Iran’s Leverage Surges As U.S. and Israeli Aggression Backfires
What was meant to destabilize Iran instead united its people and expanded its global influence

Nouri™️
Mar 24

Three weeks into the latest U.S. and Israeli assault across the region, the outcome looks nothing like what Washington and Tel Aviv promised. They set out to weaken Iran, isolate it, and shake its internal foundations. They believed that by hitting Iranian allies, tightening pressure, and fueling regional chaos, they could trigger instability inside Iran itself. The goal was straightforward: regime change and the breakup of Iran into smaller sectarian states. They wanted ordinary Iranians to feel so strained and insecure that they would turn against their government.

She rejects Iran’s government but still defends her country when it’s attacked. Even with a U.S. immigration case underway, she’s willing to face the consequences to stand with her nation.
But the West completely misread the country and the Iranian people.

Instead of collapse, Iran saw unity. Instead of internal revolt, millions of Iranians have taken to the streets every night in enormous marches across the country. These are not small gatherings. They are massive, city‑wide demonstrations of solidarity with the government. Tehran, Mashhad, Isfahan, Shiraz, Tabriz, Ahvaz, Qom, Kerman, and dozens of smaller cities have seen crowds filling every major avenue. People who disagree on almost everything else are standing together because they refuse to let foreign powers dictate their future. The West expected fragmentation. What it received was a population uniting.

And while this internal unity was building, Iran’s external leverage was rising just as fast. American political scientist Robert Pape summed it up clearly: Iran is not weakened. It is more powerful than before. The facts make that impossible to deny.

Iran now holds real influence over global oil prices. Every escalation by the U.S. or Israel sends markets into panic, and every signal from Tehran steadies or shakes the global energy system. This is not symbolic influence. It is structural power that affects every country dependent on imported energy.

At the same time, sanctions that were supposed to suffocate Iran have quietly eroded. Oil is moving again. Buyers who once obeyed Washington’s restrictions are now stepping around them because they cannot afford an energy crisis. In just a few weeks, Iran has sold roughly 1.5 billion dollars’ worth of oil. This profile does not resemble a state under duress. It is the profile of a state capitalizing on the chaos its adversaries created.

And then there is the global food system. With influence over nearly a third of the world’s fertilizer production, Iran now has indirect leverage over global food prices. Oil and food, the two foundations of global stability, are now tied to Tehran’s decisions more than Washington’s.

This is the strategic reality the U.S. and Israel created for themselves. They launched strikes believing Iran would retreat. They believed instability would turn the Iranian public against its own government. Instead, the public united, the economy gained breathing room, and Iran’s global relevance expanded.

Pape captured it clearly:

“That’s the kind of power states escalate to protect.”

And now there is another layer that the West did not anticipate. Iran is not only winning the power struggle. It is winning the global narrative. Across the world, people who once viewed Iran through Western talking points are seeing a different picture: a country under attack that refuses to break, a population that refuses to be manipulated, and a state that has turned pressure into leverage. From the Middle East to Latin America to parts of Europe and Africa, public sentiment has shifted. Iran is gaining sympathy, respect, and moral credibility in places where Washington once dominated the story.

The West wanted regime change. What it produced was national unity, economic resilience, and a stronger geopolitical hand for Iran. The balance of power in the region has shifted, and the world is adjusting to that shift, whether Washington and Tel Aviv admit it or not.

🚨 Leaked Tape Sparks MAGA Panic
SECRET VIDEO: SAVE Act Author Admits It Hurts Women

CALL TO ACTIVISM
Mar 24

🚨MASSIVE BREAKING: A Republican lawmaker was secretly recorded confirming what many feared about Trump’s voter suppression bill.

In a leaked video obtained by Call to Activism, Rep. Chip Roy admitted in a private meeting that he was actively burying concerns that his bill, the SAVE Act, would harm women voters.

Roy said, “I’m trying not to elevate the issue… My chief of staff… had to go through a bunch of hoops… (and) go back to the DMV twice.”

That’s not spin. That’s his own description.

And it matters.

Because the SAVE Act would require proof of citizenship—a process that could create serious complications for women who take their spouse’s last name, or anyone whose current name doesn’t match their birth documents.

Now here’s where it gets revealing.
Roy has publicly insisted this bill doesn’t create barriers. He’s dismissed concerns over and over—especially when it comes to how it impacts women.

But behind closed doors?

He’s acknowledging the exact problem.

The hoops.

The delays.

The real-world obstacles.

And this wasn’t said in a debate or under pressure.

This was said privately, during a Zoom meeting with the “Election Integrity Network,” a group tied to efforts to challenge the 2020 election.

In other words—this is what’s said when no one is supposed to hear it.

So the picture becomes clear.

Publicly: no barriers.

Privately, they know there are hurdles.

And that gap?

That’s everything.

Because laws don’t just sit on paper. They affect real people trying to vote, navigate paperwork, and meet requirements that lawmakers themselves admit are complicated.

