Heat
a large nonstick skillet over MEDIUM heat until hot. Add Ground Beef;
cook 8 to 10 minutes, breaking into 3/4-inch crumbles and stirring
occasionally until meat is no longer pink. Pour off drippings, if any.
Step 2
Stir in carrots, salsa, beans, cumin, chili powder and garlic powder; cook for 2 minutes. Remove skillet from heat.
Step 3
Divide
salad greens between 4 plates and top each with a quarter of the beef
mixture. Top with cheese, tomato, pepper and onion. Garnish with sliced
olives and dressing, if desired.
That's a pretty dense salad, I bet it's very satisfying and can be the main dish.
A
federal judge in Washington struck down part of President Donald
Trump’s executive order targeting funding for NPR and the Public
Broadcasting Service (PBS) on Tuesday, ruling that it was
unconstitutional retaliation that violated their press freedom rights
under the First Amendment.
The
May 1, 2025, executive order, titled “Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of
Biased Media,” cut off funding to public media — with Trump calling out
what he perceived as left-wing bias in NPR’s and PBS’s news reporting.
“The
message is clear,” U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss, a Barack Obama
appointee to the federal bench, wrote in an opinion. “NPR and PBS need
not apply for any federal benefit because the President disapproves of
their ‘left-wing’ coverage of the news.” He added that the action
amounted to “viewpoint discrimination.”
The
portion of the order stipulated that agency heads “shall identify and
terminate, to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law, any
direct or indirect funding of NPR and PBS.” Moss issued an injunction
halting the federal government from permanently cutting off funding to
the two entities.
In a fact sheet issued along
with the executive order, the White House excoriated NPR and PBS, saying
the media organizations “fueled partisanship and left-wing propaganda
with taxpayer dollars, which is highly inappropriate and an improper use
of taxpayers’ money.” The White House cited an NPR article about “queer
animals” and a PBS documentary about a transgender teenager in deriding
the public media giants.
[. . .]
Moss
wrote that NPR and PBS proved their cases definitively. “It is
difficult to conceive of clearer evidence that a government action is
targeted at viewpoints that the President does not like and seeks to
squelch,” he wrote. “To be sure, the President is entitled to criticize
this or any other reporting, and he can express his own views as he sees
fit. He may not, however, use his governmental power to direct federal
agencies to exclude Plaintiffs from receiving federal grants or other
funding in retaliation for saying things that he does not like.”
The practical impact of the ruling could be limited.
Two months after the executive order, Congress voted to claw back
roughly $500 million in annual funding for the Corporation for Public
Broadcasting (CPB), the organization that distributes federal money to
NPR and PBS. The CPB has since dissolved, and public radio and television stations across the country have sought alternate sources of revenue and fundraising.
The executive order also already cut millions of dollars in funding
from the Department of Education toward PBS for children's programming,
forcing the system to lay off one-third of its PBS Kids staff.
The
ruling could, however, remove a legal hurdle if Congress later moves to
restore funding for public media. Katherine Maher, NPR’s president and
CEO, described the ruling to the AP
as an affirmation of the rights of free and independent press. “Public
media exists to serve the public interest—that of Americans—not that of
any political agenda or elected official,” she said.
The
attacks Chump launched are despicable and against who we are as a
people. NPR and PBS are important outlets and Chump having a hissy fit
over PBS is especially revealing -- revealing how stupid he is. PBS has
drama, Brit coms, music programs, cooking shows, science shows, travel
shows. In terms of news? The NewsHour has a left and right pundit
providing commentary each episode. Otherwise, they do try to go down
the middle. And I believe that conservative Margret Hoover is the only
person with a political daytime show. There is Amanpour & Company
that airs at night.
NPR has more news programming than PBS.
I
watch The PBS NewsHour. I've noted that here repeatedly over the
years. I have a little TV in the kitchen that I watch while I'm fixing
dinner and I watch The NewsHour. I don't know why you would have a
problem unless you're just someone who thinks everything broadcast has
to interest you at every minute of the day. These two networks -- radio
and TV -- are
Wednesday, April 1, 2026. Chump due to address the nation tonight
regarding his Iran War, federal judge rules against him in his attack on
NPR and PBS, Kristi Noem gets some attention, Secretary of Education
Linda McMahon deserves some attention for being named in a pedo lawsuit,
and much more.
As former secretaries of defense, we
understand the profound responsibility of deploying our men and women in
uniform into harm’s way. It is critical that there be a clear
objective, a strategy to achieve the objective and an endgame to bring
our forces back home. The president, Congress and the American people
should be unified when a country goes to war.
There are now over 50,000 troops stationed in the Middle East, with President Trump reportedly considering sending forces on missions to extract Iran’s uranium or to occupy Kharg Island. Both operations are very risky and could result in heavy casualties and prolong the war.
Because
their lives are on the line, we owe it to these committed American
service members and their families to be truthful about the risks
involved and why we are at war. There was a case to be made that Iran
had a history of threatening the stability of the United States, Israel
and other nations in the Middle East. Its leaders’ support for
terrorism, arming dangerous proxy forces, developing large numbers of
missiles that could strike regional targets and efforts to develop
nuclear capability represented a genuine threat to peace and stability
in the region.
But it is also true
that the 12-day war waged by Israel and the United States against Iran
in June weakened Tehran and its proxies, damaged missile and airstrike
capabilities and set back the project to develop a nuclear bomb. By
July, Iran was no longer an imminent threat — a conclusion supported by
our intelligence agencies.
President Trump is set to address the nation on the Iran war at 9
p.m. Eastern time on Wednesday night, with White House press secretary
Karoline Leavitt saying he would be providing "an important update,"
without providing further details.
