Donald Trump has sweeping plans for a second administration. Here’s what he’s proposed

March 13

Wyoming governor signs ban on abortions after about 6 weeks but cites misgivings

Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon on Monday signed a ban on abortions after embryonic cardiac activity can be detected, generally at about six weeks’ gestation and often before women know they’re pregnant. The signing makes Wyoming the fifth state to bar abortions at that stage of pregnancy, along with Florida, Georgia, Iowa and South Carolina. Thirteen other states bar abortion at all stages of pregnancy, with some exceptions. Gordon, a Republican, said in a letter to lawmakers that he has some misgivings about the law he signed because it does not include exceptions for pregnancies caused by rape or incest. Read more.

RELATED COVERAGE ➤

Beyond the Potomac River, sewage spills threaten cities with old infrastructure and little funds

The January collapse of a pipe as wide as a car dumped so much sewage into the Potomac River that officials tracked a spike of gut-wrenching bacteria drifting slowly past Washington for weeks, prompting an emergency declaration and federal assistance. It was a disaster of historic scale — 244 million gallons spilled — spotlighting the severe consequences of old, failing infrastructure. But smaller sewer overflows that draw far less notice are common. Tens of thousands occur every year across the U.S., contaminating rivers, flooding streets and sometimes causing backups into homes that threaten human health. Read more.

RELATED COVERAGE ➤

A Virginia boater is suing a Washington utility for the Potomac River sewage spill

March 13

🚔 White House Deputy Chief of Staff James Blair privately urged House Republicans today to stop emphasizing "mass deportations" and instead focus their messaging on removing violent criminals, Axios' Kate Santaliz and Marc Caputo report in a scoop. Go deeper.

March 13

Schrödinger’s War

collage of trump speaking into microphone

																(Mark Peterson / Redux)
															

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The Trump administration can’t say why the United States went to war with Iran, and it can’t say what the goal of the war is. Now it can’t even decide whether the war is still going on.

During an interview with CBS News yesterday afternoon, President Trump all but declared victory. “I think the war is very complete, pretty much,” he said.

This statement is so self-contradictory and confusing that one might be tempted to write it off as just riffing, except that he reiterated it at a press conference later in the day. “We’re achieving major strides toward completing our military objective, and some people could say they’re pretty well complete,” he said, apparently referring to himself. All that was missing to complete the parallel to the Iraq War was a flight suit, an aircraft carrier, and a “Mission Accomplished” banner.

Yet the same afternoon, the Department of Defense posted on X, “We have Only Just Begun to Fight,” mangling a famous quotation from John Paul Jones, the father of the U.S. Navy. Reporters at the press conference, perplexed, asked Trump about the gap. “You said the war is ‘very complete,’ but your defense secretary says this is just the beginning, so which is it?”

“Well, I think you could say both,” Trump replied.

You could—if you were a pundit making an argument about the future of the war. But people might hope for a bit more clarity from the man who launched the war without congressional authorization, popular support, or even much buy-in from his own advisers.

Trump’s equivocation yesterday may be his attempt to steady an economy shaken by the war. The president’s approval has been battered recently by the high cost of living. Although inflation was a major factor in his victory over Kamala Harris in 2024, Trump has seldom focused on it since entering office and has insisted that affordability is somehow both a Democratic “hoax” and a problem that he has already solved.

The war in Iran has exacerbated existing stressors: It has driven up gas prices, rocked stock markets, and suggested that Trump’s attention is not on the economy. The president appears rattled by this and even called on oil-tanker captains to “show some guts” and sail through the contested Strait of Hormuz, according to Fox News’s Brian Kilmeade, though he hasn’t volunteered to personally dodge Iranian missiles aboard a floating makeshift bomb.

Trump’s comments yesterday seemed to work, at least in the immediate term: Oil futures dropped, and markets rebounded a bit. Over time, however, whatever succor Trump provides to the economy by saying that the war is nearly over is likely to be canceled out by his administration’s vacillation. Markets seek stability, and Trump can’t seem to decide on a talking point, much less a strategy or aim for the war itself. As my colleagues Marie-Rose Sheinerman and Isabel Ruehl reported last week, Trump offered 10 different rationales for the war in its first six days alone. Traders may be primed to look for examples of Trump chickening out, but yesterday’s remarks seem more like a feint at ending the war: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth declared that today would “be yet again our most intense day of strikes.”

Trump appears confused not only about the future of the war but also about some of its basic facts. The U.S. has faced international criticism over a missile strike on a girls’ school in Iran, which was next to a naval base that was also struck. Iranian authorities say that about 175 people were killed at the school, mostly children. Over the weekend, Trump said that the attack was friendly fire. “In my opinion, and based on what I’ve seen, that was done by Iran,” he said. “They have no accuracy whatsoever. It was done by Iran.”

Since then, evidence has emerged that the missile that struck the base was a Tomahawk, an American-made weapon. Yesterday, Trump claimed that Iran possesses Tomahawks. “Whether it’s Iran or somebody else, the fact that a Tomahawk—a Tomahawk is very generic,” he said. “It’s sold to other countries.” This is nonsense: Only a few U.S. allies, including the United Kingdom and Australia, are known to have them. When a New York Times reporter confronted Trump, asking why no one else in the government was backing up his claims, the president folded. “Because I just don’t know enough about it,” he replied. “Whatever the report shows, I’m willing to live with that report.”

This claim of ignorance is surprising, because Trump usually claims to know better than everyone around him. When asked a question to which he doesn’t know the answer, his default is to say that he’s considering it. But on occasion, when really backed into a corner, Trump will throw up his hands and claim that he doesn’t know anything about a topic.

No president can or should be expected to know everything. This is why he’s provided with a Cabinet and a team of other advisers, an executive branch full of subject-matter experts, and a Congress and judiciary to serve as checks on him. The problem is that Trump wants to operate with complete freedom from any restrictions and without waiting for advisers’ input. Asked when the war would completely end, Trump told CBS, “Wrapping up is all in my mind, nobody else’s.” That’s not very reassuring, for stock markets or anyone else.

Related:

March 13

The U.S. Built a Blueprint to Avoid Civilian War Casualties. Trump Officials Scrapped It.

Images from the missile strike in southern Iran were more horrifying than any of the case studies Air Force combat veteran Wes J. Bryant had pored over in his mission to overhaul how the U.S. military safeguards civilian life.

https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-defense-department-iran-hegseth-civilian-casualties?

ps:As per usual this man Scraps anything that actually is needed. Just like in his first term, he got rid of all the stock piles of medical supplies that the previous administration had built up!!!!!!!!!!

March 13

🚨 Republicans' midterm road map

DORAL, Fla. — President Trump's top advisers are urging House Republicans to turn the 2026 midterms into a choice election — and hammer Democrats on taxes, crime and border security.

