This weekend was a treat for lovers of the night sky all the way to mid-latitudes. The intense solar activity of the past week culminated in an extreme auroral event seen even to latitudes where you usually do not see such night sky spectacle. Social media was wonderfully inundated with pictures – probably helped by it being the weekend – and we saw many people wonder what was happening and how common this event was.The NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center reported that the planet experienced an extreme geomagnetic storm (G5 category), the strongest event since Halloween 2003. Back then, the event was intense enough to cause generator faults in Sweden and South Africa. On average, there are four of these events per every solar cycle.      IFLScience is not responsible for content shared from external sites.A solar cycle lasts 11 years. The activity of the Sun goes through a peak known as the maximum and a trough called the minimum. We are approaching the maximum of Cycle 25 (or we are at it). The maximum is always seen after the event. If you are quick at math, you might have noticed that 2003 was more than 11 years ago – but Solar Cycle 24 was quite unusual and not particularly strong, so it did not cause G5 or G4 storms, even though 100 G4 storms are expected each cycle.As solar activity perks up, the Sun becomes marked by sunspot regions that are slightly cooler than the surrounding area. They possess incredibly strong magnetic fields, and it’s the behavior of these magnetic fields that causes the major events in space weather. The auroral activity of the weekend comes from a sunspot called AR3664, which is 16 times as wide as Earth.     "Magnetic field lines have a special fundamental property – they typically cannot cross each other. This means that as they get twisted and tangled they store energy like a wound up spring. When a so-called 'magnetic reconnection' occurs, these fields relax rapidly, which can release explosive energy out into space." Dr John Morgan, Space Weather Scientist, said in a statement.Sunspots' magnetic release can cause solar flares – flashes of light so intense that, as they reach Earth eight minutes later, they ionize atoms in the upper atmosphere, making it puff up. They cause radio blackouts, errors in GPS, and drag on satellites. AR3664 released an X5.8 flare, the second strongest of this cycle so far.But it’s not just solar flares. There are also coronal mass ejections (CMEs) that make up space weather. These are releases of high-speed plasma from the Sun. Charged particles are currently hitting our planet, but CMEs come in with a lot more energy. These particles are moving at thousands of kilometers per second. Once they get to Earth, they follow the magnetic field lines and slam into the atmosphere around the polar regions.Well, usually. Places like mainland Australia, Tuscany in Italy, and Southern California are nowhere near the poles, and yet aurora was visible there. Even in places with a lot of light pollution, they were visible. That’s because we had a lot of plasma coming in. Earth was at the right place and the right time for multiple CMEs to hit at once. Three of them merged into a "cannibal CME" because the one released by the Sun last was faster than the other two, gobbling them up.      IFLScience is not responsible for content shared from external sites.Some of that plasma got to Earth and slammed into the atmosphere at lower latitudes than usual. So aurorae were visible from a lot of places that usually don’t get them. Another question many people have is: is it going to happen again?"No-one can know for sure. The events of the last few days certainly seem to be some of the most significant of the smartphone era," said Morgan. "It’s certainly possible that we’ve just seen the peak of auroral activity for this solar cycle. However, experience tells us that big events can happen even well after the peak of the solar cycle, so for those who missed out, there’s certainly a good chance of comparable events happening over the next few years."     Let’s hope for more activity as the Sun goes through its maximum.All “explainer” articles are confirmed by fact checkers to be correct at time of publishing. Text, images, and links may be edited, removed, or added to at a later date to keep information current.  