On Tuesday, Trump said he
expected the conflict to be over in two to three weeks, adding, "we'll
be leaving very soon," and promising gas prices would then "come
tumbling down."
Trump shrugged off what would happen to the
blockaded Strait of Hormuz – which has cut off one fifth of the world's
oil supply – saying, "we're not going to have anything to do with it."
He said that it wouldn't affect the U.S. and would be something for
other countries to deal with.
"They'll be able to fend for themselves," he said, having previously
told European allies who have refused to enter the war to "go get your
own oil!"
The assertion to wrap up the war quickly comes just
days after Trump threatened to up the ante if there was no deal and
Tehran didn't reopen the strait. He said he could seize Iran's oil and
blow up all of their Electric Generating Plants and desalinization
plants. He also said he was considering an invasion of Iran's key oil
export terminal, Kharg Island.
So will Chump
announce that tonight? If so, will he stick to it or will it just be
more disposable words about this war of choice? Will it happen or will
he TACO again? At least 13 American service members have died in
Chump's war of choice, over 3000 more have been left injured, between
1,500 and 3,4000 Iranians are estimated to have been killed.
And after four weeks, Chump's finally going to address the nation about this war of choice he started.
The
Department of Homeland Security permitted a Mexican woman to return
Monday to the United States after a judge found her deportation was
unlawful, a rare reprieve at a time when growing numbers of immigrants
who arrived as children are being targeted for removal.
A
federal judge had ordered DHS to facilitate Maria de Jesus Estrada
Juarez’s return to the United States, after immigration officers
deported her to Mexico even though she is actively enrolled in an Obama
administration program that prohibits her removal because she arrived in
the U.S. as a child.
Stacy Tolchin, her immigration attorney, and Ivonne Rodriguez, an advocate, confirmed Estrada had returned to California.
“This
has been one of the most painful experiences of my life,” Estrada said
after arriving in California. “I followed the rules. I trusted the
system. And for that, I was ripped away from my daughter, Damaris,
without warning. I’m home now — but what happened to me is wrong, and it
should never happen to anyone.”
Estrada, 42,
is one of dozens, if not hundreds, of immigrants enrolled in the
Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program who have been
arrested and, in some cases, deported, since President Donald Trump
started his second term. Former DHS secretary Kristi L. Noem, who was
ousted this month, alleged that most had criminal histories and were
therefore eligible for removal. But congressional Democrats say Trump is
targeting a group that had cleared background checks and been promised
to be shielded from deportation.
Maria
is just one of the many harmed by Kristi Noem. The freak. Some of her
victims are dead. Some are being tortured in other countries. She has
a lot of blood on her hands. And she has a lot of nerve asking for
privacy. Yes, there's her alleged years long affair with Corey
Lewandowski who is married. And Kristi's married. But that's not what
she's asking for privacy over Do we go there? Let's. Ahmad Austin Jr. (MEDIAITE) covers it:
Former
Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem was reportedly “devastated” by
the bombshell allegations of her husband’s double life involving
crossdressing.
On Tuesday morning, Daily Mail published
a explosive report alleging that Noem’s husband, Bryon Noem, liked to
cross-dress and regularly contacted fetish models. Included in the
report were numerous photos of Bryon dressed in women’s clothing, with
what appeared to be two balloons under the shirts to imitate breasts.
Daily Mail also claimed that Bryon “lavished praise on their
surgically-enhanced bodies” and “confessed his lust for ‘huge, huge
ridiculous boobs.'”
THE DAILY MAIL published photos and texts. TMZ adds:
The
statement reads, "Ms. Noem is devastated. The family was blindsided by
this, and they ask for privacy and prayers at the time."
According
to The Daily Mail, Bryon snapped photos of himself wearing oversized
fake breasts and chatted with adult performers from the "bimbofication"
fetish scene about their massively augmented boobs.
Kristi Noem has made a career out of policing identity. She has pushed laws targeting transgender
people, restricted access to care, and framed those decisions as moral
clarity about who people are allowed to be. What began as political noise quickly became policy, enforced by the state, often against children. So when a scandal breaks inside her own family, and her response is to ask for privacy, the contradiction is not subtle. It is the system working exactly as designed.
Privacy has never been extended to the people her politics target. Transgender people, and the broader LGBTQ+
community, live under a level of scrutiny that most Americans will
never experience. Our identities are debated in legislatures, dissected
on television, and reduced to talking points in political campaigns.
Transgender
people’s bodies, their health care, their families, and their very
existence are treated as public questions to be answered repeatedly,
often by people with no stake in the outcome. There is no off switch. No
private lane. Just a constant demand to explain, justify, and defend
the simple act of being alive.
This would be easier to
dismiss as a personal scandal if it were not happening in the middle of
a coordinated political project. In 2026 alone, hundreds of anti-LGBTQ
bills have already been introduced across the country, with hundreds
more specifically targeting transgender people, restricting health care,
policing schools, and inserting the state into the most private parts
of people’s lives. The same politicians driving that effort are the ones
now asking for privacy when the scrutiny turns toward them.
So
maybe this is a moment to reconsider the rules. If privacy matters, it
should matter for everyone. If identity is complex, it should be treated
that way in law. And if living honestly is something worth protecting,
there are already people doing that work every day, often in the face of
the very policies Kristi Noem has championed.
Another
ally of former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem
has found herself in legal jeopardy over delays in responding to a
natural disaster, according to a new report.
