MAGA is The Inevitable Result of America’s rape culture.

From Cesar Chavez to Hegseth to Trump, America’s unwillingness to confront and uproot its normalization of misogyny and rape culture has led to MAGA incels threatening to destroy the world.

THE LEFT HOOK with Wajahat Ali and Francesca Fiorentini (Substack)
Mar 20

Yesterday, the New York Times published a shocking investigative piece exposing civil rights and labour leader Cesar Chavez as a rapist and groomer of girls.

Overnight, allied activists and organizations distanced themselves from the alleged sexual abuser. Dolores Huerta, activist, organizer, and co-founder of the National Farm Workers Association, confirmed that Chavez, her colleague, sexually abused her twice, resulting in the birth of two children. Sacramento cancelled its Cesar Chavez march, and the United Farm Workers also cancelled their annual celebration of their cofounder. Several cities are considering removing his name from schools, streets, and parks.

The survivors, much like Huerta, kept quiet for decades because they felt naming their abuser would hurt the movement and the cause. Like so many survivors, they felt shame even though they were the victims. Also, who would believe them?

Just look at the Epstein scandal.

A powerful cabal of wealthy pedophiles raped and trafficked girls for decades with complete impunity. The man mentioned the most in the files is now the President of the United States! Trump was re-elected after being held liable for sexually assaulting E. Jean Carroll. America’s original sins of capitalism, misogyny, and racism are exemplified by this criminal vulgarian who continues failing up despite having numerous accusations of sexual assault.

Without accountability, why should anyone be shocked that MAGA, his cult, now resembles its flawed and perverse leader? The one moment of reckoning, Me Too, was quickly crushed by the Epstein class, along with DEI, “wokeness,” and any attempts at equality and justice. Now, we are being led to WW3 by a deranged cabal of cosplay-crusading incels who want to meme their way to Valhalla.

 

The Trump administration is waging war on people with disabilities. Decent Americans cannot let them win.

John Pavlovitz (Substack)
Mar 19

Recently, Donald Trump ridiculed California Governor Gavin Newsom’s dyslexia, saying, “Honestly, I’m all for people with learning disabilities, but not for my president.”

Personally, I’d rather have a human being with dyslexia leading our nation than a felonious, traitorous rapist who has the compassion of a ham sandwich, but that’s just me.

Trump’s comments, as disgusting and dangerous as they are, are hardly shocking. His body of work against those with physical, mental, and emotional challenges is well-documented and shameful:

Trump’s initial 2016 presidential campaign included a vicious rally ridiculing of a disabled reporter, which in any other iteration of America would have immediately disqualified him.

He has often publicly used the R-word in insulting political opponents, including then-Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024 and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz.

In March of 2025, Trump’s nephew Fred C. Trump, whose son William was born with a genetic abnormality that altered his physical and cognitive development, detailed the contempt his uncle has for mentally disabled human beings, quoting him as saying, “Those people…the shape they’re in, all the expenses, maybe those kinds of people should just die.”

It’s impossible to overstate how damaging Trump’s words are to disabled people throughout this nation, especially children, who have to hear the occupant of our highest office tell them they are less-than, that they are a burden, that they are insult fodder, and that they will forever be limited by their differences.

For a nation that has seen tremendous progress in the perception of and conversation around Americans with disabilities, the President’s ignorant, Jurassic ramblings signal a sad regression, with millions of his sycophantic disciples celebrating the return of slurs, myths, and mockery that they are all too happy to traffic in.

And somehow, as incomprehensibly destructive as Trump’s words are, they pale in comparison to his party’s legislative war on children and adults with disabilities:

The Trump administration’s incessant attacks on SNAP benefits are a fierce blow to disabled people, who are disproportionately impacted by the funding cuts and program cancellations.

The elimination of DEIA programs throughout the country is profoundly harmful to the visibility, representation, and opportunity for those with physical, mental, and emotional challenges.

The administration is working to dismantle the Department of Education, including severe cuts to staffing and financial support for the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services.

They have targeted Supplemental Security Income (SSI), which helps provide financial support for parents of children with disabilities, placing greater burdens on already vulnerable families.

They’ve cut funding to SOAR (Supplemental Security Income (SSI)/Social Security Disability Insurance and (SSDI) Outreach, Access, and Recovery), an invaluable resource in housing those with severe mental illness and other serious medical conditions.

Trump’s Department of Labour has cancelled a proposal to phase out subminimum wages for workers with disabilities, financially penalizing them in the workplace.

Over and over, in both the president’s reckless words and his regime’s punitive legislative assaults, children and adults with disabilities in America are facing an undeserved cruelty that they should not be left alone to endure.

While the domestic terrorism of ICE, the growing carnage of the war in Iran, and the prolific predation of the Epstein files all relentlessly scream for our attention and rightly receive it, it can be easy to overlook tens of millions of people who are finding themselves assailed by those elected to protect and represent them.

We cannot overlook them.

Decent human beings here need to make sure we do not fail our families, friends, and neighbours with our silence or our inaction. We must confront those who would drag our nation back to a shameful place where those with disabilities are shut in and silenced, erased from the collective community, and denied the freedoms and liberties that presence here should provide without caveat or condition.

People of faith, morality, and conscience need to step forcefully into the faces of the bullies and the bigots, whether in our families, our schools, our communities, or in the White House, and let them know that we will not tolerate their cruelty.

Donald Trump, his willing Cabinet of ghouls, his complicit party, and a pathetic number of their supporters will continue to demean and dehumanize disabled people, but they will not do it unopposed.

