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President Donald Trump is heading this week to two crucial swing states in this year’s midterm elections to highlight the tax cuts that Republicans in Congress passed, and which he signed into law, last year.He will visit Nevada on Thursday and Arizona on Friday. The stops follow Wednesday’s deadline for Americans to file their taxes with the IRS.Trump’s western swing comes as the GOP works to protect its razor-thin House and slim Senate majorities in the midterms, when the party in power typically faces political headwinds and loses congressional seats. The GOP also faces a challenging political climate fueled by persistent inflation, rising gas prices tied to what polls show is an unpopular war with Iran, and the president’s low approval ratings.But Republicans have for weeks spotlighted the tax cuts, which they insist will give them a political boost with voters in the midterms.TRUMP HITS THE ROAD TO SELL ECONOMIC WINS, AS REPUBLICANS BRACE FOR HIGH-STAKES MIDTERM SHOWDOWNIn an interview Wednesday on Fox Business’ “Mornings with Maria,” Trump touted the tax cuts, telling host Maria Bartiromo that “the refunds are really significant, and it makes it less complicated to do your tax return. Much less complicated.””People are getting refunds of $5,000, $8,000, $11,000 that they had no idea they were getting. It’s turned out to be better, as good or better than I said it would,” the president emphasized.The tax cuts were a key component of Republicans’ massive domestic policy measure, which passed almost entirely along party lines in the GOP-controlled House and Senate.FIRST ON FOX: GOP TAKES AIM AT DEMOCRATS FOR OPPOSING TRUMP TAX CUTSThe law, originally titled the One Big Beautiful Bill Act but rebranded as the Working Families Tax Cuts, is stuffed full of Trump’s 2024 campaign trail promises and second-term priorities, including extending the president’s signature 2017 tax cuts and eliminating taxes on tips and overtime pay. Trump will spotlight the tax cuts on Thursday at a roundtable discussion at the AC Hotel in Las Vegas. The city, a popular entertainment and gaming mecca, has an outsized population of service industry workers who rely on tips and overtime pay.EXCLUSIVE: HOUSE REPUBLICANS TARGET ‘VULNERABLE’ DEMOCRATS FOR VOTING AGAINST TAX CUTSWhite House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said the president on Friday will deliver remarks at a Turning Point USA event at Dream City Church in Phoenix.”You’ll hear a lot from the president about how his policies have benefited the American people,” Leavitt said.Democrats have criticized the tax cuts, arguing they disproportionately benefit the wealthy and corporations.”Donald Trump promised Americans lower prices, lower taxes, and bigger refunds, and what have they gotten instead? Massive tax breaks for Trump and his wealthy friends, a reckless trade war that has hiked prices, and a deadly and costly taxpayer-funded war with Iran,” Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin argued in a statement.Martin charged that “Trump’s ‘Big, Beautiful Bill’ stole from nursing homes, rural hospitals, and hungry families to give a windfall to the ultra-rich.” And he claimed “Americans are seeing lower-than-promised refunds hit their bank accounts that won’t even cover the higher costs Trump has forced them to shoulder.”

