2026-03-30 01:28:40
On Saturday millions of people around the country took part in more than 3,000 No Kings protests opposing the presidency of Donald Trump, whose approval ratings have plummeted to 36 percent, a record low since his return to the White House.
Saturday’s rallies were the third major No Kings protest, with organizers saying that 8 million people took part. That estimate has not been independently verified. But to put this weekend’s anti-Trump protests in perspective: about 300,000 people attended the April 2009 Tea Party protests against the Obama administration that were heralded as a seismic political event.
My Mother Jones colleagues were on the ground yesterday covering the action around the country:
Given the immense outpouring, what could these demonstrations mean for future organizing?
According to Payday Report, an outlet that covers labor and union news, Indivisible, one of the lead organizers of the No Kings protests, is backing the May Day Strong coalition, which is calling for “No Work, No School, No Shopping” on May 1.
Leah Greenberg, the co-founder of Indivisible, said, “On May 1, Indivisibles will be joining people across the country with a clear message: we demand a government that invests in our communities, not one that enriches billionaires, fuels endless war, or deploys masked agents to intimidate our neighbors.”
2026-03-30 01:12:59
On Sunday, Pope Leo said that God refuses the prayers of leaders who have “hands full of blood,” in what appeared to be a direct rebuke to many Trump administration officials, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who have invoked religious rhetoric to justify their war with Iran.
“This is our God: Jesus, King of Peace, who rejects war, whom no one can use to justify war,” Leo said to thousands of people attending his Palm Sunday mass at St. Peter’s Square. “He does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them.”
The pope has made repeated calls for an immediate ceasefire in Iran and, last Monday, said military airstrikes should be banned.
“Thousands of innocent people have been killed, and many others have been forced to abandon their homes,” Leo said earlier this month. “I renew my prayerful closeness to all those who have lost their loved ones in the attacks that have struck schools, hospitals, and residential areas.”
While the pope’s remarks have not identified anyone specific, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has been at the forefront of mingling his Christian faith with his prosecution of the Iran war. On Wednesday, Hegseth prayed at the Pentagon in front of military and civilian workers for US troops to deliver “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy.”
“We ask these things in bold confidence in the mighty and powerful name of Jesus Christ,” he continued.
Hegseth has been open about his support for a Christian crusade. As my colleague Kiera Butler pointed out when Donald Trump nominated him for secretary of defense in November 2024, Hegseth published a book in 2020 titled American Crusade, which discussed the destruction of Muslim holy sites to reclaim them for Christianity.
Kiera also highlighted Hegseth’s tattoos, including a Jerusalem cross on his chest, which Matthew Taylor, a religion scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies, told her is a reference to the Christian crusades. According to Taylor, another Hegseth tattoo of the words “Deus Vult”—Latin for “God wills it”—signifies that “God mandated Crusaders’ violence.”
During his tenure, Hegseth has explicitly injected religion into the Pentagon. According to the Washington Post, he hosts monthly evangelical worship services every month at the Pentagon and has invited clergy members from his Christian denomination to preach at these events.
2026-03-29 20:00:00
This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
Every summer, people descend on the wildflower capital of Colorado to see grasslands flush with corn lilies, aspen sunflowers and sub-alpine larkspur. In January 1991, a group of scientists lea by Professor John Harte set up a unique experiment in these Rocky Mountain meadows. It was one of the first (and longest running) to work out how the changing climate would affect an ecosystem.
At the time, it was believed a temperature increase could lead to longer, lusher grasses. But instead of flourishing, the grasses and wildflowers started to disappear, replaced by sage brush. The experimental meadows morphed into a desert-like scrubland. Even the fungi in the soils were transformed by heat.
The Warming Meadow experiment provided a window into the future. These meadows will disappear in the coming decades if warming reaches 2C above preindustrial levels, according to the resulting article published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The findings are alarming, not just for Colorado, but for mountains across the planet as “shrubification” takes over.
The Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory is in the former ghost town of Gothic, abandoned after the closure of its silver mines. Over winter, the landscape lies quietly under a bed of snow. In early spring, the only way for researchers to get to experimental sites—at an altitude of 10,000 feet—is by skiing across country.
Electric infrared radiators warmed five experimental plots of 30 square meters year-round. Head-height heaters were on day and night over a patch of meadow, keeping it 2C above normal temperatures with an annual electricity bill of $6,000. They warmed the top six inches of soil. Animals could come and graze and the natural system was preserved as much as possible.
Over 29 years, researchers found that shrubs increased by 150 percent in warmed plots compared with those without warming. The surface of the soil was dried by up to 20 percent, and shallow-rooted plants became stressed. Some wildflowers went extinct in heated plots. “It’s a sign of things to come,” says lead researcher Lara Souza from the University of Oklahoma.
Scientists also noted big changes in the invisible world of soil fungi and microbes. Shrubs and sage brush don’t rely on fungi in the same way as grasses. They found a decline in fungi that help plants acquire nutrients, and an increase in fungi that decompose organic matter. “This highlights that when you have a big change above ground, you’ve likely got a big change below ground,” says Souza. “Turning back is very unlikely.”