Bloomberg reported on Monday that Kara Voorhies, who was installed at the Federal Emergency Management Agency by Noem's top advisor, Corey Lewandowski,
is facing a DHS Inspector General probe into her role in responding to
the deadly floods in Texas last year. Voorhies retained outsized
influence on agency contracting and spending decisions while she worked
at DHS, according to the report.
Davis
notes that this ally of Kristi's is "the second Noem ally to come under
legal scrutiny" and that "Tricia McLaughlin, a former DHS spokesperson,
and her husband have also faced allegations of benefitting from a
massive $220 million advertising contract from DHS, according to
reports." Actually Voorhies is the third. It would go Tricia, Corey
and now Kara. That's three, not two. And there will no doubt be many
more. (And I may have forgotten one that's already known.)
Defense
Secretary Pete Hegseth’s personal broker allegedly approached a major
asset manager about making a multimillion dollar investment in defense
companies in the weeks leading up to the airstrikes on Iran, according
to a report.
The Financial Times, citing three
people familiar with the matter, has alleged that Hegseth’s broker at
Morgan Stanley reached out to BlackRock in February to inquire about
making a significant investment in its Defense Industrials Active ETF.
The
inquiry from such a high-profile client was flagged internally at the
asset manager, the FT writes, and the investment was ultimately never
made as the $3.2 billion equity fund in question was not at that time
available for Morgan Stanley clients to buy.
Catherine Bouris (DAILY BEAST) adds, "The
Financial Times notes that it is unclear whether the broker
representing Hegseth found an alternative defense-focused fund to invest
in."
MAGA
Rep. James Comer has admitted that President Donald Trump’s Justice
Department has “botched” the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files.
The
Kentucky Republican was asked on CNN’s The Lead with Jake Tapper on
Monday if he had “confidence” in the DOJ’s handling of the Epstein case,
with Tapper noting that Attorney General Pam Bondi’s department has not
been in compliance with the Epstein Files Transparency Act.
The DOJ identified 6 million Epstein files for potential release, but has only disclosed about 3.5 million.
“Well,
I think the Justice Department has botched this,” said Comer, who once
described himself as a “Trump man” shortly after the Jan 6. Capitol
attack.
[. . .]
He
said Bondi blamed the slow release on ongoing class-action lawsuits
involving victims, which he said make it difficult for the DOJ to turn
over some documents.
It’s
unclear what lawsuits Comer or Bondi are referring to. A group of
Epstein survivors filed a class-action lawsuit against the DOJ last week
over its failure to redact victims’ personal information in the
documents, but it’s unclear how that would affect the millions of files
still to be released.
Richard
Kahn was deposed by the House Oversight Committee last month. After
stating that Jane Doe number four received a payout from an Epstein fund
for victims, he then disowned his testimony. Jane Doe number four is
the woman who accused Epstein and Chump of assault. María Teresita Armstrong-Matta (RAW STORY) reports US House Rep Ro Khanna appeared on Jen Psaki's MS NOW program on Sunday and they discussed this issue:
During an appearance on MS NOW, Khanna told Jen Psaki that the FBI interviewed Jane Doe 4 four times, suggesting credibility.
Khanna
proposed that Kahn retracted his statement due to fear of Trump
directing Attorney General Pam Bondi to prosecute him or take
retaliatory action. Khanna questioned why Kahn's representatives claimed
they could "neither confirm nor deny" payment of a settlement, stating
they would definitively know whether funds were disbursed.
Today,
the US Supreme Court hears arguments in Chump's efforts to overturn the
Constitution and strip people of birth right citizenship. Chump is
said to be planning to attend the hearing. If so, expect plenty of
photos of him sleeping through the arguments.
A
disgraced attorney who tried to help President Donald Trump overturn
the 2020 election has been revealed as the secret driving force behind
the administration’s effort to end birthright citizenship.
John
Eastman has been working for decades to convince the Supreme Court to
take up his fringe legal theory that the Constitution doesn’t
automatically confer citizenship on virtually all people born in the
U.S., despite the 14th Amendment’s explicit guarantees.
The
justices will hear oral arguments on the subject Wednesday in a case
challenging a Trump executive order that seeks to end birthright
citizenship.
But
the administration has apparently sought to obscure Eastman’s influence
on the topic, even as it has embraced his legal theories, according to Politico.
Trump
did not mention Eastman—who has been barred from practicing law over
his effort to subvert Joe Biden’s election victory—when he signed his
executive order, even though Eastman had been pushing Trump to try to
end birthright citizenship since the president’s first term in office.
The
Justice Department’s briefs also don’t cite any of Eastman’s 100-plus
op-eds, interviews, law review articles, debates, speeches, or
legislative hearings, despite adhering closely to Eastman’s legal
arguments, Politico noted.
The
Trump administration was hit Thursday with a new lawsuit from survivors
of Jeffrey Epstein over what they say was a “deliberate” oversight from
the Justice Department (DOJ).
“The
United States, acting through the DOJ, made a deliberate policy choice
to prioritize rapid, large-volume disclosure over protection of Epstein
survivors’ privacy,” the plaintiffs in the lawsuit said, according to a report from NBC Los Angeles.
“[The DOJ] outed approximately 100 survivors of the convicted sexual
predator, publishing their private information and identifying them to
the world. Survivors now face renewed trauma. Strangers call them, email
them, threaten their physical safety, and accuse them of conspiring
with Epstein when they are, in reality, Epstein’s victims.”