This isn’t a misunderstanding.

This is a contradiction.
And now – it’s on tape.
This bill will be a nightmare if it passes—but we have a chance to make some good trouble.

Bannon Exposes Trump’s 2026 “Test Run,” and It’s Already Happening
Bannon just pulled back the curtain on a strategy that ties together recent events in a way that’s getting harder and harder to dismiss…

Thom Hartmann (Substack)
Mar 24

Steve Bannon, an enthusiastic advocate of authoritarianism, dropped the mask this week. On his War Room podcast, while interviewing far-right lawyer Mike Davis, Bannon said plainly what the Trump administration has been dancing and weaving around for months:

“We can use this as a test run, as a test case, to really perfect ICE’s involvement in the 2026 midterm elections.”

There it is. Not a conspiracy theory. And definitely not liberal hand-wringing. The man himself, in his own words, explaining exactly what’s going on at airports across the country right now.

I’ve been writing and talking about authoritarian playbooks for decades, including in my book The Hidden History of American Oligarchy: Reclaiming Our Democracy from the Ruling Class, and they almost always follow the same predictable script.

First, you exploit (Reichstag Fire, 9/11) or manufacture (“Border invasion,” Iran attack) a crisis. Use that to change the laws to give yourself more power as you flood public spaces with your militarized enforcers under the cover of “helping.”

Then you normalize it. Have you noticed how stories about ICE brutalizing and killing people have gone from the front pages to occasional mentions on social media?

Then you expand it. ICE has gone national, massive databases of protesters are being organized, and Trump this weekend came right out and said that his next target will be Democrats, who he called America’s “greatest enemy,” using the “Democrat Party” slur that Joe McCarthy suggested Republicans should always use:

“Now with the death of Iran, the greatest enemy America has is the Radical Left, Highly Incompetent, Democrat Party!”

Hitler didn’t march his stormtroopers into polling places on day one. He put them on street corners first, just like Trump is doing. By the time Germans understood what was happening, the intimidation and threats of violence or imprisonment were already baked into daily life, and questioning what was happening felt like questioning the natural order of things.

As you can see, what’s happening in American airports today is simply a chapter of that same playbook.

The crisis, of course, was manufactured. TSA agents are working their second or third round of missed paychecks because Trump and Republicans in Congress refuse to fund the Department of Homeland Security.

More than 400 TSA officers have quit since the shutdown began, according to their union. Callout rates at some airports have hit 55% in recent days. Lines at JFK, Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson, and George Bush Intercontinental have stretched three hours or more, right in the middle of spring break travel season.

And why hasn’t this been fixed? Because, as Republican Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana admitted on Fox News just yesterday morning, Trump killed the deal. Kennedy and Ted Cruz had actually worked out a two-step plan with Senate Democrats to reopen DHS and get our TSA agents paid. It would have worked just fine.

“Senator Thune submitted that to President Trump,” Kennedy said. “As is his right, he said no. No deals with the Democrats. So we’re back to square one.”

Senate Republicans have now blocked legislation to pay TSA agents at least seven separate times.

So the chaos in our airports isn’t an accident. It’s the setup for the end of free and fair elections and the final installation of a fascist state here in America. Create the crisis, then ride in to “save the day” with your loyal and violent enforcers as the solution.

And notice who those enforcers are: ICE agents, funded not through the normal appropriations process that’s stalled but through the $75 billion Trump locked into his “One Big Beautiful Bill” last year, fully paid while TSA workers go broke.

The agents can’t run X-ray machines, as border chief Tom Homan himself admitted. They’re not trained for airport security or to help people efficiently get to their airplanes.

What they are trained for, as Bannon crowed about on his podcast, is looking for brown-skinned people and checking their IDs. And that, Bannon said explicitly, is “perfect training for the fall of 2026.”

Bannon’s rightwing guest Davis was enthusiastic, saying ICE should be at polling places because “if you’re an illegal alien, you can’t vote.”

That claim sounds reasonable until you realize that noncitizen voting is, as Democracy Docket, the Cato Institute, and numerous academic studies have documented, virtually nonexistent. It’s a naked lie Republicans have been pushing since the 1960s to justify suppressing the vote of minorities and women.

The Heritage Foundation’s own election fraud database, after years of searching, found only a tiny handful of cases — fewer than 30 over several decades — in a country that cast billions of votes over that time period.

This has nothing to do with illegal voting, and Steve Bannon and Donald Trump both know it. As does every elected Republican and the very well paid professional propagandists at Fox “News.” It has everything to do with stopping legal voting by Americans who might vote the “wrong way.”

And it doesn’t stop at airports. The Fulton County FBI raid in late January exposed another piece of this apparent puzzle. Armed federal agents showed up at the Fulton County Elections Hub in Georgia and carted away over 700 boxes of 2020 ballots, as well as voter rolls and voting machine tabulator tapes.