They have declared war on Americans with disabilities, but they’re gonna have to fight all of us.

Hormuz Blues
Bush should show Trump how you seize another nation’s oil…

Greg Palast
Mar 19

In one of my most elaborate undercover operations for BBC Newsnight, I got my hands on the secret plans for the invasion. Nope, not Trump’s attack on Iran. It was 2004 when I conned the Heritage Foundation and a James Baker operative into handing over the elaborate 323-page plan to keep the oil flowing from Iraq. The plan was secretly drafted BEFORE George W. Bush invaded.

In 2004, the State Department had told me that no plan existed for handling Iraq’s oil. I didn’t buy it. If we invaded California, we’d certainly have a plan for oranges and action films.

With lots of luck, with lots of bluff and BS, I got my hands on the confidential scheme. Here it was, the smash-and-grab plan for Iraq’s oil written in secret at the direction of oil industry big shots headed by Baker, Bush Sr.’s secretary of state, who, as a lawyer, represented Exxon and the Saudi monarchy.

At the time, when I reported it on BBC, it was a scandal. (Correction: the story was front-page news everywhere BUT the USA, where it was buried.)

I’m only bringing up 20-year-old history to tell you that, while Bush’s hidden plan for the oil fields of Iraq evidenced greedy, secret scheming to grab Iraq’s oil industry, at least we could say this: EVEN GEORGE BUSH HAD A PLAN.

So no, I have not uncovered Trump’s secret plans for the invasion of Iran or his plan to protect the world’s oil supply, BECAUSE TRUMP HAS NO PLAN. Even the Wall Street Journal, a loud booster of the attack on Iran, was shocked that our trillion-dollar defence and intelligence apparatus did not seem to know that the choke point at the Strait of Hormuz would seize the world’s economy by the throat.

In fact, before Bush invaded Iraq, he had TWO plans. One was 101 pages long and drafted by neo-cons in the Defence Department (with help from the Heritage Foundation) to “privatize” (that is, seize) Iraq’s oil fields. Kudos to the Wall Street Journal for getting that document and sharing it with me.

However, oil companies were furiously opposed to seizing Iraq’s oil, so the oilmen drafted a 323-page counter-plan.

And what a plan it was. The State Department and Big Oil were pushing for what they called “an invasion disguised as a coup,” with one of Saddam Hussein’s generals taking over. The 101st Airborne would be in and out in three days.

In fact, the State Department had a secret hugger-mugger in Walnut Creek, California, where, as OPEC consultant Falah Aljibury told me, he “auditioned” several of Saddam’s generals to act as replacement dictators.

Amazingly, once I got the oil industry plan, I reviewed it with Philip Carroll, the former CEO of Shell Oil USA, who had been appointed, under pressure from the oil industry, by Bush to take charge of Iraq’s oil fields. Carroll slammed the neocons’ claim that “privatization [of Iraq’s oil] is a no-brainer.” Carroll said, “It would only be thought about by someone with no brains.”

Why did Shell and Exxon NOT want Iraq’s oil fields? Because, as a Saudi official explained to me, that would kick Iraq out of OPEC, and, indeed, the OPEC cartel’s power would be crushed. The Texas oil bosses knew: We don’t want Iraq’s oil; we want Iraq to stay in OPEC to LIMIT Iraq’s production and keep the price of oil at $50+ a barrel.

Oil corporations don’t want oil; they want PROFITS. Keeping most of Iraq’s oil in the ground, per direction of OPEC, keeps prices high. Those oil fields today remain, technically, in the hands of Iraqis. Oil companies work by “production sharing agreements,” which give Big Oil the profits without the headache of ownership and keep the OPEC cartel sitting happily on its spigots.

But Iran is different. I can’t find the secret plans for Trump’s attack on Iran because it seems there are none. It seems that “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth and our massive intelligence agencies haven’t looked at Google Maps. I thought these guys read the Bible, in which Jesus clearly said, “It is as difficult for a rich man to get into heaven as it is to get an oil tanker through the Strait of Hormuz.” I may not have that quote exactly, but you know what I mean.

Trump is right that the war is nearly over. Because the Ayatollahs have won. While we can revel in Trump’s nose being rubbed in the vomit of his own self-created defeat, let us not forget that it is the people of Iran who are paying the price of Trump’s hubris, of Netanyahu’s fever dreams of Iranians rising up against their mullah masters.

The Guardian reports that, this year, Iran gunned down over 30,000 of its own citizens, unarmed, nearly ten times the number of Americans killed on September 11, 2001. Now that Trump and Hegseth have discovered the Strait of Hormuz, they must realize they are checkmated. And that they will sell out the Iranian people to the untender mercies of the religious fascists in return for some baloney deal to limit Iran’s nuclear bomb program.

Uncovering Dubya Bush’s plan for Iraq’s oil, the auditions for a new dictator, the oil industry, and Saudi and OPEC control over Iraq’s oil output made me sick at heart. But the only thing more evil than a secret plan is to have no plan at all. I am sick when I hear Mr. Chickenhawk “bone spurs” draft dodger Trump tell the Iranians to rise up, unarmed, against the murder-crats.

When Trump does his TACO, as he always does, we will witness the Islamic Revolutionary Guard begin the mass arrests, whippings, and executions that are all too predictable. You know and I know that Trump is going to sell them out. All because he had no plan, just a momentary rush from his testosterone and Adderall injections. An empty, bloviating sack of a man, with small hands and a small heart.

Denmark and its allies were prepared to go to war with the US—ready to Blow Up Runways, bridges, and roads. Denmark Wasn’t practicing—they were preparing.