How and when flowering plants evolved has been a longstanding question in botany – one that has a huge impact on the field and beyond, also affecting conservation, agriculture, and even medicine. Now, with the creation of the most detailed tree of life so far, we are poised to get some answers.After a mammoth sequencing effort, which involved an astonishing 1.8 billion letters of genetic code from over 9,500 species, an international team of 279 researchers have shed new light on the evolutionary history of all 330,000 known species of flower.Previous research has attempted to draw the flowering plant tree of life, but none have gone as far as this, which used 15 times more data than any comparable studies and included DNA from more than 800 plants that had never been sequenced before.“This is an incredible example of collaboration among the world’s botanists, and the result is new insight into plant evolutionary history,” co-author Pam Soltis said in a statement.A new phylogenetic tree for flowering plants based on more than 9,500 species.Image credit: Royal Botanic Gardens, KewA tree of life provides a graphic depiction of relationships between species, similar to a genealogical family tree. The creation of an up-to-date tree for flowering plants will hopefully aid us in a multitude of ways: “Understanding how organisms are related is the building block of all biodiversity science and applications,” contributing author Dr Fabián Michelangeli said in a separate statement.To achieve this for flowering plants – also called angiosperms – the team designed new tools that enabled them to sequence nuclear genes, instead of relying on chloroplast DNA as prior research has. They then applied these techniques to a wealth of living, dried, and extinct plants – including the Guadalupe Island olive, which has not been seen alive since 1875 – to identify the relationships between them.Studying fossilized flowers also revealed an explosive diversification of angiosperms around 140 million years ago in the Late Jurassic and Early Cretaceous, which gave rise to 80 percent of the major lineages that exist today. This then slowed to a steadier rate of diversification for the next 100 million years until another surge in species numbers around 40 million years ago as global temperatures dropped. As well as deepening our understanding of Earth’s flora, the findings have real-world applications, from identifying new species and conserving plants in the face of the climate crisis to advising sustainable agriculture and uncovering new medicinal compounds. Talk about flower power.The study is published in Nature.

In the bubbling, super-acidic hot springs of Yellowstone National Park there lives a strange gang of viruses with an ancient origin. Because thermophiles – organisms that thrive at scorching hot temperatures – are deeply rooted in the evolutionary "tree of life," it might even be possible to learn about the origins of life by studying these microscopic freaks. If there’s life, there’s a good chance you’ll find viruses, which cannot reproduce without a host. This remains true in the harsh environment of Yellowstone’s geothermal springs, where the most abundant life form is a class of single-celled red algae, Cyanidiophyceae.In a new study, a team of scientists studied samples from Lemonade Creek in Yellowstone National Park to better understand the interactions between Cyanidiophyceae and the local viruses. Among three neighboring habitats – the creek, inside rocks, and soil – they found unique collections of viruses, with the giant viruses (Megaviricetes) being the most dominant.“A major finding of our study is that even though different habitats at hot springs may be adjacent (within centimeters of each other) and visually dominated by Cyanidiophyceae, multiple, divergent virus classes exist at these sites that are often habitat specific,” the study authors write.“Megaviricetes is the dominant class at Lemonade Creek, suggesting they may infect and influence red algal population dynamics,” they added. The Cyanidiophyceae algae at geothermal sites originated at least 1.5 billion years ago, so it’s likely the viruses emerged around a similar time to accompany them. Life on Earth evolved over 3.8 billion years ago, but the appearance of this virus-host relationship is still relatively early in the evolutionary story of our planet. After all, multicellular animals did not appear until about 600 million years ago.Looking at the genes of the viruses, the researchers were able to see how they became adapted to thermophilic life. Their proteins show that the viruses belong to an extremely old lineage that evolved the heat-loving ability very early on. This suggests the viruses didn’t move into the hot springs after spending much of their existence in cooler environments; the viruses are seasoned spring-dwellers that have thrived here for a very, very long time. Interestingly, some of the viruses are related to other thermophilic viruses that live deep within the ocean around hydrothermal vents. Hydrothermal vents contain the ideal conditions and a soup of key molecules that have the potential to allow life to be created from inorganic chemicals, so it's thought that thermophilic microbes in the deep sea may have been among the first life forms on Earth.Viruses aren't technically alive, but they have played an integral part in many biological processes and had a huge influence on the evolutionary tree of life, most notably the lateral transfer of genes. As such, it's possible that the hot spring viruses at Yellowstone – relatively close relatives of the viruses that linger around hydrothermal vents – may provide an invaluable insight into Earth’s earliest life.The study is published in the journal Communications Biology.

