EJ Dionne/Washington Post:
With Leo, there’s no going back from Francis
The first American pope is in the mold of his predecessor.
He will be the first leader of 1.4 billion Roman Catholics with a robust social media history. That history suggests Leo will not be afraid to take issue with the policies of President Donald Trump, even though, as The Post reported, he voted in Illinois Republican primaries in 2012, 2014 and 2016.
Within minutes of the pope’s selection, the internet buzzed with his February tweet, which linked to a story in the liberal National Catholic Reporter that criticized Vice President JD Vance’s comments on immigration.
Mona Charen/The Bulwark:
Trump’s Immigration Policy Is a Failure Built on Lies
A policy at war with the truth is doomed to fail.
At its 100-day mark, the Trump administration is touting its immigration onslaught as both a policy victory and a political victory. But neither is true.
The mugshots on the lawn and Homan’s snarling threats are meant to achieve a number of goals, including frightening many illegal (and doubtless some legal) immigrants into self-deportation, but they are also a tell—the administration just hasn’t been able to find those thousands of criminal aliens they claimed were rampaging throughout the nation. Like so many other themes Trump campaigned on, the plague of immigrant crime was a fiction.
Adrian Carrasquillo/The Bulwark:
Trump’s Immigration Horror Stories Are Breaking Through. Here’s How.
Brocasters, sports YouTubers, and comedians take on the president’s El Salvador disappearances.
REGULAR READERS OF THIS NEWSLETTER are well aware of the ways President Donald Trump’s mass-deportation agenda is hurting individuals, communities, and businesses. But not everyone is quite so clued in. Voters in one of the demographic groups key to Trump’s re-election—young men without a college degree, online but only marginally politically engaged—tend not to rely so much on conventional news sources. Trump’s sharp drop in the polls didn’t just happen because the New York Times and Washington Post published tough stories. It happened because the stories those outlets broke and reported started getting picked up by mainstream infotainment—including by one of the guys credited with helping Trump win back the White House: Joe Rogan.
At the end of March, Rogan hit Trump hard on the cruelty and lawlessness of his deportation policies. While discussing the case of Andry José Hernández Romero, the gay makeup artist and hairdresser who has not been heard from since he was thrown into the Salvadoran CECOT prison almost two months ago, Rogan said it’s “horrific” that “people who aren’t criminals are getting lassoed up and deported.”
“This is kind of crazy that that could be possible,” Rogan said. “And that’s bad for the cause. The cause is: Let’s get the gang members out—everybody agrees—but let’s not let innocent gay hairdressers get lumped up with the gangs.”
Betting markets:
G Elliott Morris/Strength in Numbers
Trump's job approval is in potential "blue wave" territory
Unless there's a war, presidents always lose House seats in their first* midterm
I am aware that we talk about polls a lot here. I think polls are important and worth talking about, but I acknowledge this can be alienating. One comment I get frequently online is that all these polls and presidential approval ratings don't really even matter. People say this to me for a variety of reasons, taking positions ranging from "polls are always wrong, who cares?" to "President Trump doesn't care about polls, he's going to do what he wants."
I get it, polls schmolls. What about the voters? And what about policy? Those are important too! But I think there are a couple of very good reasons to pay close attention to public opinion: First, you should care about polls because we live in a democracy, and what people say should matter to our leaders. As those living in authoritarian regimes are quick to remind us, the only way for opinions to matter is to make them matter. When you can’t vote with a ballot, vote with your attention, energy, anger, enthusiasm, and actions. Polls are just another way to hear those emotions.
But second — and more germane to what we do here at Strength In Numbers — approval ratings also map pretty neatly onto political and electoral outcomes in the real world. So this week's Chart of the Week is a way-too-early look at the 2026 U.S. House midterms, via way of the relationship between presidential approval in May the year before a midterm and eventual midterm seat loss for the party of the president.
POLITICO:
Judge orders immediate release of Rumeysa Ozturk, Tufts student detained by ICE
U.S. District Judge William Sessions III said her detention, over an op-ed, could chill the speech of “millions and millions” of noncitizens.
U.S. District Judge William Sessions III ruled that Ozturk had been unlawfully detained in March for little more than authoring an op-ed critical of Israel in her school newspaper.
“That literally is the case. There is no evidence here … absent consideration of the op-ed,” the Clinton-appointed judge said, describing it as an apparent violation of her free speech rights. He also said Ozturk had made significant claims of due process violations. “Her continued detention cannot stand.”
Sessions said the Trump administration’s targeting of Ozturk could chill the speech of “millions and millions” of noncitizens.
James Fallows/Breaking the News:
Pay Attention to What Happened in Newark.
Should you worry about getting on an airline flight tomorrow? No. Should you worry that the Golden Age of phenomenally safe flying may be nearing its end? Yes.
Reports on every kind of “trouble in the skies” tend to mush together, because of their shared inherent drama. A huge rocket ship blows up; a private plane plows into a neighborhood; a passenger-jet engine catches fire.
They all command attention. Some eventually prove to be just bad luck, or fate. One US aircraft carrier, the Harry S. Truman, has lost three of its F/A-18 fighter planes into the Red Sea in recent months. But there does not yet appear to be a systemic cause. (One was reportedly brought down by “friendly fire” from another US ship; one rolled off the carrier deck while being towed; one could not be stopped during a landing attempt. These planes cost $65 million apiece.) Bad discipline or leadership? Maybe. Also maybe just coincidence and terrible luck.
But other aviation disasters are bellwethers, or turning points. In 1956, two airliners collided over the Grand Canyon, killing all 128 people aboard the two planes. From that disaster the modern US aviation-safety system was born. (Congress created the FAA itself in 1958, largely in response to this tragedy.) The Colgan commuter-plane crash near Buffalo in 2009 led to sweeping changes in pilot certification and training. One of many trademark sayings in the flying world is, “Aviation regulations are written in blood.”1
Almost everything bad in aviation involves some degree of bad luck. But the tragedies that change policy and behavior are ones that reveal deeper problems—the “accidents waiting to happen,” that had previously been avoided only because of luck.
David Shuster on Donald Trump’s signs of dementia:
