US Hijacks Iranian Ship – The Monday AM Quickie 4/20/26
Space lovers, I have good news. The ancient Lyrid meteor shower is back and it’s going to be especially great this year because light from the crescent moon will be low and unobtrusive. The Lyrids can be seen all over the world, with the best views in the Northern Hemisphere tomorrow night and Wednesday morning. -Whitney
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THE BIG NEWS
US Hijacks Iranian Ship, Erratic Trump Jeopardizing Peace
The US military attacked and seized the Iranian-flagged container ship Touska early Monday morning, the AP reported. Per Al Jazeera, “Iran has responded by describing the attack and hijack as an act of ‘piracy,’ and threatened retribution. On Monday, hours after the attack and capture, Iran said it had no plans to send its negotiators for talks with the US in Islamabad.”
Trump claimed yesterday that US negotiators will be in Pakistan this evening for another round of negotiations with Iran, the WSJ reported. But Iranian officials said they never agreed to that and called out “Washington’s excessive demands, unrealistic expectations, constant shifts in stance, repeated contradictions, and the ongoing naval blockade, which it considers a breach of the ceasefire,” Iran’s official IRNA news agency reported, according to Al Jazeera. “The published news about the second round of negotiations in Islamabad is not true,” IRNA said. “The news published by the United States is their media game and part of the ‘blame game’ to pressure Iran.”
According to a report in Drop Site, Trump is sabotaging a peace deal with his “erratic behavior.”
“Our assessment is that Trump effectively lacks both a coherent plan and the capacity to secure even a temporary agreement,” said an Iranian official who spoke with Drop Site.“His decision-making appears to be grounded in Israeli political and security assessments, conveyed to him on a daily basis.”
According to Drop Site, if Trump starts bombing Iran again, Iran will halt all diplomacy and fight back.
Trump’s claim of renewed talks came just hours after he threatened Iran with a new round of war crimes. Trump will “knock out every single Power Plant and every single Bridge, in Iran” if Tehran doesn’t do as he says. “They’ll come down fast, they’ll come down easy, and if, they don’t take the DEAL, it will be my Honor to do what has to be done, which should have been done to Iran, by other Presidents, for the last 47 years,” Trump wrote on the social media website he owns. “IT’S TIME FOR THE IRAN KILLING MACHINE TO END!”
Abbas Masjedi, the head of Iran’s Legal Medicine Organization, updated the death toll for his nation Monday to 3,375 people.
MORE STORIES TO WATCH
DC Police Planned to Arrest Rep. Cory Mills for Assault, Body Cam Footage Shows
Disturbing records The Washington Post obtained show that DC police were about to arrest Rep. Cory Mills (R-FL) last year after a woman accused him of assaulting her but didn’t because a lieutenant ordered them not to. The incident took place on Feb. 19 and is part of the House Ethics Committee’s investigation into Mills, which also includes allegations that he accepted gifts and broke campaign finance laws. Per the Post:
The body-camera footage and documents show that Richard Mazloom, the police officer who first responded to the accuser’s 911 call, disagreed with his superior’s decision to classify the incident as a “family disturbance” after the woman recanted and said Mills had not assaulted her.
“Unfortunately, I have bosses that are making this into a family disturbance — a domestic disturbance — instead of an actual domestic assault,” Mazloom told the alleged victim, according to the body-camera footage that a judge ordered released to The Post last month.
Before changing her account, the woman had shown Mazloom bruises on her arms and marks on her face, the body-camera footage shows. Tearful, she told the officer that Mills had harmed her during an argument and forcibly removed her from his Southwest Washington penthouse apartment, according to the footage.
“I just wanted to make record of this because I don’t want it to happen to anyone else,” the woman told Mazloom when he interviewed her at a hotel bar near the congressman’s apartment more than six hours after the 4:30 a.m. altercation. Mazloom’s body-camera footage shows her sipping what she later said was an alcoholic beverage.
Soon after, with Mazloom’s body camera still recording, the woman could be heard talking on her phone. She told Mazloom that “he wants me to say” that the marks on her body “were from our vacation and that I bruise easily.” Mazloom later told fellow officers that he understood that the person she had been speaking to on phone was the congressman, according to the footage.
Members of Congress are “facing intense scrutiny” after Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) resigned and dropped out of the California gubernatorial race following rape and assault accusations by multiple women. Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-TX) resigned shortly after over his affair with a staff member who died by self-immolation.