Artificial intelligence (AI) is the most transformational technology in the history of the world—and will have a profound impact on the life of every man, woman, and child in our country. And, if you’re currently in the workforce, there’s a good chance it will take your job.Recently, I took a trip in a self-driving Waymo car in San Francisco. There was no one behind the wheel. Waymo is already operating in 10 major cities and, along with other driverless car companies, intends to expand rapidly. In Texas, 18-wheelers are now traveling down highways without a driver. Left unchecked, it is likely that millions of truck drivers, bus drivers, taxi drivers, and rideshare drivers will lose their jobs in the next decade.But it’s not just job loss in transportation. A few weeks ago, The Wall Street Journal reported that Jeff Bezos, the fourth-richest man alive, is seeking to raise $100 billion to purchase factories all over America. Not content with replacing the 600,000 workers in his Amazon warehouses with robots, he intends to do the same with millions of factory workers.WE COULD WIN THE AI WAR AND STILL LOSE ALL OF OUR FREEDOMS IF WE AREN’T CAREFULMeanwhile, Elon Musk, the richest man alive, is converting Tesla into a robot company with the goal of building one million robots per year. What will these robots do? They will not only replace factory and warehouse jobs, they will displace workers in health care, grocery stores, the hospitality industry, call centers, and every other part of our economy.AI will not only be devastating for blue-collar workers, but for white-collar workers as well. Mustafa Suleyman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, said most white-collar work “will be fully automated by an AI within the next 12 to 18 months.” A Stanford paper called “Canaries in the Coal Mine?” found there has already been a 16% decline in employment for younger workers in jobs exposed to AI—like computer programming and customer service.THE AI REVOLUTION THREATENS OFFICE JOBS, BUT REVIVES DEMAND FOR SKILLED TRADESThe reality is that the AI oligarchs do not want to just replace specific jobs. They want to replace workers. As Dario Amodei, the head of Anthropic, has said, AI “isn’t a substitute for specific human jobs but rather a general labor substitute for humans.” According to OpenAI’s charter, its mission is to build “highly autonomous systems that outperform humans at most economically valuable work.”Why are AI and robotics being pushed so aggressively by Big Tech oligarchs like Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg, Ellison, Altman, and Thiel? The answer is obvious. They are implementing a technology that will make them and their corporate clients even richer and more powerful. Why will any business want to hire a human worker when it can install AI and robotics and cut its labor costs by 80 to 90%? AI and robots don’t take a salary, need a vacation, require health care, or form a union. They just keep working—24/7.REP RO KHANNA: WE NEED A NEW TECH SOCIAL CONTRACT TO RECLAIM AI FROM BILLIONAIRESReplacing workers with revolutionary new technology is a good investment for billionaires. But for the working class of this country, AI and robotics could well be a nightmare. If AI and robotics eliminate millions of jobs and create massive unemployment, how will people survive if they have no income? How will they feed their families or pay for housing or health care? If workers and their employers are not contributing into Social Security and Medicare, what happens to these programs that provide life-and-death support for elderly and disabled Americans?The American people see what is coming. And they don’t like it. According to a recent poll by Blue Rose Research, 79% of voters are concerned that the government does not have a plan to protect workers from AI job losses. Fifty-six percent are concerned about losing their job or having someone in their family lose their job in the next year. The next year!Further, the overwhelming majority of Americans do not trust the motives of the AI oligarchs. For good reason.IN 2026, ENERGY WAR’S NEW FRONT IS AI, AND US MUST WIN THAT BATTLE, API CHIEF SAYSWe’ve heard this story before. In the 1990s, the working class of this country was told by corporate America and their media that unfettered free trade would be a boon to the economy and that it would create millions of new jobs and raise wages. As many of us understood then, that claim was a lie, which is why we opposed trade deals like NAFTA and PNTR with China. The true goal of these deals was to shut down thousands of factories in the U.S., allow companies to move abroad where they could pay desperate workers starvation wages, and greatly enhance profits for large corporations. And they accomplished exactly what they set out to do.Now, in the midst of the coming AI revolution, what should we be doing? It’s not complicated.Congress must act to ensure AI benefits all of us—not just a handful of billionaires racing forward for power and profit.AI-DRIVEN SCHOOL EXPANDING TO MAJOR US CITIES DESPITE UNION PUSHBACKThat is why I have introduced legislation to impose a federal moratorium on the construction of new AI data centers until strong safeguards are enacted. What does that mean?It means that if AI and robotics are going to be deployed, these technologies must improve the lives of workers instead of just throwing them out on the street.It means that as productivity greatly increases, the workweek should be significantly reduced with no loss in pay.CLICK HERE FOR MORE FOX NEWS OPINIONIt means fundamentally rethinking the American social contract. If AI and robotics are going to create unprecedented wealth, we as a nation must guarantee all Americans a high-quality standard of living: decent housing, health care, education, and more.It means that if AI and robotics will be used by children, guardrails must be established to make sure they do not harm their emotional well-being or their capacity to learn.It means that our democracy must be secured from those who would use these technologies to lie and distort reality, and it means that our privacy must be protected from huge surveillance corporations that can use AI to increasingly track and record every aspect of our lives.And last, but certainly not least, it means that we need to protect the American people and the world from the existential threat many scientists fear may be coming. If AI and robotics become smarter than humans, there is a real possibility they will function independently of human control, with possible catastrophic outcomes. That obviously must not be allowed to happen. The international community must come together to prevent this nightmarish scenario.CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM SEN BERNIE SANDERS