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was personally present, saying she was there at Trump’s personal direction. The affidavit used to justify the warrant cited claims about the 2020 election that have already been investigated, audited, litigated, and debunked repeatedly. Fulton County Commission Chair Robb Pitts put it plainly:

“Every audit, every recount, every court ruling has confirmed what we the people of Fulton County already knew: Our elections were fair and accurate and every legal vote was counted.”

Georgia’s ballots were hand-counted three times after the election six years ago. There’s nothing to find, because nothing untoward happened.

But that’s not really what the raid was about either, was it? It was about setting up a rationale for future election interference.

About sending a message that the federal government can roll into any county in America, flash a warrant, and in a clear violation of the Constitution walk out with your election infrastructure. It was about demonstrating raw power, and about laying the groundwork for stealing this fall’s contest.

What comes next, Bannon has now told us directly: ICE surrounding polling places in November to scare away Black and brown voters and intimidate anybody else afraid of being the next Renee Good or Alex Pretti.

Trump himself has told reporters he thinks Republicans should “take over the voting in at least 15 places.” When pressed by reporters, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt admitted that she “can’t guarantee” that ICE agents won’t be at polling places this fall.

Newly confirmed DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin, during his confirmation hearing, also refused to rule it out, saying he’d only deploy ICE if there was a “specific threat,” without explaining that that could mean pretty much anything.

So imagine walking up to your polling place in November, having driven past ICE vans parked outside, seeing heavily armed immigration agents in black gear and wearing masks standing near the entrance.

You’re a citizen. You know you have the right to vote. But your neighbor is undocumented. Or your cousin is. Or you’ve been at an immigration rights protest. You don’t know if your name is on one of the many lists you’ve read about. You don’t know what “specific threat” means. And you think: maybe I’ll just come back later. Maybe it’s not worth it.

That’s voter suppression in its most raw and brutal form. That’s the way Vladimir Putin would do it. And that’s what this invasion of our airports is for.

Federal law under 18 U.S.C. § 594 prohibits “intimidating, threatening, or coercing any person with regard to voting or attempting to vote.” The law under 52 U.S.C. § 20511 prohibits certain federal and state officials from acts of fraud in connection with federal elections.

Deploying federal law enforcement at polling places for the purpose of intimidating voters as Bannon is bragging they’re setting up now is not some obscure, gray area of American law. It’s blatantly illegal. But the Trump regime has made clear, over and over again, that it considers itself above the law. And there’s no way Ka$h Patel’s FBI is going to investigate ICE or even itself.

I’ve been doing this long enough to remember when suggestions like the ones Bannon is making would have ended a political career before lunch. Now they’re bragged about on a podcast with millions of listeners, and the White House doesn’t deny them. That’s how normalization works.

That’s exactly how it worked in the 1930s, when European democracies looked at what was coming and kept telling themselves “it can’t really happen here.”

But it can happen here: It is happening here.

What you can do right now is simple but urgent. First, check your voter registration at vote.org and make sure you’re still on the rolls, especially if you live in a red state where Republican-led purges are removing voters by the hundreds of thousands.

Second, contact your senators, both of them, and demand they go on record about whether they support ICE agents at polling places. Make them say it out loud. Ditto for your member of the House of Representatives. (202-224-3121)

Third, support the organizations fighting this in court. Democracy Docket is doing extraordinary work on exactly these cases, and Fulton County’s lawsuit seeking the return of their ballots is one battle in a much larger war.

And fourth, talk to everyone you know. Not just the people who already agree with you, but your neighbors, your coworkers, your family. Because the goal of all of this, the airports, the raid, the threats, is to make you feel like resistance is futile.

It isn’t. But only if we act like it isn’t.

A Government of One
Otherwise known as an autocracy

Dan Rather and Team Steady
Mar 23

It is a sad state of affairs when Americans are unsure whom to believe: the word of their president or that of his foreign adversary. And what makes it worse, many would rate the statements of the enemy, even though it’s Iran — one of the most prolific sponsors of terrorism on earth — over the word of Donald Trump.

Out of the blue and before financial markets opened on Monday, Trump announced progress on ending the four-week-long war with Iran. Was this another lie, or was there real movement toward the end of the war? It is a head-spinning story that began over the weekend.

In a 7:44 p.m. EST social media post on Saturday night, Trump gave Iran an ultimatum: open the Strait of Hormuz within 48 hours or the United States will obliterate your energy infrastructure, including power plants, which may be considered a war crime since the power is primarily for civilians.

The ultimatum was that Iran had until Monday night to act. But Trump blinked with more than 12 hours to go, and the reason may have been more monetary than military.

At 7:04 a.m. Monday, two hours before the shaken U.S. markets opened, Trump wrote that those threatened strikes on Iranian power plants would halt for five days because “the U.S. and Iran have had productive conversations.”

Within minutes of that post, the S&P 500 rebounded, adding $2 trillion in value. The cost of a barrel of Brent crude oil dropped almost 14%.