New reporting reveals NATO allies were days away from active combat with the United States. This is not a drill. It never was.

Dean Blundell (Substack)
Mar 19

In late January and early February of this year, I was in Nuuk, Greenland—on the ground with the Save America Movement—while the world was watching Trump threaten to seize the island by force. The whole time, I kept noticing people who didn’t fit. Fit guys in civilian clothes who weren’t tourists. People who moved differently. Clusters of men at the airport and around the port who had that particular kind of quiet alertness you only develop doing one thing for a living.

I thought, “Something is happening here that we’re not being told about.”

Turns out I was more right than I knew.

Today, DR—Denmark’s equivalent of CBC or the BBC and not a publication known for blowing smoke—published the findings of an investigation based on twelve senior anonymous sources inside the Danish government, military, and intelligence agencies, with corroboration from allied sources in France and Germany. They also reviewed an actual military operations order dated January 13th — the week I landed.

Here’s what that document described:

Denmark had sent soldiers to Greenland carrying explosives to destroy the runways at Nuuk and Kangerlussuaq airports. They also flew in blood bags from Danish blood banks to treat combat casualties.

The cover story? A NATO training exercise called “Operation Arctic Endurance.”

It was not an exercise. Denmark was planning to blow up landing strips, roads, and bridges while taking up key positions to fight US troops, acting on intel that was verified.

That intel?

A US invasion was imminent.

The Trigger: Venezuela
Let’s back up to what made January 2026 the most dangerous moment in NATO’s post-Cold War history—and why Denmark quietly concluded it needed a sabotage plan.

When Trump’s administration demonstrated its willingness to use military force by invading Venezuela on January 3rd, 2026, everything changed. “That’s when everything exploded,” a senior Danish security official told DR. “When Trump kept saying he would take Greenland, and then we saw what happened in Venezuela, we had to take every scenario seriously.”

DR obtained a military operations order dated January 13th that served as the basis for the deployment—drafted immediately after the US operation in Venezuela. A Danish military source quoted in the investigation put it plainly: “The official machinery of the United States is not working the way it used to.”

That last line deserves to sit there for a second. A Danish military official—an ally who bled alongside American soldiers in Afghanistan, who sent their kids to die in Iraq under Article 5 obligations—said out loud that the United States government, under Donald Trump, could no longer be trusted to behave like a state bound by international law.

They weren’t wrong.

The Plan: Blow the Runways, Raise the Price

Danish soldiers arrived in Nuuk with explosives to destroy the runways at Nuuk Airport and at Kangerlussuaq—the two main points of entry for any air-delivered invasion force. The cargo also included blood bags from Danish blood banks. As one Danish defence source told DR: “We have not been in such a situation since April 1940.”

April 1940. That’s when Nazi Germany occupied Denmark.

The strategy was brutal in its simplicity: if American military transports showed up and tried to land troops, Denmark would deny them the runway. No runway, no foothold. No foothold, no occupation. And if it came to a firefight on the tarmac? They had the blood for that too.

A military source who spoke to DR was unambiguous: “It was a real deployment and not an exercise.” There was no possible ambiguity.” The presence of blood for transfusions and explosives was cited as proof that it was not a training exercise.

The Coalition Nobody Talked About
This is where it gets genuinely extraordinary, because Denmark didn’t do this alone.

Copenhagen reached out to Paris, Berlin, and Nordic capitals starting in late 2025—shortly after Trump’s re-election—to build what one French official described as a political and military alliance to defend the Danish Realm. “Denmark decided to ‘play the game,’” the French official said. “We were prepared to do almost anything Denmark asked for—whether troops, naval support, or air cover.”

France alone offered a battalion of several hundred soldiers. What actually deployed was a multi-nation coalition that grew to include Belgium, France, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Finland, the Netherlands, the UK, Estonia, Slovenia, Canada, and Iceland—all within days of each other, as Danish F-35s and French A330 MRTT jets began conducting joint training missions over southeastern Greenland.

Outside analysts described the deployment as a tripwire force actually directed at the United States — despite Danish commanders publicly claiming the operation was focused on countering potential Russian activity.

The logic of a tripwire force is cold and deliberate: you put allied soldiers in the path of any potential invasion so that any attacker can’t claim they didn’t know what they were walking into. If Trump moved on Greenland, he wasn’t shooting at Danes. He was shooting at Frenchmen, Germans, Swedes, Brits, and Norwegians simultaneously.

The goal, as one source put it directly: “The price the US would have to pay would be higher. The US would have to carry out a hostile act to take Greenland.”

That is a deterrence strategy. Deployed against an American president. By NATO allies. Inside NATO territory.

What I Saw on the Ground
When I was in Nuuk during that window — the exact days this deployment was live — I kept seeing men who weren’t what they claimed to be. Fit. Alert. Moving in small groups. Not dressed like the military, but not dressed like tourists either. Not speaking to locals in any meaningful way. Just… present. Watchful.

Now I know exactly who they were.

They were the tripwire.

French Alpine troops. German Bundeswehr reconnaissance. Swedish counter special forces operators. Danish Engineer Regiment and Jutland Dragoons. And very possibly, quiet Canadians with NORAD credentials who’d been on the island for weeks.

All of them operating under the fiction of a training exercise. All of them have live ammunition, explosives, and blood bags. All of them were there to make sure that if Donald Trump gave the order to land American troops on Greenlandic soil, the price would be catastrophic—politically, diplomatically, and potentially militarily.

