Category Archives: Republican Party

Healthcare, Obama Care, Republican Party, Trump, US

One Year Later, RFK Jr Has Dismantled America’s Health Care Infrastructure

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One Year Later, RFK Jr Has Dismantled America’s Health Care Infrastructure

Why take vaccines when you can eat meat, do push-ups, and increase your chances of cancer with tanning beds? Inside the deranged, pro-death agenda of RFK Jr. and his cabal of conspiracy theorists.

THE LEFT HOOK with Wajahat Ali and Paging America (Substack)
Mar 20

One year.

That’s it. That’s how long it took for an unqualified, dangerous crank to damage America’s once lauded health care infrastructure.

Out of all Trump’s horsemen of the apocalypse, I have long warned that RFK Jr., a man with zero medical qualifications who spouts eugenics, is the most dangerous. The man who is now the director of our Health and Human Services has single-handedly replaced medical experts and scientists with fellow conspiracy theorists who don’t believe in life-saving vaccines, use Nazi rhetoric to describe autistic people, and promote bunk science and snake oil to line their own pockets.

Thanks to RFK Jr., vaccination rates in the United States are now hovering around 70% as preventable diseases, such as measles, are becoming great again. The man with brain worms has also decided to literally invert the food pyramid, prioritizing meat and dairy instead of fruits and grains. Why take medication when you can eat “magical” foods and do push-ups instead? No need for vaccines and veggies, kids, but be sure to use tanning beds! Earlier this week, the FDA abandoned its proposal to ban people under 18 from using beds that could increase the risks of skin cancer.

Meanwhile, our best and brightest are now fleeing to Europe and China, with critical research funding being cut, and we haven’t even addressed the cataclysmic damage that will result after the GOP’s “billionaire bill” that will gut $1 trillion from Medicaid.

Thankfully, medical experts and a few judges are fighting back from this pro-death march. On Monday, a federal judge blocked the Trump administration’s dangerous changes to the childhood immunization schedule. On Thursday, another judge provided temporary relief to 21 states to protect federal funding to hospitals that provide gender-transition care.

Unfortunately, generational damage has already been done, but that doesn’t mean we give up the fight to educate and inform the public about the intentional attacks on their health.

Middle East, Politics, Republican Party, Trump, US, World

BREAKING: Trump Commits Thousands Of Troops To The Middle East – Iran Has Been Waiting For “US Boots On The Ground” For 47 Years.

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BREAKING: Trump Commits Thousands Of Troops To The Middle East—Iran Has Been Waiting For “US Boots On The Ground” For 47 Years.
Trump is gearing up to seize Kharg Island. The IRGC built their entire military doctrine around the day America tried.

Dean Blundell (Substack)
Mar 20

What’s Deployed, What’s Coming, And What The Numbers Actually Mean

The USS Boxer Amphibious Ready Group—Boxer, USS Portland, and USS Comstock—departed San Diego on March 18, ahead of its originally scheduled deployment window. The Boxer ARG carries approximately 2,500 Marines from Camp Pendleton’s 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit, bringing total personnel, including sailors, to roughly 4,000 aboard those three ships.

They’re linking up with the USS Tripoli group, already transiting from Japan with the Okinawa-based 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit—approximately 2,200 Marines plus around 2,000 sailors, totaling 4,200 to 4,400 personnel. Once the two groups merge, six amphibious ships will have added roughly 8,000 service members to a region where 50,000 U.S. troops are already deployed.

The Boxer is a small aircraft carrier. F-35B stealth jets. V-22 Osprey tiltrotors. Hovercraft in the well deck. The 11th MEU can conduct amphibious landings. The 31st MEU is specifically trained for limited-scale raids and seizure of maritime platforms.

The Navy spokesperson told NBC San Diego this is “routine training that ensures the continued war-fighting readiness of Navy and Marine forces.” That’s the same Navy currently fighting a war with Iran.

The Target Is Already Named

This morning, Axios reported — citing four sources with direct knowledge — that the Trump administration is actively considering plans to occupy or blockade Iran’s Kharg Island to pressure Tehran into reopening the Strait of Hormuz.

“He wants Hormuz open. If he has to take Kharg Island to make it happen, that’s going to happen. If he decides to have a coastal invasion, that’s going to happen. But that decision hasn’t been made,” a senior administration official told Axios.

Kharg Island is a five-mile strip of coral in the Persian Gulf, 15 miles off Iran’s coast and 500 miles past the Strait of Hormuz. It processes roughly 90% of Iran’s crude oil exports. Destroy it or seize it, and you’ve grabbed Iran’s economy by the throat.

The U.S. already bombed it. On March 13, American forces conducted what Trump called “one of the most powerful bombing raids in the history of the Middle East,” targeting over 90 military sites on Kharg—naval mine storage, missile bunkers, IRGC naval bases, and the runway—while deliberately sparing the oil infrastructure. The message: We know where the off switch is, and we haven’t thrown it yet.

Trump told Fox News Radio the same day that if he were going to take Kharg Island, he certainly wouldn’t tell anyone about it. Then he spent the next week publicly threatening to bomb the oil pipelines. So.

White House thinking, per Axios sources: “We need about a month to weaken the Iranians more with strikes, take the island, and then get them by the balls and use it for negotiations.”

But Here’s What’s Waiting For Them

This is where the story gets complicated — and where the cheerleading from certain corners of Fox News needs to stop.

Iran has been preparing for this exact scenario since 1979. Not metaphorically. Literally. The entire military doctrine of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was built around the day America tried to come ashore in the Persian Gulf.

The lesson Iran learned in 1988 is the foundation of everything that followed. After the U.S. Navy sank roughly half of Iran’s conventional fleet in a single day during Operation Praying Mantis—retaliation for Iran mining a U.S. warship—Tehran reached an obvious conclusion: you cannot fight the U.S. Navy ship-for-ship and win. What followed was nearly four decades of building something else entirely.