Why it matters: Midterm elections are almost always referendums on the president and the party in power.

But Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Trump are looking to buck history and retain the House by focusing on the Democrats' national brand, with 52% of voters viewing the Democratic Party unfavorably.

🚘 Driving the news: At the House GOP retreat in sunny Doral, Florida, (high 84°) White House deputy chief of staff James Blair told lawmakers to stop emphasizing "mass deportations," we scooped earlier.

Mass deportations were central to the GOP's 2024 campaign message, so Blair's advice captured attention. Instead, he told lawmakers, focus on deporting violent offenders.
The emerging strategy: remind voters of Democrats' Biden-era positions on crime, cashless bail and open borders, according to people familiar with the matter.

Zoom in: Blair was on a closed-door panel with Chris LaCivita, Trump's 2024 co-campaign manager, and Chris Winkelman, president of the Congressional Leadership Fund, an outside super PAC associated with Johnson.

The panelists, led by National Republican Congressional Committee Chair Richard Hudson, reminded members of the GOP's unprecedented cash advantage.
In a cycle with a small map, the party with stronger organization and clearer lines of control has the edge, the panelists said.
🤔 Blair also told GOP lawmakers to remember how Trump won in 2024. He challenged conventional wisdom: Don't feed into Democratic talking points, he said.

Zoom out: History is not on the GOP's side this November.

🤕 Republicans lost 41 House seats in Trump's first midterm. President Obama's Democrats lost 63 seats in 2010, the first midterm after he was elected.
👟 Lawmakers in both parties are fleeing Congress at a record rate, with 34 Republicans and 21 Democrats planning to leave the House at the end of this Congress.
Trump is also a drag on Republicans as his favorability rating remains well underwater, with his approval rating in the low 40s.

Historically, the party with more departures tends to lose seats, and often the majority.

But with a small map — around two dozen seats in toss-up districts — Democrats would need to outperform Vice President Harris by 3% to win the majority.

— Kate Santaliz, Marc Caputo and Hans Nichols

March 14

Frantic Trump, 79, Makes Desperate Late-Night Attempt to Push His Obsession

The increasingly petulant president can feel his personal obsession slipping away.

Donald Trump has resorted to making completely unfounded claims about the SAVE Act as he tries to get it passed through Congress.

In a late-night Truth Social post, the president claimed the bill, which would require proof of citizenship for voter registration and largely scrap mail-in ballots in elections, “is by far the most popular bill of its kind ever put before Congress!”

The biggest hurdle preventing the “Safeguard American Voter Eligibility” bill from clearing the Senate is that it lacks bipartisan support and is guaranteed not to secure the support of at least seven Democrats to clear the 60-vote threshold in the upper chamber.

Trump has made a number of late-night Truth Social posts promoting the bill in an effort to push it through the Senate. Critics of the SAVE Act have raised concerns that the president hopes to use the legislation as a pretext to meddle in the midterm elections in November, when Republicans are widely expected to suffer an electoral wipeout.

In another late-night post, Trump lashed out at those who refer to the bill by its shortened name, suggesting that doing so diminishes its significance.

“It’s not the Save Act, it’s The Save America Act! A MUCH better, and more important, name!!!” the president wrote Sunday.

The increasingly petulant 79-year-old has also threatened not to sign any other legislation into law unless the SAVE Act passes in its current form.

“It supersedes everything else. MUST GO TO THE FRONT OF THE LINE. I, as President, will not sign other Bills until this is passed, AND NOT THE WATERED DOWN VERSION,” Trump wrote. “GO FOR THE GOLD: MUST SHOW VOTER I.D. & PROOF OF CITIZENSHIP: NO MAIL-IN BALLOTS EXCEPT FOR MILITARY - ILLNESS, DISABILITY, TRAVEL: NO MEN IN WOMEN’S SPORTS: NO TRANSGENDER MUTILIZATION [sic] FOR CHILDREN! DO NOT FAIL!!!”

In further signs of the president’s desperation, Trump has urged the filibuster be scrapped so the SAVE Act would require only a simple majority in the Senate rather than the support of at least 60 senators.

He has also floated the idea of forcing Democrats to try and block the legislation through marathon speeches on the Senate floor known as a “talking filibuster.”

On Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader John Thune bluntly rejected both of Trump’s suggestions, noting there is little appetite among senators to eliminate the filibuster and that forcing Democrats into a talking filibuster to wear down their opposition would not necessarily help the bill pass.

“The votes aren’t there, one, to nuke the filibuster, and the votes aren’t there for a talking filibuster,” Thune said. “It’s just a reality.”

“I’m the person who has to deliver, sometimes, the not-so-good news that the math doesn’t add up, but those are the facts and there’s no getting around it.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/frantic-donald-trump-79-makes-desperate-late-night-attempt-to-push-his-obsession/?

March 15

Insiders Reveal ICE Barbie Is Leaving DHS With a Major Problem

“The ramifications of her tenure are going to be felt for years and years and years and years,” one source said.

Kristi Noem is apparently leaving the Department of Homeland Security with dozens of unsigned contracts on her desk—including payments owed to a facility holding migrant children.

The backlog is the fallout from a policy Noem, 54, imposed that required every DHS contract worth $100,000 or more—which covers nearly all of the agency’s agreements—to receive her personal sign-off before taking effect. The rule proved so disruptive that some vendors began billing the department in chunks of $99,999 each just to get paid.

“There’s a mountain of backed-up contracts and invoices on her desk that the new guy will just have to deal with,” a source familiar with the situation at DHS told Axios.

“From everything that I’ve heard, it’s still a giant s--t show up there,” a source familiar with Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) delays told the outlet, referring to DHS leadership.

“The ramifications of her tenure are going to be felt for years and years and years and years,” the source added. “We’re not really going to know exactly how bad it is until we have a major hurricane that unfortunately impacts someplace in the United States.”

The disruption, Axios says, is already reaching real facilities. At the family detention center in Dilley, Texas—the only long-term immigration facility in the country holding migrants’ children—government payments lapsed in early March, with roughly 700 people detained there as of mid-February.

CoreCivic, which operates Dilley and several other detention sites, said it was “hopeful the federal government will resolve budget matters to enable resumption of payments,” adding it remained focused on running “safe, humane facilities.” A contract covering Camp East Montana, a facility in Texas that held close to 3,000 detainees a day in mid-February, expired at the end of February without renewal. The facility’s operator, Acquisition Logistics LLC, could not be reached for comment by Axios.

New Jersey’s Delaney Hall, which held roughly 900 detainees last month, is also operating without a current payment after its government deal lapsed. Geo Group, the contractor, declined to comment to Axios. Dozens of small county jails that contracted with ICE to hold detainees are also owed payments, according to the outlet.