She's
just a con artist and she knows nothing about education. (She served
less than a year on that board.) She also has an Epstein like
connection with the other creeps in Chump's administration per Wikipedia:
In October 2024, McMahon was named as a defendant in a lawsuit
accusing her, her husband, and the WWE of negligence regarding the ring boy scandal, in which multiple WWE personnel, including ring announcer Mel Phillips and executives Pat Patterson and Terry Garvin, either resigned or were dismissed in 1992 after being accused of sexually assaulting young boys.[80][81] The lawsuit alleged that the McMahons fostered a culture of sexual abuse within the WWE.[82]
The lawsuit was paused by a federal judge in December 2024, pending the
outcome of a legal challenge to a state law that could impact the case.[83]
The lawsuit was allowed to proceed in February 2025; in April 2025,
McMahon filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit. She has denied the claims
in the lawsuit.[84][85]
Didn't
know that until today. She's accused of being part of a pedophile
ring. I don't think she should be allowed to serve in our government
while she's accused of that. It doesn't look right.
A federal judge ruled on Tuesday that President Trump’s executive
order barring the federal funding of NPR and PBS violated the First
Amendment.
Randolph Moss, a judge in the U.S.
District Court for the District of Columbia, said in his ruling that Mr.
Trump’s order, signed last May, was unlawful because it instructed
federal agencies to refrain from funding NPR and PBS because the
president believed their news coverage had a liberal viewpoint.
“The
message is clear: NPR and PBS need not apply for any federal benefit
because the president disapproves of their ‘left-wing’ coverage of the
news,” Judge Moss wrote. But the First Amendment, he said, “does not
tolerate viewpoint discrimination and retaliation of this type.”
The
ruling will likely have minimal effect on the federal funding of public
media. Two months after the executive order, Congress voted to claw
back roughly $500 million in annual funding for the Corporation for
Public Broadcasting, the organization that distributes federal money to
NPR and PBS. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting has since shut
down, and public radio and TV stations across the country have sought
alternate forms of revenue.
Let's wind down with this from Senator Patty Murray's office:
ICYMI: Murray, Booker, Lieu Reintroduce Legislation to Ban Conversion Therapy
ICYMI: Murray, Congressional Democrats File Amicus Brief Urging Supreme Court to Support Conversion Therapy Bans
Seattle, WA – Today, U.S. Senator Patty Murray
(D-WA), a senior member and former Chair of the Senate Health,
Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, released the following
statement in response to the Supreme Court’s decision in Chiles v. Salazar.
The decision rejected a Colorado law that protects children from the
harmful practice of conversion therapy, putting at risk the safety and
wellbeing of children in Colorado and 23 states around the country—including Washington state—with similar restrictions.
“Conversion therapy is a dangerous practice based on the
hateful idea that being part of the LGBTQ+ community is an illness that
requires treatment—it’s child abuse. Conversion therapy should be banned
nationwide, and I have a bill to do just that because there is no real
debate in the medical community—the overwhelming majority of mental
health care providers know how harmful this practice is. I’m not going
to stop fighting for a world where every person, no matter their gender
or sexual orientation, can live with dignity and without fear.”
Senator Murray has consistently fought to ban conversion therapy and
ensure that LGBTQ+ people have access to high-quality health care. Last
year, Senator Murray, joined by Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Congressman Ted
W. Lieu (D-CA-36), reintroduced her Therapeutic Fraud Prevention Act
legislation that would ban conversion therapy—a practice that has been
recognized by the national community of professionals in health,
education, social work, and counseling as being both dangerous and
useless. Senator Murray first introduced the legislation in the 114th Congress and has pushed to pass it every Congress since.
In addition to Senators Murray and Booker, the Therapeutic Fraud Prevention Act was
cosponsored by Senators Baldwin, Bennet, Blumenthal, Cantwell, Coons,
Cortez-Masto, Duckworth, Durbin, Fetterman, Gillibrand, Hassan,
Heinrich, Hickenlooper, Hirono, Kaine, Kelly, Kim, King, Klobuchar,
Luján, Markey, Merkley, Murphy, Padilla, Reed, Rosen, Sanders, Schiff,
Shaheen, Slotkin, Smith, Van Hollen, Warren, Welch, Whitehouse, and
Wyden.
The legislation was introduced in the House with 70 original cosponsors. The Therapeutic Fraud Prevention Act is
endorsed by the Congressional Equality Caucus, Human Rights Campaign,
PFLAG, American Academy of Pediatrics, Equality California, National
Association of School Psychologists, Christopher Street Project, and
Advocates for Trans Equality.
Also last year, Senator Murray joined Democratic colleagues in the House and Senate in filing an amicus brief
urging the United States Supreme Court to uphold the constitutionality
of Colorado’s ban on mental health professionals engaging in conversion
therapy for minors in this case, Chiles v. Salazar.
1 small acorn squash (about 1 lb), cut into 3/4-in.-thick wedges
1 bulb fennel, cut into 1/2-in.-thick wedges
1 Tbsp. plus 2 tsp olive oil, divided
4 sprigs thyme
Kosher salt and pepper
2 small bone-in chicken breasts (about 1 1/2 lbs total)
Directions
Step 1
Heat
oven to 425°F. On rimmed baking sheet, toss onions, squash and fennel
with 1 tablespoon oil, thyme and 1/4 teaspoon each salt and pepper;
roast 15 minutes.
Step 2
Meanwhile, heat remaining 2
teaspoons oil in medium skillet on medium. Season chicken with 1/4
teaspoon each salt and pepper and cook, skin side down, until deep
golden brown, 8 to 10 minutes. Flip and cook 3 minutes more.
Step 3
Nestle
chicken among veggies and roast until chicken is cooked through, 15 to
18 minutes. Transfer chicken to cutting board; let rest at least 5
minutes.