The IRGC Navy isn’t a navy. It’s a guerrilla force at sea. Jane’s Defence—the gold standard for military analysis—recognizes it as the world’s most prominent practitioner of small boat swarm tactics: speed, mass, coordinated manoeuvre, low radar signature, and concealment. Iran is believed to possess around 3,000 fast-attack craft capable of these operations. Here’s how it works in practice: 10 to 20 boats swarm a single vessel from every direction simultaneously. They target the bridge to blind it and the engine room to kill it. Hidden in the chaos are unmanned suicide vessels — remote-controlled drone boats packed with explosives — steered directly into the hull. While the crew is overwhelmed, other boats drop tethered naval mines directly into the ships’ path. If the swarm doesn’t finish you, anti-ship missiles fired from mobile trucks that immediately retreat into fortified mountain caves will.

Then there are the mines. A former U.S. Navy admiral has stated publicly that Iran retains the capacity to mine the Strait of Hormuz in ways that would take many months to clear even without any hostile fire. A former British security analyst adds that Iran can deploy manned and unmanned submersible vehicles—small submarines, underwater drones—from concealed shore tunnels. You have to clear the strait before you can even reach Kharg. And you’re doing it under fire, in shallow water, in a channel 21 miles wide at its narrowest point.

Then there’s the “Mosaic Defence.” In 2005, the IRGC formalized what it calls a decentralized command-and-control doctrine—essentially a military designed from the ground up to absorb and survive decapitation strikes. Every regional IRGC unit operates semi-autonomously with its own intelligence, weapons stockpile, and command structure. You can kill the leadership — and the U.S. and Israel killed Supreme Leader Khamenei and dozens of senior IRGC commanders on day one of Operation Epic Fury — and the machine keeps running. Iran’s foreign minister announced this openly on February 28th: “Bombings in our capital have no impact on our ability to conduct war. Decentralized Mosaic Defence enables us to decide when — and how — war will end.”

Then there’s the cost math. A Shahed drone costs $20,000 to $50,000 to produce. A U.S. Patriot interceptor costs $4 million per shot. Iran has already forced the U.S. to burn through Tomahawk stockpiles and air defence interceptors at a pace that’s alarming Pentagon planners. This is the same playbook the Houthis ran in the Red Sea for months — low-cost attrition against expensive American systems — and Tehran has been watching and refining it the entire time.

Then there’s the Strait of Hormuz. To take Kharg Island, you need to get through the Strait of Hormuz. NE is getting through the Strait of Hormuz without lighting up the Iranian coast and mountain ranges for DAYS with ammo the US simply does not have.

What The Experts Say About Actually Taking Kharg

Former U.S. Army intelligence analyst Harrison Mann, who resigned from the Defence Intelligence Agency over Biden’s Gaza policy and has no axe to grind for either side, put it plainly: any attempt to seize Kharg Island would be “close to a suicide mission.” The Marines would be 500 miles past the Strait of Hormuz — a chokepoint the U.S. Navy currently considers too dangerous to enter — 15 miles off the Iranian coast, within range of weapons the IRGC hasn’t even had the opportunity to deploy yet in this war. Artillery rockets. Short-range drones. Shore-based systems that have been waiting for exactly this moment.

A helicopter assault avoids anti-ship weapons but creates a different problem: the MEU’s Ospreys and helicopters would need at least three trips to insert the full Marine force. Those are three trips of predictable flight paths, landing zones, and sitting targets while Iranian forces calibrate their sights. Resupply and evacuation by sea means running the gauntlet again. Resupply by air means doing it indefinitely, under fire, on an island 15 miles from the Iranian mainland.

Responsible Statecraft’s assessment: for the troops who receive those orders, “the operation would land somewhere between a suicide mission and a self-imposed hostage crisis.”

There is a counter-argument. One analysis published this week argues the March 13 strikes degraded Kharg’s fixed defences severely enough—destroying SAM batteries, missile bunkers, and the IRGC naval base—that what’s left is a broken garrison of 200 to 500 personnel without command infrastructure or reinforcement capability. Under that scenario, 2,200 Marines against a destroyed garrison with total U.S. air superiority is an overwhelming force. The 82nd Airborne’s ready brigade has quietly cancelled scheduled exercises. Army battalions are already in Kuwait. Pentagon planning reportedly covers multiple island seizures simultaneously—Kharg, Hormuz, Qeshm, and Kish. If Rump keeps this Operation Epstein thing up, the US military is going to need all the help it can get, considering the USS Gerald Ford is on its way to Greece to have the shitters fixed and to start preparing it to be seaworthy enough to head back to the US after a mysterious 30-hour fire broke out on board.

That analysis assumes the intelligence assessment is right. The regime is too broken to mount a coherent response. Because Iran doesn’t have mobile capabilities, the bombing runs missed. That they don’t mine the waters around Kharg the moment the ships appear on radar.

If that assessment is correct, Kharg falls and the war ends on American terms.

If it’s wrong, the United States has Marines trapped on an island 15 miles from Iran with a hostile sea between them and resupply.

Iran has been building toward that second scenario for 47 years. The ships are sailing. The decision hasn’t been made. But the window is closing, and the math is brutal.

Canada, China, Politics, Republican Party, Russian Investigation, Trump, US

Way To Go, MAGA. Is this the great America you were hoping for?

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Way To Go, MAGA.
Is this the great America you were hoping for?

Adam Kinzinger (Substack)
Mar 20

Yesterday, the president of the United States made a Pearl Harbour joke to the Japanese prime minister. Not in a private moment of breathtaking social incompetence, but on the world stage, in a diplomatic meeting, where the entire point of the exercise is to convince our most important Pacific ally that we are a serious, reliable partner in an increasingly dangerous world. Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi responded the way any seasoned diplomat responds when trapped in a room with a man who just stepped on every rake simultaneously—she offered the polished, glacial smile of someone checking her watch and calculating how many minutes until she could escape.

Then, because the moment clearly needed more texture, Trump led her down the “Wall of Presidents”—a proud American tradition—and made sure to point out, with evident satisfaction, the spot where Biden’s autopen photo had been replaced. A diplomatic masterclass. Truly. The Japanese delegation flew thousands of miles for a hallway tour and a WWII call back.

Brilliant. Just brilliant.

Here’s the thing about “Making America Great Again”—at some point, you have to reckon with the scorecard.

It’s been roughly one year. Let’s check in.

We are now an unreliable ally. The nations that built the post-World War II order with us — nations that sent their sons and daughters to fight beside ours, that opened their markets, their bases, their intelligence networks to us — are quietly, urgently making contingency plans that don’t include Washington. Not because they want to. Because they have to.