I walked through a secret war footing and thought I was on a journalism trip.

How It (Barely) Ended
It hasn’t; Denmark and its allies remain on a war footing, even though Trump backed down at a NATO meeting where he announced a vague “framework” agreement on Greenland with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, the details of which remain deliberately murky.

Denmark’s official threat assessment—published by the Danish Defence Intelligence Service—had by then formally listed the United States as a threat to national security for the first time in Danish history. Alongside Russia. And China.

Let that sentence land. Denmark — a founding NATO member, a country that deployed troops to Afghanistan and Iraq and took casualties doing it out of loyalty to the United States — officially classified America as an existential threat. In writing. In a government document.

That is the world we are living in now.

Why This Matters Now
The reason DR is publishing this today—two months after the fact—matters. Someone decided the world should know how close we came. Twelve sources in three countries coordinated to make sure this story got out. That’s not a leak. That’s a disclosure. That’s a deliberate signal.

The signal is this: Europe was ready. The coalition was real. The explosives were packed. The blood was on ice. And if Trump had given that order, the first shots of a NATO-on-NATO war would have been fired on an Arctic runway — and the world would have learned about Operation Arctic Endurance the hard way.

They want Trump — and the world — to know that.

And now you do too.

 

Glenn Kirschner destroys the latest Trump lies on Epstein!

Dean Obeidallah and Glenn Kirschner
Mar 19 (Substack)

Another day, another lie by Team Trump about the Epstein criminal case. This time it came from Todd Blanche, Trump’s personal lawyer who is moonlighting as second in command in Trump’s DOJ. Blanche appeared this week on the podcast of Katie Miller—who is married to human gargoyle Stephen Miller—where she praised the amazing job his DOJ has done in regard to the Epstein case.

First, Blanche stated, “I do defend the work that this department is doing today, right now, which is going after every single perpetrator anywhere.” He then added this BS: “And if there’s a narrative that exists that we’re ignoring Epstein victims, that is false.”

That was too much for Glenn—and me as well! For starters, despite more than 1,000 Epstein victims, Trump’s DOJ has prosecuted zero men for raping children or trafficking women. Zero!! How can Blanche say with a straight face that they are “going after every single perpetrator anywhere” when they have charged zero people with crimes?!

As to Blanche’s BS claim that he’s not “ignoring Epstein victims,” keep in mind that Trump’s DOJ has refused to meet with any of them despite the victims seeking to speak with the DOJ!! Instead, Trump’s DOJ has met with convicted child rapist Ghislane Maxwell and then moved her to a cushy “Club Fed” type camp so she can have a more comfortable lifestyle! And they did that over the objections of Epstein survivors!

In addition, AG Pam Bondi, in Glenn’s view, has lied to Congress and should be charged with crimes. As Kirschner noted, “Pam Bondi testified to Congress that there is no evidence that Donald Trump committed a crime in the Epstein files.” In reality, the Epstein file includes statements to the FBI from a person who said when, “I was between 13 and 15 years old. And I’m not going to go graphic here, but he sexually assaulted me and then punched me and assaulted me.” “Pam Bondi lied. And that is a violation of 18 United States Code Section 1001,” Glenn concluded.

In addition, Glenn explained Bondi is “still holding back three million documents,” reportedly. We know she redacted things that shouldn’t have been redacted, and she failed to redact things that should be redacted, like victims’ names and identities.” He added, “That, to me, feels punitive.”

At the very time Glenn and I were chatting, over on Capitol Hill, we saw Democratic House members walk out of a meeting with Bondi because she refused to be under oath or even allow a transcription of what she said. Rep. Robert Garcia, the House Oversight Committee’s ranking Democrat, said he and other lawmakers refused to participate in a “fake hearing” that wouldn’t be transcribed and made public. Garcia told reporters: “It’s infuriating, and it’s continuous, this coverup of the Epstein files.”

Yes, it’s infuriating to see this play out, but Glenn is confident that if (when) Democrats win the House in November, next year they will be far more robust investigations into Bondi. And he believes justice will be served when she is no longer AG and “the rule of law comes back into the light of day.” That includes people like Bondi being disbarred. Amen!

 

Trump’s DHS Chief Admits He Doesn’t Know What Agency Does

Trump caught lying about major strike in Iran, Project 2025 economist issues dire warning about Trump’s economy; Newsmax executive picked to lead Voice of America

Raw America
Mar 19

Trump personally approved Israeli strikes on Iranian energy infrastructure, then went on Truth Social and lied about it to the entire world. A Heritage Foundation economist and Project 2025 architect is warning the U.S. economy cannot handle what this war is doing to energy prices. A former Newsmax executive was quietly installed to run Voice of America. And Trump’s pick to lead Homeland Security doesn’t appear to know what one of its most important agencies actually does.

Trump lied about knowing. U.S. and Israeli officials say otherwise.

After Israeli strikes hit Iran’s South Pars gas field, Iran’s primary source of national income, Trump posted on Truth Social claiming the United States knew nothing about it. Sources inside both the U.S. and Israeli governments say that is false. Multiple senior officials told reporters that Trump personally approved the strike before choosing to publicly deny it. The operation was designed to pressure Iran into reopening the Strait of Hormuz.

The denial became impossible to sustain when Iran retaliated beyond U.S. borders. Tehran struck Qatar’s Ras Laffan industrial zone, one of the world’s most critical LNG facilities, twice. Iran also launched missiles toward Saudi Arabia, which were reportedly intercepted. Qatari officials were furious, demanding answers from Washington about what prior knowledge the U.S. had. Trump’s Middle East envoy scrambled to arrange an emergency call between the president and the Qatari emir.

