Wednesday, April 15, 2026. Chump claims war may be winding down, Americans struggle to manage with inflated prices from the war, NYT does a deep dive in Homeland Security, Kristi Noem's work is under examination, Pam Bondi skips her deposition before the House Oversight Committee, Melania's speech last week appears to have been prompted by a former friend announcing on social media that she was going to spill, and much more.
Most
Americans still think their taxes are too high, according to recent
polls, even after last year’s tax law fulfilled several of President
Trump’s tax-related campaign promises.
In fact,
a new Fox News poll indicates people are more upset about taxes than
they were last year. The findings from the survey, which was conducted
in late March, are another sign that Americans are on edge about their
personal finances as the U.S. experiences a spike in inflation and
sluggish economic growth. Other polling finds that frustration goes
beyond personal tax obligations, with many believing that wealthy people
and corporations are not paying their fair share, while others worry
about government waste.
And why wouldn't they be on edge about personal finances? Paul Wiseman (AP) reports,
"U.S. wholesale prices surged last month as the Iran war drove up the
cost of energy. The Labor Department reported Tuesday that its producer
price index -- which measures inflation before it hits consumers --
rose 0.5% from February and 4% from March 2025. The year-over-year gains
was the biggest in more than three years. Energy prices surged 8.5%
from February." Tristan Bove (FORTUNE) notes Chump's
tariffs have hit all fifty states, "As farmers have faced higher costs
for livestock feed, fertilizer, and machinery, those higher costs now
appear on grocery store shelves across the country as food inflation,
according to the study."
“Stagflation”
is the phenomenon that dare not quite speak its name, but will soon
perhaps stalk the Earth. Crucially, that depends on how long the Iran
war lasts, and the skill of central banks and national treasuries, but
it could easily become an extremely uncomfortable reality in the coming
months.
Given that the United States is the
IMF’s major “shareholder”, and its irascible president is known to take
critical remarks personally, the IMF avoided mentioning Donald Trump by
name. But we all know who is to blame for this catastrophe – the
president, with his illegal, unplanned and unnecessary war.
The
IMF’s list of industrial casualties from this war is a long one. The
Gulf economies, which had in recent decades become a new hub for global
growth (and tax avoidance), are the hardest hit, for obvious reasons.
But, in the broader sense of their vast reserves of money and natural
resources, they can afford it. As with the spike in commodities prices
that followed Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, it is the
poorer people in Africa and Asia who will find the struggle to survive
even harder.
The emerging economies of East Asia, which rely
so heavily on the Middle East for their oil and gas supply, and for many
raw materials, will also suffer a slowdown, having already borne the
brunt of Mr Trump’s tariff war. China, in particular, will see growth
drop to its lowest in three decades – around 4.5 per cent. While
enviable by European standards, that is insufficient to sustain jobs
growth for the rising generation.
The advanced
economies will also suffer from the disruption to trade and investment,
and the cost-of-living crisis will intensify once more – including in
the United States. President Trump’s “hottest nation in the world” will
cool, even if its fossil-fuel providers enjoy a windfall.
And yet Chump's war of choice on Iran continues. Ben notes the latest this morning on MEIDASTOUCH NEWS.
In a Wednesday morning interview with Fox Business, Trump said the war with Iran was "very close" to ending.
"I view it as very close to being over," Trump told anchor Maria Bartiromo.
Trump has repeatedly suggested the war is nearing an end without offering a clear timeline.
The
latest developments came as the International Monetary Fund warned
Tuesday that the global economy could be heading toward a recession
triggered by the war.
The velocity at which President Trump’s war on Iran has spiraled out of control is unsurprising.
History
neither repeats nor rhymes, but patterns flash like neon signs in the
recent U.S. experience in the Greater Middle East. The combination of
underestimating the enemy, overestimating one’s own power, and
altogether ignoring the need for a clear definition of victory leads to
escalation with no end in sight.
The president
raced to the top of the escalatory ladder, threatening to destroy
Iranian civilization on April 7. Mercifully, he backed down and offered a
ceasefire, leading to a single day of peace talks in Pakistan. Already,
however, Trump is ordering the U.S. Navy to blockade of the Strait of
Hormuz and is reportedly weighing the resumption of limited air strikes.
The
United States was supposed to have learned these painful lessons after
the long nightmare in Vietnam. Despite serious doubts in his own mind
and among his chief advisers that victory was attainable, President
Lyndon B. Johnson sank his legacy in the jungles of Southeast Asia.
The
Homeland Security deputy secretary who was on the outs late last year
is back in the department following Kristi Noem’s firing.