We are a non-threatening adversary to Russia and China. This is a sentence that would have been considered treasonous fever dream fiction five years ago. Today it’s foreign policy. We have provided Russia with effective sanctions relief despite documented evidence that Russia supplied targeting intelligence to Iran, which used it to kill American troops. Read that again slowly. And yet here we are, apparently decided that the real enemy is a trans activist in Vermont.

We have started, or accelerated, a conflict that is holding the global energy market hostage, with no coherent exit strategy, no clear diplomatic framework, and no apparent adult in the room with a whiteboard. The economic ripple effects are slamming against the shores of every nation on earth, and we’re the ones who threw the stone.

We have threatened to invade Canada. Canada. Our largest trading partner. The country that shares the longest undefended border in human history with us. We have also, for variety, rattled sabres at Colombia, Cuba, Greenland, Panama, and presumably anyone else who looked at us funny on a Tuesday. NATO allies are not quietly reassured by this energy.

China—and this is the part that should make every American, regardless of party affiliation, sit down and breathe into a bag—is being considered by the international community as a more reliable strategic partner than the United States. China. The authoritarian surveillance state that imprisons ethnic minorities in camps and jails journalists. More reliable than us. We did that. We handed them that gift, wrapped it in a bow, and personally delivered it.

And China, watching us shred our alliances like a raccoon who got into the filing cabinet, is quietly accelerating their internal timeline for Taiwan. Why wouldn’t they? The cavalry just announced it’s not coming.

Here’s the part that really stings, beneath the geopolitical catastrophe and the economic whiplash and the international humiliation: we did this to ourselves because Fox News successfully convinced a significant portion of the American electorate that the real existential threat to this country wasn’t Russia, or China, or climate change, or crumbling infrastructure—it was your neighbour who voted Democrat.

The White House communications operation—which was once the most powerful messaging apparatus on the planet—has been handed to people whose primary credential is posting on X at 2 AM. Governance has been replaced by content creation. Policy has been replaced by the performance of policy. The hard, grinding, unglamorous work of actually running a country has been outsourced to a reality television production that has apparently never heard of a second act.

And while all of this is happening, while the world is reorganizing itself around our absence, while our allies are building new arrangements and our adversaries are growing bolder, this administration is actively working to keep the Epstein files sealed. The party that ran on draining the swamp is apparently very concerned that you don’t get a good look at what’s in the swamp. Funny how that works.

The base was told the elites were hiding something. They were right. They just voted for the cover-up.

Here is the geopolitical truth that is not complicated, even if it’s been made to seem so:

Alliances are the source of American power. Not our aircraft carriers — though those are nice. Not our GDP — though that matters. What made America the indispensable nation was that we built, over 80 years, a network of relationships, treaties, shared institutions, and mutual commitments that no adversary could match. NATO. The Pacific alliance structure. The WTO. The international financial architecture. The basic credibility that when America said something, it meant it.

That is what we are burning. And unlike aircraft carriers, you can’t build alliances on a procurement schedule. Trust, once broken, takes a generation to rebuild — if it rebuilds at all.

We didn’t lose our strength by being outcompeted. We walked into the room, pulled the pin on a grenade, and set it on the table ourselves.

Here is where I refuse to join the doom choir, because doom is a luxury we can’t afford right now.

America has survived catastrophic failures of leadership before. We survived the Civil War. We survived McCarthyism. We survived Watergate. We survived every preceding era in which people in power decided that their grip on that power was more important than the republic itself.

We will survive this too — but only if we treat it as the clarion call it is.

The Democrats will win Congress. The arithmetic of backlash is not subtle. When you torch the economy, terrify your allies, embolden your enemies, and run the country like a particularly chaotic episode of a failing streaming show, the voters who stayed home or held their noses or convinced themselves it couldn’t be that bad—those voters show up. They’re already showing up. The 2026 midterms will not be a gentle course correction. There will be a verdict.

And when Donald Trump finally leaves the stage — removed by term limits, by elections, by the weight of history — America will do what it has always done with its worst chapters: it will process, reckon, and move on. The Trump name will join the ranks of historical cautionary tales taught in classrooms, cited in poli-sci papers, referenced as the inflection point when the country looked into the abyss and decided, collectively, that it preferred not to fall in.

History has a long memory and no mercy for those who mistake a moment for a mandate.

The lesson, if we’re paying attention, is not that democracy is fragile — though it is. The lesson is that democracy requires maintenance. It requires coalitions of people who believe in it to remain active, engaged, organized, and frankly a little bit angry.

The answer to the unravelling of American alliances abroad is the building of alliances at home—across party lines where possible, across demographic lines certainly, unified not by ideology but by the simple conviction that the American experiment is worth preserving.

Large, durable, pro-democracy coalitions. That’s it. That’s the whole strategy.

We don’t need to out-meme them. We need to out-organize them, out-vote them, and then — once we have the keys back — rebuild, slowly and unglamorously, the institutions and relationships that made this country worth fighting for in the first place.

And hold them to account legally when appropriate. Not for retribution, but for the future. So lessons learned will stick. Jail has a way of doing that.

America is not going to be great again because someone told us it would be.

It’s going to be great again because enough of us decided to make it so—the hard way, the only way that actually works.

The toilet of history awaits. The rest of us have work to do to flush it.

News, Politics, Republican Party, Trump, US

This is the move everyone has been waiting for. Philadelphia DA Larry Krasner just told every person connected to Jeffrey Epstein’s trafficking empire that state prosecutors are coming for them, and there’s not a thing Donald Trump can do about it.

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other98

This is the move everyone has been waiting for. Philadelphia DA Larry Krasner just told every person connected to Jeffrey Epstein’s trafficking empire that state prosecutors are coming for them, and there’s not a thing Donald Trump can do about it.

“Hey Epstein class, you may think that whatever happened on that island or happened in Epstein’s mansion is not going to haunt you,” Krasner said. “Let me tell you who is going to haunt you. It’s the prosecutors at the state court level who still care about the Constitution, the laws, and justice.”

Because Epstein’s operation was sprawling and transnational, it crisscrossed through countless local jurisdictions. That means state prosecutors across the country potentially have standing to bring charges. And here’s the part that should have every powerful person on that client list losing sleep: state court convictions cannot be pardoned by any president. Period.