Brent crude surged more than 7 percent to $111.23 a barrel. One analyst said the conflict is “no longer just about military headlines or Strait of Hormuz closure.” It is now hitting the plumbing of the global energy system.”

Trump’s response was to threaten even more destruction, warning Iran that if Qatar’s LNG infrastructure were struck again, the U.S. would wipe out the entire South Pars operation. He approved the strike and lied about it publicly, and his own officials contradicted him within hours. The global energy market is now in crisis, and the president’s answer is more threats.

Even Project 2025’s Own Economist Says This Economy Can’t Handle It
E.J. Antoni, the Heritage Foundation’s chief economist and a co-author of Project 2025, told a financial publication this week that the U.S. economy simply cannot absorb $100-a-barrel oil. “I don’t think this is an economy that is going to be able to handle $100 a barrel for oil; it’s just not,” he said. “The economy is weaker than we thought it was, and inflation is worse than we thought it was.”

Lower energy prices in 2025 had been helping keep a lid on inflation. With oil now surging past $111, the opposite pressure is building. Groceries, utilities, gas, and consumer goods across the board will feel it. Working families will feel it first and worst.

This warning is not coming from a Democrat or a critic of the administration. It’s coming from a Project 2025 architect, a man Trump once wanted to install as head of the Bureau of Labour Statistics. When the people who wrote the blueprint for this presidency start warning that its war is going to hurt ordinary Americans, that’s not something you can dismiss as partisan spin. The economic alarm is now sounding from inside the MAGA house itself.

Voice of America Gets a Newsmax News Director

One day after a federal judge ordered more than 1,000 Voice of America journalists back to work, reversing Trump’s efforts to effectively shut the agency down, the administration installed a former Newsmax news director as VOA’s deputy director via an unsigned internal memo. It remains unclear who authorized the appointment.

VOA was founded in 1942 specifically to counter Nazi propaganda. It broadcasts in 49 languages to more than 360 million people living under authoritarian governments around the world. Its editorial independence is mandated by Congress. The Trump administration has already attempted to air Newsmax content on VOA’s networks and sought contract language giving Trump appointees veto power over editorial hires.

This is the same playbook being run on the domestic press. The FCC is threatening broadcast licenses over war coverage. David Ellison, who already controls CBS News, is closing in on an acquisition of CNN, HBO, and Warner Bros. Discovery. Pete Hegseth said publicly that Ellison’s CNN takeover could not come soon enough. Voice of America abroad, CBS at home, and CNN potentially next. This is a coordinated effort to control what Americans and the world are allowed to hear about this war and this administration. It is exactly why Raw America exists.

Trump’s DHS Pick Doesn’t Know What DHS Investigations Do:

Senator Markwayne Mullin had a difficult confirmation hearing Wednesday for the role of Homeland Security Secretary. When Senator Ruben Gallego asked him to describe the primary mission of Homeland Security Investigations, Mullin gave a vague non-answer about DHS agencies working toward a common goal. Gallego stepped in and answered his own question, explaining that HSI is the unit that handles human trafficking, smuggling, counterfeit goods, and financial crime.

HSI is ICE’s criminal investigations arm and one of the most consequential law enforcement bodies in the federal government. A nominee to run the department overseeing it should know what it does.

The gap points to a real and ongoing problem. HSI agents have already been pulled off core investigative work under Trump’s deportation push. One report found HSI spent roughly 33 percent fewer hours on child exploitation cases last spring. A five-agent child exploitation squad in Los Angeles was reassigned to immigration duties. Work on sex trafficking, terrorism, and illicit finance has all slowed.

Mullin also faces questions about a mysterious overseas trip he refuses to explain publicly, claiming the mission was classified. Senator Rand Paul says he plans to vote no on confirmation. With eight Republicans and seven Democrats on the committee, that could force Mullin to find at least one Democratic vote to move forward

Senate Republicans in complete disarray as massive fight breaks out in DHS Secretary nomination and over Trump’s SAVE America Act

Ethan Wolf (Substack)
Mar 19

If you want a snapshot of what Republican governance looks like right now, don’t look at the spin coming from Trump’s orbit. Look at the chaos erupting inside the Senate GOP itself.

On Thursday, two major Republican infighting stories broke into public view, and together they tell a bigger story: the party that controls the House, the Senate, and the White House is too busy tearing itself apart to govern.

The first fight centres on Markwayne Mullins, Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Homeland Security.

That nomination was already controversial. But things exploded when Senator Rand Paul confronted Mullin over prior comments in which Mullin had suggested he understood and supported the violent assault Paul once suffered. Paul reportedly gave Mullin an opportunity to apologize. Mullin refused.

That was enough for Paul to draw a line in the sand.

And this is not some random Republican backbencher objecting. Rand Paul chairs the Senate Homeland Security Committee. If the Trump team had done even the bare minimum of homework, they would have known this conflict was sitting there waiting to blow up. Instead, they shoved forward another chaotic nomination without doing the basic work required to secure support from their own side.

That is not strength. That is dysfunction.

It is also the latest sign that Trump’s governing style has infected the entire Republican Party. There is no discipline. No strategy. No competence. Just constant chaos, followed by surprise when that chaos spills into public view.

But as messy as the Mullin fight is, the second Republican feud may be even more revealing.

