What’s in today’s issue
📺 Fact-checking Trump’s Iran address
🧑⚖ Court arguments and rulings
🪖 Army raises enlistment age
🏆 Help us win a Webby!
Hi friends!
Chris Vazquez, your Friday newsletter writer here. I want to take a moment and stress the importance of civic engagement this election cycle. I’m talking, of course, about voting now being open for the Webbys. Dave is nominated for Best Creator, Personality or Host alongside some of the biggest names in late night TV and cable news. I, for one, think that’s pretty neat. You can help him win by voting here before April 16.
I got to see Dave in person the day nominations came out. We were at one of journalism’s biggest annual conferences, where I also got to see LNI co-founders Micah and Lauren in person for the first time in literal years, I think? I even got to be a crash dummy in Dave’s panel to demonstrate how to film someone for vertical video.
Photo credit: Katrina Pham, who previously worked with me as an intern and is by extension Dave’s long lost grandintern
Being around so much of our team, and around so many other kind and talented journalists, made the rough news cycle we’ve all been trapped in much easier to follow. The world is on fire, sure. But I’ve never felt more assured that the people in charge of explaining it all to us know exactly what they’re doing. That includes the videos Dave has made in the last week, so let’s dive in.
The president loves to get on TV and lie so here’s another fact check
Let’s start with the fact that there is still no evidence Iran has nuclear weapons or came close to having nuclear weapons.
In a 20 minute televised address about the war in Iran, President Donald Trump boasted about “taking the country of Venezuela in a matter of minutes.” Venezuela is a sovereign country that was not “taken” as part of the U.S., even though Trump has said that’s what he wants. But Venezuelan leader Delcy Rodríguez has been amenable toward Trump’s efforts to extract Venezuelan resources. The U.S. attack on Caracas and capture of Nicolás Maduro also took about two and a half hours, not minutes.
Trump exaggerated the number of protesters killed in Iran before the U.S.-Israeli invasion. Trump put the number at 45,000. But Human Rights Activists News Agency, a U.S.-based group, put the number closer to 7,000. PBS says that group’s numbers have been accurate in the past. The president also repeated Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s claim that families of killed U.S. military members in Iran said to “finish the job.” One of those family members said such an exchange didn’t happen.
After the Strait of Hormuz reopens, it could take a while to return to normal despite Trump’s claims that it will “open up naturally.” And Trump has called for regime change despite claiming he never did. And no, we have not “beaten” Iran, but U.S.-Israeli attacks have killed over 1,900 people there since late February.
In the interest of fairness, here are some things Trump at least kind of told the truth about or that we can’t disprove: Artemis II could travel further than any manned rocket before it. The U.S. is the world’s largest oil producer (which is an interesting thing to brag about considering the harm it’s doing to the planet we need to live on). We don’t know if we actually produce more oil and gas than Saudi Arabia and Russia combined. The U.S. did pay Iran $1.7 billion under the Obama administration, which reached a deal to pay back money the U.S. has owed Iran since the 1970s with interest. Stock prices did go up in the days before the address, but they did not subsequently “rapidly go up” as Trump predicted they would. Many Americans are seeing large tax refunds this year but not as large as predicted.
Courts on birthright citizenship, White House construction and more
Earlier this week, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments over whether President Donald Trump’s efforts to end birthright citizenship are constitutional. And I’m not a lawyer, but I can read the 14th Amendment, which clearly says that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.”
Most of the justices seemed skeptical of the Trump administration’s legal reasoning to get rid of birthright citizenship. That means it’s looking likely that Trump will lose this fight and birthright citizenship will stick around, but we won’t know how the justices will rule on this until probably late June or early July.
But wait, there’s more court news! A federal judge told the Trump administration they have to stop construction of its new White House ballroom until Congress approves it. A federal judge is also making the University of Pennsylvania hand over a list of Jewish employees to the Trump administration, which says it wants that list to investigate antisemitism on campus. Critics have compared this to Nazis’ efforts to gather lists of Jews. The ruling also bolsters the Trump administration’s efforts to chill and criminalize pro-Palestinian activism; that crackdown had previously faced a series of setbacks in courts.