RANDOLPH, N.J. — Republican Joe Hathaway aims to flip a vacant U.S. House seat in a blue-leaning district in northern New Jersey.”I think we have the right math, the right bipartisan coalition to come together to win this thing,” an optimistic Hathaway said this week in a Fox News Digital interview.Hathaway is facing off against Democrat Analilia Mejia, who is backed by progressive champions Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of neighboring New York, in Thursday’s special election in New Jersey’s 11th Congressional District. The winner will fill out the final eight months of the term of Gov. Mikie Sherrill, the Democratic representative who stepped down from Congress in November after winning New Jersey’s gubernatorial election.FIRST ON FOX: HOUSE REPUBLICANS TARGET DOZENS OF ‘VULNERABLE’ DEMOCRATS ON EVE OF TAX DAYThe special election comes as the GOP clings to a fragile House majority and would relish the opportunity to flip a suburban district Sherrill won by 15 points in her 2024 re-election and carried by roughly the same margin in last year’s gubernatorial election. But given a rough political climate and traditional headwinds for the party in power, it’s a tough task for a candidate with an R next to their name on the ballot.To have any chance of winning, Hathaway will need the support of independents and crossover Democrats.He said his message to those voters is “even if you’ve never voted for a Republican before, you got the chance to test drive one for the next six months, send me to Washington. Let me prove to you I’m going to do what I say.”Pointing to Mejia, Hathaway argued that voters in the district will “choose common sense over socialism in this race.”Mejia, a progressive organizer who served as national political director on the 2020 Sanders presidential campaign, pulled off an upset in the February Democratic primary, narrowly edging out more moderate rival former Rep. Tom Malinowski in a field of 11 candidates. While Mejia was the clear choice of the party’s left flank, the rest of the field appeared to divide the moderate and center-left vote.HOUSE SPEAKER JOHNSON GETS REINFORCEMENT AS GOP CLINGS TO RAZOR-THIN MAJORITYHer victory was another boost for the left against the establishment after democratic socialist New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani sent shock waves across the nation with his Democratic primary victory in June 2025.Hathaway, a former Randolph Township mayor and current council member who was uncontested for the GOP congressional nomination, emphasized that the choice for voters is “between a common sense, practical independent leader who’s gotten things done at the local level in New Jersey and knows the issues, contrasted with someone who’s running on pure ideology, far left-wing ideology, Squad-backed ideology.”Mejia recently appeared at a town hall with Malinowski and on Sunday teamed up with Sherrill on the campaign trail as she aimed to unite Democrats, who enjoy a sizable registration advantage in the district.Hathaway claimed that Mejia is now trying “to hide from that a little bit in some of her rhetoric, because she knows that those policies are completely out of touch, but it’s not fooling voters. It’s certainly not fooling us.”Jewish voters make up a key part of the district’s electorate, and Hathaway, in the only debate in the special election, claimed Mejia was antisemitic, noting that she has said Israel committed genocide in Gaza.”She blamed Israel for the attacks by Hamas on October 7,” Hathaway said. “I think Jewish individuals across this district, Republican or Democrat, are very afraid of this kind of rhetoric.”PROGRESSIVES NOTCH ANOTHER WIN OVER DEMOCRATIC MODERATES AS SANDERS-AOC ALLY NEARS CONGRESSHathaway said, “I’ve spoken to more members of the Jewish community who have told me they’ve never voted for a Republican in their life, who are going to vote for me in this race. I mean, that shows you where the Jewish community is on the importance of this race and how they are not aligned with Mejia… and her platform.”Mejia has pledged to “protect the rights of Jewish constituents,” and has said her criticism of Israel’s actions in Gaza should not be conflated with antisemitism.In a statement to Fox News Digital, Mejia said that “Joe Hathaway’s inability to distinguish between criticism of a government or government official and bigotry is troubling and disgusting in equal measure.”Mejia last week wrote that she was “honored” after being endorsed by the liberal pro-Israel political group J Street PAC. But her acceptance of the endorsement triggered pushback on the left, with the North Jersey Democratic Socialists of America calling her move a “heel turn.”Hathaway, as he aims to win over independents and Democrats, is pointing out where he agrees and disagrees with President Donald Trump, who lost the district by eight points in the 2024 presidential election.REPUBLICANS WIN BUT DEMOCRATS ALSO CLAIM VICTORY WITH BALLOT BOX SURGE IN TRUMP TERRITORY”I’m always going to do what’s right for this district first. And I’ve been clear: If the president’s going to do things that are good for the district, increasing the SALT cap deduction, putting money back in people’s pockets, especially New Jersey, affordability is so tough here. If we’re doing things like border security, reducing fentanyl deaths like we’ve seen in our community. Those are good things. I support those policies,” Hathaway said.”But on the other hand, if the president’s going to do things that aren’t in the best interest of our district, it’s my job to push back, and that’s exactly what I’ve done,” he spotlighted.Hathaway pointed to Trump’s move last year to terminate billions of federal dollars for the Gateway Project, which is funding a new train tunnel under the Hudson River connecting New Jersey and New York, and the president’s plans to cut roughly 1,000 jobs and nearly $1 billion in funding for an Army base located in New Jersey.”I’m going to call balls and strikes in this race. I’m not going to be a rubber stamp for anybody,” Hathaway said.He touted, “I think we have the right math, the right bipartisan coalition to come together to win this thing on April 16.”But Dan Cassino, a Fairleigh Dickinson University political science professor and pollster, calls Hathaway’s hopes of capturing crossover Democrats “a pipe dream.””Democrats as a whole do not seem interested in finding common ground with Trump,” he said as he predicted that most voters in the special election will be strong partisans. “Democratic turnout is through the roof and Republican turnout is depressed at this point.”Cassino noted that “right now national politics drives everything. We say all politics is local. Today, unfortunately, all politics is national.”Mejia, meanwhile, has tied Hathaway to Trump and Republicans in Congress.”MAGA Republicans are driving up everyday costs with extreme policies my opponent supports. Healthcare and critical programs are being gutted just to fund tax breaks for the ultra-rich. We can’t afford another vote for Trump in Congress,” she wrote in a social media post.