“It’s all happening so much faster than the projections would have said.”
Alpine grasslands are often overlooked in terms of their species richness. Europe’s alpine grasslands host 50 percent of European flora on just 3 percent of land. They are home to many plant species found nowhere else on the planet. “They’ve been here for thousands of years,” says Dr Patrick Möhl from Lancaster University who studies pristine alpine grasslands in Austria and their disappearance due to climate breakdown.
“It is very species diverse, we will lose so much of that. It will just be forest, the same kind of forest we have lower down,” he says.
Möhl has observed species of trees—often pine—moving uphill as the climate warms. “It’s a profound change in the ecosystem—the life form is changing, from grassland to a woody ecosystem,” he says.
This is not just being observed in mountain environments.
The expansion of shrub cover is one of the most significant ways Arctic landscapes are changing, with polar “greening” trends even visible on satellites. Increasing summer temperatures are the key driver. Shrub cover expanded by 2.2 percent each decade in the western Canadian Arctic, according to data recorded between 1984 and 2020.
In cold places, plants tend to stay small. Larger plants can get damaged through wind and cold exposure, the weight of snow, or face difficulties growing leaf and stem tissue in a very short growing season. As the climate becomes less cold and less stressful, shrub and tree species can move in.
“Global heating is lifting some of the restrictions to plant growth that were associated with cold conditions in high latitude and high-altitude ecosystems,” says Sarah Dalrymple, a conservation ecologist at Liverpool John Moores University, who has been studying changes in Iceland. “There is a transition from grasslands, or heath, through to shrubs, and eventually through to trees.”
Grass and soil ecosystems that have been kept in a delicate balance for thousands of years are likely to be irrevocably changed in the coming decades. “Shrubification in itself isn’t necessarily a problem, but the fact we are losing Arctic ecosystems is a problem,” says Dalrymple.
Some people welcome shrubs and trees—they bring shelter for wildlife, livestock and people. “But at a global level, the afforestation of cold environments is worrying because it is associated with permafrost melting and the acceleration of subsequent carbon emissions,” adds Dalrymple.
“It is alarming to see this process of shrubification happening so quickly. The speed of change, and the knock-on impacts on things like the carbon cycle, are really very worrying. It’s not just about whether the individual tree is good or bad.
“What is ‘bad’ is our inability to control our own carbon emissions. Shrubification is a symptom of this, not the cause, and we need to treat it as such.”
The way we manage the planet and where we live is based on the fact we assume that the planet is going to be there for ever, and is going to be unchanged. But these changes are global, not localised to Colorado. “It’s all happening so much faster than the projections would have said,” says Dalrymple.
Souza is still captivated by the insect-rich meadows around the research centre. She has been coming since 2012 and the magic is unchanged.
“It’s like flowers on steroids,” she says. “It’s surreal to me, every time I come.” But this vision is tinged with sadness at what the future might hold. This fragile landscape—like so many across our planet—is on the brink of huge change.
2026-03-29 07:30:22
I’ve covered all the No Kings protests in New York City since the start of Trump’s second presidency. What has struck me about all of them is how they fuse people’s fears with their hopes. The fear is what drives people onto the streets: threats to democracy, the war in Iran, attacks on LGBTQ Americans. The hope: each other, the promise of change. So, amid a raucous sea of angry, festive rallygoers along Manhattan’s 7th Avenue on Saturday, I asked people: What is your biggest fear and greatest hope right now?
“I’m here because they’re fucking building concentration camps that they’re locking tens of thousands of people in, and ICE is in our fucking airports,” the artist (and “Mother Jones fan”) Molly Crabapple told me. “Too many people are dying and too many people are in cages.” And while she doesn’t typically think “in hope,” she was inspired by the community. “I know we have each other and I don’t know if that’s enough, but that’s all we have.”
For Matthew Nichols, a 56-year-old arts worker, the greatest fear is November’s midterms—that “there’ll be some significant interference,” he said. “All of these things that seemed farfetched maybe a year ago or two years ago are actually coming to pass.”
Ash, 29, a Mexican agricultural worker, says he fears people being silenced and “losing empathy” but, like others I met, pointed to “all of us,” gesturing around, as providing him with hope. “People from all walks of life. Rich people, poor people, white people, black people. Everyone. So, it’s quite powerful.”
2026-03-29 05:16:11
Polls show that the majority of Americans oppose President Donald Trump’s war in Iran. Those numbers go even higher when the prospect of boots on the ground is included. The war has even repelled some of Trump’s biggest supporters in the MAGA world, who thought he was serious when he promised during his 2024 campaign that he wouldn’t engage in foreign wars if elected.
But none of those schisms were on display Saturday at CPAC, the nation’s oldest conservative political convention, when Reza Pahlavi took the stage. The son of the last shah of Iran was given rock star treatment and greeted with roars of approval from an audience filled with Iranian-Americans who back Trump’s attack on Iran.
“Can you imagine Iran going from death to America to God bless America?” he asked the raucous crowd. “Well, I, too can.” He pitched Trump’s war as an opportunity for Iranians to finally throw off 47 years of oppressive theocratic rule, and offered up himself as the chosen one who would lead the country through its transition to freedom.