Thirty-three minutes later, at 7:37 a.m., Iran categorically denied holding any talks with the Trump administration, saying claims of “productive talks” were a lie. They even used Trump’s term, calling it “fake news.” By 8:00 a.m., half of the S&P gains had vanished.

Trump wasn’t done. He then called in to Fox Business host and Trump cheerleader Maria Bartiromo and CNBC’s Joe Kernen, telling the latter, “We are very intent on making a deal.”

Not so, says Iran’s official news agency. Trump “backed down” because of pressure from allies and the markets, they reported.

Making it all the more suspicious was that the U.S. spin was coming from Trump, and only Trump. Conspicuously silent were the State Department, the White House, and the well-traveled negotiating team of Steve Witkoff, the president’s real estate pal and son-in-law Jared Kushner.

Once again, there appears to be no collective wisdom or strategy from the U.S., just the constantly changing whims of one erratic and unreliable figurehead.

“The unsettling reality is that with this president, Americans in wartime are in the unprecedented position of having to suspect that the enemy’s version of events is more likely to be true than our own,” The Wall Street Journal’s Gerard Baker posted on social media.

If you thought trying to pacify markets and buy time were the most chaotic and dangerous things Trump did in the last two days, you’d be wrong. He had a busy weekend.

On Saturday, Trump did something that even for Trump is hard to believe. In an effort to rein in rapidly escalating oil prices, he announced he would lift sanctions on Iranian oil, effectively sending millions of dollars to a regime he has described as a “dire threat to every American” and one that is killing American service members.

This follows the easing of sanctions on Russian oil earlier this month. Russia, in turn, will use the unexpected windfall to continue financing their four-year-long war against Ukraine.

Here at Steady, we try to deal in facts. With that in mind, there is growing suspicion that Trump is struggling to find a way to declare victory and get out.

And then there is Linda from Arizona.

On Friday, during the Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show, a conservative talk radio show, Linda from Arizona called in with a suggestion. “I think I have a solution to the TSA problem. We need to bring in ICE agents.” Travis called her idea “brilliant” and then pitched it on Fox News that night.

Early Sunday morning, Trump said in a social media post, “ICE will be going to airports to help our wonderful TSA agents,” which was the first time most of his government heard of the idea.

Apart from the unorthodox genesis of the scheme, let’s talk about how this would work—”work” perhaps being too strong a word.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), currently unfunded and without a head, will be deploying untrained Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to our nation’s airports during the busy spring break season to assist the Transportation Security Administration (TSA).

Because of the partial government shutdown, affecting only the DHS, TSA agents haven’t seen a paycheck in 37 days. ICE agents, who are considered essential, are getting paid. According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 41% of TSA agents at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson Airport were no-shows on Sunday. As a result, three-hour-plus security lines snaked through the country’s busiest airport. Long lines were reported at many other airports.

Regardless of training or lack of it, unmasked ICE agents were walking around 13 airport terminals across the country on Monday, reportedly to help. The president called the airports “fertile territory” for arresting “illegals.”

Today, Tom Homan, the de facto head of DHS until a new secretary is confirmed, said ICE could provide site security only, not help with passenger and bag screenings. They could also watch exit doors, Homan said. So essentially no help at all, just a pricey jostling of personnel.

What would help is an end to the shutdown, which was within reach over the weekend.

On Sunday, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) presented Trump with a deal to fund DHS, minus ICE. He promised ICE would be funded with a reconciliation package in the near future. Not that it needs it. ICE’s $85 billion, three-year budget eclipses the budgets of all the other federal law enforcement agencies combined (FBI, Secret Service, etc.).

Reading the electoral tea leaves, Senate Republicans and some White House aides urged Thune to bring the deal to the president, according to Punchbowl News. Senate Democrats signed on to the deal, compromising on several points, including requiring ICE agents to go maskless.

Trump flatly rejected the offer. He is holding Homeland Security funding hostage until the Senate passes the SAVE Act, the controversial voter suppression bill now pending. “Don’t worry about Easter… In fact, make this one for Jesus,” he told lawmakers.

Trump said he would publicly shame any Republican senator who left for the upcoming recess, inviting them to the White House for Easter dinner. That sounds more like a threat than a prize.

“It’s hard to imagine a dumber political strategy to respond to long TSA lines than sending personnel from an agency that 2/3 of Americans don’t like and declaring you won’t fund the TSA unless the Senate passes the politically toxic SAVE Act.” Democratic strategist Dan Pfeiffer wrote on social media.

In the middle of a war and partial government shutdown, Trump still managed to spend the weekend at his Florida resort playing golf. He exists in a world where consequences are immaterial. Decisions made are not for the betterment of the American people, but for him alone. Gas prices and long security lines don’t affect him. That may change come November.

Trying To Fly In an Increasingly Fascist United States of America

THE LEFT HOOK with Wajahat Ali
Mar 23

I’m writing this essay while sitting in DCA, using the still functional WiFi, and waiting to board my flight to SFO, while armed, untrained ICE agents are being unleashed at numerous airports across America.