The situation has been made worse by the partial government shutdown that began Feb. 14, sparked by the standoff over DHS immigration policies. It has touched most of the agency’s 23 sub-agencies, including ICE, Customs and Border Protection, FEMA, the TSA, and the Secret Service.

As the Beast reported on Monday, DHS insiders have warned that Noem and her “special government employee” and de facto chief of staff Corey Lewandowski, 52, face investigations and potentially worse over their tenure at the agency. “They’re f---ed,” a DHS source told the Beast.

His unpaid role and long-rumored romantic relationship with Noem drew withering scrutiny at Noem’s final congressional hearings.

Congressional leaders also grilled Noem last week over the department’s slow distribution of FEMA disaster relief funds. The contract logjam has also stalled construction of Trump’s border wall—just 36 miles of which had been completed as of mid-February, despite nearly 2,000 miles being funded under Trump’s “big beautiful bill.”

Lewandowski defended the sign-off policy to Axios, claiming it had saved $15 billion last year. “For 23 years nobody ... ever reviewed the spending of that department,” he told the outlet, adding that agreements typically cleared Noem’s desk within two days.

Noem—who became the first Cabinet member fired in Trump’s second term when she was dismissed on March 5 and moved to a newly created post as Special Envoy for the Shield of the Americas—is due to hand DHS to Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin, 48, on March 31.

Mullin did not respond to Axios’s request for comment on whether he would continue Noem’s sign-off policy. Lewandowski, expected to follow her out of the building, declined to say whether he would recommend the system to her successor.

The Daily Beast has contacted DHS, representatives for Kristi Noem and Corey Lewandowski, CoreCivic, and Geo Group for comment.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/insiders-reveal-ice-barbie-is-leaving-dhs-with-a-giant-st-show/?

ps:These are the best of the best? Right!! Every department has someone running them that has no clue and they also have in the past disliked the department or said it needed to be purged. As Rome fell from the inside it looks like America will do the same!!!!!!!!!!

March 15

Republican Senator Torches ‘Terrible Mistake’ in Trump’s War

The U.S. is thought to have been behind an airstrike that left at least 175 people dead.

Sen. John Kennedy has said the U.S. is likely to blame for the deaths of scores of schoolchildren killed during a missile strike in Iran.

Speaking to CNN’s The Arena with Kasie Hunt, the Louisiana Republican broke with Donald Trump’s suggestion that Iran may have been behind the Feb. 28 strike on the Shajareye Tayabeh girls’ school in Minab, Hormozgan Province, which reportedly killed at least 175 people, many of them children.

Reports suggest the school was struck by a U.S. Tomahawk missile, a weapon possessed by only a handful of countries worldwide, none of which are Iran or Israel. On Monday, Kennedy told NBC News he was “just so sorry” for the deaths of the 175 people but stressed he did not believe the school was struck intentionally.

Kennedy told CNN it was important for him to publicly apologize and acknowledge that the U.S. was likely responsible because he believes it is “the truth.”

“We’re investigating, but I’m not going to hide behind that. It was a terrible, terrible mistake. The investigation may prove me wrong—I hope so. The kids are still dead, but I think it was a horrible, horrible mistake,” Kennedy said.

“I wish it hadn’t happened. I’m sorry it happened. I can assure you it wasn’t intentional. That’s the sort of thing Russia does. We don’t do that. But, you know, I don’t see any other possible explanation. And when you make a mistake, you ought to admit it.”

Trump, however, is standing by his claim that Iran or “someone else” could have obtained a Tomahawk missile and struck the school on the first day of the U.S.-Israel war in the Middle Eastern country.

“The Tomahawk, which is one of the most powerful weapons around, is sold and used by other countries,” Trump said at a press conference at his golf resort in Doral, Florida, on Monday.

Other countries believed to possess Tomahawk missiles include Britain, Australia, Japan, and the Netherlands, none of which are involved in the conflict in Iran.

When pressed Monday on why no one else in the administration appeared to support the theory that Iran could have carried out the strike—not even Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth—the 79-year-old president acknowledged that “I just don’t know enough about it.”

“I think it’s something that I was told is under investigation,” Trump said. “But Tomahawks are used by others, as you know. Numerous other nations have Tomahawks; they buy them from us.”

“Whatever the report shows, I’m willing to live with that report,” he added.

Elsewhere during his CNN appearance, Kennedy suggested the war in Iran could end within weeks and predicted Trump would not deploy “boots on the ground.”

“I don’t think I’m wrong on that, but if he does, the thud you hear will be me face-planting from surprise—from fainting—because I don’t think he would,” Kennedy added.

The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/republican-senator-john-kennedy-torches-terrible-mistake-in-donald-trumps-iran-war/?

March 15

Another Trump Goon Gets D.C. House Courtesy of Military

The attorney general is the latest in a long line of Trump officials to receive free housing.

Attorney General Pam Bondi has reportedly relocated from her Washington, D.C., apartment to housing on a nearby military base.

The move was prompted by an increase in threats issued by drug cartels and critics of the Justice Department’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case, the New York Times reported on Tuesday.

The threats were flagged to her staff by federal law enforcement, according to the Times, with one senior official with direct knowledge of the situation explicitly citing an increase in threats aimed at Bondi following the abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in January.

The move makes Bondi the latest in a growing line of senior Trump officials to move into military housing. The Times notes that while other government officials have occasionally lived on military bases—including former Trump Cabinet members Jim Mattis and Mike Pompeo—former officials and historians are concerned that the second Trump administration appears to be the first to “take such widespread advantage of taxpayer-funded military housing to accommodate political appointees who do not have a direct connection to the military.”

Recently-ousted DHS Secretary Kristi Noem was moved into a home on a military base that belonged to the Coast Guard commandant in August, rent-free, citing fears for her safety, with DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin telling the Washington Post that Noem’s decision to move came after the Daily Mail published photos outside her home.

At the time, Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin accused Noem of “living rent-free in the official waterfront residence reserved for the commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard.”

During her hearing on Capitol Hill earlier this month, however, Noem sought to clarify that she was paying her way, and that she was not in the commandant’s house.

“Let me clarify a couple things,” she told the House Judiciary Committee. “I’m not in the commandant’s house. I’m in a Coast Guard house, but not the commandant’s house. The commandant is in his house.”

“I rent that facility. I rent where I stay and pay personal dollars to do that,” she added. Her recent demotion most likely means she will be required to vacate the housing.

A spokesperson for Bondi did not comment on the financial matters to the Times. When contacted for comment, the Justice Department directed the Daily Beast to an X post in which they denied that the move had anything to do with the Epstein files.

In quick succession in October, top Trump aide Stephen Miller and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth both moved into taxpayer-subsidized military homes.

Miller moved into military housing shortly after his wife, podcaster Katie Miller, was confronted by a woman at their Arlington home.