Step 4
Meanwhile, continue roasting
vegetables until ready to serve, about 5 minutes. Slice half of chicken
and serve with one-third of vegetables. Refrigerate leftover chicken and
vegetables for lunch the next day.
Three
former FBI special agents who worked criminal cases against President
Donald Trump and were then ousted by the administration have filed a
lawsuit over their "illegal" firings, citing as evidence comments that
the No. 2 official at the Justice Department made at a conservative
conference last week.
Deputy
Attorney General Todd Blanche, who formerly served as Trump's personal
attorney, said last week at the Conservative Political Action Conference
(CPAC) that FBI Director Kash Patel had “cleaned house” and that there
“isn’t a single man or woman with a gun, federal agent, still in that
organization that had anything to do with the prosecution of President
Trump.”
Former agents Michelle Ball, Jamie
Garman and Blaire Toleman filed the lawsuit that seeks class-action
status. It names Patel and Attorney General Pam Bondi and argues the
agents "faithfully served" the country but were targeted by a
"retribution" campaign that was "timed to drive headlines and curry
favor with political supporters."
The suit, one
of at least three filed by FBI agents fired under Trump, argues that
the administration has axed more than 50 FBI employees “without
providing them any modicum of due process, and while disparaging their
reputations and service in public statements around the time of the
firings.”
Ava and C.I. wrote a
strong piece about Blanche and his idiotic statements for Polly's Brew
last Saturday. They noted how those who were fired now have a real case
on their hands because they were fired for doing their job. There's no
confusion regarding that after Todd Blanche's foolish statements.
When
Trump arrived at his West Palm Beach golf course on Saturday morning,
it marked his 56th visit there since his 2025 inauguration. It was his
110th day on a golf course that he owns — meaning he has played golf on
more than one-quarter of his days since returning to the presidency. Per our analysis, Trump is now on track to spend $300 million on his golf habit by the end of his term.
President
Trump zigzagged from claims of diplomatic progress to renewed threats
of destruction on Monday, sending new shocks through oil markets as he
sought to pressure Iran to make a deal to end the monthlong war.
Mr.
Trump said in a Truth Social post that there had been “great progress”
in talks with Tehran but warned that if they failed to produce an
agreement, he would order the bombardment of Iranian power plants, oil
infrastructure and potentially desalination plants. The president has
repeatedly threatened such attacks in recent weeks, only to back down,
as the global economy reels from the risk to energy supplies.
Despite
Mr. Trump’s claim that the United States is in talks with “a new, and
more reasonable, regime” in Iran, however, there has been little
apparent progress in the negotiations. Iran has denied holding
substantive talks with the United States and has rejected the Trump
administration’s conditions as unreasonable. The war has raged on,
drawing in much of the Middle East, sending oil and gas prices
skyrocketing and fracturing Mr. Trump’s political support at home.
As
Mr. Trump strains to find an end to a conflict he originally mused
would last four to five weeks, he has alternately narrowed his aims —
arguing on Sunday that “regime change” in Iran had already been achieved
— and raised the prospect of escalation, ordering thousands more U.S.
troops to the Middle East, including Marines and Special Operations
Forces.
He has no plans because he
has no established goals. He never did. He started a war with on end
goals. He was encouraged in this by the yes-people who surround him.
They started a war and, even now, can't point to any accomplishments.
They just continue it and hope at some point they'll discover a way to
say, "It's over!"
Trump’s threats: Trump claimed
the US was in “serious discussions” with a “new” regime in Iran and
threatened to “completely obliterate” the country’s energy sources if “a
deal is not shortly reached.” US Secretary of State Marco Rubio later
claimed there were “fractures” within Iran’s leadership but declined to
name the specific people the US is negotiating with. Trump’s former
national security adviser dismissed claims the White House is negotiating with a more moderate regime as “just delusional.”
Tehran’s rebuttal: Contradicting both Trump and Rubio, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei
said there are currently no direct negotiations between the US and
Iran. Messages have only been relayed through intermediaries, he
claimed. The White House says Tehran’s pessimistic public comments do not reflect private messages being passed between the two sides.
Chump
lies about conversations all the time. And what happens when you lie
all the time? No one believes you. So people don't believe Chump's
talking to anyone in the Iranian government. And they don't believe
that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth would be sitting out press
briefings if he had anything worth sharing.
Once
mobilization begins and the war industry is activated, it is difficult
to turn back. The war machine is too vast and complex to stop. Now the
war against Iran is escalating and seems out of control. This is
evident, to begin with, in the words: Iran issued a harsh warning to the
United States yesterday that any ground operation against the country
will end with the "humiliating capture" of its troops, who will be "food
for the sharks of the Persian Gulf".
In this
context, the Pentagon has offered, as confessed yesterday by Karoline
Leavitt, White House press secretary, "several intervention options in
Iran and the president has not yet made a decision." In the Middle East
region, the United States already has over 8,000 deployed ground forces,
including paratroopers, marines, and special forces, but Trump has not
yet made a decision on the plans presented to him, which include taking
one or more islands and even an incursion beyond enemy lines. At the
moment, we do not know if Trump will choose one, several at once, or
none.
What we do know is that
he is not satisfied with that deployment and has asked for more. Another
ship for amphibious operations, the USS Boxer, set sail from Hawaii two
days ago to head to the Gulf region with thousands of marines on board.
It will be the second of its kind, as the USS Tripoli already arrived
here on Friday.
Some recall these days that
U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War began in 1960 with 900 military
advisors, then with 3,500 marines to secure Da Nang airport, and from
there to half a million soldiers fighting in 1969.