Krasner emphasized that the statute of limitations for crimes involving children extends for years, giving prosecutors a long runway. Any conviction at the state level means real time served, no matter who’s in the White House.

Krasner already founded the F.A.F.O. coalition, a network of progressive prosecutors from cities including Minneapolis, Dallas, Austin, and multiple Virginia jurisdictions built specifically to hold powerful people accountable when the federal government refuses to. He’s not bluffing. He’s building infrastructure.

Under Pam Bondi, the DOJ has shown zero interest in pursuing Epstein’s associates. The files have been buried. The investigations have stalled. The coverup is happening in plain sight.

So if the federal government won’t do its job, Krasner is saying the states will. And the beauty of this approach is that it only takes one indictment. One associate flips. Then another. Then the whole thing unravels.

The powerful have spent years assuming they were untouchable. Krasner just told them they’re not.

Constitution, Environment, Healthcare, Politics, Republican Party, Science, Trump, US

Somebody Finally Stood Up to RFK Jr. A federal judge’s ruling highlights the ways Kennedy’s anti-vax agenda is putting public health at risk.

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Somebody Finally Stood Up to RFK Jr.
A federal judge’s ruling highlights the ways Kennedy’s anti-vax agenda is putting public health at risk.

Jonathan Cohn (The Bulwark)
Mar 18

WELL, WELL, WELL. The brainworm may finally have turned.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has spent the past year systematically dismantling federal support for vaccines. From his perch atop the Department of Health and Human Services, he has canceled funding for vaccine research, published misinformation about supposed vaccine dangers, forced out or fired respected scientists who might resist his agenda, and withdrawn federal recommendations for a half dozen childhood vaccines.

Until recently, Kennedy had run into little resistance. Donald Trump, who gave Kennedy all this power, has lauded Kennedy and amplified his attacks on vaccines. Bill Cassidy, the high-profile Senate Republican and Louisiana physician, has—despite some angry statements—refused to use his chairmanship of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee to demand changes or even explanations for Kennedy’s actions.

But this week Kennedy suffered a major setback. And it came at the hands of the judiciary.

On Monday, a federal judge in Boston blocked several of Kennedy’s most consequential policy changes, arguing that he had violated legal rules for how the HHS secretary is supposed to make key decisions. The 45-page ruling was a big win for the plaintiffs—a group of medical organizations and affected individuals led by the American Academy of Pediatrics—who have been protesting Kennedy’s actions from the get-go.

“There is a method to how these decisions historically have been made—a method scientific in nature and codified into law through procedural requirements,” Judge Brian Murphy wrote in his opinion. “Unfortunately, the government has disregarded those methods and thereby undermined the integrity of its actions.”

Murphy’s order “stays” several key actions taken by Kennedy’s department—meaning that they are not fully prohibited, but rather they are put on hold as the legal proceedings fully play out. Judges in higher courts may not see things the same way; they could reverse some or all of Murphy’s ruling if the Trump administration appeals, as officials are already promising to do.

“HHS looks forward to this judge’s decision being overturned just like his other attempts to keep the Trump administration from governing,” HHS spokesman Andrew Nixon told reporters after the ruling. ¹

The underlying legal issues here include genuinely complex questions about which powers the HHS secretary really has and the extent to which judges can or should determine what qualifies as an expert. It also involves questions over who has legal “standing” to bring a lawsuit like this. Murphy is a Joe Biden appointee with a reputation as a liberal. It’s not at all hard to imagine conservative judges—including Trump’s appointees on the Supreme Court, if the case gets that far—ruling differently.

But Murphy’s order will help keep vaccines in the news. And that alone has important consequences, given how the politics around the issue seem to be shifting.

In just the last few weeks, the White House has taken a series of steps to get a tighter grip on operations at HHS and to tamp down on some of the anti-vaccine rhetoric coming from Kennedy and his camp. It’s not clear whether Trump is having second thoughts about his full-throated endorsements of Kennedy. What is clear is that people around the president have gotten nervous that the anti-vaccine agenda is alienating the majority of voters who support vaccination strongly.

In short, Team Trump would prefer to change the subject. Murphy’s ruling makes that harder.

Which, perhaps, is appropriate. The debate here isn’t simply about whether Kennedy is making decisions in ways that comply with the law. It’s also about whether he is making decisions in ways that are good for public health. And this case highlights multiple ways in which he is not.

Business, Constitution, International, News, Politics, Republican Party, Russian Investigation, Trump, US, World

Saying No to the Toddler Resisting consistently is the key

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Saying No to the Toddler
Resisting consistently is the key

Mary L Trump
Mar 18

As you may have heard, despite declaring the war over, Donald has been desperately seeking help from U.S. allies to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. I have bad news for him. His delusions aside, every single country he has asked so far has said no. What we’re now seeing play out on the world stage is something long overdue: a toddler finally being told no.

Our allies’ united refusal is not the only thing rattling Donald right now. I think the latest phase of his unraveling began earlier this year when his corrupt, illegitimate supermajority of the Supreme Court that has bent over backwards to enable him nearly every step of the way finally drew a line when it declared his tariffs were unconstitutional and must be undone. How did Donald respond?

He attacked the justices who had, up to that point, given him almost everything he could hope for, including near-total presidential immunity. These justices have bent the law and broken the Constitution in ways that continue to protect him while expanding his power. The one time they told him something he did not want to hear, he lashed out; he insulted them; he called them traitors. And then he refused to comply with their decision anyway.

That’s right, instead of following the court’s ruling, he doubled down and imposed another 15% tariff across the board.

After all, who’s going to stop him? Donald continues to do what he’s always done: push the envelope to see what he can get away with. If nobody stops him (which they almost always never do), he pushes further and gets away with more. On those rare occasions when he’s thwarted, he doesn’t course correct like a mature human being; he doesn’t come up with a different strategy. He doubles down.

When the person engaging in this kind of behavior has the power to bring the world to the brink of economic chaos and a war nobody but him wants, we should all be on our guard. But it’s a long-established pattern: Most frequently, the person who stands up to him—after being threatened or blackmailed—eventually backs down. This gives him more room, more power, more oxygen. He becomes emboldened to do worse things, to take bigger risks, to inflict more pain, and to acquire more wealth and more power. Rarely has anybody stood up and said no in a way that sticks.