Europe’s chemical industry is quietly unraveling, and Americans should be paying very close attention. What is happening across the Atlantic is not simply a story of industrial decline. It is a warning sign for the United States about what happens when overregulation collides with global competition, especially from China. If Washington does not act, the same pressures now hollowing out Europe’s chemical base could undermine America’s position as a global chemical producer over the next decade. After all, it is just as true in the United States as it is in Europe that excessive regulation combined with a flood of Chinese imports is a double hit few industries can withstand for long.The numbers alone are staggering. A recent story in the Financial Times disclosed that investment in Europe’s chemicals sector fell more than 80% in 2025, collapsing from 1.9 million tons of new capacity in 2024 to just 0.3 million tons last year. At the same time, plant closures doubled. Since 2022, around 20,000 jobs have been directly affected, and 37 million tons of production capacity – representing ~9% of Europe’s chemical production capacity – have disappeared. What we are witnessing is the structural decline of Europe’s chemical manufacturing sector, which produces all the building blocks for modern life.Industry leaders in Europe are clear about what is driving this decline: high energy prices, suffocating bureaucracy, aggressive regulations, and a flood of cheaper imports from China. Chemicals are among the most energy-intensive products in the economy, with energy accounting for a significant share of petrochemical production costs. Chinese producers benefit from access to discounted oil from sanctioned suppliers, in effect creating a parallel trading network that provides cheap feedstock for Chinese petrochemical production. This gives Chinese chemical manufacturers a structural cost advantage in global markets and allows them to undercut Western competitors that lack access to those cheaper feedstocks. When you add carbon pricing, painfully slow permitting, and a veritable maze of regulatory requirements tied to the EU’s net-zero agenda, it becomes clear why investment capital, and jobs, have gone elsewhere.TRUMP’S $12B RARE EARTH PLAN TARGETS CHINA AS EXPERTS WARN US IS ‘ONE CRISIS AWAY’The consequences reach far beyond chemical companies themselves. Chemicals are the building blocks of modern economies. As Marco Mensink, director-general of the European Chemical Industry Council, warned, “If you want a defense sector… an automotive sector, it’s totally dependent on chemicals supplying the materials.” Europe is already 80% dependent on China for vitamins, and increasingly reliant on Chinese inputs for economic essentials. This dependence leaves Europe not only economically exposed but strategically vulnerable to China for the building blocks of its economy.For Americans, the temptation is to see this as simply a problem of Europe’s own making. After all, the U.S. enjoys comparatively lower energy costs, abundant natural gas, and a more market-oriented approach to industrial policy. At Olin, we see that this sense of security is more fragile than people might expect. Many of the same pressures are already visible here: rising regulatory burdens, permitting delays for industrial projects, growing reliance on chemicals produced in China, and an uneven trade playing field. Recent Biden-era EPA rules pertaining to the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), particularly around risk evaluation and unreasonable risk determinations, have significantly expanded federal authority in the chemical space, adding to the regulatory burden facing companies here at home. This, in turn, has threatened the domestic production of chemicals essential to economic growth in the United States. As recent Congressional testimony highlighted, as late as 2009, the United States was the global leader in chemical production. Yet today, China accounts for 50% of all global chemical sales, with the United States a distant second place. Without deliberate action, the U.S. could follow Europe down the same path, losing investment, capacity, and, most importantly, good-paying American jobs, one plant at a time.CLICK HERE FOR MORE FOX NEWS OPINIONThe recent closure of our epoxy plant in Brazil offers a telling illustration of this broader trend. While Brazil is not Europe, the logic is the same. And while Europe is experiencing this troubling dynamic at scale, U.S.-based producers are not immune to the same calculus. In recent years at Olin, we have had to close chemical capacities in our facilities in the United States, as well as in Europe and Asia, as global markets shifted. Other chemical companies have also taken similar steps as rising costs and uneven trade conditions reshape the industry.All is not lost though. The United States still has a strategic advantage in chemical manufacturing. When it comes to resources, technology, safety, and our workforce, the United States is well placed to continue advancing in the chemical sector. At Olin we are committed to fostering this sector of the economy and onshoring chemical manufacturing so that we strengthen the United States’ economic and national security interests.As U.S. policymakers ponder our direction moving forward, the lesson from Europe’s decline is not that environmental goals or worker protections should be abandoned. It is that policy choices have trade-offs, and ignoring competitiveness has real consequences. The dramatic decline of chemical manufacturing in Europe shows what happens when regulation races ahead of market realities and when governments underestimate how quickly global supply chains can shift. Once capacity is gone, it is extraordinarily difficult, time-consuming, and very expensive to rebuild.If the United States wants to avoid becoming dependent on China for the chemicals that underpin defense, healthcare, agriculture, and advanced manufacturing, we need a coherent strategy now. That means faster permitting, predictable regulation, realistic climate policy timelines, and a serious approach to trade enforcement. It means recognizing chemicals as a strategic sector, not just another line item in environmental rulemaking. Europe is offering our nation a cautionary tale in real time. The question is whether America will learn from it or follow Europe down the path to job losses and Chinese dependency.