Another federal court ruling found that Trump’s executive order to defund NPR and PBS was unconstitutional. This ruling can’t refund public media — Congress already voted to slash its funding as well. But it does make it clear that the White House can’t just take their money away because it doesn’t like how they cover the news. (Aside: Amid these cuts, many execs at NPR, PBS and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting made hundreds of thousands of dollars while laying off staffers and contractors who earned a fraction of their salaries. Defunding public media sucks; so does absolving yourself of blame while hoarding wealth from my friends and colleagues who have lost their livelihoods.)
Looking for a bonkers way to celebrate 4/20?
On April 20, the army’s maximum enlistment age will rise to 42 years old. It was previously 35 years old. ABC News reported that sources said this change isn’t tied to the war in Iran and was in the works for months. A spokesperson also told Snopes the policy had been in place for years and is just now being codified. This also follows the Navy and Air Force raising their maximum age for new recruits to 41 and 42, respectively. Those changes happened in 2022 and 2023.
The army is also now letting you enlist without a special waiver if you have one previous conviction for possession of marijuana or paraphernalia. Marijuana is still fully illegal in a handful of states. And last December, Trump signed an executive order aiming to reclassify marijuana from a Schedule I drug to a Schedule III, which would loosen restrictions and allow for more research. But the president doesn’t have the authority to reschedule a drug like this, and federal laws targeting marijuana and its interstate commerce wouldn’t automatically go away.
Although the military has been recruiting more people than it has in the past few years, it’s still struggling with young people. Part of that is because of falling birth rates, and part of it is also declining confidence in the military. They’re also contending with the war in Iran that is increasingly unpopular.
“Loudly posting something doesn’t make it true,” is both a good line and something I really,,,, really wish everyone would take to heart.
Each week, after running through the news Dave has covered in the past week, I turn things over to him for some analysis. Dave, take it away!
We received more newsletter emails than ever before after I spoke about JK Rowling’s transphobia earlier this week. Thanks to everyone who reached out. I am doing my best to respond to you all, though it may take some time.
I wanted to first say how much I appreciated the input from our trans readers and the parents of trans kids. So many of you were extremely generous and thoughtful, probably allowing me more grace than you may have felt I deserved. One particular email stuck with me, in which someone mentioned that sometimes seeing Harry Potter books on a shelf can signify to a trans person that they are no longer in a safe place. It seems quite obvious the more I think about it, but it certainly wasn’t something I had considered.
Many of you also pointed out that Rowling explicitly funds an organization focused on anti-trans causes, something I was admittedly ignorant to. I suppose that’s yet another version of transphobia: even those who are well-meaning can help perpetuate it simply through ignorance.
To that end, I wanted to assure readers that LNI will never adopt an anti-trans stance in any of our videos that cover trans news. There isn’t a “both sides” to hate. At the same time, I will never tell any reader, fan, or rando-on-the-street how to spend their money either. I don’t think that’s my job. But I do think it’s my job to be informed and distill information to others as best I can. And friends, it is insane what Rowling is spending her money on.
As I reflect more, I started to realize I haven’t actually watched an entire Harry Potter film since Rowling’s Twitter crusades began. I haven’t read the books either. It felt like I had, because, like so many of you, I had read them so many times that I broke the pages off the spine. The good memories I have remain, but I’m not making new ones.
In this way, I think my path may take the same route as it did with Twitter. Over time, the vitriol and hate became so toxic on “X,” that I just quit it altogether. It seemed difficult at first, until I realized that I wasn’t missing much. All I was missing was going viral for a silly joke Tweet - something that can still happen in other corners of the internet.
Dragging out this long break-up with Harry Potter has had one very positive outcome: its reinforced my appreciation of our readers and followers at LNI. Not only do you care about people, you have the empathy to approach hot button topics like this carefully and kindly. Thank you for that. Thanks for your emails. And thanks Harry for the memories.
Thanks, Dave!
If you made it to the end of this newsletter, you get two rewards. The first is a pet picture from a loyal reader. This is Hash Brown!
incredible cat name 10/10
The second is the reveal for this week’s link scavenger hunt, in which I hide a non-news related link somewhere in the email and make you look for it as part of a sick, sad scheme to increase our click rate. This week, I linked out to the trailer for the new season of “Hacks”, which I’m waiting for with bated breath.
Until next week!
Chris