To
replace the aircraft carrier Gerald Ford, which is undergoing repairs
in Greek waters, the USS George Bush will also be deployed. Some claim
that in reality, the Gerald Ford was damaged by an Iranian missile
attack, while the United States maintains that there was a massive fire
in the laundry room.
Many journalists covering
Defense affairs in Washington have complained about the lack of
transparency: it has been 10 days since the last appearance of Hegseth
and Caine before the press regarding Iran. There has been no CENTCOM
press briefing since March 10, nor any daily Pentagon press conference.
Questions arise over US targets in Iran. There have been two schools bombed. ALJAZEERA looks at other targets:
In
the densely populated neighbourhoods of southern Tehran, the 11th
Criminal Investigation Base once stood as a mundane symbol of local law
enforcement. Its detectives investigated economic crimes, fraud and
petty thefts.
The building housed no ballistic
missiles, no uranium centrifuges and no military command centres. Today,
it is a crater. In the opening wave of the United States-Israel war on
Iran, warplanes wiped the local police station off the map.
It
was not an isolated incident. An investigation by Al Jazeera’s Digital
Investigations unit has verified that at least 75 internal security
sites were destroyed or damaged in bombardments by Israel and the US
from February 28 to March 10. The targeted facilities included local
police stations, criminal investigation headquarters, public security
offices and checkpoints operated by the Basij paramilitary force.
[. . .]
The
spatial distribution of the 75 verified strikes revealed a clear and
deliberate strategy. Warplanes bypassed isolated military installations
to hit the infrastructure Tehran uses to police its citizens.
The
capital alone absorbed 31 strikes, more than 40 percent of the total
targets. Sanandaj, the capital of Kurdistan province, suffered eight
strikes. The remaining targets were clustered tightly in major western
and central cities, including Isfahan, Kermanshah and Hamedan.
Meanwhile, Iran’s sprawling eastern and southeastern provinces remained
largely untouched by this campaign.
By
overlaying the strike coordinates with demographic maps, the
investigation shows a near-perfect alignment with urban density. More
than 70 percent of Iran’s population lives in these targeted western
urban areas.
At THE HILL, James Durso points out, "The
ghosts of Baghdad and Kabul should be enough to silence any serious
talk of sending American troops into Iran. Yet here we are again, with
voices in Washington and Tel Aviv whispering that only boots on the
ground can neutralize Tehran’s nuclear ambitions, its local allies and
its regional mischief.
On this morning's MEIDASTOUCH NEWS, Ben explains that Chump may, in fact, be abandoning the war.
Trump’s job-approval ratio at Silver Bulletin
on March 4 was at minus-12.5 percent. As of March 30, it’s at
minus-17.4 percent, more than 2 percent below the previous second-term
low. His average job-approval number stands at 39.7 percent, another
second-term low, while his average job-disapproval number is 57.1
percent, a second-term high. On average, 47.2 percent of Americans strongly
disapprove of Trump’s performance as president, still another
second-term high. Only 22.4 percent strongly approve of Trump’s job
performance, another second-term low. That’s an intensity gap of nearly
25 percent, or if you prefer, a ratio of more than two to one.
,
Individual polling trends mostly tell the same story. Fox News polls show Trump’s net job approval sliding from minus-14 percent at the beginning of March to minus-18 percent on March 23. Quantus Insights had him at minus-9 percent at the beginning of March and minus-15 percent on March 26. Reuters-Ipsos showed him sliding from minus-22 percent at the beginning of March to minus-26 percent on March 23. A new UMass survey
on March 25 set his job approval at 33 percent, around the same level
he was registering after the Capitol Riot. Polls that break out partisan
self-identification show the president’s job approval among
independents dropping into the 20s (25 percent at Quinnipiac, 29 percent at Economist/YouGov).
It’s tempting to attribute this sudden downward lurch to the Iran war. As Silver Bulletin documents in its polling averages,
Trump’s war of choice is quite unpopular: Currently 38.5 percent of
Americans support it and 53.9 percent are opposed. But the president is
bleeding support on other crucial issues as well. According to
Silver Bulletin, on “the economy” Trump’s net approval averages have
dropped to a second-term low of minus-22.5 percent, and on “inflation,”
he’s hit a really shocking second-term low of minus-35.9 percent.
,
In
terms of the rapidly approaching midterm elections, there’s a pretty
clear trend as well: The Democratic advantage in the generic
congressional ballot has hit 2025–2026 highs of 5.9 percent at RealClearPolitics and 5.4 percent at Silver Bulletin.
,
If
the war in Iran continues, along with elevated gas prices and other bad
economic news, there’s no reason to think the current free fall in
Trump’s popularity will do anything other than persist, at least until
the irreducible minimum of hardcore party-base support is reached.
There’s a reason prediction markets strongly favor a Democratic takeover
of the U.S. House (84.5 percent at Kalshi and 85 percent at Polymarket) and give even odds of the Senate flipping as well.
President
Trump’s approval rating dipped to a new low, and even fewer people
surveyed in a new poll said they support his administration’s war
efforts against Iran.
In a University of Massachusetts Amherst poll released Monday,
33 percent of respondents said they approve of the president’s job
performance. Of the 62 percent who said they disapprove of his work in
office, 53 percent expressed “strong” disapproval.
Exactly
33 percent of the poll’s respondents said they either “somewhat” or
“very much” associated themselves with Trump’s Make America Great Again
(MAGA) movement, including 77 percent of Republicans and 4 percent of
Democrats polled.
On the issue of the ongoing
conflict in the Middle East, only 29 percent of respondents said they
supported Trump’s handling of strikes against Iran. Sixty-three percent
disapproved of his job on this issue.