Before leaving for my flight, friends and family all messaged me to be extra careful, take my passport, and scrub any social media off my phone. Last time I checked, I hadn’t done anything radical or criminal, unless driving a Honda Odyssey minivan and shopping at Costco are now considered extremist acts.

Nope, this is just me, a middle-aged dad, trying to take a domestic flight to SFO for a speech this Tuesday for the Commonwealth Club in Lafayette. (Come by if you’re in the East Bay!)

Meanwhile, TSA agents are still not paid because Trump has decided to hold the nation hostage to bumrush his voter suppression bill (SAVE Act) and fund DHS without any guardrails or constraints. Trump rejected the plan even though Democrats and GOP Senate leader Thune are on board to fund a clean TSA bill.

He owns the chaos.

This is nothing new. Why is anyone surprised? Relationships for Trump are zero-sum games where he must emerge dominant or appear to be the winner.

It’s worked wonderfully for America.

It explains the disastrous trade war where Trump has alienated our allies, whom he believes are screwing us over due to his fundamental misunderstanding of trade deficits, tariffs, and basic economics. Now, we have higher grocery prices.

Awesome.

Trump also thought he could bully Iran into submission, giving it a 48-hour deadline to open the Strait of Hormuz. They didn’t flinch, and onward we stumble into an escalating quagmire that is spiking the price of oil and gas and threatening our future food supply.

All of this could’ve been avoided, but a plurality of Americans chose the “murder-suicide” option instead. They thought it wouldn’t affect them. They thought the fascists would stop at the undocumented immigrants, the pro-Palestinian activists, the “woke,” and the poor.

Nope.

Fascists come for everyone in the end.

Now, we are all waiting in line for hours at the airport, praying to God that we have enough air traffic controllers who can prevent avoidable catastrophes, as we witnessed at LaGuardia Airport. Now, all of us are paying more for oil, gas, and food. Now, all of us are being threatened by Trump’s Gestapo, who are on American streets, in schools, and at airports. Next, they will be unleashed at the voting booth, because Trump and Republicans aren’t leaving peacefully or legally.

It’s time to wake up, friends!

TACO: Trump Unleashes the Airport Gestapo!
A Nation Held Hostage: Infrastructure Collapse, Market Grifts, and the Rise of the Airport Gestapo

THE LEFT HOOK with Wajahat Ali
Mar 23

We are no longer waiting for the catastrophe; we are living in its reverberations. For years, the warnings were clear, like scientists pointing to a massive comet hurtling toward Earth. But in a collective act of cultural murder-suicide, a segment of this country invited the impact. Now, the comet has struck, and we are navigating the craters of a crumbling infrastructure and a hollowed-out democracy.

The current state of American travel is the perfect metaphor for this systemic rot. At airports across the nation, travelers face five-hour lines for two-hour flights. This isn’t just a glitch; it is the logical conclusion of a regime that treats governance as a game of “owning” the opposition. When expertise is culled and bureaucracies are gutted for the “laughs,” the safety of every citizen is traded for a headline.

The Rise of the “Airport Gestapo”
The deployment of ICE agents into airports under the guise of “helping” TSA is a chilling escalation. These agents have seen their training hours slashed—no de-escalation, no negotiation, and no instruction on the Constitution. Recruited with appeals to white nationalist talking points and given a badge and a gun after just 47 days, they represent a force multiplier for intimidation rather than safety.

We have already seen the body count of this “new model” with the brutalization and deaths of citizens like Keith Porter, Renee Nicole Good, and Alex Pretti. It doesn’t matter if you carry a blue passport or a green card; when law enforcement is trained to prioritize “speed” and “suspicion” over civil rights, everyone is a target. We are watching the normalization of a domestic Gestapo—first in the streets, then in schools, and now at the gates of our freedom of movement. It is a precursor to fascism, where looking “terrorist-y” or expressing “anti-American sentiment” provides all the probable cause needed for state-sanctioned violence.

The Handmaid’s Tale is a documentary.
This isn’t dystopian fiction; it’s the evening news. In scenes mirroring The Handmaid’s Tale, we now see families facing interrogation at the border of their own states. “Was it your egg or an implanted embryo?” is no longer a line from a script; it is the invasive reality of a government obsessed with the law of the wall. As travel becomes a gauntlet of fear and detention, the entire industry teeters on collapse. People won’t fly if it means risking physical injury and emotional trauma just to visit family.

The Global Grift: War as a Market Manipulator
While Americans stand in six-hour lines, the administration is playing a deadlier game abroad. The current war with Iran, spurred by an “impotent” leadership easily manipulated by foreign interests, is being used as a massive financial grift. We see the pattern: a threat issued on a Friday to skyrocket oil prices, followed by a “retreat” on Monday to manipulate short sales.