But that may finally be shifting.

Donald has dragged America into a war of his choosing without the permission of the U.S. government or the support of the American people. Nobody, with the exception of Donald and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, wanted this. It is a war that nobody, including Donald, can justify. And perhaps most telling of all, it is a war that nobody, including Donald, knows how to end.

For once, our allies are not falling in line behind him. Instead of humoring him, they’re standing up against him. They are finally, at long last, saying that very simple and powerful word: “no.” They are saying, “We do not want this. We did not ask for this. You did not consult us before starting this, and therefore we owe you nothing.”

And most importantly, they’re saying, “We will not risk our blood and treasure to help you wage an illegal and unconstitutional war that endangers us all.”

They will not participate in Donald’s war crimes; nor will they help him clean up the political disasters he has created for himself, both at home and abroad. Make no mistake, this situation is already costing him politically. His reckless and ill-considered actions have helped drive massive spikes in oil prices and the kind of economic shock that reverberates quickly across the globe.

Our allies are beginning to understand something that people inside the U.S. government often pretend not to understand: weakening Donald politically is actually good for the United States, and it is good for the rest of the world.

I suspect that many of our allies are quietly relieved to see Donald’s position weakening, because a diminished Trump regime means a more secure international coalition, fewer reckless decisions, fewer unilateral acts of aggression, and fewer moments during which the entire world has to hold its breath hoping that American leadership doesn’t plunge all of us further into chaos.

In this context, it’s particularly revealing who Donald has not asked for help—that embarrassing gaggle of failing democracies and autocracies that make up his so-called Board of Peace, countries like Israel, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey, and Hungary. Donald created that group as a way to convince people, erroneously, that he has global support when, in reality, he does not. The “Board of Peace” is also a very effective mechanism through which to steal more money from the American people. On February 26, Donald pledged $10 billion American dollars, funds over which he, as permanent chair, has discretion.

Donald, instead, has turned to China to help him out of the geopolitical mess he created. This serves to empower China further (it’s important to keep in mind that this entire fiasco benefits China and Russia—two of our greatest adversaries—at least until Donald gets back into the Oval Office in 2025. And it benefits them at the expense of American influence and security. And yet even China said, “No.”

Everyone is saying no to him. These refusals, though, will only matter if they are unwavering.

Over the past few days, we’ve seen signs that Donald is losing control to a degree that we may not have seen before. His behavior toward reporters has become even more volatile and inappropriate. Journalists asking basic, legitimate questions about the war he started, questions any president should be prepared to answer, are being met with insults and temper tantrums.

When a female reporter asked a straightforward question:

Can you explain why you are sending 5,000 additional Marines and sailors?

Donald shushed her and said,

You’re a very obnoxious person.

He then turned to a male reporter who, without missing a beat, asked another question without any concern for how his colleague had been treated (a conversation for another time).

This is how Donald has always operated, but there’s an important difference between throwing temper tantrums during business negotiations, when you have all of the power and leverage, and doing it while managing multiple international crises, most of them of your own making.

Donald likes to claim that he is a master dealmaker—he is not now, nor has he ever been. Not even if we entertain that myth for a moment, the reality is that as a businessman, he always negotiated from a position of overwhelming advantage.

When he was at the Trump Organization, thanks to my grandfather, Donald had more money, more lawyers, more resources, and more leverage than the people he was dealing with. Every negotiation was structured in his favor from the very beginning, and by the time a deal was ready to be finalized, all Donald had to do to make sure he got his way was show up at the last minute, and if the other party did not give him everything he wanted, he’d throw a tantrum, and, if necessary, threaten to bury them in lawsuits if they didn’t comply with his wishes.

That’s not how negotiations work. That is how weak people without any moral compass behave when they are handed enormous, unfair advantages.

What we are witnessing now is something Donald has almost certainly never experienced in his life: he is negotiating from a position of increasing weakness, and he has absolutely no idea how to handle it.

For most of his life, Donald has been protected by wealth, by privilege, and by individuals and institutions that were reluctant to hold him accountable. Even when he failed, the consequences were mitigated by those who realized he was still of use to them. Even when he crossed lines, someone eventually stepped in to smooth things over for him.

But we are living in a very different moment, because this is not just about him and his business interests anymore, and we’re not just talking about the Republican Party anymore. We’re talking about the fact that, through his reckless and dangerous actions, Donald has put the entire world at risk without having secured the support of the American people, of Congress, or other world leaders.

In response, our allies are showing us something that has been missing for far too long: resolve.

To our allies around the world, if you care about the future of NATO and Western liberal democracy, and if you care about America and the survival of our democracy, which you should, keep doing exactly what you are doing.

Keep saying no.

Middle East, Politics, Republican Party, Russian Investigation, Trump, US

Articles of Impeachment for Bondi Introduced, Some Airports May Shutdown, SAVE Act in Trouble, Russia

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Articles of Impeachment for Bondi Introduced, Some Airports May Shut Down, SAVE Act in Trouble, Russia Helps Iran Even More

Aaron Parnas
Mar 17

There is a lot to cover this afternoon. Articles of impeachment have been filed against Pam Bondi. Some airports may begin shutting down as the government shutdown escalates. The SAVE Act is in serious trouble, lacking enough Senate support to pass. At the same time, Russia is increasing its support for Iran in the ongoing war.

Meanwhile, new data shows CBS Evening News ratings are dropping sharply as independent media continue to surge. We are doing this differently, and we are doing it better. Why? Because we answer to you.

Rep. Summer Lee has introduced articles of impeachment against Attorney General Pam Bondi, alleging a wide range of misconduct, including defying congressional subpoenas to release unredacted Epstein files, violating federal law, misleading Congress and the courts, and abusing prosecutorial authority. The resolution also accuses Bondi of politicizing the Justice Department by targeting political opponents, dismissing cases involving allies, and retaliating against officials and journalists, as Lee and several Democratic co-sponsors argue her actions undermine the rule of law and warrant removal from office.