This one revolves around the SAVE Act, one of the most regressive anti-voting rights proposals in recent memory. Republicans are trying to force through legislation that would create massive new barriers to voting, including strict identification requirements that would make it harder for millions of Americans to cast a ballot. Women who changed their names after marriage could face major hurdles. People without passports or costly documentation could be pushed out of the process. Mail voting would also face major new restrictions.

In other words, Republicans are not trying to win over voters. They are trying to make voting harder.

But here’s the problem for them: they don’t even have unity inside their own caucus.

Senator Mike Lee reportedly circulated a message suggesting that any Republican who does not support forcing Democrats into a talking filibuster over the bill should be primaried and pushed out. That threat did not go over well. Senator Thom Tillis took offence, started showing the message to colleagues, and soon reports started surfacing of a circular firing squad inside the Senate Republican conference.

Anonymous Republican senators began venting to the press. One even admitted that the threat “doesn’t do much for camaraderie.”

That may be the understatement of the year.

Think about what this means. At a time when Americans are worried about affordability, economic instability, and major global developments, Republicans are consumed by internal vendettas over how aggressively they can pursue voter suppression. They are fighting over process. They are threatening one another. They are leaning against one another. And in many cases, they are too afraid to even put their names on what they are saying publicly.

That is not a governing majority. That is a party in open internal collapse.

And the political consequences could be enormous.

Voters tend to punish chaos, especially when it comes from the party already in power. Republicans cannot credibly claim they are focused on helping working families when their energy is being spent on ugly internal feuds, botched nominations, and anti-democratic power plays. The knives are out inside John Thune’s caucus, and the public is starting to see it.

These two fights may seem separate, but they are really part of the same story. Republicans are disorganized. They are fractured. And they are so focused on fighting each other that they are not fighting for the American people.

That may be the clearest lesson of all.

 

THE WHEELS JUST CAME OFF: Israel blew up Iran’s biggest gas field, Iran torched the Gulf in retaliation, and America’s rapist-in-chief is rage-posting at 2 AM screaming “STOP!”

NATO told Trump to go to hell, the USS Gerald Ford is in a Greek repair shop, oil is at $110 a barrel, and the president of the United States is on Truth Social apologizing to Qatar. This is what losing is.

Dean Blundell (Substack)
Mar 19

GOD IS SENDING SIGNS, AND TRUMP ISN’T READING THEM: A Burning Carrier, $110 Oil, Gulf States On Fire, And Zero Allies — The Iran War Just Collapsed In Real Time.

Let’s talk about what a collapsing war looks like in real time—because we are watching it happen.

On Wednesday night, Israel did something the United States publicly claims it had zero warning about: it struck South Pars, the world’s largest natural gas field, jointly owned by Iran and Qatar. Then Donald Trump—the Commander-in-Chief of the United States military—went on Truth Social to publicly scold Israel, apologize to Qatar, and threaten Iran, all in the same unhinged post.

The president of the United States found out his “ally” bombed a critical energy facility from the news. Then he told the world about it on social media. Then he threatened to blow up the same field himself if Iran retaliated against Qatar.

Iran retaliated against Qatar.

Iran retaliated against everyone.

The Escalation Nobody Can Stop

Iran hit a Saudi refinery on the Red Sea, set Qatari liquefied natural gas facilities ablaze, and struck two Kuwaiti oil refineries in a massive wave of retaliatory attacks following Israel’s strike on the South Pars gas field. This isn’t a skirmish. This is a full regional energy war.

Qatar said firefighters extinguished a blaze at its Ras Laffan LNG facility after Iranian missiles caused “sizeable fires and extensive further damage.” Production had already been halted from earlier attacks. The world’s single most important LNG export hub — the one that keeps the lights on in Europe — is now a recurring target.

A drone attack on Kuwait’s Mina Al-Ahmadi refinery, one of the biggest in the Middle East with a petroleum production capacity of 730,000 barrels per day, sparked a fire.

Brent crude oil was trading above $110 US a barrel—up more than 50 percent since Israel and the United States started the war on February 28th.

And Trump’s response? A Truth Social post that reads like it was written by a man who just found out his house was on fire and decided to live-tweet it.

Trump’s Post Is The Clearest Evidence Of A Man Who Has Lost Control

Look at that screenshot again. In a single post, Trump:

Blames Israel publicly, in writing, forever

Exonerates Qatar completely (”Qatar was in no way, shape, or form, involved ”)

Acknowledges the U.S. had zero intelligence on the South Pars strike

Demands Israel stop attacking the field

Then threatens to obliterate the entire field himself if Iran doesn’t stop

This is not strategy. This is a man trying to manage twelve simultaneous dumpster fires with a wet napkin while telling everyone he’s never been more in control.

The truth is simple: Israel is running this war, not Trump. Netanyahu never asked permission to hit South Pars, and if he did (which the IDF says he did, so he’s lying, which should surprise no one), he doesn’t need to. He’s had Trump’s unconditional political cover since day one, and he’s using it. Trump signalled that Israel would not attack South Pars again—but that’s not a commitment from Israel; that’s a wish from Trump. There is a meaningful difference.

NATO Told Trump To Figure It Out Himself

Here’s where the coalition fantasy officially died.

(Worth noting that Trump has not officially asked NATO for help—just private begging and public demands and threats.)

Trump’s effort to corral an international coalition to police the Strait of Hormuz concluded in disappointment, leading him to lash out at European nations that rejected his demands to help with his war against Iran.

Australia, Japan, Poland, Sweden, and Spain all said they had no intention of sending military ships. Germany’s defence minister said there would be “no military participation.”

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer stated clearly that this was “never envisioned as a NATO mission.” Germany’s Boris Pistorius was blunter: “This is not our war; we did not start it.”