“To the person who tried to threaten me at my home this morning: We will not back down. We will not be afraid. We will not run scared,” Katie Miller wrote on X at the time. The Millers moved onto the base and listed their home for sale shortly after.

Around the same time, Hegseth moved into a home typically occupied by the Army’s chief of staff at Fort McNair in D.C. after a general promoted to the vice chief position opted to remain on a different base.

A Defense Department official told the New York Times that Hegseth was paying $4,655.70 a month to live in the home, located a few short miles from the Pentagon.

An October report from The Atlantic found that other Trump officials had also moved onto military bases, including State Secretary Marco Rubio, who had joined Hegseth on ‘Generals’ Row’ at Fort McNair.

Army Secretary Dan Driscoll shares a home on Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall with another senior political appointee to the Army, and Navy Secretary John Phelan moved onto a base after his home was damaged in a fire last May.

The sheer number of senior Trump officials moving onto military bases prompted questions, including from then-congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene.

“I’m one of those people they call a conspiracy theorist,” Greene said during a November appearance on Real Time with Bill Maher. “When I hear things like that, I’m like, what do they know that I don’t know?”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/another-trump-goon-gets-dc-house-courtesy-of-military/?

ps:Amazing that we have no money for those that need it but we have money to let the rich get free housing??????????

March 15

How Top Trump Suck-Ups Are Lining His Pockets (Again)

The House Gop’s annual policy retreat provided a fiscal boost to its host. Who is it? Our must-read bulletin The Swamp knows.

In this week’s news from the ooze: Markwayne Mullin, Bari Weiss, Huggie Bear, James Fishback, Lord Peter Mandelson, Nick Fuentes, Kelcy Warren, Corey Lewandowski, Byron Noem, Lauren Sanchez Bezos, Clinton Bonds, Allison Schuster, Rebecca Johnson, Thomas Halvorsen, Ron DeSantis, Paul Hamill, and Princess Diana.

Trump Lines His Pockets as Republican Reps Live It Up at His Luxury Resort

America is at war and casualties are mounting, gas prices and the cost of living are skyrocketing, and federal workers forgotten in a government shutdown are wondering when they’ll get their next paycheck. So what better for GOP lawmakers to do than to head for the Miami sunshine for the annual House Republican policy retreat?

One cloud on the horizon: Nothing was on the House. Rooms at the four-star luxury 643-room golf resort start at $600 a night. (You do get access to a pool with a 125-foot water slide, though.) All the expenses—the $1,100-a-night-suites, the $31 burger, and the luxury $420 spa treatments—go into the pockets of the owners of the Trump National Doral Golf Club. No prizes for guessing who that is.

But here’s a clue: The name is on the Donald J. Trump Grand Ballroom. So one person (presumably) did get their room comped.

Super suckup Speaker Mike Johnson gushed it was an “amazing” venue and insisted attendees among the House’s 218 Republicans had “so much” to celebrate while they were chatting by the pool.

If they were hungry for a bite, there was the BLT Prime steakhouse in the evenings where GOP lawmakers could drop $79 on that ribeye or $75 for the dover sole. For more casual daytime fare, there was the Champions Bar & Grill overlooking the greens or the poolside Palm Grill, where the burger is $31.

Hearteningly for Trump’s accountants, this was a lucrative return trip from the House Republicans. Just days after Trump returned to office in 2025, House Republicans high-tailed it to Doral, and liked it so much they’re back again.

While the full amount House Republicans spend at Trump’s fancy club remains unclear, individual GOP campaigns, PACs and the national party have separately spent more than $1.8 million at the resort since Trump’s first run in 2016, and that’s not including the thousands they’ve dropped on meals at its multiple restaurants or on other luxury amenities.

But the White House dismisses widespread concern over the president profiting from his office. The president “only acts in the best interests of the American public,” according to White House spokesperson Allison Schuster. She also insisted there are “no conflicts of interest no matter how many times the failing media claims otherwise.” Err, sure, Allison.

After all, the White House argues the president is forgoing a salary as president, but what’s a $400,000 salary when you can add a whopping $3 billion to your net worth in just a year?

How Markwayne Became the MAGA Man in The Arena

In the red corner, representing Westville, Oklahoma, was Markwayne Mullin, aka the MAGA Cowboy, weighing in at 168 lbs, with a 3-0-0 Mixed Martial Arts record.

His opponent was Bobby Kelly, aka Huggie Bear, representing Joplin, Mo & Galena, Ks, weighing in at 196 lbs, with a 11-10-0 MMA record.

And the winner was… the MAGA Cowboy.

When Donald Trump announced last week that Markwayne Mullin was replacing ICE Barbie Kristi Noem as the Department of Homeland Security security, Trump described the first term GOP senator as a “MAGA warrior” and praised his undefeated mixed martial arts fighting career.

No matter that Mullin’s career lasted all of three fights, with three wins, one over “Huggie Bear,” and two victories over middleweight Clinton Bonds, a loser of eleven of his 12 professional fights.

The cowboy’s total career earnings from 2006/7 was, err, $0. It’s probably just as well that he was flush from Daddy’s plumbing business. Mullin left college without a degree—he is the only serving senator without a Bachelor’s degree—to look after his father. Then he built up a big enough fortune to buy the Mullin dude ranch. Stretching across the foothills of the Ozark mountains, the family ranch is available for weddings and corporate events. Intriguingly, Mullin’s ranch also offers quickie weddings for couples desperate to tie the knot.

“With the Just Married Package, you’ll be able to say I DO in a short and sweet elopement between the two of you! And YES! - There’s time for a couple photos too!” reads the ranch website. “Unlike old-fashioned, runaway weddings, modern elopements offer so much more!

It’s easy to plan a modern elopement with all the details so that you can share the most significant day of your life with the people closest to your heart!”

Politics has been much better for Mullin’s bank account than MMA. When he first became a House rep. in 2013, Mullin had a net worth of about $3.5 million By 2018, that number had ballooned to more than $11 million. Today, according to Quiver Quantitative, it currently stands at an estimated $66 million. He also happens to be one of the most active stock traders in Congress, making more than 500 trades since 2023 for some $24 million. So much easier than seeking his fortune in the ring.

Keeping the Right Company

James Fishback, the white nationalist MAGA candidate pulling up palm trees in the Republican primary to replace Ron DeSantis as governor of Florida, may not have Donald Trump’s endorsement (that went to frontrunner Byron Donalds) but maybe he can call on CBS News boss Bari Weiss for a helping hand.

Two years ago, Fishback was a contributing writer for Weiss’ anti-woke Free Press and he posted a photo of them yukking it up at a D.C. event on the day before Trump was sworn in for a second term. But with revelations of ties to far-right misogynist Nick Fuentes, perhaps even the Trump-smooching media maven might pass.