House Oversight Chair James Comer has subpoenaed former Attorney General Pam Bondi to testify under oath in an ongoing probe into the Justice Department’s handling of the Epstein investigation, citing concerns about potential mismanagement and failure to comply with transparency laws. The move follows bipartisan frustration over heavily redacted files and escalates congressional scrutiny, even as the DOJ calls the subpoena unnecessary and offers briefings instead.

Senior Justice Department officials are set to brief a bipartisan group of lawmakers at the Capitol on the handling and release of Epstein-related documents, as congressional scrutiny intensifies over transparency and the DOJ’s actions.

A group of more than three dozen House conservatives has staged a revolt against their own party leadership by voting down even routine, bipartisan legislation to pressure the Senate into taking up the SAVE Act, openly defying Speaker Mike Johnson, disrupting the House’s normal legislative process, and signaling they are willing to block all Senate-originated bills—including “must-pass” measures—until their demands are met.

A prolonged government funding standoff has led to a mounting workforce revolt among TSA officers, who have been working without pay for weeks and are increasingly calling out or quitting, severely straining airport security operations. Absentee rates have surged far above normal levels, causing long screening delays and operational disruptions at major hubs, while officials warn that if the situation continues, staffing shortages could force the closure of some smaller airports—especially as travel demand ramps up during the busy spring season.

The Senate narrowly voted 51–48 to open debate on the SAVE America Act, but some Republicans showed internal division: Sen. Lisa Murkowski voted against it, Sen. Thom Tillis missed the vote after opposing it, and Sen. Mitch McConnell—who doesn’t support the bill—only voted to proceed as a procedural courtesy, highlighting fractures within the GOP despite overall backing for the legislation.

DNI Tulsi Gabbard responded to Joe Kent’s resignation in protest of the Iran war.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Russia is significantly ramping up its military and intelligence support for Iran by sharing satellite imagery and upgrading drone capabilities, enhancing Tehran’s ability to target U.S. forces and sustain operations in the region. The cooperation reflects a deepening strategic partnership, with Moscow aiming to keep Iran engaged against U.S. and Israeli forces while prolonging a conflict that benefits Russia by diverting Western attention and creating military and economic advantages.

Iranian state media has confirmed that top security official Ali Larijani was killed in an Israeli airstrike on Tehran, marking the first acknowledgment from Iran after earlier Israeli claims and signaling a major escalation in the conflict with the loss of one of the country’s most senior leaders.

According to the Washington Post, the U.S. aircraft carrier Gerald R. Ford, deployed in operations against Iran, is set to make a temporary port stop after a significant onboard fire injured nearly 200 sailors with smoke exposure, disrupted living quarters, and took hours to contain, impacting its operational readiness during the ongoing conflict.

Rep. Pat Ryan sharply attacked Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, accusing him of increasingly erratic behavior, blaming him for the deaths of 13 Americans, and calling for him to be held accountable.

French President Emmanuel Macron rejected claims by Donald Trump that France would help reopen the Strait of Hormuz, stating France would not participate in such operations and signaling a split with the U.S. over how to respond to escalating tensions in the region.

Iran confirmed the killing of Basij commander Gholamreza Soleimani in an اسرائیلی strike, marking one of the highest-level assassinations of the war, as regional tensions escalate with ongoing missile exchanges, heavy civilian casualties in Lebanon, and warnings from the UN that Israeli strikes on civilian areas may constitute war crimes.

The conflict is widening politically and militarily: Trump is pressuring but also criticizing NATO allies for not joining U.S. efforts in the Strait of Hormuz, key partners like France are refusing involvement, internal dissent is growing in the U.S. (including a senior resignation), and Iranian leaders warn the strategic waterway will not return to normal conditions.

Ireland’s leader Micheál Martin publicly pushed back on Donald Trump’s criticism of UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer during a White House meeting, diplomatically defending Starmer and Europe while avoiding confrontation, highlighting growing transatlantic tensions over the Iran war and NATO.

Arizona has escalated its crackdown on prediction market platform Kalshi by filing its first-ever criminal charges, accusing the company of operating an unlicensed gambling and election-betting business as part of a broader, multi-state legal battle over whether such platforms fall under federal financial regulation or state gambling laws.

A federal judge ordered a sweeping reversal of Kari Lake’s dismantling of Voice of America, mandating the reinstatement of about 1,000 employees and rebuking her for disregarding congressionally mandated legal requirements.

According to Axios, Senator Ruben Gallego is pressing the Energy Department for details on potential releases from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve as gas prices rise, highlighting growing political pressure in Washington over the domestic impact of the Iran war on energy markets.

 

Of Interest, Politics, Politics, Republican Party, Trump, US

Drunk General Loses Top Secret Documents

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Drunk General Loses Top Secret Documents

US airports may shut down over TSA worker shortage; judge kicks Trump DOJ prosecutor out of the courtroom; majority of Americans think Iran war meant to distract from Epstein

British Chris and Raw America
Mar 17

There’s a lot happening right now that billionaire-owned outlets are sweeping under the rug. Airports across the U.S. could soon shut down. A judge had one of Trump’s prosecutors removed from his courtroom. A majority of Americans think the Iran war was launched to distract from the Epstein files. And a general drank himself into a stupor and left behind top-secret documents.

TSA Crisis Could Mean Shutdown of U.S. Airports
America’s airports are in trouble.

The Transportation Security Administration is stretched so thin that its own acting deputy administrator went on Fox News this week and said, flat out, that shutting down airports isn’t hyperbole. It’s a real possibility. Smaller airports especially.

Adam Stahl told Fox & Friends that officers “can’t afford to come in.” TSA workers have been going without full pay since a partial DHS shutdown kicked in on February 14th.

Three hundred and sixty-six TSA workers have already quit. Each replacement takes four to six months to train and certify. So every officer who walks out the door creates a gap that won’t be filled anytime soon.

The results are showing up at every major airport in the country. Three- and four-hour security lines. People missing flights. TSA callout rates are spiking, including in major hubs like Houston, Atlanta, and New Orleans.

The DHS shutdown happened after two American citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, were killed by ICE agents in Minneapolis. Democrats want to fund DHS agencies like the TSA and FEMA while cutting off ICE funding. Republicans insist on an all-or-nothing approach.

Judge Kicks Trump DOJ Prosecutor Out of Courtroom
Here’s a story that deserves far more attention than it’s getting.