If you are even vaguely interested in the way the universe works, you have likely read about a mysterious substance proposed by physicists called "dark matter".Dark matter is invisible matter that doesn't emit, reflect, or absorb light, and only interacts with normal matter through gravity. We have never detected it directly – but physicists are very confident of its existence and believe that there is about five times as much of it in the observable universe than regular matter which makes up the stars, planets, dust, and everything else we enjoy (e.g. pies).You may be wondering how physicists know that there must be this invisible matter out there if we cannot directly detect it. The answer goes back to the work of Fritz Zwicky in the 1930s, and Vera Rubin and Kent Ford's observations in the 1970s.In 1933, Swiss astronomer Fritz Zwicky studied the Coma Cluster – a large galaxy cluster more than 20 million light-years in diameter, containing thousands of galaxies – and found something quite odd. Galaxies within the cluster were moving at such high speeds that they should fly away from each other, given the amount of visible mass within the galaxies and the cluster. He hypothesized that the region must contain a large amount of "Dunkle Materie" (dark matter) in order to keep the cluster stable.               Though puzzling, the study did not change cosmology too quickly. But similar results came from observing other clusters, and then stars within the galaxies themselves."By using Newton’s law of gravitation and the centrifugal force one can calculate the rotation speed of a mass in circular motion around another one as a function of the distance to the rotation center," a paper on the topic explains. "Through these simple calculations it is shown that the rotation speed decreases when the distance grows."This works when we look at our own solar system. The further an object is from the rotational center (our Sun) the slower its rotation around the center. But when Vera Rubin and Kent Ford plotted the velocities of stars within spiral galaxies – by looking at the shift in wavelengths of light as they move towards and away from us – they found the same odd phenomenon as Zwicky. As spiral galaxies contain the most (visible) mass towards the center, they were expecting the stars towards the center of the galaxy would rotate faster than those at the galaxy's edge. If the stars at the galaxies' edges rotated at the same high speeds as at the center – and visible mass is all that is within them – you would expect those stars to become unbound from the galaxy, with not enough gravity to keep them within it. And yet this is precisely what they found. Stars at the sparsely-populated edges of spiral galaxies were moving just as fast as stars toward their galactic centers. Studying over 60 galaxies they found the same result, with Rubin concluding that galaxies must contain around 10 times more mass than is visible in order to explain these movements. The more we study galaxies, the more we find a discrepancy between how much visible mass they have and the velocities at which we would expect their stars to move, given their visible mass. It is now widely accepted that the universe contains "dark matter", vastly out-massing the visible matter we see – though the debate about what that matter is is still an ongoing debate, and detection still remains out of reach. Alternatives to dark matter do exist (such as MOND, which somewhat arbitrarily posits that gravity becomes weaker at large distances) but any theory about the dynamics of our universe must now explain within it why stars at the outer edge of a galaxy rotate as fast as they do, while still being bound to it.“We have peered into a new world,” Rubin wrote of that physics-changing observation, “and have seen that it is more mysterious and more complex than we had imagined. Still more mysteries of the universe remain hidden. Their discovery awaits the adventurous scientists of the future. I like it this way.”

As if ABC’s Station 19 didn’t shove their liberal opinions down our throats enough by championing kids attending over-sexualized gay pride parades and portraying anyone who doesn’t toe the LGBTQ line as hateful bigots, the show decided to revisit last month’s storyline in their latest episode, “Give It All.” Apparently, Shonda Rhimes hadn’t given it her all in the previous episode, “True Colors,” and she had some more liberal preaching to do. If you remember, in the previous episode, a crowd of angry, white, conservative men (of course) were protesting at a pride parade in which Station 19 was participating, including bi-sexual character Maya Bishop (Danielle Savre) who saw her brother among the men. Now, four episodes later, Maya’s brother is back to again teach viewers, “Conservatives bad! White men bad! Liberals good!” I mean, they could at least try to come up with a unique storyline instead of ripping off tired old tropes from other shows. Maya shows up at the home her brother Mason (Cameron Cowperthwaite) is sharing with his fellow protesters whom he considers family, and she’s already moody and agitated from hormones she’s taking for IVF treatment: Mason: What do you want, Maya? Maya: I don't know. After seeing you at Pride, I just wanted to talk. I mean, what the hell, Mason? Mason: Is that a question? Maya: Do you believe this crap? Is this who you are now? Mason: "Now" is a weird qualifier. Maya: I've known you my entire life, Mason. You're just confused or… Mason: You don't think I can form my own opinions? I can't think for myself? Maya: You're not a person who… Okay, you're not full of hate. We grew up together. I know you. Mason: You don't know me. You know yourself. That's all you've ever cared about. Maya: Is that one of yours? Mason: Yeah. Maya: Fine. Tell me who you are then. I want to understand. Mason: I'm not doing this. Maya: No, I'm not leaving until we talk. So we nee… Mason: Come on, Maya, enough. Just leave me alone. Damn it. Maya: I'm sorry. Let me... Mason: Just please leave! Maya: No, I can help, okay? Let me help. Poor Maya is trying so hard to save her brother from his conservative self. What’s a liberal girl to do? #EyeRoll As their argument continues, Mason becomes every Hollywood production’s caricature of how they see conservatives - angry, cruel and hateful: Mason: At least I can contribute. Maya: To what? This boys' home for deplorables? Mason: We uphold the traditions of our country and the people who built it. Maya: What does that even mean? Mason: A man used to be able to raise a family on one salary. We're losing out on jobs because of identity politics, immigration. Maya: Mason, you are brainwashed. Mason: This is the stupidity… This is the stupidity my brothers warned me about. Men like us are despised. Maya: What are you talking about? How are you despised? You were the group shouting at innocent people at… Look, I'm just confused, okay? The Mason I knew was a kid who made up stories with me. You remember that? He was the kid who insisted on having a funeral for the dead mouse in the garage. He is extremely talented. Mason: Talented? Why didn't you ever tell that to Dad when he was burning my art? Where were you when I wanted to go to art school? All the money went to your Olympic training. These people are my brothers. Okay? They helped me get clean. They hung my art on the walls. I matter to these people. No one ever told me that I mattered before. Maya: You matter to me, Mason. Just let me get you out of this place and see how it feels. Mason: And go where? Maya: Move in with me. Mason: You want me to come and live with you? Maya: You don't know what real family feels like. Let me show you. Deplorables? Okay, Hillary. And Maya doesn’t think straight, white men are despised in our culture? Hollywood really does exist in a bubble. Maya is a great example of so many on the left who mistakenly believe conservatives and Christians must give up their deeply held beliefs (which Maya refers to as brainwashing) to love them. Do the writers not realize she’s being just as sanctimonious and holier-than-thou as Mason is? She just cloaks her bigotry in “love” and a savior complex: Maya finally admits to Mason she’s bisexual which takes him by complete surprise: Maya: You could go to school and study art and get a job. Mason: You want me to pay rent? Maya: I mean, no. You could, but I don't need you to pay rent. Mason: You really want me to come and live with you? Maya: I just… I want to show you that there's another way. Mason: I didn't need your saving when I was on the streets, and I don't need it now. Maya: These people don't care about you. Mason: These people are my family. Maya: Who harass innocent people at a parade. Was that your family? Mason: Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Why are you so obsessed with that? Why do you care so much about a stupid gay parade? Maya: Because they're my people, Mason. You're harassing me and my community. Her revelation just brings out more of Mason’s hatred: Mason: You're telling me you're... gay? Maya: Yes. I'm bisexual. Mason: Oh, so you're confused. And you have daddy issues. Maya: I have a wife. We're trying to adopt a son. I am building a family. Mason: You have a wife and a kid? And you want me to move in with you? Call your wife. Tell her. God knows that fatherless kid is gonna need a male role model, especially when the little weirdo tells all the other kids at school about his two mommies. No, go on. Call her. Tell her Uncle Mason's coming. I'll pack my bags. Right. Maya: I want you to be a part of my life, Mason, but I can't do that if you don't… Mason: So, you want me to accept you and your "choices," but you don't have to accept me and mine? Maya: I can agree to disagree about everything except my humanity, Mason. I'm just trying to exist, and your "brothers" hate me for it. Mason: Because you are poisoning this country. And you shouldn't be allowed to do that. You shouldn't be allowed to have kids. Maya: Oh, my God. You're Dad. You've become Dad. Mason: Don't pull that crap with me. Maya: No, actually... You're not him. You're worse. I came here trying to save you or something. But now I get it. That's not possible. You can never be a part of my life, Mason. Not like this. You're not allowed to touch the beautiful life that I've created, because you would ruin it. I have love that we never knew existed as kids, and I wanted you to have that, too, but...You don't want it. And I won't risk losing it, so... As a conservative Christian with a transgender family member, I have lived this experience. My family member is one of the most kind, loving people you could ever hope to know. My husband and I have gay family members, as well. What’s beautiful is they love us and allow us to be ourselves without shaming us for our faith. They know we don’t think any less of them or judge them, and they don’t think any less of us or judge us. We just…love each other. Unfortunately, I have lost close friends who are gay once they’ve learned about my Christian, conservative beliefs, and it’s honestly broken my heart. I was willing to love them just as they are, but they couldn’t do the same for me. Because just as Maya says she can agree to disagree on everything but her humanity, the same can be said for conservatives and Christians who are hated and criticized for who we are. Sadly, Maya cuts Mason out of her life and the two never find any common ground to cling to. There’s only judgement and hate on both sides: Beckett: May I help you? I used to help my ex-wife with hers. Maya: I found my brother. He's so hateful. Like, I thought a little piece of him was still left, but he's gone. Oh, my God. I cut him off. How could I do that? Beckett: Maya... Maya: I'm a horrible person. Beckett: Maya, you did what you needed to do. Maya: Why does it feel like somebody died or something? Beckett: That's actually apparently a real thing. Hughes said it's called "ambiguous loss." Can I? Maya: Yeah. Beckett: It hurts like hell. But you had to make a choice. It was either him or you. Maya: Yeah. Yeah. Beckett: It's okay. It's okay. You ready? Alright. And, Bishop... Maya: Yeah? Beckett: For what it's worth you're already a great mother. Maybe if Hollywood would ever allow conservatives and Christians onto their writing teams to consult the way they do pro-abortion and leftist activists, they could come up with a decent storyline in which two family members actually express their love and devotion to each other unconditionally, no matter their differences. And neither must conform to the others’ beliefs in order to be “rescued.” Yeah, I’m not holding my breath, either.