While the “children of the corn” sons of the elite buy up oil barrels and invest in drone companies right before declarations of war, the rest of the world faces a “triple threat” of scarcity:

Energy & Tech: The closure of the Strait of Hormuz threatens to pop the AI bubble as data centers become unviable and chip production ceases.

Agriculture: Fertilizer prices are at a four-year high, up 44%, because the essential components are trapped behind naval blockades.

Medicine: Qatar supplies a third of the world’s helium—essential for MRI machines and medical imaging—and production has halted.

A Failure of Imagination
The irony is that this devastation was avoidable. Multiple “clean” bills to fund the TSA without conditions have been rejected because the current leadership prefers to hold the public hostage to extract more money for “concentration camps” and detention quotas.

We must stop pretending we can simply “recover” in the next cycle. The stench of this rot is deep. We are witnessing an isolated, chaotic America that refuses to confront its sins, choosing instead to indulge in them. For those who thought they were safe—the wealthy, the indifferent—the reality is finally setting in: when you destroy the infrastructure of a nation for a grift, the lights eventually go out for everyone.

The comet is not coming; it is here. Our task now is to protect as many people as possible from the fallout of a country that decided it would rather burn down than grow up.

ICE at Airports Is ‘Test Run’ for the Unthinkable
Supreme Court could disenfranchise Americans in over a dozen states; ex-WSJ editor calls out Trump on Iran; Trump puts blame for Iran on Hegseth

British Chris and Raw America
Mar 23

There’s a lot happening right now. A lot. Steve Bannon is openly salivating for ICE agents to intimidate voters at the polls. The Supreme Court might be about to disenfranchise almost a million Americans in one ruling. Iran’s government is proving Trump is lying to the whole world about the war. And Trump is now pinning the blame for his unpopular war on Pete Hegseth.

Bannon Says ICE Agents at Airports Are Practice for the Polls
Trump supposedly sent ICE agents into airports because of delays caused by the partial government shutdown. But Steve Bannon just went on his show and said the quiet part loud.

He called it a “test run” for the 2026 midterms. He said ICE agents checking IDs at airports is “perfect training” for what he wants them doing at polling locations this fall.

Bannon called it “5D chess” from Trump. He said, quote, “That’s what’s going to happen in the fall of 26.”

Now, here’s where it gets complicated. A DHS official told state election officials last month that ICE agents won’t be at polling locations during the midterms. Kentucky Secretary of State Michael Adams even posted on X confirming that DHS made that commitment.

But then Trump’s nominee for secretary of Homeland Security, Senator Markwayne Mullin, refused to rule it out during his confirmation hearing. And when White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked directly, she said she “can’t guarantee” that an ICE agent won’t be near polling locations.

So the official line is no ICE at the polls. But the people around Trump keep leaving the door wide open. And Bannon isn’t hiding what he wants at all.

Voting rights activists have been sounding the alarm about this for months. The presence of immigration agents at polling places would intimidate voters. That’s the point.

The Supreme Court May Deal Blow to Mail-In Ballots
This one’s genuinely alarming, and it hasn’t gotten nearly enough attention.

The Supreme Court heard arguments Monday in a case called Watson v. Republican National Committee. At issue: whether states can count mail ballots that arrive a few days after Election Day, as long as they were postmarked on time.

About 30 states have these grace period laws. In 2024 alone, more than 750,000 ballots were counted because of them. The RNC is arguing those laws are invalid because federal law sets Election Day, and they say that means ballots have to be received by Election Day, not just mailed by it.

The liberal justices spent the hearing pointing out that this argument has no basis in history or law. States allowed soldiers to vote by mail during the Civil War, with grace periods. Early voting, by definition, doesn’t happen on Election Day. None of that has ever been considered a problem.

But the conservative justices weren’t interested in that history. And the Trump administration itself couldn’t name a single example of fraud from post-election day ballot receipt in this century. But those same false claims are being used as legal justification to gut voting laws in 30 states.

Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett sounded genuinely uncertain during arguments. They might hold the line. Or they might not. If the court strikes these laws down before the midterms, state election officials will have fewer than 150 days to rewrite their rules and somehow inform millions of voters. The chaos that would follow is hard to overstate.

Democrats are statistically more likely to vote by mail. That’s not a secret. The RNC knows it. And conservative justices know it.

Former Murdoch Paper Editor Tears into Trump’s Iran War Claims
There’s a remarkable story developing around Trump’s messaging on Iran, and it’s coming from conservative journalists, not the left.

Trump posted on Truth Social over the weekend, in all caps, claiming the U.S. and Iran were negotiating and that he’d instructed the Pentagon to pause military strikes for five days while talks continued.

But Iran’s government flatly denied it. Their foreign ministry said there had been “no direct or indirect contact” between Washington and Tehran and claimed Trump had backed down after Iran threatened to strike power plants across the region.

Gerard Baker, the former editor-in-chief of the Wall Street Journal, said on Fox News that Trump was re-creating a “Baghdad Bob,” in reference to the Iraqi information minister who gave press briefings during the 2003 U.S. invasion, claiming Iraq was winning right up until the end.