A federal judge in New Jersey threw a top prosecutor out of his courtroom this week. Not metaphorically. Actually ejected him.

Judge Zahid Quraishi was presiding over a sentencing hearing when things unraveled fast. The head of appeals for the New Jersey U.S. Attorney’s Office, Mark Coyne, showed up without formally disclosing he’d be there. The judge told him he couldn’t address the court. Coyne spoke anyway. Judge Quraishi warned him again. Coyne spoke again. And the judge had security remove him.

The New Jersey U.S. attorney’s office has been in legal chaos since Alina Habba was disqualified from her previous role. Pam Bondi responded by appointing a three-person leadership team that a federal judge found last week to be unlawfully appointed. Judge Quraishi is now demanding those three people testify in court next month.

The concern isn’t just procedural. Last week, Judge Matthew Brann wrote that Trump’s reliance on illegal maneuvers to staff the New Jersey prosecutor’s office could mean scores of dangerous criminals walk free or get convictions reversed because the law would be on their side.

Judge Quraishi didn’t mince words at the end of Monday’s hearing. He told the remaining prosecutor that the office had lost the confidence of the court, the New Jersey legal community, and the public.

More Than Half of Americans Think Trump Started War to Distract from Epstein
Posters popping up across Washington D.C. are calling the war in Iran not by its official name, “Operation Epic Fury,” but rather “Operation Epstein Fury.”

Another poster shows a fallen American serviceman in front of the Stars and Stripes saying U.S. troops shouldn’t have to “die fighting Iran for the Epstein class.”

Now, whether the war was launched to distract from those files is impossible to prove. But what’s striking is who is raising the question.

Republican Congressman Thomas Massie wrote that bombing a country on the other side of the globe won’t make the Epstein files disappear. Podcaster Joe Rogan said that bombing Iran makes everyone forget about everything.

A poll for progressive outlet Zeteo found that 52 percent of Americans believe Trump attacked Iran because of the Epstein headlines. That includes 26 percent of Republicans.

Republican strategist Rick Wilson summed it up bluntly: “For Trump, war is the ultimate political reset, no matter its cost.”

U.S. General Gets Drunk and Loses Secret Documents
A Pentagon watchdog report has found that the U.S. Army general who ran America’s Ukraine aid mission left classified documents on a train and drank himself into a concussion.

Major General Antonio Aguto Jr. headed the Security Assistance Group-Ukraine out of Germany between 2022 and 2024. Three anonymous complaints triggered a Department of Defense inspector general investigation in June 2024.

The findings are remarkable.

In April of 2024, Aguto’s staff traveled to Kyiv carrying secret classified maps in an unsecured plastic tube. When they boarded the train home, the tube didn’t make it back with them. Ukrainian train security found it and returned it to the U.S. Embassy within 45 minutes, but the documents had been outside American control for over 24 hours.

Aguto accepted responsibility. But the alcohol findings are harder to explain.

The following month, Aguto attended a dinner in Kyiv that lasted nearly six hours. He and his companions drank from two bottles of strong liquor, violating U.S. European Command rules limiting personnel in Ukraine to two drinks in any 24-hour period.

He was visibly intoxicated when he left the restaurant. He fell multiple times that night and the following morning. Despite pleas from staff, he pushed through a meeting with the secretary of state, arriving late with a ripped jacket, a red mark on his forehead, and the smell of alcohol.

By mid-afternoon, a Kyiv hospital confirmed a concussion. Investigators concluded the concussion was caused by his drinking the previous evening.

Aguto has disputed some of the findings, citing medical conditions, and claimed verbal authorization to drink during official Kyiv visits. Investigators rejected both defenses.

International, Middle East, Oil, Oil, Politics, Politics, Republican Party, Trump, US, World

Iran called Trump’s bluff — and now he’s spiraling and ‘out of ideas’: expert

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Iran called Trump’s bluff—and now he’s spiraling and ‘out of ideas’: expert

Travis Gettys
March 17, 2026, 3:28PM ET (RAWSTORY)

None of President Donald Trump’s usual bailouts are coming after he launched a war on Iran, and the situation has quickly spiraled out of his control.

The 79-year-old president has long relied on lies, bluster, and escalation to stay one step ahead of consequences in his business, political, and personal life, but those tactics are proving woefully ineffective against the global energy market that’s been choked off by Iran in response to the military operation he impulsively authorized, wrote political scientist Nicholas Grossman for MS NOW.

“In response to the U.S.-Israeli attack, Iran played its biggest card, closing the Strait of Hormuz,” wrote Grossman, a political science professor at the University of Illinois. “It’s a narrow choke point at the end of the Persian Gulf, and a kink in the waterway leaves it exposed to a lot of Iran’s coastline. About 20 percent of the world’s oil passes through Hormuz, and it isn’t hard for Iran to stop the traffic.”

“Iran can’t prevent U.S. and Israeli forces from flying over the gulf, and they probably couldn’t keep the U.S. Navy out of it, but to close the strait, they don’t need to,” he added. “They only have to make shipping companies afraid to sail, and insurance companies think the risk of insuring the ships is too high. With threats, a few attacks on tankers, and now possibly sea mines Iran has.”

That development should have been expected, Grossman wrote, but the president seems caught off guard by the strategic closure that’s threatening to tip the global economy into a tailspin, so Trump has fallen back on his habitual tactics to wriggle out of the jam he created for himself.

“Trump tried saying the war is almost over and the U.S. already won,” Grossman wrote. “It made the oil price drop back down for a bit, but as U.S.-Israeli bombardment continued and market disruptions got worse, it rose again.”

“Trump tried telling ships to traverse the Strait of Hormuz, but most wouldn’t, and a few who did exploded, presumably at Iran’s hand,” he added. “He tried releasing oil from America’s strategic reserve, and some other countries did from theirs. But that’s a Band-Aid on a gaping wound and had little impact.”

He tried bombing Kharg Island, which Iran uses for oil exports, in the apparent belief that slowing down Iran’s shipping would force it to stop blocking other nations’ ships in the Persian Gulf, and Grossman saw a parallel in Trump’s business career.