Bravo Sarah Isgur. And thank you.The “bravo” is for Isgur’s new book: “Last Branch Standing: A Potentially Surprising, Occasionally Witty Journey Inside Today’s Supreme Court.” Isgur is a superb communicator, a Harvard Law School-trained lawyer and a practiced observer of the Court as she and New York Times columnist David French demonstrate with every episode of their much listened-to podcast “Advisory Opinions.” If Isgur has a discernible judicial philosophy/ideology, it’s probably best described as a merger of Chief Justice John Robert’s and Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s, with a dash of the other four “conservatives” on the Court thrown in. But as Isgur explains at length and in useful detail, every label used in every discussion of the Court is at least very oversimplified and usually misleading. She’s Sarah Isgur. She runs on common sense, good humor and an appreciation for the complexity of Supreme Court proceedings. If you want to know what she thinks, you’ll have to read her book. The same rule applies to the nine justices.JONATHAN TURLEY: JUSTICE JACKSON’S ‘CHILES’ DISSENT REVEALS NARROW VIEW OF THE FIRST AMENDMENTIsgur is also not just “occasionally witty.” She is very funny, and that helps a non-lawyer or even lawyers who aren’t focused on the Court to get the key themes into their heads. “Winsome” always wins when pitted against “loud and certain,” and far too much Supreme Court chatter falls into the latter category. Not Isgur’s. Constitutional law is complicated stuff.  That’s why all law students have to spend at least two semester-long classes to get the basics down and those two courses don’t usually include the Court’s criminal law jurisprudence. Isgur takes all that great tumbleweed of complexity and makes it manageable. When justices write books, I try to read them and am always eager to interview them within the rules set the Court has quietly established. An interviewer of a justice should not ask about matters before the Court or likely to get there, and should not expect one justice to dish on another. In interviews with Justices Barrett, Gorsuch and Thomas and with now retired Justice Breyer, I’ve found it is not difficult to respect those rules and still have interesting conversations. The books by justices should be mandatory for journalists covering the Court. They write to be understood.JONATHAN TURLEY: LIBERAL JUSTICE’S SWIPE AT KAVANAUGH LATEST SIGN OF SCOTUS’ SLIPPING STANDARDSBut they don’t shoot for laughs. Isgur does and there are plenty to be had. Enjoy. The “thank you” is because Isgur’s book prompted me to finally put down in a column the simple propositions that (1) it is unconstitutional to expand the Court above its present number and (2) Republicans should support keeping the Senate’s legislative filibuster rules in place so that we need never have to test proposition one. Amateurs will be quick to point to the historical fact that the size of the Court has varied between 6 and 10 members since it was first established by the Constitution, and that only the most recent change came via the Circuit Judges Act of 1869, which fixed the Court’s membership at 9 — with one of the seats designated as the chief justice. On nine occasions total, Congress has tweaked the number of justices, beginning in 1789,  but it has not done so since 1869, though there have been many opportunities for super-majorities of both parties to try and do so. Franklin Roosevelt famously tried and failed to “pack” the Court in 1937 after a landslide win in 1936, but his proposed Judicial Procedures Reform Bill of 1937 failed even his own party’s smell test.AMY CONEY BARRETT DISCUSSES HOW CATHOLIC FAITH KEEPS HER GROUNDED IN INTERVIEW WITH BISHOP BARRONWhy? It is guesswork to attribute motives to one or more