An Australian federal judge has swooped in to defend free speech by siding with Elon Musk in the tech billionaire’s latest spat with Australia’s Ministry of Truth. On May 13, Federal Court Justice Geoffrey Kennett blocked the application for the extension of an injunction issued by Australia’s e-Safety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant. The injunction ordered X to censor a video depicting an Australian Bishop being stabbed while delivering Mass in Sydney.  It is expected that the Justice will issue an explanatory statement later in the day, reported SkyNews Australia. Musk responded to news of the ruling by re-expressing his continued commitment to the cause of free speech globally. “Not trying to win anything,” Musk posted on X. “I just don’t think we should be suppressing Australia’s rights to free speech.” Grant issued the injunction on April 16 ordering X to suppress the video even for users outside of the United States. She also threatened the company with a daily fine of $785,000 AUD if it didn’t comply with the order.  X’s Global Government Affairs Team challenged Grant’s authority, citing her lack of jurisdiction over non-Australian users. X’s lawyers also argued before the Justice that the video in question was not overly graphic and, contrary to the Australian Government’s characterization, did not glorify violence or terrorism. Related: WATCH: Bishop’s Powerful Response to Censorship Demands of Stabbing Video On April 28, Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel, the victim of the vicious stabbing, made a public statement in favor of free speech as a cornerstone of Western civilization and a fundamental natural right.  Musk has faced a lot of pushback and even legal threats for his bold stance in favor of free speech. Tasmanian Senator Jacqui Lambie called for Elon Musk’s arrest. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese singled out X as being so-called uncooperative with the Australian government’s censorship initiatives and claimed that Musk was going against the will of Australians. Conservatives are under attack. Contact your representatives and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on hate speech and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us using CensorTrack’s contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.

A male sucker punched actor Steve Buscemi in the face last week in yet another broad-daylight, random attack on a New York City street. Police told CBS News they responded to a 911 call about an assault around 11:48 a.m. Wednesday. Buscemi "is OK and appreciates everyone's well wishes, though incredibly sad for everyone that this has happened to while also walking the streets of NY." The news network reported that officers were told an unidentified individual punched a 66-year-old man in the face in front of 369 3rd Avenue, the New York Police Department said last week in a news release that didn't name Buscemi; the victim was taken to Bellevue Hospital in stable condition for treatment of bruising, swelling, and bleeding to his left eye. Buscemi's publicist on Sunday said the actor "is OK and appreciates everyone's well wishes, though incredibly sad for everyone that this has happened to while also walking the streets of NY," CBS News added. The NYPD said the suspect was "wearing a dark colored baseball style cap, blue T-shirt, black pants, white sneakers, and carrying a bookbag," the news network reported, adding that there were no arrests, and the investigation was continuing. Buscemi is a beloved Brooklyn native and former New York City firefighter who rushed to the site of the World Trade Center after the 9/11 terror attacks to join his former fire company, Engine 55, the New York Post reported. The veteran actor is well-known for roles in movies such as "Armageddon," “Fargo," “Reservoir Dogs," and "The Big Lebowski." The Post noted that Buscemi also received high praise for his work in the HBO series “Boardwalk Empire.”More of the sameBlaze News in late March reported that a number of horrified women said males punched them in unprovoked, broad-daylight attacks on Manhattan streets. In April, an attacker punched a New York University female administrator in the face in broad daylight. On May 1, a New York City judge reportedly set free a suspect accused of sucker punching a woman and breaking her jaw in a late March attack in Brooklyn — then, the judge retired to Florida days later. Actor Steve Buscemi is OK after being punched in the face in New York City youtu.be Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