Troy Edgar is serving in the same role under Secretary Markwayne Mullin, Politico reported on Monday.
Edgar
was sworn in last March, but his working relationship with Noem
deteriorated late last year, one Trump administration official and a
former DHS official told the outlet. The ex-DHS official said Edgar had
essentially been “ousted.”
In January, Donald Trump nominated him as ambassador to El Salvador, but that nomination has now been withdrawn.
“The
Admin is withdrawing Troy’s nomination and the withdrawal is expected
to be transmitted to the Senate today,” a second administration official
told Politico. “Troy never resigned from his DHS position so he was
able to return.”
Acting DHS Secretary Lauren
Bis told the Daily Beast in a statement: “DHS is fortunate to have
Deputy Secretary Troy Edgar continue in his role. He brings valuable
knowledge of the Department from the President’s first term when he
served as DHS’ Chief Financial Officer. He will play an integral role in
helping to make America safe again.”
The
main engine of Trump’s enforcement campaign is the Department of
Homeland Security. To understand how the agency has transformed, we
interviewed more than 80 former and current D.H.S. employees, as well as
officials in the Justice Department, which oversees immigration courts.
Many of them supported increased enforcement but criticized the
administration’s execution, aspects of which they characterized as
chaotic, dangerous and ineffective.
Career
employees described experiencing a frustrating sense of whiplash as
immigration policy has swung back and forth between Republican and
Democratic administrations. The root of the problem, as they see it, is
the failure of Congress over many decades to pass new laws that address
today’s realities. In February, the Department of Homeland Security shut
down after Congress failed to reach a deal on Democrats’ proposed
changes to enforcement tactics.
D.H.S. policies
bar employees from speaking to the news media without authorization.
Some of our sources spoke on the condition of anonymity because they
feared retribution from the administration. We corroborated their
descriptions of specific incidents with colleagues, contemporaneous
notes and court documents. Miller, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne
Mullin, former Secretary Kristi Noem and other agency leaders declined
our requests for interviews. We also sent the department detailed
questions.
It
amounts to a sweeping indictment of the agency under Noem, 54, who was
fired by Donald Trump on March 5 after a controversial 14-month run. As
the Daily Beast has reported, Trump’s aides had wanted her gone for
months before he finally acted, with the final straw reportedly being
her insistence, under oath, that he had personally signed off on her
$220 million vanity ad campaign.
The hits in the
Times feature come thick and fast. A former ICE field director
describes how Trump’s deputy chief of staff and immigration czar,
Stephen Miller, told a room full of agency chiefs that targeting lists
were irrelevant. “There is no list,” Miller said, according to the
Times. “Everyone is fair game.”
One former
senior ICE officer says that when agents fatally shot unarmed
Minneapolis mother Renee Nicole Good on Jan. 7, 2026, Noem cleared the
shooting as justified within an hour, before any investigation had taken
place. The officer says the exoneration’s speed sent a message to
agents in the field that they could “push the limits.”
The
testimony about Noem’s arrival at the agency is withering. A former
associate counsel at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services recalls
her first DHS town hall, at which she entered to the theme song “Hot
Mama,” spoke for a few minutes, took no questions, and left. “It felt
like a South Park moment,” he told the Times.
An immigrant child detained by ICE with her family in Texas nearly died before receiving medical care.
The New Yorkerpublished
a long article Monday about the medical neglect of children under
Trump’s draconian immigration crackdown, and the story highlights
Amalia, who was detained by ICE with her parents and sent to Texas’s
Dilley Immigration Processing Center in December when she was only 18
months old.
At the time, Amalia was a healthy toddler with no known issues.
The water at Dilley smelled strange, so her parents, Kheilin Valero
Marcano and Stiven Arrieta Prieto, bought bottled water at the center’s
commissary for her, despite having no income in detention. (The article
noted that nonprofit organizations who work on immigrants’ rights, such
as Human Rights First and RAICIES, have found that families detained at
Dilley say the water there is “unclean, foul-smelling, and causes
stomachaches.”)
Marcano also said that one child
found a bug in her food in the facility’s cafeteria, leading other kids
not to want to eat. Not long after that, children in the facility began
to fall sick, including Amalia. In January, Amalia developed a high
fever, and at the facility’s clinic, Amalia was given ibuprofen and her
parents were told the fever was “good, because it means she’s fighting
off a virus.”