legislators for what they did or did not do, especially legislators from a century and a half ago. But the fact should matter greatly that the last change to the Court’s numerical composition came after the upheaval of the Civil War and Andrew Johnson’s near-impeachment and on the heels of the ratification of the 14th Amendment with its guarantee of the “due process of law” should matter to those who believe in the rule of law. The last change to the composition of the number of justices came immediately after great threats to the Constitution and its repair after secession and civil war via the guarantee of “due process of law” from every state as well as the federal government.  CLICK HERE FOR MORE FOX NEWS OPINIONI am prepared for Senate Democrats to refuse to confirm even one federal district court judge from President Trump must less any Supreme Court nominees should the Democrats regain the Senate majority in 2027. That’s the political process playing out and turnabout is fair — and constitutional — play. But piling five more Justice Brown Jackson’s on to the Court via court-packing legislation would mark a fundamental break with our past legal history and evolution. That would not be consistent with the rule of law. That would in fact be its abrogation and the beginning of a cycle impossible to predict in its outcome.Which is why it is important for the Senate GOP to defend its filibuster rules. The filibuster is the one hurdle that must be crossed before any bill to mangle the Constitution via disfiguring the Court makes it to a final vote. Serious senators will defend it for the simple reason is that it preserves the stability of every institution but especially the Court. If you care about the Constitution, read Sarah Isgur’s new book and realize the Court isn’t meant to move quickly or to be broken beyond repair in a fit of partisan excess. “We must never forget, that it is a constitution we are expounding,” Chief Justice Marshall famously wrote in the 1819 decision McCulloch v. Maryland. Whether that restraint is still within the whole of the Republic depends not a little on serious people of the center-right to the center-left keep their eyes on the prize: The rule of law. Hugh Hewitt is a Fox News contributor and host of “The Hugh Hewitt Show” heard weekday afternoons from 3 PM to 6 PM ET on the Salem Radio Network, and simulcast on Salem News Channel. Hugh drives Americans home on the East Coast and to lunch on the West Coast on over 400 affiliates nationwide, and on all the streaming platforms where SNC can be seen. He is a frequent guest on the Fox News Channel’s news roundtable, hosted by Bret Baier weekdays at 6 p..m ET. A son of Ohio and a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, Hewitt has been a Professor of Law at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law since 1996, where he teaches Constitutional Law. Hewitt launched his eponymous radio show from Los Angeles in 1990. Hewitt has frequently appeared on every major national news television network, hosted television shows for PBS and MSNBC, written for every major American paper, has authored a dozen books and moderated a score of Republican candidate debates, most recently the November 2023 Republican presidential debate in Miami and four Republican presidential debates in the 2015-16 cycle. Hewitt focuses his radio show and his column on the Constitution, national security, American politics and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians. Hewitt has interviewed tens of thousands of guests from Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump over his 40 years in broadcasting. This column previews the lead story that will drive his radio/ TV show today.CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM HUGH HEWITT