Confusion reigns on Capitol Hill. What is the American policy on Israel, and what is the Democratic Party’s policy? Where did the money Congress sent for the war on Hamas go? Who placed a hold on what, and who’s in charge, anyway? President Joe Biden — first elected to the Senate over half a century ago — is more than old enough to know that when you set out to please everyone, you end up pleasing no one, but his last week in office is a master class in tangling, confusing, and ticking off all manner of supporters and allies. While Democrats on the ground have been in open civil war for months, the politicians in D.C. have largely held it together. That fragile hold is coming apart, in no small part because of the president’s own decisions. The week began with Holocaust Remembrance Day, which was marked with more national attention after Hamas’ Oct. 7 rampage and amidst anti-Israel campus unrest. The president used the day to call America’s relationship with Israel “ironclad,” and the White House was eager to promote this. Congress had committed billions in both offensive and defensive aid to Israel as part of its massive foreign aid package (and to increase Republican support). In Washington by and large, things seemed normal. By Wednesday night, it was all on its head. The president announced in an interview with CNN he’d be stopping certain weapons shipments to Israel in retaliation for its continued offensive operations. Congress went into a tizzy. While Republican anger was predictable, the more interesting pushback came from Senate Democrats — many of whom broke ranks to publicly criticize the White House. Sens. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) were quick to disagree with the hold. Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), a frequently surprisingly astute and independent politician, attacked the White House’s decision in an interview on Fox News (an interview that also showcased just how dramatically the Pennsylvania freshman has recovered from his campaign-trail stroke). Meanwhile, the influential chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), declined to immediately contradict the president but promised he was "having conversations" to better understand the new policy. Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) showed a particularly political stripe: After weeks of calling for conditions on American Israel aid, he tried to publicly distance himself from the new policy. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) said he didn't even know what Biden was talking about. Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) said he needs more details. The former space man did not tease when he plans to catch up on the details of a war that’s been going for seven months now. To top it off, support among the louder Senate voices against Israel was tepid. Most called it some iteration of “a step in the right direction.” Further confusion stems from exactly what Biden did and whether anyone can do anything about it. Thus far, he hasn’t hit the funding Congress approved, though he’s certainly signaled his intent doesn’t align with lawmakers. The hold on bombs, for example, appears to be a hold on Israel buying 2,000-pound, 1,700-pound, and 500-pound bombs from an American vendor — a transaction that predates Congress’ supplemental, and well within the State Department’s authority. And the delay of the $18 billion sale of F-15s and aerial bombs and missiles to Israel dates to early April, when the ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee put an informal hold on the sale. Congress has oversight on foreign military sales of more than $25 million. Republicans, for their part, pointed out that former President Donald Trump was impeached for holding up aid to Ukraine. The palace eunuchs of the D.C. press corps were quick to say there’s no comparison between the Israel and Ukraine hold-ups, but the allegation against Trump was that he was subverting American foreign policy to serve domestic political goals, so the comparison makes plenty of sense. Biden’s domestic political calculations, however, have been a total disaster. Pro-Israel Democrats are angry at the holds, those Democrats who believe the president has supported a historic genocide won't be so easily satisfied, and now, the top officers of the party are arguing in public. Confusion reigns, and prominent allies who aren’t openly criticizing the president are running for cover. All in all, a disastrous fix with no end in sight. The Federalist: Mike Johnson gave Democrats everything they wanted and all he got was this stupid ‘Churchill’ T-shirt Sign up for the Christopher Bedford newsletter Sign up to get Blaze Media senior politics editor Christopher Bedford's newsletter, launching later this spring. IN OTHER NEWS The next witness disaster is on the books. Monday is perhaps the most consequential day of the Trump trial so far, as Michael Cohen is set to take the witness stand in Manhattan. Cohen is, inconveniently for prosecutors, a convicted liar, a vocal Trump critic, an aspiring TikTok star, and a disbarred former attorney. That will not stop Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg from using Cohen as effectively the only link between Trump and the alleged wrongdoing at the heart of the case. It will be a tough sell, however, because Cohen has made something of a second career attempting to ruin Trump’s. And on cross-examination later this week, we can expect to see defense lawyers tear Cohen’s credibility to shreds. They did so successfully with Stormy Daniels — who also monetized her hatred of Trump, including with Catholic saint-themed candles so liberals can worship the indictments — and she hasn’t even been convicted of lying. Blaze News: More bad news for Fani Willis: Disqualification is back on the menu and state investigators are drilling deep Blaze Opinion: My front-row