He’s right. NATO’s Article 5 collective defence clause has been invoked exactly once in history—after September 11th, when the United States was attacked. This time, it was the US and Israel that attacked Iran, giving other members no legal or political basis to intervene.

The Quincy Institute’s Trita Parsi put it perfectly: “Under normal circumstances, you build a coalition before you go to war, not afterward. Trump started an unnecessary war that none of these other countries supported or were consulted about. Now they’re paying the price for it and then being asked to come in and bail Trump out of this fiasco, despite the fact that there still is no plan.”

Trump’s response to all of this? He declared that America never needed NATO anyway. “WE DO NOT NEED THE HELP OF ANYONE!” he wrote on Truth Social. Senator Lindsey Graham, his own ally, told reporters he’d “never heard him so angry in my life.”

Cool. Totally in control. Everything’s fine.

The USS Gerald Ford: A Metaphor You Cannot Make Up

The crown jewel of American naval power — the USS Gerald R. Ford, the world’s largest aircraft carrier — is currently limping to a Greek repair base. Not because of Iranian missiles. Because of a laundry room fire.

The blaze (being investigated as sabotage) broke out on March 12th and took more than 30 hours to extinguish. Dozens of sailors suffered smoke inhalation. Over 600 crew members were left without beds, sleeping on floors and tables, with no access to laundry facilities because the laundry room is a crime scene.

The Ford’s vacuum collection system — which transports and disposes of wastewater — has been malfunctioning across its nearly 650 onboard toilets. The ship had called for toilet assistance 42 times since 2023, with 32 of those calls coming in 2025 alone.

The Ford has been deployed since June of 2025. As of this week, it was on its 266th day at sea—on pace to break the post-Vietnam War record for longest carrier deployment. The crew have been told their deployment will likely extend into May. The carrier is now sailing to Naval Support Activity Souda Bay in Crete for more than a week of repairs pierside.

A European diplomat told NBC, “He’s asking us to help for a war he started. There is not much enthusiasm for this. And even if European navies are sent to the Gulf, it would not ensure the strait is reopened. Iran can keep it closed as long as it likes because all it takes is a drone or a mine.”

The Bottom Line

This war is now three weeks old. Oil is at $110 a barrel. More than 20 vessels have been attacked in the Strait of Hormuz. Iran has torched energy infrastructure from Kuwait to Qatar to Saudi Arabia. The U.S.’s most powerful aircraft carrier is in a Greek repair shop. Every major NATO ally has declined to participate. Israel is bombing whoever it wants without telling Washington first. And Trump is on Truth Social threatening countries that have already proven his threats mean nothing.

The Christian nationalist fever dream of a clean, decisive, victorious little war—the one that was going to finally silence the Epstein noise and make Trump look strong heading into the midterms—is dead. It is not coming back.

The question is no longer whether Trump has lost control of this war.

The question is how many more people have to die before he admits it.

William Kristol, Mark Hertling, and Andrew Egger (Substack)
Mar 19

The average price of a gallon of gasoline is now about $3.88, according to AAA. In eight states, it’s over $4/gallon. Happy Thursday.

What Nobody’s Telling Trump
by William Kristol

I doubt anyone on the inside is willing to tell President Trump the truth about how the war is going. But if some courageous truth-teller were to enter the Oval Office this morning and speak, he’d say this: It ain’t going great, sir. In fact, sir, it’s going pretty badly.

And if the president didn’t have this intrepid soul removed from his presence and would listen for a minute or two, this is what more he would hear:

The Iranian regime is surviving.

The Strait of Hormuz remains closed—except to those ships the Iranians want to allow to go through, delivering Iranian oil to their allies.

Global energy prices continue to rise and stock markets continue to fall. Inflation is ticking up, and the Fed looks more likely to raise than cut interest rates in the near future.

Iran’s military capabilities aren’t as degraded as we thought. In fact, Iran’s missile and drone launches, which had been declining in number over the first two weeks, have increased this week.

Some of those missiles and drones are hitting their targets: After Israel attacked Iran’s South Pars gas field yesterday in a strike you pretended we didn’t know about ahead of time, Iran retaliated by hitting Qatar’s Ras Laffan terminal, the world’s largest liquefied natural gas facility.

As the Economist put it yesterday, “Although President Donald Trump says he has ‘destroyed 100% of Iran’s military capability,’ the 0% that remains is playing havoc with the global economy.”

We’re facing a decision about deploying thousands of ground troops to try either to secure the Strait of Hormuz or to seize Kargh Island—and neither operation is assured of success.

The Defence Department says we need to go to Congress for a supplemental appropriation—as much as $200 billion—to pay for the war and replenishing stocks, and it’s not clear the votes are there to approve the funds.

Meanwhile, our allies abroad aren’t rallying to us.

And there’s no sign that the American public is rallying to the administration either.

That’s what an honest analyst would tell the president of the United States.

But that’s surely not happening.

“They Died For You, Son”—How Pete Hegseth Sold His Iran “Holy War”/Death Of US Military To His 13-Year-Old Son And The Evangelical Fear Porn Machine Behind It

The Secretary of Defence used his son, a dead soldier body count, and a lie about nuclear war to sell the oldest grift in evangelical Christianity: fear porn wrapped in a cross.

Dean Blundell (Substack)
Mar 19

Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of Defence currently managing America’s unauthorized, unjustified, and increasingly costly war in Iran, popped into his own top-secret office this week with a story about his 13-year-old son.

