Wednesday Night #2301

Neither the spreading of the news “The British are coming” on the 18th (Paul Revere’s Ride, nor the Battle of Concord & Lexington and the less well known Menotomy on 19 April) is honored on its respective date;  since 1969  Patriots’ Day (formerly the 19th of April) is celebrated on the mundane 3rd Monday of the month. Fortunately, we have Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters from an American April 19, 2026 to set all records straight and conclude:  “Just over a year later, the fight that had started over the question of whether the king could be checked by the people would give the colonists an entirely new, radical answer to that question. On July 4, 1776, they declared the people had the right to be treated equally before the law, and they had the right to govern themselves.”
Celebrations include the Boston Marathon, won this year by Defending champion Kenyan John Korir who also broke the Boston record. Sharon Lokedi joined Korir as a back-to-back champion, winning the women’s race — a year after she shattered the course record.

Earth Day 2026, April 22 “Our Power, Our Planet”
Since the first Earth Day in 1970, its observance has grown from rallies and lectures across the United States into a global celebration that’s sometimes extended into Earth Week, a full seven days of events focused on green living and confronting the climate crisis.
Coming back down to Earth on the climate crisis
As we mark Earth Day, wars rage, floodwaters rise and human-made crises threaten the planet.
The theme reflects current global economic, environmental, and civic conditions In 2026, Our Power. Our Planet. refers to the role of people and communities worldwide in sustaining environmental protections that affect the cost of living, public health, infrastructure reliability, and long-term stability. Environmental conditions influence food systems, water availability, energy access, disaster risk, and economic resilience across all regions.
Arriving just in time for Earth Day: The latest editions of IEA’s Global Energy Review provides a comprehensive global assessment of trends across the energy sector in 2025 (Global energy demand growth was met by diverse range of sources in 2025, led by solar and then gas); and the Global Electricity Review which concludes that the share of global electricity demand growth was met by solar power in 2025
Neither takes into account the energy crisis of the first months of 2026. Still, the trend is positive.
See also: The Hormuz crisis instantly exposed the risks of rolling back green and clean tech agendas (Long Reads)
Under Donald Trump, the U.S. has been aggressively rolling back its green agenda, making the world’s biggest economy ever more reliant on fossil fuels, as if the President’s goal is to create a petrostate.
To a lesser extent, Canada and the European Union are doing the same, partly because they are taking their lead from Mr. Trump, who is a climate-change-denying oil-firster, and partly because of the mistaken belief that a hydrocarbon economy creates jobs, or at least preserves existing ones, and that cleantech manufacturing does the opposite.
And then, there is this: A judge blocked Trump’s clean energy blockade. Are projects out of limbo? The ruling could start to clear a 57-gigawatt bottleneck of solar and wind capacity — or be appealed.

What a tangled web we weave When first we practice to deceive!
Middle East U.S. , Iran, Israel, etc.
Is Donald Trump ‘practicing to deceive’? He hardly needs practice. Is he deceiving himself? Is he losing, or has he lost, his mind?
Events and declarations of the past few days have been totally contradictory. For a clear-eyed summary, we recommend Heather Cox Richardson’s Letter of April 20, 2026 in which she also reminds us of the varying conflicts of interest of Jared Kushner and the Trump sons. She adds another disquieting fact: explaining “the fact pattern behind the general suspicion that someone is engaging in insider trading over Trump’s war announcements. After matching the president’s market-moving statements to the trade volume on a number of financial markets, Nick Marsh of the BBC found “a consistent pattern of spikes just hours, or sometimes minutes, before a social media post or media interview was made public.” Marsh notes a similar spike over Trump’s announcement of his “Liberation Day” tariffs of last April.”
How lucky we are to live in Canada with the government of Prime Minister Carney!
Mark Carney’s Year Two: Results as a National Imperative (see Long Reads & Views)
As Mark Carney enters his second year as prime minister, he confronts the oldest problem in governing: the gap between ambition and implementation.
Carney’s “Canada Strong” is one of the most expansive agendas of any recent Canadian prime minister: economic transformation, trade diversification, defence renewal and institutional reform. … But can it be delivered in a volatile world? Policy is never made in a vacuum. It is constrained by resources, federalism and events. Mark Carney’s Fireside Chat, or a Brief History of Forward Guidance
More from Policy Magazine ‘Carney’s Canada: One Year Later’

Israel-Lebanon
John Buchanan forwards Thomas L. Friedman’s piece:
How Israel Lost Its Way and How Trump Can Save Lebanon with the note that this is endorsed by Mme Chahine aka Joumane.
If you read nothing else about Netanyahu’s strategy vis à vis the West Bank, Gaza, Lebanon and his Arab neighbours, you should read this.

Press Freedom Week 27 April – 1 May
AP to host Press Freedom Week highlighting importance of independent journalism
Great news to celebrate during Press Freedom Week.
Not a lot of good news coming from South of the border, so double cause to rejoice that NPR Receives $113 Million From 2 Gifts
The donations, from the philanthropist Connie Ballmer and an anonymous donor, will support the network’s long-term strategy.
So much for Trump’s defunding of the national media treasure.
World Press Freedom Day (WPFD) 3 May
According to UNESCO’s World Trends Report 2022–2025, press freedom has experienced its steepest decline since 2012. This decline is comparable to that seen during the most unstable periods of the 20th century – the two world wars and the Cold War.
Information manipulation, including the use of AI by malicious actors, is weakening trust and national security. At the same time, independent media face growing economic fragility.
Self-censorship has grown by more than 60%, driven by fear of reprisals, online harassment, judicial intimidation, and economic pressure.
World Press Freedom Day (WPFD) 2026 offers a critical moment to reaffirm freedom of expression and to align journalism, technology (including AI), and human rights actors around practical ways to strengthen information ecosystems for the future.
Hosted in Lusaka, Zambia, WPFD 2026 brings together press freedom advocates and digital rights communities at a time when the boundaries between journalism, technology, civic space, and human rights are increasingly intertwined.