“Unlike the regime that worships death and destruction, the Iranian people celebrate life and liberty,” he said. “That’s why I can imagine an Iran that exports engineers instead of extremists, startups instead of suicide bombers, energy instead of hatred.” With echoes of Trump’s “Make America Great Again” motto, Pahlavi said, “I can imagine in the Middle East where Iran is no longer a source of chaos, but an anchor of stability that does not fear its people, doesn’t threaten its neighbors, doesn’t isolate itself from the world. Imagining this is not difficult, because this is exactly what Iran once was, and what it can be again.”
The moment was surprisingly moving. Hundreds of exiled Iranians, many with children in tow, were clearly longing for Pahlavi to deliver change for the good. Yet the crown prince’s future—as well as exiles who hope to return to Iran—rests almost entirely on Trump, which seems like risky business. After all, Trump has the attention span of a gnat, and already he’s facing a revolt from his own party over the war.
Media stars like Tucker Carlson and Joe Rogan have been openly breaking with Trump for betraying his campaign promises. At CPAC, where most speakers seemed largely supportive of the war, former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) sounded a discordant note, saying, “A ground invasion of Iran will make our country poorer and less safe. It will mean higher gas prices, higher food prices. And I’m not sure if we would end up killing more terrorists than we would create.”
Some Republicans in Congress like Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) have joined with Democrats to try to pass a war powers resolution that would limit the president’s ability to wage war in Iran. Gas prices are skyrocketing as Iran continues to strangle the critical Strait of Hormuz, an outcome that seems to have taken Trump by surprise.
Faced with increasing opposition at home to the war, Trump has suggested that “me and the Ayatollah” might jointly oversee the operation of the strait, a partnership that would seem anathema to Iranian exiles in the US.
At CPAC, Pahlavi seemed to recognize the limits of America’s support for regime change in Iran through military action. “What we ask of America now is simple: Stay the course,” he pleaded. “Pave the way for the Iranian people to finish the job.”
The crown prince framed himself as the leader of an Iranian MAGA movement, and his supporters openly pined for the restoration for the shah. In that sense, they seemed much like American conservatives imagining a better past that never was. After all, Iran wasn’t exactly a model of democracy before the 1979 Iranian revolution. While he may have been a modernizing force, Pahlavi’s father was an authoritarian monarch who oversaw a one-party state that also engaged in torture and human rights abuses. Many of the Iranians I met at CPAC were far too young to remember life under the shah, and they seemed to view pre-revolutionary Iran with sepia tones.
“Iran, as it was before 1979, you know, we had a great country,” Sara Paras told me. “We were progressing. But now with the Ayatollah and Islamic regime, they are just destroying our country.” Paras, 29, is an enthusiastic backer of Pahlavi. “He is the representative of the people of Iran. He wants the same thing that the Iranian people want, too. They want freedom.”
While Pahlavi seems to have a large following of Iranians inside the US, Trump and his aides have reportedly called him the “loser prince” because they don’t believe he has much support inside Iran, a country the suburban Maryland resident hasn’t visited in 50 years. At CPAC, however, Pahlavi pushed back on such criticism. “I have unified a broad coalition of dissidents, republicans, and monarchists, left and right,” he said. “Men and women of all ages, religions, and ethnicities. Even people who were former political opponents have joined the movement to free Iran under my leadership.”
One thing Pahlavi didn’t promise to deliver in Iran: immediate elections—though he has said that those will happen eventually.
“The Iran story is not yet finished,” he said, concluding his speech. “Great civilizations outlast even the most vicious occupiers. With your help and with the courage, sacrifice and heroism of Iran’s greatest youth, our best latest chapter is being written right now. When it is done, a free and democratic Iran will stand alongside the United States as a partner, ally, and a friend. President Trump is making America great again. I intend to make Iran great again.”
2026-03-29 01:37:32
From hundreds of people standing on the side of a road in St. Petersburg, Florida, to tens of thousands in Manhattan, the third round of No Kings protests has once again brought out people across the country to protest President Donald Trump and his administration. Organizers are expecting several million people to turn out in total.
The flagship event at the Minnesota State Capitol in St. Paul in the afternoon is expected to see around 100,000 people, and there are planned demonstrations in all 50 states. Saturday’s turnout follows two other nationwide events in June and October 2025 from the No Kings coalition, a movement made up of dozens of organizations. The October 18 demonstrations drew millions of Americans to more than 2,700 events, according to organizers.
As the chants, signs, and speeches at Saturday’s events make clear, countless Americas are fed up with federal immigration agents’ violence in American cities, the rising cost of living, the ongoing war against Iran, and the administration’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein scandal.
Ezra Levin, the co-founder of Indivisible, one of the main groups behind the nationwide protests, told me in January that this third No Kings mobilization would be “a response to the secret police force that’s terrorizing American communities.” Yet, he continued, “I reserve the right to say that this is in response to whatever more recent atrocity the regime commits. It’s lashing out quite a bit, so we’ll see.”
Here are just some of the scenes from Saturday’s events. This post will be updated as the day goes on.