Baker wrote that Americans are now “in the unprecedented position of having to suspect that the enemy’s version of events is more likely to be true than our own.”

That’s a Fox News contributor. About a Republican president. During wartime.

The Financial Times’ Edward Luce said something similar, noting the strange situation of having to wait for Iran’s statement to figure out whether anything the U.S. president said was true.

The fact that veteran conservative journalists are publicly drawing comparisons to Saddam Hussein’s propagandists should be more than a little alarming for the White House.

Trump Blames Hegseth for His Unpopular War
Trump said Monday that Pete Hegseth was the first top administration official to advocate for military strikes on Iran.

That tracks with what Bloomberg reported over the weekend: that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and Rupert Murdoch were among the loudest voices pushing Trump toward military action, while Vice President Vance, Secretary of State Rubio, and Chief of Staff Susie Wiles were more skeptical.

Trump has acknowledged Vance wasn’t enthusiastic. Vance hasn’t said anything publicly.

The war is now four weeks in. When Hegseth was asked Thursday when the U.S. might wind down operations, he pushed back against setting a “definitive timeframe.” Meanwhile, Trump announced that Hegseth signed a directive extending active-duty benefits to National Guard members serving in Memphis, Washington, D.C., New Orleans, and at the border.

The crowd applauded. Hegseth smiled. And nobody mentioned an exit strategy. Stay tuned; we’ll be watching this one closely.

Trump: “Do It For Jesus”; Two Pilots Dead at LaGuardia, Trump Blocks TSA Deal, SCOTUS Targets Mail-In Voting and Iran’s Ghost Talks
The FiveStack | Top 5 Breaking News Stories

Zev Shalev and Dean Blundell
Mar 23

BREAKING: Two Pilots Dead at LaGuardia
An air traffic controller at LaGuardia Airport cleared a Port Authority fire truck onto an active runway at 11:40 PM Sunday, then screamed “stop” at least ten times as Air Canada Express Flight 8646 barreled in from Montreal at 150 miles per hour. Both pilots were killed instantly. Flight attendant Solange Tremblay was ejected from the aircraft while still strapped to her seat, thrown dozens of feet from the wreckage—her daughter called it “nothing short of a miracle.” The escape slides never deployed, leaving 72 passengers to organize their own evacuation in the dark, scrambling over the wings. “The flight attendant in the front got ejected from the plane, so we really did not have direction,” said passenger Rebecca Liquori. Dean noted the controller “has got to live with this for the rest of his life” and pointed out that air traffic controllers have the second-highest burnout rate of any profession in the world. The crash came at an airport already buckling—earlier that same day, travelers endured hour-long security lines because of TSA staffing shortages tied to the DHS shutdown. LaGuardia is 40% below safe staffing levels; controller retirements have surged from four a day to 15-20 during the shutdown, and DOGE fired 400 FAA employees back in February 2025. It is the first fatal accident at LaGuardia since 1992.

5️⃣ Trump Blocks TSA Deal, Sends ICE to Airports
Senate Majority Leader John Thune had a deal with Chuck Schumer to end the 43-day DHS shutdown—fund everything except ICE, get TSA workers back on the job, end the airport chaos. Trump killed it on Truth Social. “Donald Trump doesn’t give a fuck if that lasts,” Dean said, describing how Trump told Thune he wanted to keep the fight going for political leverage. “I don’t care how dangerous flying the friendly skies of the United States is. Because it’s more important to me that I look like I win this fight.” Trump’s solution: deploy untrained ICE agents to 15-20 airports starting Monday. “None of them are trained to do any TSA work, any screening, none of that,” Dean noted. “They’re trained for customs and border enforcement.” Meanwhile, ICE agents were filmed at airports without masks, some directing travelers to TGI Fridays, others leaning on mezzanine railings with their heads in their hands. “I don’t know what the fuck we’re doing here, but we’re here.”

4️⃣ SAVE Act: Do It for Jesus
Trump appeared at an event in Tennessee and delivered what may be the most revealing moment of his presidency. He told Republican senators to tie voter ID and proof of citizenship to the DHS funding bill — the SAVE America Act — and skip Easter recess to get it done. Then he said it: “Make this one for Jesus.” Dean, who grew up in the evangelical faith, broke it down: “When you’re out of answers, when you need them to do something, you tell them it’s their God-given duty. Jesus died for you so you could pass the SAVE Act.” Trump was laughing as he said it, unable to keep a straight face. “He knows he’s misusing Jesus’s name,” Zev observed. “The idea that Jesus would have endorsed anything Donald Trump is doing is nonsensical.” The SAVE Act would require proof of citizenship to register and a photo ID to vote—targeting communities of color, women, trans people, and anyone who’s undergone a name change. Trump has made it clear: this bill is more important to him than funding the TSA, more important than airport safety, and more important than ending the shutdown.

