One of my favorite Broadway show tunes features the lyric, “The opposite of war isn’t peace; it’s creation.” (Any other Rent-heads out there? Viva la vie bohème!) I’ve always envisioned that line to be as much a tribute to the transformative power of art, as a nod to the potential of future generations.

But President Donald Trump turned that juxtaposition on its head last week when he pitted childcare against his desire to fund the costly, unpopular and likely unconstitutional war in Iran.

During a private Easter luncheon at the White House, he went on a tirade about how the United States “can’t take care of daycare” because “we have to take care of one thing: military protection.” He pinned the responsibility solely on the states, sharing that he told Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget, “Don’t send any money for daycare. …. We’re a big country. We have 50 states. We have all these other people. We’re fighting wars. You got to let a state take care of daycare. And they should pay for it, too.”

No doubt, the cost of childcare, which is rising quicker than the overall rate of inflation, is among the starkest of affordability issues affecting families in this country. In many states, the average cost of daycare runs upward of $1,000 a month per child. The U.S. government’s benchmark for what is “affordable”—when less than 7 percent of the household income, for a family with two children, goes toward childcare—amounts to parents having to earn around $400,000 annually to meet that standard.

While on the campaign trail in 2024, Trump responded to a straightforward question from Moms First CEO Reshma Saujani about his commitment to childcare reforms. His answer—a bombastic word salad, of course—went viral as he implied there would be some federal commitment.

Not that anyone believed it for a moment. The entire tradwife meets pronatalist agenda his administration is mired in revolves entirely around the notion that women should not or won’t want to work (even to vote, for that matter), making such policies all but irrelevant to them.

In mid-December 2020, federal officials responsible for protecting American elections from fraud converged in a windowless, dim, fortified room at the Justice Department’s downtown Washington, D.C., headquarters.

They had been summoned by Attorney General William Barr.

Over the preceding weeks, Donald Trump’s claims that the presidential election had been stolen from him had reached a crescendo. He’d become obsessed with a conspiracy theory that voting machines in Antrim County, Michigan, had switched votes from him to Joe Biden.

With each day, Trump ratcheted up the pressure to unleash the might of the federal government to undo his defeat.

Barr interrogated experts from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, crammed in beside top FBI officials around a cheap table. He needed the group of around 10 to answer a crucial question: Was it really possible the 2020 presidential vote had been hacked?

ProPublica’s description of the previously unreported meeting comes from several people who were in the room or were briefed on the gathering. Everyone understood that the meeting represented an important moment for the nation, they said. Barr, who did not respond to requests for comment, had walked a delicate line with Trump, instructing the FBI to investigate allegations of election irregularities while declaring publicly there had been no evidence “to date” of widespread fraud.

Given the increasing dominance of right-wing politics by arrogant, super-rich Tech Bros, here's a question about wealth inequality for your barroom philosophers to ponder: Does one have to be born a jackass to become a billionaire, or does becoming a billionaire cause jackassim?

Either way, they do seem to go together — as in Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Peter Thiel and so forth, ad nauseam. Oddly, the richer they get, the whinier they become, devolving into over-privileged crybabies.

Consider the appalling example of that California clique of Thiel, Zuck and other Silicon super-richies. They've been caterwauling that if voters approve a proposed wealth tax on billionaires, By Gollies, they'll just up and abandon the state. So? Do they not know that voters know that nearly all tax subsidies have long profited undeserving vainglorious elites like them at everyone else's expense? So excuse us if we don't join their pity party. In fact, most of us commoners would gladly trade that whole pack of pompous plutocrats for a dozen good kindergarten teachers.

Besides, it's possible to be both very rich and a decent human being! I've known such people. For example, Texas businessman Bernard Rapoport devoted millions to advancing labor, women and our state's progressive movement. Or my friends, Ben & Jerry, who've spent their lifetimes and fortunes delivering financial help — and even ice cream! — to grassroots democracy fighters. Then there's the example of heirs to the Pillsbury family fortune — calling themselves the "Pillsbury Doughboys," then later, "Doughgirls. They have donated their inheritances to progressive causes benefitting the Common Good.

As an East Texas farmer pointed out to me years ago: "Money is like manure. You can't just pile it up. It only works if you spread it across the grassroots."

Nearly 50 days into the Iran war, disruptions to the global energy supply chain continue to grow. Though the U.S., Iran, and Israel agreed to a fragile cease-fire on April 7, the Strait of Hormuz remains closed, Iran hopes to continue charging tolls, and the global economy is still a long way from normal.

Fossil fuels, abundant in the Gulf countries, are essential ingredients for countless goods—the helium that powers MRI machines, the fertilizer that boosts crops, and of course the gas that powers cars. Fossil fuels are also critical to the production of semiconductors, the building blocks for all modern technology. A breakdown in production would not only strain supplies of consumer and commercial electronics, but could seriously disrupt the growth of AI computing capacity at a time when firms are funneling hundreds of billions of dollars into data center construction.

The majority of the world’s chips are produced in Asia. Taiwan, home of the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), is a powerhouse, the sole producer of certain high-end chips, and the primary supplier of companies like Apple, Nvidia, and Qualcomm. Other semiconductor fabrication plants are located in South Korea and throughout Southeast Asia. Chips made in Asia are then shipped across the world to power AI systems, video game consoles, weapons systems, smart dishwashers, laptops, and many of the other pieces of technology that are ubiquitous in Americans’ personal and professional lives.

Though semiconductors are produced in East and Southeast Asia, many of the raw materials needed for the intensive, precise manufacturing process come from the Middle East. Chips are produced in dustless clean rooms that are some 10,000 times cleaner than outside air, and the process requires dozens upon dozens of chemical components like bromine, helium, and sulfuric acid.

https://prospect.org/2026/04/13/how-iran-war-threatens-ai-economy-semiconductors-supply-chain-strait-hormuz/

Families are one of the fastest-growing segments of the homeless population, but they are rarely acknowledged in the larger policy conversation about homelessness in the U.S. Instead of living on the street, they’re often out of sight, staying with other family members or living in their cars. People don’t truly notice them the way they see chronically homeless individuals living on the street, people who work with homeless families say.

“You often see the chronic street homeless who suffer from mental illness because it is more in your face … [Families] end up doubled up in situations and we just don’t end up counting them as homeless,” said Peter Jacob, executive director of Family Promise Union County in New Jersey.

Unhoused families, like everyone else who is unhoused, are facing renewed financial pressures as social programs and housing support that was already woefully insufficient is stripped down under the Trump administration and wages fail to keep up with the hefty cost of apartments. But they also have to contend with the higher costs of supporting kids, like finding an apartment with more bedrooms or paying for child care. Families who can’t afford child care are often penalized with underemployment and financial instability that also puts them at risk of eviction, workers at groups serving homeless families explained.

Jacob said it’s time that policymakers prioritize family homelessness as much as other forms of individual chronic homelessness.

During the 2022-2023 school year, public schools identified nearly 1.4 million homeless students, which was a 14 percent rise from the previous school year. But schools are likely under-identifying the number of kids who are homeless. From 2023 to 2024, families with children had the biggest year-over-year increase in homelessness compared to any other group.