American Gestapo Targeting Dreamers; Haitian Immigrants Hiring Smugglers to Flee
Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported 174 people between January and September 2025 who were renewing their protections under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, immigrants commonly referred to as Dreamers, according to The Guardian. Between late September and mid-November, the regime arrested at least 343 Dreamers. Illinois Rep. Delia Ramirez told the paper that the persecution illustrated the regime’s white nationalist agenda, led by Trump advisor Stephen Miller. The Department of Homeland Security “has refused to abide by the protections that Daca provides to Dreamers, [and] it is clear that Daca recipients are at great risk,” Ramirez wrote in a statement. “The mandate from Trump and Miller is clear: our neighbors will continue to be terrorized, detention will continue to be unsafe and fascists will continue to try to profit from our pain. We must abolish ICE and dismantle DHS.”
In other immigration terror news, the prospect of staying in the United States has become so dangerous for Haitians that many are paying smugglers thousands of dollars to get them across the Canadian border instead of waiting to see if Trump throws them in one of his deadly concentration camps, according to HuffPost. In some instances, smugglers hide them in vehicles and drive them across; in others, “the smuggler may guide Haitians through the woods for hours, which can mean trudging through deep snow and surviving below-freezing temperatures or, in the case of the people seeking refugee protections who were arrested last summer, wading through chilling waters.” At least 15 immigrants have died attempting to do this between 2020 and 2023.
QUICKEST QUICKIES
- US Drought Levels Hit Record Levels, Threatening Food, Water “More than 61% of the Lower 48 states is in moderate to exceptional drought — including 97% of the Southeast and two-thirds of the West — according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. It’s the highest levels for this time of year since the drought monitor began in 2000.” Severe weather also struck the US in the form of tornados this weekend, destroying homes across the Midwest. via the AP and the Guardian.
- Maine Gov. Janet Mills Waffles on Data Center Moratorium Law The unpopular Senate hopeful can’t decide if she’ll sign the bill lawmakers passed to halt all new data centers, which are also extremely unpopular, because she wants a “carveout” for her pet project in a small town; the bill is the first of its kind to pass and more are on the way in other states. via NBC News.
- 26 Arrested in Rescue Attempt at Wisconsin Animal Testing Puppy Mill About 1,000 animal rights protesters tried to break into Ridglan Farms, a state-licensed medical research dog breeder that has avoided punishment after prosecutors last year found staff conducted experiments on beagles “that constituted animal mistreatment,” such as performing eye surgeries without general anesthesia; police and private security fired tear gas and rubber bullets at the activists, who were unable to get any of the dogs out. via the NYT.
- With Joe Rogan By His Side, Trump Orders Admin To Fast-Track Psychedelic Drugs “The Food and Drug Administration next week will issue national priority vouchers for three psychedelics, which the agency’s commissioner, Marty Makary, said will allow certain drugs to be approved quickly ‘if they are in line with our national priorities.’ The vouchers can cut review times from several months to a period of weeks. It is the first time the FDA has offered that fast-tracking to any psychedelics.” via the AP.
SOME NUMBER
$4,049
That’s how much the average US taxpayer paid in 2025 for weapons and war, according to an analysis by the Institute for Policy Studies. Average taxpayers also paid $1,870 for Pentagon contractors, $136 for nuclear weapons, $119 for Trump’s mass deportations and $57 to support foreign militaries, including Israel’s.
ON THE SHOW TODAY
4/20: Sam and Emma are in the studio and their guest is Daniel Levy, president of the U.S Middle East Project, former Israeli peace negotiator under Prime Ministers Ehud Barak and Ytizhak Rabin. His recent column in The Guardian is What Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli right really mean when they invoke ‘Greater Israel.
DON'T MISS MR CLIPS
WTF Is Happening Right Now?
Kirsten Gillibrand. Man, what a disappointment. Remember that fawning Vogue photoshoot years ago that tried to position her as the next best thing and said she “radiat[ed] kindness”? Hasn’t really worked out. She is up for reelection in 2030.
No, You Dumb***!
If Scott Bessent really cared about protecting the financial well-being of Americans, he would agitate to fully fund the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. But he doesn’t care about that, so he won’t. Anyway, support the CFPB union and get some tough union swag from their shop.
PARTING WORDS
“The time stolen from me by the U.S. government belongs not just to me, but to the children and youth I have dedicated my life to advocating for. With them in mind, I am choosing to return home as planned to continue my career as a woman scholar without losing more time to the state-imposed violence and hostility I have experienced in the United States – all for nothing more than co-signing an op-ed advocating for Palestinian rights.”
-- Dr. Rümeysa Öztürk, the Tufts PhD student who the Trump regime illegally threw in an immigration prison for six weeks because she co-authored a column in her student newspaper in support of Palestinian rights. Öztürk has since completed her studies and returned to her native Turkey, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.
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