The Price of Darkness

The Swamp hears that disgraced former U.K. ambassador to the U.S. Lord Peter Mandelson has employed Princess Diana’s one time legal representatives Mishcon de Reya to look after him following his arrest for allegedly farming out classified documents to his pal Jeffrey Epstein. The bill could end up being as much as $20 million, so we are intrigued to know who might help keep the Prince of Darkness solvent. Mandelson once got into hot water in the UK for accepting a loan from government colleague Geoffrey Robinson to buy his London home. Mandelson was a vocal Trump critic, who had a Damascene conversion to shameless suck-up. Now they are friends, perhaps Mandy can ask Trump for a loan. Or, better still, a pardon.

Spotted: Logan International Relations consultant Paul Hamill, Washington Post Intelligence Councils engagement head Thomas Halvorsen and Washington Life magazine senior editor Kevin Chaffee at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel for the annual Qatar Embassy Iftar Dinner. Code Pink provocateur Olivia Dinucci and fellow anti-war activist Chuck Modiano at Marx Cafe for a Cuba-related fundraiser. Hogan Lovells trade lawyer Mayur Patel outside Barrel House Cafe as punters lined up for a JFK lookalike competition. Bezos Earth Fund director Nicole Iseppi and Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History chief scientist Rebecca Johnson at the Australian Embassy for an IWD event. Brazilian UFC fighter and Elon Musk fanboy Caio Borralho partying at XS Nightclub in Las Vegas after his win at UFC 326, where the White House’s “Fight Night” lineup was announced.

Won’t Anyone Think of the Swimming Pool Owners?

A question lingers still following Wil Lewis’s departure from the Washington Post having drained the venerable publication of its staff and its reputation. The British journalist was let go by the publication’s owner Jeff Bezos after a night of the long knives shredded more than 300 journos from the payroll. Worried former staffers can’t help wondering: who on earth is looking after the swimming pool at Lewis’s Georgetown townhouse?

ICE Blonde and a Marriage Frozen in Time

Like Kristi Noem’s looks, her husband’s social media habits have dramatically changed over the years. Bryon Noem had luckily left the House committee room before his wife was asked about her alleged “sexual relations” with top aide Corey Lewandowski. But Mr. Noem left the conversation long before that. For years while Noem was governor of South Dakota, the former first husband dutifully engaged in social media and actively shared wedding anniversary posts every year on May 23, including their original wedding photo of him with Noem, that had The Swamp doing a double take. But noticeably with her exit from the governor’s mansion, the Facebook posts of the first gentleman also stopped, leaving everyone to wonder what is happening behind closed doors.

Noem may have been at his wife’s side when she first went through the wringer on Capitol Hill, but he’s been out of the public eye ever since—and off the internet it appears as well. But it has not stopped curious onlookers from commenting on his old posts. “Does Corey Lewandowski get invited to family gatherings?” one wrote. It was The Swamp, of course, that first revealed that Lewandowski had been spotted emptying the trash cans at Noem’s apartment (a story that is now part of the congressional record). Corey may now be unemployed, but there will always be a job for him with Kristi: garbage man.

Big Oil

As Donald Trump threatens to hit Iran “20 times harder” if it disrupts oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz, it’s worth remembering who exactly benefits when global oil suddenly becomes the most important thing on Earth again. The oil industry has been one of Trump’s most loyal financial backers; he even asked them for a cool $1 billion in 2024. Chevron, ExxonMobil, and ConocoPhillips were among the companies who donated millions to Trump’s inauguration fund in 2025, according to Federal Election Commission data. Then there are the oil-patch billionaires who prefer their politics with a side of drilling rights. Pipeline magnate Kelcy Warren—executive chairman of Energy Transfer—poured millions, and more millions, into Trump’s 2024 campaign and hosted high-dollar fundraisers for the-then presidential hopeful in Houston, Texas. Texas oil heir Bryan Sheffield, founder of Parsley Energy, also kicked in over $1 million to Trump’s 2024 campaign. And according to an analysis by Climate Power, Big Oil spent $450 million to help out Donald Trump and Republicans throughout the 2024 election cycle and 118th Congress in the form of direct donations, lobbying, and advertising to support Republicans and their policies. None of this proves a direct link between campaign cash and foreign policy brinkmanship, of course. But it does create a certain oily and slick… atmosphere.

What Is Ivanka Priming Lauren For?

Her husband Jared Kushner is tasked with creating peace in the Gaza Strip, Iran and Ukraine (yes, we know…) but Ivanka Trump has other things on her agenda: Blowing bubbles. The first daughter posted a strange video of herself promoting a new children’s book by Lauren Sanchez Bezos, The Fly Who Flew Under the Sea, by, in fact, blowing bubbles. (The book is on Amazon, naturally.) Ivanka and Jared were guests at the Bezos nuptials in Venice, so for normal people, The Swamp would consider this an act of simple friendship. But surely no true Trump would do something for nothing. Could Ivanka be laying the groundwork for her own Melania-style Amazon documentary, complete with her own $40 million payout? Consider her primed.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-top-trump-suck-ups-are-lining-his-pockets-again/?

March 15

Trump Is Trying To Run the World Like a Pyramid Scheme. That Should Terrify You

He’s redecorating the White House while trying to rebrand diplomacy and fire foreign leaders like he’s the star of the boardroom, ‘Apprentice’-style.

Trump seems to believe the presidency comes with C-Suite access for the planet as a whole: he can interview foreign leaders for job openings, dissolve international peacekeeping entities, fudge the expense reports, and dispatch his wife to “do” diplomacy like she’s running the annual company charity auction. (All the items for sale are signed copies of her autobiography, of course.) And that’s before the environmental rollbacks and the renaming sprees like the planet is a failing franchise he’s trying to rebrand. In Trump’s head, the U.S. is corporate HQ and the rest of the world is a network of regional branch offices.

Most leaders wrestle with governing. Trump skips the match and just announces he won. Everything is going the way he says it’s going—better than ever! He has decided he’s going to redecorate not just the White House ballroom but the entire globe, starting with hostile takeovers of Venezuela and Iran; maybe Cuba and Greenland penciled in for next quarter?

Let’s start with Trump’s latest foray into international headhunting: his announcement that he must be personally involved in selecting Iran’s next Supreme Leader. He’s also suggested that the regime’s handpicked successor to the Ayatollah killed in the recent U.S. strike should, wait for it, be killed too. This would be worth of an HR investigation if Trump believed in HR; the man who free-associates through war briefings now wants to run the hiring committee. You can imagine the interview now: ‘Tell me about a time you showed leadership under pressure. Are you willing to relocate? Also, would you describe your hatred of America as a strength or an opportunity?”Foreign policy turns into reality TV the second he touches it. He can’t help it. It’s The Apprentice: Tehran, complete with Trump as the executive producer, the star, and the guy who keeps pausing the meeting to ask how his hair is coming across on camera. Plenty of presidents meddle abroad. Trump does it with the confidence of a man who thinks theology is a managem

style, not a worldview. He genuinely can’t grasp why a theocratic state might not want career coaching from a twice-divorced casino owner who treats spiritual authority like a PR problem and keeps trying to workshop the Pope. Also, he just bombed them.