The United States blacklisted three people, 17 entities and nine oil tankers accused of aiding Iran in evading sanctions amid U.S.-Iran negotiations.

UK Voters Call For Lower Taxes & Energy Bills As Economic Concerns Grow

Via CityAM,

According to a new poll, most British voters want lower energy costs and tax cuts to support growth.

A large majority rated the UK economy as poor and showed little faith in current progress.

Business leaders are also increasingly pessimistic, citing geopolitics and rising costs.

British voters want Rachel Reeves to cut taxes and reduce energy costs in order to focus on growth, as a majority of people felt the UK economy was “poor”, new research has shown.

Polling by Freshwater Strategy for the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), a free market think tank, suggested that the vast majority of Brits wanted the Labour government to focus on economic growth more than it currently does. 

The findings back up the Labour government’s primary mission, which is to grow the UK economy. 

But respondents in a survey and focus groups suggested that voters supported small-state policies to deliver improved growth, as much of the public was confused about the measurements used by the government to track achievements. 

Polling found that 77 percent believed energy costs should be reduced, while 72 percent backed lower taxes for workers. A slightly lower portion, 66 per cent, backed tax cuts for businesses. 

When faced with a direct choice, Britons backed economic growth even if it led to some environmental damage, while most also wanted energy to be cheaper, even if it meant slower progress to net zero. 

Taxes and energy costs top Brits’ priorities

Respondents to the survey of 3,000 voters were also more likely to say that GDP growth benefited the government more than individuals. 

In a damning indictment, nearly two-thirds of people (65 per cent) rated the UK economy as “poor” but overestimated the average wealth of Brits compared to Germans, Australians, and Americans. 

Kristian Niemietz, editorial director of the IEA, said the lack of progress made in the last 18 years “should be the number one public policy issue of our time”. 

“While political discourse in Britain may not always reflect it, Britain is clearly not a country that is comfortable with economic stagnation and relative decline,” Niemietz said.

“We still have the social expectations associated with a growing economy. What we do not have is the economic performance to match those expectations.”

Middle East war rattles finance chiefs

Low sentiment across the public reflects wider pessimism among business leaders, with one survey of 79 chief financial officers suggesting that confidence had fallen to a six-year low. 

Deloitte’s finance chief survey suggested that the war in the Middle East had weakened top business leaders’ hopes of an economic recovery, as geopolitics was cited as the top risk. 

Levels of concern around geopolitics were at a record high, according to the survey, while rising energy prices and the prospect of higher interest rates were also among the top risks. 

Deloitte UK chief economist Ian Stewart said: “Rarely in the last 16 years have UK chief financial officers been more focused on cost control than today. 

“This challenging environment is prompting chief financial officers to scale back expectations for margins and sharpen their focus on cost reduction and cash conservation. 

“The immediate priority for finance leaders is to strengthen balance sheets in the face of external headwinds.”

Tyler Durden
Thu, 04/16/2026 – 05:00

Two U.S. nationals were sentenced to federal prison for helping North Korean operatives obtain remote IT jobs with American companies, the Justice Department said Wednesday.

Iran Boasts It Is Fast Rebuilding Bridges & Rail Lines After US Wrought Destruction

Iran is seeking to put out images showing its resiliency after the country was hit with tens of thousands of airstrikes during over a month of the US-Israel Operation Epic Fury, including blowing up bridges, rail lines and other infrastructure.

The US and Israel struck bridges and rail lines to cripple Iran’s national transport network. Israel especially adopted attacks against key civilian infrastructure as a battle tactic, in hopes that eventually there would be a groundswell of anti-Tehran anger domestically, leading to government overthrow.

The bridge that was bombed by Israel and the US in Iran a few days ago, will be operational soon.
Iranian engineers are hard at work. pic.twitter.com/BJYicGKZud
— Sentletse 🇿🇦🇷🇺🇵🇸🇱🇧 (@Sentletse) April 15, 2026
However, Tehran officials and state publications have been boasting of restoring key rail links within days, showcasing the drive of its engineers and its reconstruction capacity.

This actually began happening even while the bombs were still falling while the ceasefire was in effect, with reports that even underground missile silos were being dug out and restored after some 12 hours of being attacked.

President Trump himself repeatedly threatening to bomb bridges, power plants, and other infrastructure to send Iran “back to the Stone Age.”

While vital infrastructure and even energy sites have indeed in many cases been obliterated, the lights are still on across the country, save for the persisting government-imposed internet blackout.

Since the fragile ceasefire took effect on April 8, Iranian officials say multiple damaged rail lines and bridges have been restored in record time – sometimes within 40 to 96 hours – using domestic engineering teams. These efforts have showcased by pro-Iran and even sometimes official diplomatic accounts on X.

An incredible railway bridge reconstruction in #Iran after a U.S.-Israel attack.
Speed, precision, and dedicated teamwork: Charbagh railway bridge back in service in just #72 hours🚂. pic.twitter.com/UJl4cL9ENe
— Embassy of Iran in Bulgaria (@IRANinBULGARIA) April 11, 2026
But the war has not yet been fully declared over, after one failed round of peace talks in Pakistan, and as the US still maintains a naval blockade on the Strait of Hormuz.

In many ways the current tense calm is a game of chicken, with each side seeing how much economic pain it can both impose and endure, before the other side blinks and backs down.

Tyler Durden
Thu, 04/16/2026 – 04:15

Continuing Slump In Global Media Climate Agitprop Bodes Ill For Future Net Zero Support

Authored by Chris Morrison via THE DAILY SCEPTIC,

Decades of careful grooming of incurious journalists designed to whip up a non-existent climate emergency have failed to halt a dramatic continuing collapse in mainstream media stories backing the Net Zero fantasy. Last year saw a 14% global slump in climate-related stories compared to 2024, which was already 38% down on peak Greta hysteria in 2021. Perhaps there is only so long that once trusting consumers are prepared to read, let alone pay for identical, narrative-driven drivel that is often so one-sided that it is an insult to the intelligence. Exhibit 1: the BBC’s October 2023 classic – Climate change could make beer taste worse. 

