,” Goldberg wrote. “Without any evidence, Trump claimed that the only reason the reflecting pool’s paint is peeling and algae blooming is because anti-American ‘vandals’ sabotaged it with a ‘300-foot long gash.’”Additionally, Goldberg noted that Trump’s baseless excuse for the Reflecting Pool’s problems — namely, that vandals sabotaged his renovations (a charge which ignores internal documents proving that the administration had a number of logistical issues during the construction project) — are as absurd as so many other things he has said during his administration.“How vandals evaded National Park Police, security cameras, and his own National Guard deployment remains unknown,” Goldberg said. “Never mind how they put a 300-foot gash in a paint job Trump described as, ‘So very strong. You couldn't, if you had a knife—I don't want to give anybody ideas—if you had a knife, you can't even cut it. So strong, so powerful.’”Goldberg also pointed to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s absurd attempt to defend Trump’s renovations.“If you look at Washington and Lincoln, these are two men that faced monumental tasks and stood up in historic fashion and delivered for the American people,” Hegseth said. “And, when you step back and look at 47 years of what Iran waged … there’s only one man, over the course of both presidencies, who has stood up and said they will never get a nuclear weapon.”Goldberg is not the only right-wing commentator to blast Trump’s Reflecting Pool controversy as emblematic of his presidency. Political commentator David Rothkopf said something similar earlier this month.“It’s turned into a tourist attraction in downtown D.C. for people to hate on Trump, right? They come down, and they reflect on what a bad president they’ve got,” Rothkopf told The Daily Beast’s Joanna Coles. “And then he’s like, ‘Holy mackerel, this is a mess. What are we going to do?’”He compared this issue to other Trump failed renovations.“Who defaced the Oval Office?” Rothkopf said. “Who destroyed the East Wing? Who put a giant claw on the South Lawn of the White House? Who is building a gilded ballroom for billionaires to dance in while Americans starve? Who is building an arch to honor himself? Who’s covering all the horse statues in Washington in gold leaf?”
Left
Washington Examiner
Trump says Iran has pledged no tolls through Strait of Hormuz, and that negotiations would end if otherwise
President Donald Trump claimed Iran pledged that it will not pursue any tolls or charges of any kind through the Strait of Hormuz, and that negotiations would end if it did. “Iran has informed the U.S. that, despite troublemaking Fake News reporting to the contrary, there are ‘NO TOLLS, NO INSURANCE COSTS, & NO OTHER […]
Center Right
Bloomberg Politics
IAEA Says ‘War of Words’ Won’t Stop Iran Nuclear Inspections
The international nuclear watchdog responsible for verifying Iran’s stockpile of near-bomb-grade uranium dismissed the conflicting signals from Tehran and Washington overnight and said it expects to resume full monitoring at some stage.
Center
Washington Examiner
What would happen if we balanced the budget?
If our citizens understood the dangers we are facing with our wild, out-of-control spending and the enormous advantages of a balanced or near-balanced budget, we might get support for fiscal sanity in Washington. We have no fiscal sanity today, and worse, the optimistic projections from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office show the situation getting much […]
Center Right