Today
on MORNING JOE, they addressed Chump's talk that he might be willing to
walk away and they addressed his threat of War Crimes.
As Americans pumped gas into their cars Monday, pennies were getting pumped right out of their pockets. A lot of pennies.
As the Iran conflict entered its fifth week, gas prices had increased about 35 percent since Feb. 28, with the national average hitting $4.02
per gallon on Tuesday. It was the largest increase in decades. The
conflict has threatened oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz,
which previously carried a quarter of the world’s seaborne oil.
Motorists
in every corner of the country are watching the numbers tick up and —
rarely — down. On Monday, New York Times reporters followed along as
they made their calculations.
At a Mobil station on Atlantic Avenue along a popular route to Kennedy
International Airport, Mohammed Razzak, an Uber driver, paid $70 on
Monday to top up his Chevrolet Suburban, a purchase that would have cost
about $53 earlier this year.
“This is too much,” Mr. Razzak, 48, said.
“Since the beginning of the war, it’s gone up almost $1 a gallon” — to
$3.69, from $2.79.
Uber has offered drivers increased discounts on gas, but Mr. Razzak, who has been driving for 14 years, said his bottom line has gotten steadily worse.
“Every
week, I’m spending $100 extra,” he said. “It’s not like my fare is
going up every day. We are suffering, all the drivers, all the people —
not the government. There’s nothing I can do. No choice.”
Many mornings, Penelope Cepeda drives her
mother to work and in the afternoon picks up her sister from school.
And she commutes to her own job or to college classes.
She
drives a relatively fuel-efficient Kia K4, but the skyrocketing gas
prices caused by the Iran war — more than a $1 hike per gallon in
Florida over the last month — have cut into an already tight budget.
Before the increases, Ms. Cepeda paid about $35 for a tank of gas. That
price is now more than $45. For Ms. Cepeda, who earns $12 an hour as
in-home caregiver, every penny counts.
“If you’re counting on the dollars that
you’re earning by the hour, it’s like, ‘Damn, 80 cents?’” said Ms.
Cepeda, a student at Valencia College who fills her tank two or three
times a month. “That’s money that I’m losing for my car bill. That’s
money that I’m losing for my water bill or my phone bill.”
Ms.
Cepeda, 20, gave up on plans to travel for spring break, but hopes gas
prices will stabilize by the summer so she can take a vacation.
“Maybe a cruise. Maybe something cheap. If cruises go up, then maybe we’re just going to stay here.”
Last week,New York Times columnist Bret Stephens penned an article that
captured the rah-rah-ness of the pro-war crowd and was breathtaking in
its short-sighted triumphalism. Headlined “The War Is Going Better Than
You Think,” Stephens called for “perspective on the panic over the war
in the Middle East” and scolded critics who depict the Iran war as “an
unprovoked and unnecessary attack on Iran, launched at Israel’s behest”
that is “already a foreign-policy fiasco that has put the global economy
at risk without any clear objective or endgame.” Not so, he cried.
His evidence? Comparisons to the past. In 1991, during Operation
Desert Storm against Saddam Hussein, the US-led forces lost 75 aircraft.
So far not a single piloted plane has been shot down over Iran. At the
start of the invasion of Iraq 12 years later, President George W. Bush
tried but failed to mount a strike to decapitate Saddam’s regime. This
time around, Donald Trump killed Iran’s supreme leader and many
high-ranking officials in the initial bombing. And in 2012, when Barack
Obama was president, the price of Brent crude oil hit $123 a barrel
($175 in 2026 dollars). So the price of $108 a barrel this past week
shouldn’t be such a bother.
Stephens presents a couple of other markers to suggest this war is
proceeding just fine, while acknowledging the Trump administration’s
“failures in planning, particularly its unwillingness to make a stronger
public case for war and get more allies on our side before the campaign
began”—which are hardly quibbles. Overall, his advice is to buck up and
not be Debbie Downers: “If past generations could see how well this war
has gone compared with the ones they were compelled to fight at a
frightening cost, they would marvel at their posterity’s comparative
good fortune. They would marvel, too, at our inability to appreciate the
advantages we now possess.”
Stephens is grasping at tactical straws. Perhaps the US military is
putting its hundreds of billions to effective use in terms of the
prosecution of the war, though we probably won’t know for certain until
there are after-action reports and investigations (if there are any). We
do already know that a missile strike that was attributed to US
military forces hit a girls’ school and killed about 175 Iranian
civilians, most of them students. But looking at the number of bombs
dropped or Iranian leaders killed or the fluctuation in the price of oil
is not the best way to evaluate this war—especially in these first
weeks of the conflict.
Wars are often not easy to judge because the chaos, conflict, and
disruption they trigger will yield consequences that last for years, if
not decades. It’s easy to gawk at Pentagon videos of Tomahawks raining
“death and destruction from above,” as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth
calls it, and hail the war machine. Much tougher is perceiving the
ripples. We have no idea where all this violence will lead. It’s
theoretically possible we might end up with a less threatening regime in
Tehran and more stability in the Middle East, though that does seem
close to magical thinking. However, cheerleading the early stats and
proclaiming they bode well for the long run seems purposefully naive.
More than one major U.S. adversary is assisting Iran.
China
has been sharing intelligence with Iran since roughly two weeks into
the war, a “well-placed,” unidentified source “with knowledge” of the
situation told HUMINT’s Sasha Ingber. The military cooperation has been ongoing since at least March 10.
[. . .]
Several military officials told The Washington Post
on March 6 that Russia shared targeting details with Iran, offering the
locations of U.S. military assets such as warships and aircraft across
the Middle East. Over the weekend, European allies warned that Russia
was aiding Iran more than U.S. officials had let on. They underscored
that America’s latest Middle East conflict is intertwined with Russia’s
war against Ukraine, reported CBS News.