The kid apparently dropped by the Pentagon—you know, the building currently conducting a classified military operation, the details of which Congress has not been fully briefed on, the justification for which keeps changing, and which has now killed more than 20 American service members. That building. The one where the highest levels of operational security are supposedly being maintained. The one where Hegseth famously shared targeting data on an unsecured Signal chat that included a journalist. That building.

And according to Pete, his 13-year-old son wandered into this temple of American military secrecy, and Pete looked him dead in the eye and said something to the effect of, “Those service members who died? They died for you, son. So you’d never have to face a nuclear Iran.”

That kid won’t have nightmares for the rest of his life at all.

Then remember what Pete Hegseth — and Donald Trump—have said repeatedly, on the record: Iran is not a nuclear threat to the United States.

The Lie at the Centre of the Sales Pitch
This is not a minor contradiction. This is the entire architecture of the lie.

The Trump regime’s own justification for Operation Epstein Fury—to the extent they’ve offered one at all—has never been “Iran is about to nuke someone.” Trump has repeatedly bragged that Iran is broke, weakened, and incapable of projecting that kind of power. His own people have said the nuclear program was years from producing a weapon. The international inspections framework, whatever was left of it, showed no imminent threat.

In other words, Pete Hegseth told his 13-year-old son that American soldiers died to protect him from a danger that, by his own government’s assessment, didn’t exist in the form he described.

This is not a slip of the tongue. This is the product. This is what the evangelical Christian nationalist movement has been selling for fifty years: a threat big enough to justify anything, miraculous enough to inspire sacrifice, and vague enough that you can never actually disprove it.

And a 13-year-old boy — his own son — is the perfect audience.

Evangelical Apologetics 101: Fear First, Facts Never
If you grew up in evangelical Christianity—as I did—you recognize this move immediately. It’s not unique to Pete Hegseth. It’s the foundational sales structure of the entire tradition.

Here’s how it works:

Step one: Identify a threat so existential that rational cost-benefit analysis becomes impossible. Hellfire. Eternal damnation. Nuclear annihilation. The extinction of Christian civilization. The specific threat doesn’t matter much, as long as it’s big enough to short-circuit critical thinking.

Step two: Establish that someone already paid the ultimate price to protect you from that threat. Jesus on the cross is the original template. Soldiers dying in a war of your own government’s making is the secular reboot. The emotional logic is identical: someone died for you, which means the threat was real, which means your gratitude and compliance are now moral obligations.

Step three: Make it personal. Not abstract. Not geopolitical. For you, son. For your family. For your future children. The evangelical altar call doesn’t work if it stays at 30,000 feet—it has to land in your chest, in your gut, in the part of your brain that loves your kids and is terrified of losing them.

Step four: Preempt doubt. Anyone who questions the threat is either naive, cowardly, or actively working for the enemy. Critical thinking becomes a form of moral failure. To ask, “Was Iran actually a nuclear threat?” is to dishonour the fallen. The sacrifice creates the justification for the sacrifice. It’s a closed loop, and it’s impenetrable to facts from the outside.

Pete Hegseth did all four steps in what sounds like a single conversation with a kid who had no reason not to believe his father. And I sincerely doubt if that conversation actually took place, because, well, Pete Hegseth is a deeply full-of-shit cult crusader who truly believes he’s on a mission from God. That mission, according to Evangelical cult apologetics, includes lying to the American people to sell them the unsellable.

“Son, If We Don’t Kill All the Muslims, They’ll Kill You.”
Let’s be direct about what is actually being communicated here, even if it’s wrapped in more palatable language.

The evangelical Christian nationalist framework — the one that has colonized the U.S. military’s leadership culture in documented, well-researched ways — does not ultimately view this conflict as a geopolitical dispute over nuclear proliferation. It views it as a spiritual war. A civilizational clash. A battle between the Kingdom of God and the forces of Islam, which are interchangeable in this worldview with the forces of darkness.

All lies. Just like the lie he told about polling numbers for his holy war yesterday. PURE Bullshit Theatre.

This isn’t conjecture. Hegseth has worn a Jerusalem cross tattoo while publicly discussing his faith. His writing and public statements are saturated with the language of spiritual warfare. The officers who surrounded Trump’s earliest military picks come disproportionately from a culture of Christian nationalism within the armed forces that has been documented by researchers, journalists, and retired military officials for over a decade.

The message being transmitted to a 13-year-old isn’t purely strategic. It’s theological. It’s “We are God’s people.” They are the enemy of God’s people. The soldiers who died were warriors for Christ. You are part of this story. This is your inheritance.

That framing doesn’t require a nuclear weapon. It doesn’t require a credible threat assessment. It doesn’t require congressional authorization or a legal justification for war. It requires only a cross, an enemy, and a body count to sanctify the mission.

The fear porn and the holy war aren’t separate things. The fear porn is the holy war. The threat justifies the mission, and the mission justifies the threat, and somewhere in the middle, facts don’t get a seat at the table.

Joe Kent Just Blew the Whole Thing Open
Now throw in Joe Kent.

Kent—the former special forces officer, MAGA congressman, and confirmed Director of National Intelligence—resigned this week and promptly went on Tucker Carlson’s podcast to… say the quiet part loudly. Kent expressed serious reservations about the conduct and justification of Operation Epic Fury in terms that make clear that even inside the true-believer wing of this movement, the strategic rationale is collapsing.

When the guy who was confirmed to lead the intelligence apparatus of the United States walks out the door and goes to Tucker to raise questions about the war you’re fighting, you don’t have a communications problem. You have a reality problem.