“That recalls one of Trump’s go-to moves in business: the bad faith lawsuit,” Grossman wrote. “He’d break a contract, screw someone over, and dare them to sue him. Or would initiate legal action himself. Either way, he bet that he’d have more resources and greater tolerance for a protracted legal fight, and the other party would settle even when the facts were on their side.”

“That won’t work with Iran,” Grossman warned.

Trump has incentivized the Iranian regime to use every bit of leverage they have and endure as much punishment as they can take, and U.S. allies aren’t willing to bail him out after he alienated them and launched an illegal war without first consulting them.

“Much of the time when Trump was in the private sector and messed up, his rich dad bailed him out or he’d declare bankruptcy,” Grossman wrote. “Instead of holding equity or debt, Trump would have the business pay him a salary and bonuses so that money was gone when the company went under, and his partners and contractors would take most of the losses.”

“Trump started something that quickly spiraled and seems out of ideas,” he added. “There’s no one to sue, no rules to manipulate, just the hard realities of resource shortages and war. And there’s a good chance Iran can tolerate being bombed more than the U.S. can tolerate a rapidly rising oil price and the economic damage it causes.”

Economy, News, Politics, Politics, Politics, Republican Party, Trump, US

This unforgivable lie is Trump’s most heinous insult to troops yet

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This unforgivable lie is Trump’s most heinous insult to troops yet

John Casey
March 17, 2026 8:21AM ET (RAWSTORY)

Donald Trump has a fixation with numbers. He must get this trait from his uncle, who taught at MIT. Trump claims his uncle had three university degrees “in nuclear, chemical, and math.”

That’s a lie, of course. And it fits. And math? What? We surely know Trump failed his math courses. That’s because Trump’s obsession with numbers usually involves numbers he makes up, pulls out of thin air, and, well, lies about, just like he lies about his uncle.

He doesn’t just lie about numbers. He remakes them as he sees fit: larger, smaller, higher, lower, more pleasing, and more flattering. He has a long history of making false or misleading statements about figures, consistently exaggerating numbers related to his achievements, support, and events.

Throughout his life—and in the interest of brevity, let’s stick to his political career—Trump has treated data not as a collection of facts but as a tool for image-making.

From the moment he was sworn in, he famously inflated his 2017 inauguration crowd size. Later, he compared the crowd that participated in the insurrection he provoked on January 6th to the historic crowds of the March on Washington in 1963.

These weren’t just wildly false. They were insulting.

And if you’re a glutton for lies and keep up with Trump’s fibs, you know the pattern extends to the economy, immigration, job numbers, gas prices, and on and on. He routinely posts whoppers on Truth Social and delivers them during interviews, rallies, and even State of the Union speeches.

He constantly claims “record-breaking” statistics, such as 20 million illegal border crossings or inheriting “record” inflation, even when the numbers are grossly exaggerated or the opposite is true.

Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie once explained Trump’s reliance on falsity: “Trump looked at my wife and said, Whether it’s true or not, if I say it enough times, it becomes true… He takes what he knows is incorrect and convinces himself by saying it enough times.”

This habitual distortion creates a phony version of leadership where popularity and success are measured by unadulterated nonsense rather than real results, i.e. electoral victory as a “landslide” or unfavorable approval ratings as “fake news.”

Trump has established a perverse precedent where obvious facts become inconvenient. His reliance on fabricated numbers doesn’t just mislead supporters; it erodes the shared seriousness required for a functioning democracy.

Alarmingly, we watched him do it six years ago with COVID. The question now, as his Iran war enters its third week and injuries and fatalities begin to mount, is whether we will watch him do it again.

On Thursday, a second military evacuation flight landed at Ramstein Air Base carrying roughly 19 more wounded American troops, including two injured in a drone attack whose details the Pentagon has declined to fully disclose. This follows about 20 who arrived days earlier. The official Pentagon tally now sits at roughly 140 injured and 13 dead.

Some of those numbers reached the public through leaks, not through clear, direct briefings from the equally fact-challenged Pete Hegseth.

When wartime casualty data has to escape through back channels to reach the American public, you don’t need a history degree to understand what’s happening. You just need a memory.

During the Vietnam War, the Johnson administration manipulated, obscured, and downplayed U.S. involvement and casualties to manage public opinion and conceal the lack of progress.

Trump has traversed this dubious road before. In the spring of 2020, he suggested that COVID case counts could be reduced simply by doing less testing.

“When you do testing to that extent, you’re going to find more people; you’re going to find more cases,” he said. “So I said to my people, ‘Slow the testing down, please.’” The White House said it was a joke. It wasn’t. And if it were, these are people’s lives we are talking about.

He pressured the CDC. He slow-walked through reporting. He feuded publicly with his own health officials when their projections made him look bad. He even tried to keep cruise ships away from U.S. shores so that the infected passengers wouldn’t raise the ominous COVID numbers.

He turned the routine act of counting the dead into a political liability to be managed rather than a solemn obligation to be honored. By the time it was over, the United States had one of the highest COVID death tolls in the developed world.

Now here we are again.

The Iran war is just over two weeks old. It has already cost American taxpayers more than $11 billion in its first week alone. Gas prices are rising by the day. A military refueling plane crashed, and the administration was remarkably quick, suspiciously quick, to distance the incident from enemy fire.

Meanwhile, the White House communications operation has been running this conflict like a winter blockbuster, complete with NFL-style highlight reels and video game-style footage. It’s disgusting. War is not a game. It is deadly. People are maimed. People die.

Trump worked hard to manipulate COVID data. Public health experts and career officials forced some transparency. But now, in his second term, he has a compliant inner circle, a press operation built for deflection, and an instinct to reward officials who shade the truth in the boss’s favor.

Consider what happened in August 2025, when Trump fired the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics after a weak jobs report, accusing the agency of producing “fake” or politically motivated data. The message was clear: numbers that make him look bad are unacceptable.

Unlike a virus or a jobs report, this war has names and faces and anxious families waiting by their phones. Those families deserve accurate information. They deserve to know exactly how many of their sons and daughters have been hurt and how badly.

Our troops are not inconvenient data points to be managed around an approval rating.

They are human beings in harm’s way. Every one of them deserves to be counted fully, honestly, and publicly.

Trump has ridiculed our troops before; under-counting the injured and dead may be his greatest insult toward them.