Canada & Quebec
Should this be high on the to-do list?
Transport Minister Steven Mackinnon announced the Canadian Space Launch Act on Tuesday. It’s planned to build a domestic launch industry that’s estimated to be worth $40 billion.
“Canada has reached the moon, but still lacks its own way, its own sovereign way to space — and that changes today,” Mackinnon said.
The announcement comes as Prime Minister Mark Carney has called for reducing Canada’s “over-reliance” on the United States, in his most recent video message.
Canada is the only G7 country without its own space launch capabilities, a gap the government is now looking to close. Currently, the worldwide space economy is projected to hit $1.5 trillion by 2032; Deloitte estimates Canada’s domestic market alone could reach $40 billion by 2040.
Quebec’s new Premier(e?), Christine Fréchette, unveiled her cabinet Tuesday; Bernard Drainville, her leadership rival, is the minister responsible for the Economy, Innovation and Energy, Maritime Strategy. Keeping him too busy to cause any trouble before the October elections?
Facing the strong possibility of a PQ government after the election, Andrew Caddell writes this week “The feds need a “dream team” to counter the PQ
The recent Liberal Policy Convention I attended in Montreal was more about convening than policy: the corridors of the Palais des Congrès were packed with 4,500 delegates networking away, while the policy sessions were sparsely attended.
One session did impress me for its participants. It was the session on “Building Canada Strong,” featuring Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne, Industry Minister Melanie Joly, Privy Council President Dominic Leblanc, and Heritage Minister Marc Miller, and Public Works Minister Joel Lightbound.
All are fluently bilingual, each is smart, articulate, and represents an important constituency: Montreal (Miller and Joly); rural Quebec (Champagne); Quebec City (Lightbound); Francophones outside Quebec (Leblanc).

Government & Governance
Food for thought from JD Vance’s Very Bad Week
What recent events in Europe can tell us about the future of Trumpism.
“…a Polish law professor [who], along with a number of judges and other law professors, had done a massive program on civic education in Poland, where they had done things like go to local communities, judges and law professors, and teach people what the rule of law is, what constitutional law is. It wasn’t, “Vote for this person and not this person,” — it was a massive civic education program. And that has stuck with me ever since. One thing we absolutely need in this country is a massive civic education program, so that people understand what it is that we are about to lose here in this country if the present trends continue towards Trumpist authoritarianism”
(See David French: To Save Democracy, Here’s a Playbook That Works
Poland pulled back from an authoritarian slide. What can the U.S. learn from its nonpartisan approach?)
Democrats are closer than you think to upending the Electoral College
The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact going into effect is suddenly plausible.

Varia
Woman, 96, enlists 150-pound dog to plant spring flowers: She points, he digs
Barbara Collins, 96, stands in her garden and points with her cane toward a patch of soil.
“And dig,” Collins commands the 150-pound Newfoundland beside her.
The dog lowers his head and starts to dig with his paws exactly where she pointed. Collins plants a small bunch of pink flowers, then pats the soil into place with her hands. They repeat until all of her flowers are in the ground.

What does the $ actually stand for?
Why is the $ sign an S? What does ‘dollar’ even mean? …what is the British pound a pound of, and what was the Euro originally called? Watch, and you will get your money’s worth.

Former first daughter Chelsea Clinton completes Boston Marathon, Bill and Hillary meet her at finish

What I Saw Inside the Kennedy Center I spent 10 months working at the institution because I thought I could help protect it. What I observed there is far worse than the public knows.
It is natural that we are deeply concerned by the trail of Trump administration foreign and domestic policy blunders and their repercussions as they affect the world, global economy,  our nation, and our personal lives, however this recent piece in The Atlantic about the desecration of the iconic (yes, this time it is appropriate) Kennedy Center is beyond awful. … The destruction of a cultural cornerstone of the US.

Trudeau can live his postpolitical life however he wants, but it will invariably reflect on his time in office
… There are no rules for what political leaders are “supposed” to do when they leave office, but there is a blueprint: Most disappear for a while, then join a few corporate boards, maybe give some speeches, and eventually write their memoirs. This is less an expectation than it is a continuation of their own natural professional trajectories; indeed, someone who is serious enough to become president or prime minister (notwithstanding the current occupant of the Oval Office) will most likely want to continue pursuing serious endeavours after he or she has left politics. Most are also mindful that their postpolitical activities will continue to tell the story of the type of person they were back when they were in office.
…when these ex-leaders decide to deliberately put their actions in the public eye – perhaps…by permitting a pop-star girlfriend to blast videos and images to her 200 million followers – the claim to privacy is not really valid.

Long reads & views
Thomas Friedman: How Israel Lost Its Way and How Trump Can Save Lebanon
The Hormuz crisis instantly exposed the risks of rolling back green and clean tech agendas
Jeremy Kinsman: Carney’s Diplomacy for a Changed World: ‘Cometh the Hour, Cometh the Man’
“But hope isn’t a plan, and nostalgia is not a strategy.”
Mark Carney’s Year Two: Results as a National Imperative
Forward Guidance with Prime Minister Mark Carney (YouTube)