3️⃣ SCOTUS Signals Kill on Mail-In Voting
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case that could eliminate mail-in ballot grace periods in 18 states just in time for November’s midterms. The RNC is challenging Mississippi’s own Republican-passed law allowing ballots postmarked by Election Day to arrive five days later. Only the three liberal justices appeared sympathetic. Ground News tracked coverage across the political spectrum: left-leaning outlets framed it as voter suppression targeting minorities and the elderly, center outlets focused on the legal question of federal versus state authority, and right-leaning outlets called it an election integrity measure to prevent late-arriving ballots from swinging results. “This is part of the SAVE Act,” Dean said. “The SAVE Act is just this enormous go fuck yourself—we don’t want you voting. If you’re Black, if you’re trans, if you’re a woman, or if you’ve undergone a name change, we want you to stay as far away from the polls.” A ruling by June would reshape the midterm elections.

2️⃣ Columbus Statue Returns to the White House
While two pilots lay dead at LaGuardia, the White House installed a 13-foot replica of the Christopher Columbus statue torn down in Baltimore in 2020 and rebuilt with pieces of the original. They also reinstalled the Confederate General Albert Pike statue. Dean had a take that surprised me: “I actually applaud the return of the Christopher Columbus statue. Because to me, that’s truly what America was built on—a lie.” Zev pushed back, insisting America’s foundational ideas — government for and by the people — remain “the most incredible, beautiful things the world has ever been given.” Dean countered with data: Canadians have a 40% greater chance of moving between economic classes. The two sparred over whether America’s promise was real or a myth, eventually agreeing the country needs “a reset of some sort.”

1️⃣ Iran: Trump’s Ghost Talks
Trump’s 48-hour ultimatum to Iran expired with no strikes and no explanation — just a Truth Social post about “very good and productive conversations.” Iran’s response: “There is no dialogue between Tehran and Washington.” Dean called it what it is: “Donald Trump had an entire two-day negotiating session with the Iranian regime that no one knew about — including the Iranian regime.” Zev noted that Trump’s entire financial future—his crypto holdings, his business interests—is tied to the region he accidentally set on fire. “I probably would invent an imaginary negotiation too,” Dean admitted. The new deadline is Friday. Iran is still enriching uranium. The Strait of Hormuz is still closed. And the president of the United States may be talking to no one.

The spring from hell is here. Trump is blocking deals, invoking Jesus, deploying ICE to airports, and negotiating with ghosts—while two pilots lie dead on a runway

Cuba on the Brink

The New Yorker Weekly
David Remnick
Editor, The New Yorker

When Jon Lee Anderson traveled to Havana earlier this year, he found a city whose plazas and squares were far more desolate than they were in the past. An estimated one in five Cubans have left the island since 2021. The tourists are all but gone. Electrical blackouts are a constant. Trash goes uncollected. Drivers sometimes wait more than twenty-four hours in line for gas. The government is essentially broke. “I don’t care anymore how it happens,” Anderson’s friend, a longtime Revolution loyalist, says, “but this situation has to end.”

Donald Trump, for his part, has at least some notion of how he’d like to see it end. “I do believe I’ll be having the honor of taking Cuba,” the president said last week in the Oval Office. “I think I can do anything I want with it.” In the wake of the U.S. military’s arrest of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela and now the prolonged war in Iran, Trump has spoken routinely of making a move on Havana. And so the political world is now asking the question that is the headline to Anderson’s on-the-ground reporting in this week’s issue: “Is Cuba Next?”

Since the beginning of the year, the United States has imposed what amounts to a blockade on Cuba, thus far preventing it from receiving oil from its allies, including Mexico and Russia. Before the blockade, Anderson writes, “Cuba was on life support; Trump’s action effectively shut the oxygen off.”

Anderson is intimately familiar with Cuba in crisis: he and his family lived there during an exceptionally bleak moment in the nineties after the island lost its Soviet backing, and he has been one of the finest chroniclers of Cuba’s politics, people, and culture. What he sees now is a government trapped in perhaps irreparable decline. Reports suggest that the U.S. position is that Cuba’s president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, needs to go. But, “even if negotiations with the U.S. yield an agreement to hold elections,” Anderson writes, “Cuba has no organized political opposition that could run against the Communist Party, let alone take over the country.” And he adds, “The best-known dissidents are dead, imprisoned, or in exile, too far removed from recent politics to be taken seriously.”

Amid this power vacuum, the Trump administration has been negotiating with Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, Raúl Castro’s grandson and personal bodyguard, who, despite a taste for flashy displays of wealth, hardly represents a break with the past. It’s simply not clear what regime change, or whatever else the administration chooses to call it, would look like in Cuba. “They’re dealing with Trump’s unpredictability on one side and their own imminent collapse on the other,” Joe Garcia, a former Democratic congressman from Florida and longtime Cuba watcher, says. “But countries don’t collapse. They simply continue to go down.”