But why stop at hiring foreign dictators when you can also restructure the entire international order? Trump has announced his intention to create a body, which he hints could supplant the United Nations, called the “Board of Peace,” all the while handing out comic-book job titles and re-orgs like “Shield of the Americas.” Because apparently the problem with global diplomacy isn’t the complexity of international relations. It’s that the name doesn’t sound tough enough.

This is peak Trump business thinking: take an 81-year-old institution that has, at minimum, kept the biggest powers in meetings, not on battlefields, for decades, and treat it like a failing restaurant chain that just needs better signage. That’s the same genius who brought us Trump University (shut down for fraud), Trump Steaks (discontinued, the only product that tastes like a press conference), and Trump Airlines (grounded faster than you can say “Chapter 11.”) The “Board of Peace” sounds like something a kindergarten teacher would call the corner where children go to resolve their playground disputes, which, come to think of it, might actually be an improvement over the current UN Security Council. But there’s something genuinely unhinged about a man who thinks you can solve centuries of geopolitical complexity by changing the letterhead. It’s like announcing you’re going to cure cancer by renaming it “Happy Cells Syndrome.” Paging RFK, Jr. Here’s what connects Trump’s Supreme Leader auditions, his UN makeover plans, and his wife’s new diplomatic career: a breathtaking inability to grasp that other countries aren’t subsidiaries of Trump International. In his mind, sovereign nations are property acquisitions. He’s writing performance reviews for countries he’s never met. And for at least one country, he’s going to misspell in all caps. By that I mean “Spain,” not “Tajikistan.” The Performance Improvement Plan for Iran probably has bullet points like ‘smile more’ and ‘stop making me look bad.’

This leaves the rest of the world doing international diplomacy with America on mute. While Trump obsesses over ballroom drapes during war briefings, European leaders are probably in some back room drawing straws to see who has to be the designated adult when he starts threatening to dissolve NATO.

At this point, the world’s strategy is the same one you use with a loud toddler in a nice restaurant: give him a menu, tell him he’s in charge, and quietly move the knives while he doodles on the placemat. Then praise his “Board of Peace,” throw a shiny participation trophy his way and do the actual diplomacy after he’s tucked into bed.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-is-trying-to-run-the-world-like-the-apprentice-that-should-terrify-you/?

March 15

Trump Wages War Against ‘Violent and Destructive’ Fish

The president said he’s also working to preserve Utah’s Great Salt Lake.

Donald Trump on Tuesday highlighted his efforts to combat a “rather violent and destructive” species of fish in the Great Lakes, and called on the region’s governors for help.

Trump said he and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer were working to protect the lakes from Asian Carp, an invasive species that threatens the region’s fisheries. In this instance, the name “Asian Carp” refers to four species that were introduced into the U.S. from Asia and Europe in the 1970s: the bighead, silver, black, and grass carp.

According to the Great Lakes Fishery Commission, “preventing the introduction and establishment of invasive carps is the only effective approach to sustaining the valuable Great Lakes fishery.”

“I’ll be asking other Governors to join into this fight, including those of Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, New York and, of course, the future Governor of Canada, Mark Carney, who I know will be happy to contribute to this worthy cause,” Trump, 79, wrote on X, along with a video apparently of silver carp jumping out of the water.

Carney has been Canada’s prime minister since last March, but Trump has periodically called him “governor” in reference to his idea of Canada becoming the “51st state.”

In a presidential memorandum last May, Trump supported infrastructure construction at the mouth of the Illinois River to keep carp out of the lakes. After months-long delays, the Brandon Road Interbasin Project is underway, but won’t be fully completed until 2031 at the earliest, according to one estimate.In his post, Trump said he was also taking action to “save” Utah’s Great Salt Lake, “which, in a short period of time, if nothing is done, will have no water.”

The body of water, satellite imagery shows, is a fraction of what it once was about a decade ago. According to Grow the Flow Utah, eighty percent of its volume loss is due to water usage by humans.

Trump concluded his post with some self-aggrandizement.

“This is on top of everything else I am doing,” wrote the commander-in-chief, 10 days into his and Israel’s war against Iran, about which he has given mixed messaging. “Only ‘TRUMP’ CAN DO IT!”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/donald-trump-wages-war-against-violent-and-destructive-asian-carp-fish/?

March 15

Trump has one prescription for midterms. House Republicans have another

President Donald Trump insisted he had the answer for Republicans anxious about losing their congressional majority this year: build on an already strict national voter identification law to ban mail ballots and restrict transgender rights. Less than 24 hours later, House Republican leaders highlighted their priorities. And the voting bill isn't high on the list. Read more.

Why this matters:

Just a few seats shy of losing their majority, senior Republicans are eager to emphasize the party’s work to lower costs, none of which is easy to accomplish with only a few votes to spare, while Trump is often focused elsewhere. The war he initiated in Iran has disrupted the party's message on affordability.
In an effort to gain leverage over lawmakers, including some Republicans, Trump said he won't sign other legislation into law until the voting bill is passed. The bill is rooted in his insistence that he won the 2020 presidential election, claims rejected by dozens of courts and his own attorney general at the time. The dynamic isn't any easier in the Senate, where Republicans are struggling to pass the measure without Democratic support.
Faced with a tough political calculus, House Speaker Mike Johnson is trying to shift focus to Democrats, in particular over the shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security, which has prompted security lines to swell at some airports over the past few days.

RELATED COVERAGE ➤

March 15

🚀 Trump: "Practically nothing left to target" in Iran

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Military personnel work on a U.S. Air Force B-1 Lancer bomber at RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire, England, today. Photo: Henry Nicholls/AFP via Getty Images

President Trump told Axios' Barak Ravid in a brief phone interview today that the war with Iran will end "soon" because there is "practically nothing left to target."

Trump said during the five-minute call: "Little this and that. ... Any time I want it to end, it will end."

🗓️ "The war is going great. We are way ahead of the timetable. We have done more damage than we thought possible, even in the original six-week period."

He said Iran's hostility extended beyond Israel and the U.S. to Gulf states across the region: "They were after the rest of the Middle East. They are paying for 47 years of death and destruction they caused. This is payback. They will not get off that easy."

🛢️ The International Energy Agency is asking member governments to jointly release up to 400 million barrels of oil from strategic stockpiles after the war sent prices skyrocketing.

More from Barak.

ps:So we're just killing as many civilians as possible for the hell of it?????????????????????