White
House press secretary Karoline Leavitt insisted Monday that the
conflict would be resolved in the coming weeks, though military
officials have indicated that the war could rage for months.
A broker for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth reportedly sought to invest
in major defense companies just weeks prior to the commencement of
Donald Trump’s war on Iran, a new report has alleged. According to three
people familiar with the matter who spoke to the Financial Times, a
Morgan Stanley broker representing Hegseth contacted investment firm
BlackRock in February about a potential multimillion-dollar investment
in its Defense Industrials Active ETF. On Feb. 28, Trump began
conducting joint strikes with Israel on Iran, killing Supreme Leader
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and starting a new war in the Middle East.
Some video coverage of the war.
Let's wind down with this from Senator Elizabeth Warren's office:
ICE Director intent on building warehouse system like “[Amazon] Prime, but with human beings”
“Cramming tens of thousands
of people into warehouses meant for packages, without the ventilation,
temperature control, plumbing, or sanitation systems necessary for human
habitation, would almost certainly exacerbate…deaths in custody,
assaults, and infectious disease outbreaks.”
Washington, D.C. — U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren
(D-Mass.) and Representative Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), Ranking Member of the
House Judiciary Committee, led 52 members of Congress in a new
investigation into whether government contractors, real estate brokers,
and property owners are corruptly profiting from the White House’s
fast-tracked expansion of inhumane warehouse-based immigration detention
facilities. The lawmakers wrote to six companies, pressing them to
explain how much they expect to earn from the new detention warehouses,
their lobbying efforts to land these lucrative government contracts, and
more.
“These warehouses were built to hold products, not people…Given the
public’s grave concerns about this warehouse system, we request prompt
answers to questions about your involvement in the system,” wrote the lawmakers.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is working at breakneck
speed to implement its “Detention Reengineering Initiative,” a warehouse system to hold nearly 100,000 people by November 2026. Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons has described the vision as “[Amazon] Prime, but with human beings.”
Experts have warned that because of the speed of the operation, it
will be nearly impossible for ICE to build the infrastructure necessary
for human habitation in warehouses. Immigrants in existing detention
centers suffer from inhumane conditions, including lack of access to adequate medical care and poor-quality food.
“Placing thousands of people in warehouses that were never
intended to house human beings will only exacerbate these problems,”
wrote the lawmakers.
With the Trump administration planning to spend $38.3 billion on the
warehouse system, the project promises to be extremely profitable for
vendors, property owners, and real estate brokers. And for many of the
warehouse contracts, ICE appears to be circumventing the normal
competitive bidding processes.
ICE is using a Navy’s contracting program, diverting DoD resources
to avoid a competitive bidding process and avoid disclosing contract
details that would typically be made public, triggering concerns of
unnecessary costs and corruption.
For example, ICE paid $129 million for a facility in Georgia — nearly five times
the amount it was assessed for last year. The details of some of these
transactions have been kept secret, including through the use of non-disclosure agreements.
Additionally, some senior Trump officials have close ties to
immigration contractors that could profit from the warehouse system. For
example, David Venturella, who recently joined ICE after leaving the
GEO Group — a top ICE detention contractor — is leading the ICE division
that oversees detention contracts even though his former employer is
competing for lucrative warehouse contracts. Attorney General Pam Bondi
is also a former lobbyist for the GEO Group. Tom Homan, the “Border
Czar,” and Corey Lewandowski, a former Homeland Security official, have
reportedly helped contractors secure contracts to line their own
pockets.
The lawmakers asked the contractors and real estate firms to provide
clarity on: their roles in the warehouse expansions; their expected
profit margins from the project; whether they’ve donated to the Trump
campaign or cabinet officials; and whether they will commit to not
allowing their work to be used to facilitate inhumane conditions at
these detention centers, by April 13, 2026.
Senators Edward Markey (D-MA), Bernard Sanders (D-VT), Richard
Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.),
Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Andy Kim (D-N.J.), and Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.)
joined in signing the letters.
Representatives Yassamin Ansari (D-Ariz.), Becca Balint (D-Vt.),
Julia Brownley (D-Calif.), Sean Casten (D-Ill.), Joaquin Castro
(D-Texas), Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (D-Fla.), Judy Chu (D-Calif.),
Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas), Madeleine Dean (D-Pa.), Diana DeGette
(D-Colo.), Maxine Dexter (D-Ore.), Veronica Escobar (D-Texas), Maxwell
Frost (D-Fla.), Jesus García (D-Ill.), Sylvia Garcia (D-Texas), Dan
Goldman (D-N.Y.), Glenn Ivey (D-Md.), Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), Hank
Johnson (D-Ga.), Sydney Kamlager-Dove (D-Calif.), Robin Kelly (D-Ill.),
Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), April McClain Delaney (D-Md.), Jennifer
McClellan (D-Va.), Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), Robert Menendez (D-N.J.),
Seth Moulton (D-Mass.), Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), Joe Neguse (D-Colo.),
Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.), Ilhan Omar (D-M.N.), Deborah Ross
(D-N.C.), Patrick Ryan (D-N.Y.), Andrea Salinas (D-Ore.), Mary Gay
Scanlon (D-Pa.), Jan Shakowsky (D-Ill.), Melanie Stansbury (D-N.M.),
Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.), Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), Lauren Underwood
(D-Ill.), Delia Ramirez (D-Ill), Donald Beyer (D-V.A.), and James
Walkinshaw (D-Va.) joined in signing the letter.