But after two weeks, the fever persisted, and Amalia started
vomiting and having diarrhea. Going back to Dilley’s medical clinic
didn’t help, as Marcano told The New Yorker
she waited in line on eight different occasions without her concerns
being addressed. Marcano at one point gave Amalia a cold bath to try to
lower her temperature, only for her daughter to pass out. She went to
the clinic and shouted, “Are you going to watch my baby die in my arms?”
Yesterday was April 14th, the day Pam Bondi was supposed to be deposed by the House Oversight Committee. She did not show. SCRIPPS NEWS SERVICE notes:
Pam
Bondi could face contempt proceedings if she does not testify before
the House Oversight Committee as part of its investigation into the
federal handling of records related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey
Epstein.
Bondi did not appear for a scheduled
deposition Tuesday, prompting accusations from lawmakers that she is
evading a lawful congressional subpoena.
The Democrats on the House Oversight Committee issued a statement yesterday:
Washington,
D.C. — Today, Rep. Robert Garcia, Ranking Member of the House Committee
on Oversight and Reform, released the following statement after former
Attorney General Pam Bondi missed the scheduled date of her deposition
before the Oversight Committee. Pam Bondi is attempting to evade a
lawful bipartisan subpoena the Committee issued last month. The subpoena
was issued following a bipartisan vote supporting a motion by Rep.
Nancy Mace to subpoena, “the Honorable Pamela Jo Bondi,” and not just
the Attorney General.
“Pam Bondi is evading a
lawful congressional subpoena by failing to appear before the Oversight
Committee for a deposition about the Epstein files and the White House
cover-up. This subpoena applies to her regardless of her title. She must
appear before the Committee, and if she continues to ignore the law,
Oversight Democrats will move forward with contempt proceedings
immediately. We will fight until there is true accountability and
justice,” said Ranking Member Robert Garcia.
###
Bondi's not the only person garnering attention for The Epstein Scandal.
Even
in the UK, they're talking about -- and making fun of -- Melania Chump
and her claims to have not been close to Epstein and Maxwell.
President Trump said Friday that he had
known his wife wanted to speak about Jeffrey Epstein at some point, and
that he “thought she had a right to talk about it,” even if he had not
known what exactly she planned to say.
“It doesn’t bother me,” Mr. Trump said in a brief telephone interview, referring to the remarks Melania Trump made from the entrance hall of the White House a day earlier.
“I didn’t know what the statement was,” he said, “but I knew she was going to make a statement.”
And
she did. And it did not work out how she planned if her plan was to
draw a clear line between herself and Epstein and Maxwell. Jude Cramer (FAST COMPANY) notes:
If the first lady’s associations with Epstein had recently reentered
the headlines, her speech might have been understandable. But instead,
her statement left many scratching their heads and pointing at her and
her husband’s proven connections to Epstein, particularly the two men’s
friendship in the 1990s.
It also brought renewed attention to the infamous birthday message and lewd drawing
allegedly left for Epstein by Donald Trump in 2003, which read, “A pal
is a wonderful thing. Happy Birthday—and may every day be another
wonderful secret.” The president has denied writing the message and sued
The Wall Street Journal’s parent company for defamation after the outlet reported on the letter.
A former model who’s flown on Jeffrey Epstein’s private jet and has
close ties to President Donald Trump’s orbit warned late Saturday that
“the truth will come out” after reportedly threatening to “tear down the entire system” by revealing insider knowledge.
That woman is Amanda Ungaro, a former Brazilian model, former ambassador to the United Nations and ex-wife of Paolo Zampolli, Trump’s special envoy and longtime friend. The New York Times reported last month that Zampolli successfully pushed Trump in 2025 to deport Ungaro, then his ex-wife.
Now, Ungaro is vowing revenge.
“Now it’s war,” Ungano told the Spanish news outlet El PaĆs in its report published Saturday night.
“We’ll
see who wins. I kept quiet for years, and that’s why people are judging
me. ‘Why are you speaking out now?’ they ask. ‘Because the guy wouldn’t
let me live in peace!’”
Last week, an account on social media apparently belonging to Ungaro issued a series of threats directed at First Lady Melania Trump, vowing to “expose everything I know.” The threats were later suspected to be the potential motivation for the first lady’s surprise statement last week in which she denied having had a relationship with Epstein.
Amanda Ungaro? When Melania made her statement last week, many said she
was acting like someone trying to get out ahead of some news that would
be breaking. It appears to have broken. QUEERTY notes:
It all starts with a story in the New York Times about
a longtime Tr*mp friend who asked ICE to detain the mother of his child
so he could win a custody battle that flew under the radar recently.