March 15

Trump, 79, Totally Loses It at Republican Being Mean About His War

The president is hellbent on unseating one of his few remaining critics in the GOP.

President Donald Trump is going all-out in his crusade to unseat one of the few members of his own party to have bucked his second-term agenda.

“I predict that ‘Representative’ Thomas Massie will go down as the WORST Republican Congressman in the long and fabled history of the United States Congress,” the president posted on Truth Social.

Trump is headed to Kentucky’s 4th Congressional District, where Ed Gallrein, a former Navy SEAL, is running with the president’s endorsement against Massie in the Republican primary.

Massie has proven a near-constant thorn in Trump’s side during the president’s second stint in the White House. He has vocally opposed the war in Iran, launched by Trump on February 28, arguing “the only winners in [the U.S.] are defense company shareholders” and asserting the president “can’t even give us a straight answer” as to why he started the conflict.

The Kentucky Congressman also last year voted against Trump’s spending proposals, and spearheaded successful Congressional efforts to force the release of fresh documents on the crimes of late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

Trump, who has faced intense scrutiny of his historic friendship with Epstein, has previously slammed Massie as a “moron,” “lightweight” and “loser.” He described the Kentucky Rep. in his Wednesday post as “even worse” than other Congressional critics, including “Crazy Liz Chaney [sic], Cryin’ Adam Zinzinger, and Marjorie ‘Traitor’ Brown. (Remember, Green turns to Brown under stress!).”

Marjorie Taylor Greene, formerly one of the president’s staunchest supporters in the House, resigned from Congress earlier this year over disillusionment with Trump’s handling of the Epstein files release, which she had joined Massie in lobbying for. The president has previously explained his joke about her name refers to the fact that grass turns brown in the sun.

“They are all misfits and losers, but Massie, who is running against a Great American Patriot in the Kentucky Primary, will hopefully lose BIG,” Trump raged on Wednesday.

Massie, for his part, appears unfazed by the president’s continued anger. “People support Trump, but they also support what he campaigned on,” the Congressman told NBC News. “When people support me, they’re supporting the things that Trump campaigned on actually getting done.”

The Daily Beast has contacted the White House and Massie’s representatives for comment on this story.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/president-donald-trump-79-totally-loses-it-at-republican-thomas-massie-being-mean-about-his-war/?

ps:I can understand being upset about some of your party for not going along with your agenda! But to just call names and go on and on about how you'll get rid of them and than campaign against them, threatening them etc., just seems little over the top, when you agendas are made with false statements!!!!!

March 15

Iran Trolls Trump’s Epstein Files Woes in Lego Propaganda Video

The Islamic regime gave trashposting Trump a taste of his own medicine.

Iran has trolled Donald Trump with an AI-generated propaganda movie featuring demented Lego-style figurines wreaking revenge for U.S. and Israeli airstrikes on the country.

The two-minute video, titled “Narrative of Victory,” was aired by Iranian state media on Tuesday, The Times of London reported. It opens to dramatic orchestral music as a dismayed plastic Trump, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Satan read through a folder marked “Jeffrey Epstein File.”

The president quickly becomes enraged and punches a big red button that launches a missile bearing the U.S. flag against an Iranian classroom. The clip does not show the impact, only a child’s backpack sitting abandoned in the resulting rubble. An Iranian soldier then cradles the backpack, tears of anger in his eyes as he launches missile attacks against Israeli targets.

Trump launched the war on Iran on Feb. 28. with joint U.S.-Israeli airstrikes that wiped out much of Iran’s leadership, including the 86-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. That same day a stray U.S. Tomahawk missile is thought to have hit a school near a naval barracks in the city of Minab, killing more than 150 people, most of them young girls.

Iran responded by sending missiles and drones at U.S. and allied targets across the Middle East, including Cyprus and Turkey. More than 1,000 people have been killed so far in Iran. Seven U.S. service members have been killed in Iranian strikes, and at least 140 wounded.

In the 12 days since the launch of military operations, the administration has offered multiple justifications for the war, most recently that the U.S. is attacking Iran to defend U.S. military assets in the Middle East from strikes in the event Iran came under attack.

Critics have accused Trump, long an opponent of U.S. “forever wars” in the Middle East, of launching the conflict, along with his lightning invasion of Venezuela in January, as part of a wider effort to deflect scrutiny of files on the crimes of sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein released by the Justice Department.

Lawmakers forced the president to sign a law mandating the publication of materials on the Epstein case late last year following a concerted campaign of pressure over his once-close friendship with the pedophile financier, who died in a Manhattan jail 2019. Trump himself features multiple times in the files released by the DOJ.

The animated Lego video features further strikes on Cyprus, Turkey, Dubai, Tel Aviv, among other targets of Iranian attacks since hostilities broke out, along with armed regime speedboats showing racing toward tankers in the Persian Gulf, and stockbrokers and Saudi businessmen weeping over rising oil prices.

Also featured are coffins being carried out of U.S. aircraft bearing the American flag. The clip ends as the Iranian soldier who searched through the rubble of the classroom looks out at a U.S. aircraft carrier blazing, child’s backpack in the dirt by his side.

It marks the second time the Iranian regime has used the beloved children’s building blocks for propaganda purposes. State media released a similar video, again featuring Trump, Netanyahu, and Satan, in response to U.S. and Israeli strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities last year.

Trump himself is also no stranger to posting animated videos when lambasting his opponents online. He has shared AI-generated clips of himself as a king dumping feces over protesters from a military jet; of himself basking in the sun with Netanyahu at a luxury resort built on the ruins of the Gaza Strip; of Democratic lawmakers dressed up as mariachi band players; and of Michelle and Barack Obama depicted as apes.

A White House spokesperson attacked the Daily Beast and did not address the Iranian regime’s video when contacted for comment on this story.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/iran-trolls-president-donald-trumps-jeffrey-epstein-files-woes-in-lego-propaganda-video/?

March 15

A Lack of Courage

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No one could accuse Representative Andy Ogles of using dog whistles. The Tennessee Republican prefers a bullhorn.

“Muslims don’t belong in American society,” Ogles wrote on X on Monday. “Pluralism is a lie.”

The statement’s open bigotry is jarring. Where American Islamophobes in the past two decades have tended to demand that Muslims assimilate or denounce particular people or views, Ogles is taking a categorial approach. (In the past, Ogles has demanded the denaturalization of New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, whom he called “little muhammad”— whatever that means—and told an activist that his attitude toward Gazan children was that “we should kill them all.”) His denunciation of pluralism is un-American—not in the sense that it’s reprehensible, though it is, but that it is directly in conflict with the founding principles of the United States. Ironically, it has more in common with hard-line Wahhabists.