The greatest declines over 2025 were found in Africa, the Middle East and North America. Interestingly, the failed Amazon COP30 meeting in November 2025 was followed the month after by coverage falling off a cliff in Latin America (-61%), Oceania (-52%) and the European Union (-41%). A period of private grief seems to have given  the long-suffering public a merciful break from the relentless cacophony of climate catastrophising. 

News of the continuing falls in climate change and global warming coverage are contained in the latest annual report from the Media and Climate Change Observatory (MeCCO) at the University of Colorado Boulder. To produce its latest findings, MeCCO tracked the volume of newspaper, wire services, radio and TV climate stories across 59 countries and seven regions. The work is said to have used a consistent methodology since 2004.The graph below shows clearly the spikes in the Greta hysteria around the start of the current decade, and the earlier Gore grift that followed the release of his ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ film.

University journalism courses often run climate modules but prospects for aspiring students looking to make the world safe for Net Zero fanatics do not look good. The Guardian can only do so much, but in the UK, coverage was 34% down in the 12 months to November 2025. In the USA, the sackings have started with a vengeance. Last year, new managers at CBS News removed most of the climate crisis team. Recent reports suggest that everyone on the climate beat has now been binned. In February 2026, the Washington Post cut 14 climate writing positions, leaving only five journalists in place.

Last year was a bad time for the climate groomers that are largely funded by Green Blob billionaires seeking societal upheaval by depriving modern (and developing) industrial countries of vital hydrocarbons. Groomed journalists working in narrative-driven mainstream media are seen as key to driving up fear of the invented climate crisis. One of the first lessons taught to useful idiot fear mongers is that the opinion, often incorrectly referred to as a theory, that human cause most if not all recent  climate change, is ‘settled’. The incurious are not encouraged to ask if this is the first scientific opinion to be declared settled, or at least the first since the Roman Popes of old adjudicated ex cathedra on these matters.

In the UK, the National Council for the Training of Journalists (NCTJ) is a respected industry-based charity that has operated since the 1950s. But its climate change training is laughable. In what other investigative fields are journalists encouraged to rely on a claimed ‘consensus’, and encouraged not to disclose alternative views? What quicker way is there, it might be asked, to replacing the writer with an AI tool? Funded by the Google News Initiative (GNI), the NCTJ offers a free e-learning course on climate change reporting. As with all climate science grooming agitprop sessions, there is a warning about avoiding ‘false balance’. In effect, this means denying publicity to sceptical scientists who investigate opinion by following the time-honoured process of scientific falsification.

GNI is a major funder of the attempts made to silence dissenting climate opinions. One of the major weapons deployed involve so-called ‘fact-checkers’ which, in the Daily Sceptic’s own experience, do little more than attack inconvenient science findings with opinionated claims of ‘misinformation’. Discussing the underlying science does not appear to be a priority, rather the negative verdicts are helpful in cancelling advertising, and diminishing impact in the social media sphere.

In the UK, GNI is a funder of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. Until recently, this operation ran a six-month groomer for climate writers under its Oxford Climate Journalism Network (OCJN) operation. The course has also attracted considerable funding from the former Extinction Rebellion paymaster Sir Christopher Hohn, and over four years it hosted around 800 journalists from 80 countries. Alas, the indoctrination pitstop pulled down the shutters late last year. The “flagship online course” will no longer be setting tasks asking participants to write a news story showing why mangoes are less tasty this year due to climate change. We can only pray that similar restrictions now apply to other climate-challenged comestibles.

It seems the world is getting tired of clickbait, centrally-determined climate claptrap that for too long has provided an unscientific base for the Net Zero fantasy. Pseudoscience gaslighting has allowed rigged computer models to predict headline-grabbing Armageddon ‘tipping points’, and contributed to the mainstream spread of unchallenged lies that extreme weather events are getting worse. Good news stories such as the major ‘greening’ of the Earth are ignored, while the vital role played in this by the gas of life carbon dioxide is downplayed. None more so than SciLine, a Green Blob-funded operation connected to the Association for the Advancement of Science, publisher of Science.

“In many cases, CO2 disproportionately favours weeds over crops causing more problems for agriculture”, it helpfully notes in its guide to journalists.

Tyler Durden
Thu, 04/16/2026 – 03:30