Paolo
Zampolli, a former modeling agent and current presidential envoy,
reached out to a top ICE official when he learned his ex, Amanda Ungaro,
had been arrested on fraud charges in Florida.
Ungaro
first arrived in New York as a 17-year-old model on Jeffrey Epstein’s
plane in 2002. Later that year, she met Zampolli at a Manhattan night
club. They entered into a relationship, had a kid together, but never
married, and eventually broke up in 2023.
According
to documents, Zampolli told the ICE agent that Ungaro was in the
country illegally, and asked if she could taken into custody, hoping her
detainment would help him win custody of the couple’s teenage son.
“The
[ICE] official, David Venturella, promptly called the agency’s Miami
office to ensure that ICE agents would pick up [Ungaro] from the jail
before she was released on bail,” reports the Times.
OK, but what does this have to do with Melania?
Well,
Zampolli is credited with bringing the future FLOTUS to the United
States when she was a model in Slovenia, as well as with introducing her
to Tr*mp at the Kit-Kat Club in 1998, a story that she referenced
Thursday.
[. . .]
Then
this week, Ungaro–or at least someone claiming to be her–started
posting veiled threats towards Melania and fired AG Pam Bondi.
Though Ungaro doesn’t directly reference Epstein, the implication is apparent, especially after Melania’s remarks yesterday.
On top of that, Ungaro apparently taped an interview with a TV station in Spain that’s slated to air this weekend.
Let's wind down with this from Senator Elizabeth Warren's office:
Washington, D.C. — As President Trump’s war in Iran
drives up food costs for American families and small businesses, U.S.
Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Minority Leader Schumer (D-N.Y.)
led a group of four senators in pressing the Department of Justice (DOJ)
and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to crack down on food and
agriculture companies engaging in grocery price fixing. The senators
pressed the administration to lower costs for Americans by taking action
to stop anticompetitive practices in the food supply chain and
predatory pricing behavior, including breaking up illegal monopolies.
Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Bernie
Sanders (I-Vt.), and Peter Welch (D-Vt.) signed onto the letter, which
comes as oil, fertilizer, and other costs continue to surge as President
Trump’s war in Iran continues into its seventh week — making the need
for action even more urgent.
In December 2025, President Trump issued an executive order
purportedly aimed at investigating “price fixing and anti-competitive
behavior in the food supply chain.”
“[T]he Administration has yet to take any meaningful action to tackle
consolidation and bring down food and farm input prices, which continue
to squeeze farmers, small businesses, and consumers…Now, more than
ever, it is time for the Administration to get serious about addressing
these problems,” wrote the senators.
Despite President Trump’s promises to bring down prices “on Day One,”
Americans saw their grocery bills rise faster than overall inflation
last year, leading them to pay an average of $310 more for groceries compared to 2024.
The closure of the Strait of Hormuz due to Donald Trump’s illegal war
in Iran has effectively halted the shipment of one third of global
fertilizer supplies, leading to higher fertilizer prices for farmers
that are expected to be passed on to consumers in the form of higher
grocery prices.
Instead of working to lower costs, the Trump administration has
undermined antitrust enforcement in the food and agricultural
industries, including by forcing out the DOJ’s top antitrust official
and closing the FTC’s investigation into surveillance pricing even after
an initial report found that retailers frequently use people’s personal data to tailor prices for goods and services.
“Excessive consolidation and anticompetitive practices by dominant firms are also major drivers of these price increases,” wrote the senators.
Consolidation in the fertilizer and seed markets, which are similarly
dominated by just a handful of companies, are also driving up prices
for farmers and American families. Giant food retailers and suppliers
continue to engage in exclusionary contracting practices (such as
slotting fees, category captain arrangements, and volume-based rebates)
and discrimination.
The senators called for the DOJ and FTC to take the following
specific actions to take on retailers’ and suppliers’ anticompetitive
practices:
Crack down on violations of antitrust laws by giant corporations in
the meatpacking, seed, fertilizer, and farm equipment sectors, including
by breaking up these dominant companies;
Scrutinize and, where appropriate, block anticompetitive mergers and acquisitions in the food and agricultural sectors; and
Issue enforcement guidance on potential violations of the
Robinson-Patman Act and investigate and take enforcement action where
merited.
The senators also called on the FTC to:
Pursue rulemaking and enforcement action to tackle exclusionary contracting practices by corporations; and
Reopen its investigation into surveillance pricing and new rules and
enforcement actions to address exploitative surveillance and dynamic
pricing practices.
The lawmakers pressed for answers by April 27, 2026.
