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Programming Note: Due to the Good Friday holiday on Friday, April 3, the next Daily Read will arrive in your inbox on Monday, April 6.
🌷 Happy Easter to all who celebrate and warm wishes to those observing Passover.
Allies at Risk: NATO Worries Trump Will Weaken Alliance as US Threatens Exit (Bloomberg)
European allies are skeptical that Donald Trump will actually pull the US out of NATO. But they still fear the president’s renewed threats to do so are eroding the military alliance at a precarious moment.
Trump on Wednesday capped mounting US critiques of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization with a suggestion that he was strongly considering leaving the alliance.
While the rhetoric isn’t particularly novel — Trump and his cohort have long bashed NATO allies as free-loaders who don’t help the US — the president’s latest ire is posing a greater risk to the alliance as his war in Iran deepens and he looks for people to blame, according to officials familiar with discussions among allies.
US-UK Shift: Keir Starmer Signals Major UK Pivot Towards EU after Donald Trump’s Taunts (Financial Times)
UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer has signaled
that Britain will pivot towards the EU after weeks of taunts from President Trump over the UK’s stance on the war in Iran.
A Year After Liberation Day: Manufacturing’s Promised Revival Has Yet to Arrive (Politico)
One year ago today, President Trump stood at a lectern in the Rose Garden, held up a booklet of trade barriers as thick as the Bible and told a crowd of people in suits and hard hats that with his planned tariffs, “jobs and factories will come roaring back into our country and you see it happening already.”
Those jobs and factories haven’t materialized, at least on the grand scale the president and his top advisers have promised, Politico writes.
Manufacturing payrolls actually declined slightly over the past year, with 98,000 fewer jobs year-over-year based on the most recent data from the Labor Department.
Business Warning: JPMorgan's Jamie Dimon Says the US Faces Its Most Dangerous Mix of Risks in 80 Years (Axios)
Relations Reset: US Drops Sanctions on Venezuela’s Rodríguez as Ties Improve (Bloomberg)
Arctic Push Continues: US Plans Military Expansion in Greenland (New York Times)
The American military is intensifying efforts to secure greater access to Greenland, a clear signal that President Trump’s interest in the enormous Arctic island has not waned.
The United States is negotiating with Denmark for access to three additional bases in Greenland — including two previously abandoned by Americans — which would mark the first US expansion there in decades, according to a top Pentagon general, Gen. Gregory M. Guillot.
Climate of Hope: How Renewable Energy Can Make This the Last Oil War (Carl Pope - Daily Read Blog)
In a stark warning,
the head of the International Energy Agency said last month that the immediate scale of the Iran War energy crisis was far worse than either the oil shocks of the 1970s or the gas crisis after Russia invaded Ukraine, Carl Pope writes in the Daily Read blog.
Unlike 1973,
when the available menu of energy sources decoupled from oil markets was sparse and expensive, a global energy transition away from fossil fuels is already underway. It has been, if tepidly, embraced by all of the world’s importing economies, particularly China and the EU. There is a brighter, fairer and more abundant energy future ahead. This can be the last oil war, Pope writes. Read his full piece
here.
Spring Stalls: Europe Braces for Wild Weather and Cold Snaps Through April (Bloomberg)
Sport Shock: Italy Fails to Qualify for World Cup for Third Straight Time, Sparking Political Fury (Politico)
Today in Prediction Markets: With ‘Death Markets’ and Attack Ads, the Polymarket-Kalshi Rivalry Turns Nasty (Bloomberg)
Kalshi Inc. and Polymarket are slinging weighty accusations at each other as the prediction market rivalry heats up and the nascent industry comes under intense scrutiny in Washington.
While the platforms have sparred frequently in the past, the rhetoric has escalated in recent days after Kalshi launched a pointed advertising campaign and its employees publicly criticized Polymarket. The accusations quickly sparked a heated back-and-forth between the companies.
In Other News: South Dakotans React to Daily Mail Article on Kristi Noem's Husband (New York Times)
Pictures of Bryon Noem, the husband of the former head of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, ricocheted across the internet this week.
Images
showed him with what appear to be
enormous inflated balloons under his spandex shirt — making him a political punchline for her many, many enemies. Back home in South Dakota, neighbors felt sorry for him.
🔊 New Episode Alert: Tune in to today’s Daily Read Podcast for an AI-powered breakdown of the day’s biggest headlines. We go beyond the scroll with key takeaways, sharp context, and the “why it matters” behind each story—so you can stay ahead in less time. Listen now on Spotify
or Apple Podcasts.
En Route to Space: NASA Astronauts Reach Safe Orbit in Historic Moon Mission (Bloomberg)
NASA’s crew of astronauts launched to space and reached a stable orbit, kicking off a landmark journey that will take them closer to the lunar surface than anyone has been in more than 50 years.
The initial phase of the 10-day mission to lap the moon, a multibillion-dollar feat about a decade in the making, clears a major hurdle for NASA and its legacy aerospace contractors as the agency works to establish a base on the lunar surface and ultimately venture to Mars.
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