seat to Stormy’s shakedown The FBI wants to make sure its agents know they can spy on Americans again. The same day Congress reauthorized the warrantless spying program used to persecute Trump, FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate sent an email to agents reminding them to make sure they use the tool. “I urge everyone,” he wrote in the email obtained by Wired, “to continue to look for ways to appropriately use US person queries to advance the mission, with the added confidence that this new pre-approval requirement will help ensure that those queries are fully compliant with the law.” The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act allows for American intelligence services to spy on foreign contacts — and by extension, any Americans they speak to. It’s been continuously abused, but Congress reauthorized it anyway. Johnson, who previously opposed reauthorization, notoriously flipped after he was frightened by super-secret intel briefings he’s not allowed to tell us about (and cannot verify, either). On Wednesday night, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner (R-Ohio) and his Democratic counterpart Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.) hosted a "bipartisan celebration" of the two-year renewal called "FISA Fest." What a hoot. The fire rises: ‘The discovery of ‘mass graves’ of indigenous Canadian children was actually a massive hoax,’ the Federalist When century-old “unmarked” “mass graves” of American Indian children were uncovered in Canada three years ago, there was good reason to be skeptical. Wooden crosses rot, after all; you can generally find human remains in cemeteries; and Canadian authorities had finished a detail reconciliation report a decade prior. That didn’t stop a violent anti-Christian panic, however; dozens of historic churches were burned to the ground while Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tut-tutted the Catholic Church and even the pope apologized (again). Well, it turns out none of it was real. Those dead children were just tree roots. Whoopsies, you guys! Everyone move on. The Federalist’s John Daniel Davidson, author of “Pagan America: The Decline of Christianity and the Dark Age to Come,” reports: It turns out the whole thing was a hoax, a modern-day blood libel against Christians that ended with at least 85 Catholic churches across Canada destroyed by arson, vandalized, or desecrated. Canadian political and civil society leaders cheered on this destruction — and then doled out hundreds of millions of dollars to investigate the mass graves and create a “support fund” for indigenous people. To this day, no human remains have been recovered at the site of the alleged mass grave, despite nearly $8 million spent looking for them. You won’t hear the corporate press report on this story now, but in the summer of 2021, it was everywhere. And no wonder, it had all the elements of a just-so story. The mere historical existence of these former boarding schools, which operated from the 1860s to the 1990s, remains a source of outrage among liberal Canadians ...

CNN host Fareed Zakaria is openly challenging the legitimacy of the criminal case that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D) is trying against Donald Trump.Right now, Trump is spending the majority of the workweek sitting in a Manhattan courtroom as his trial for allegedly falsifying business records — a case that Bragg has attempted to spin into an instance of election interference — drags on. "I doubt the New York indictment would have been brought against a defendant whose name was not Donald Trump."But Zakaria doubts that anyone not named Trump would be facing the same situation.Zakaria made the admission on Sunday while arguing the Democratic Party is fractured behind President Joe Biden while the Republican Party is "uniting behind Trump.""Whatever opposition [Trump] faced in the primaries has largely melted away. And the trials against him keep him in the spotlight, infuriate his base who sees him as a martyr, and even may serve to make him the object of some sympathy among people in general who believed that his prosecutors are politically motivated," Zakaria said."This happens to be true in my opinion. I doubt the New York indictment would have been brought against a defendant whose name was not Donald Trump," he admitted. Legal experts have made similar claims about Bragg's case.Jed Handelsman Shugerman, a law professor at Boston University, has called the case a "historic mistake." Former federal prosecutor Elie Honig believes there would be "no chance of conviction" if the case were being tried in a 50-50 Trump-Biden district. And law professor Jonathan Turley has routinely criticized Bragg's case, not only for its legal ambiguity, but for the perception that Trump is not receiving equal justice.Even CNN's own polling shows Americans are skeptical that Trump is receiving a fair trial.A minuscule 13% of Americans believe that Trump is being treated the same as other defendants, the poll found, while a majority of respondents (56%) told CNN they do not believe that Trump is receiving a fair trial.Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

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