But Ogles is not alone. Last month, his House colleague Randy Fine of Florida declared, “If they force us to choose, the choice between dogs and Muslims is not a difficult one.” (In January, Fine blamed Representative Ilhan Omar for being attacked during a town hall.) And when Speaker Mike Johnson was asked about the comments yesterday, the Louisiana Republican declined to condemn them. “Look, there’s a lot of energy in the country, and a lot of popular sentiment, that the demand to impose Sharia law in America is a serious problem,” Johnson said. (There is no evidence of any serious effort to “impose Sharia law.”) He added, “It’s not about people as Muslims,” but of course that’s exactly what Ogles’s comment was about.

This kind of hateful rhetoric is a throwback to the early 2000s. Then, as now, the U.S. was involved in a dubious, poorly defined war in the Middle East. But there are two important differences. One, jihadist violence in the U.S. was at the time a more active threat, following a devastating terror attack on U.S. soil. A failed attack on Islamophobic protesters this weekend in New York City, inspired by the Islamic State, was a notable exception to a sharp decrease in jihadist attacks in the U.S. today.

Second, leaders in the Republican Party made an effort to tamp down on anti-Muslim sentiment in the 2000s. “Americans understand we fight not a religion; ours is not a campaign against the Muslim faith,” George W. Bush said two weeks after 9/11. “Ours is a campaign against evil.” (Bush’s presidential center today makes pluralism one of its focuses.) And in 2008, when a town-hall attendee said that the Democratic presidential candidate, Barack Obama, was “an Arab,” the GOP nominee, John McCain, was quick to bat it down. “No, ma’am. He’s a decent family man, citizen, that I just happen to have disagreements with,” he said. It was an imperfect response, suggesting that being a decent man was somehow opposed to being an Arab, but it at least reflected McCain’s reflex to oppose such rhetoric—even when it may have hurt him politically.

Johnson’s smarmy answer on Ogles showed that today’s Republican leadership has neither the courage nor the desire to push back in the same way. After McCain lost the 2008 election, some voices on the right began questioning whether Obama was an American citizen and falsely suggesting that he was a Kenyan-born Muslim. The most prominent among them was Donald Trump, who seemed to represent the prejudices of many Republican voters better than Bush or McCain did. (Less remembered than McCain’s decency at the campaign event is the crowd’s response: They booed him for defending Obama.) Trump’s “birther” antics laid the foundation for his successful presidential run in 2016. During the campaign, he called for a complete ban on Muslims entering the United States and indicated a willingness to create a registry of Muslims inside the country.

As a result, it’s no surprise that a Trump-led GOP would become a home for anti-Muslim bigotry. What is less expected is that the president himself has not been a notable participant recently. The Trump administration has prominently targeted Muslims such as Mahmoud Khalil and Rümeysa Öztürk for deportation over their views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but among his many rotating justifications for the war in Iran, the regime’s theocratic brand of Islam has not been prominent. His approach to Gaza also seems driven more by affinity for Israel’s government and greed for real estate than by any consideration of religion—unlike some members of his administration, such as Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, who interprets Israel’s existence in religious rather than transactional terms. And although Mamdani’s rise has produced a spike in Islamophobia on the right, Trump has so far cultivated a surprisingly chummy relationship with the mayor.

Trump’s relative silence does not absolve him of his role in creating the atmosphere that fostered Ogles and Fine, both hard-line MAGA figures. As he has been happy to point out, he is the sole leader of the GOP, and if he disliked such comments he could put a stop to them by simply expressing his disapproval. During the 2024 election, many Arab and Muslim voters who were angry about the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s war in Gaza voted for Trump, especially in the key swing state of Michigan, but the idea that Trump would be more pro-Palestinian than Kamala Harris was ridiculous to anyone paying close attention. The GOP’s tacit approval of Ogles and Fine is a reminder of the real face of the MAGA movement.

Related:

March 15

🔥 Trump torches Massie

President Trump called GOP Rep. Thomas Massie "disloyal" and a "nut job" during a visit to Massie's district today that marks a striking escalation in his long-running feud with the Kentucky Republican.

Why it matters: House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has been watching Trump go after some of his GOP incumbents from afar for years. But now, the president is doing it on a lawmaker's own turf.

🚨 "He is the worst person. His name is...What the hell? How did he ever end up in Kentucky, his name is Thomas Massie," Trump said this afternoon, drawing boos from the audience at the mention of Massie's name.
Trump brought Massie's primary challenger, Ed Gallrein, on stage to speak, calling Gallrein, whom he recruited and has endorsed, "a real hero."

Driving the news: Massie is the first Republican incumbent that Trump's political organization targeted for defeat this cycle — and the intensity of the president's anti-Massie efforts means the primary outcome will be scored as a test of Trump's influence.

🗳️ Trump noted that he won Kentucky handily and cast Massie as out of step with the state's voters.

Between the lines: Massie's willingness to buck the party line has become so routine that Johnson doesn't factor him into the equation for tough votes.

The speaker has neither endorsed Massie nor offered much public support, despite his self-described role as head of an "incumbent protection program."
Johnson told us last month that he has "the back of every House Republican," but added that "it would be helpful if Thomas would play with the team more."
Massie did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Trump's remarks.

— Kate Santaliz

March 15

U.S. Military Refuses to Endorse Trump Claim That Iran Bombed Girls’ School

President Donald Trump claimed that Iran, not the U.S., struck an elementary school in the southern Iranian town of Minab, the attack with the highest civilian death toll in Trump’s second Iran war.

https://theintercept.com/2026/03/09/iran-trump-hegseth-bomb-girls-school/?

Veterans Who Depend on Mental Health Care Keep Losing Their Therapists Under Trump

As Jason Beaman recounts his long slog searching for mental health therapy last year, he sounds defeated.

https://www.propublica.org/article/veterans-affairs-mental-health-therapists-quit-trump?

March 15

Rising oil risk

Photo illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios. Photo: Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto via Getty Images

President Trump's advisers warn the Iran war could drag on longer if the regime succeeds in strangling the Strait of Hormuz and driving oil prices beyond his tolerance, Axios' Marc Caputo writes.

"The Iranians f*cking around with the Strait makes [Trump] more dug in," a senior Trump administration official told Axios.

Why it matters: Trump launched Operation Epic Fury to destroy Iran's nuclear program, ballistic missiles, navy and regional proxies. But oil markets now are occupying as much of his headspace as battlefield data.

"The president sees the briefings. He sees the numbers. And he feels good about his decision, militarily," one Trump adviser said.
"Oil is another matter. No one is panicking, but it's a concern. He's pulling out the stops. There's plenty of oil. It's just getting it on the market that's the thing."

🔎 Zoom in: Trump has publicly downplayed both the physical danger of traversing the Strait and the war's risk to the economy — while taking steps to address both.

Yesterday, he coordinated the largest emergency oil reserve release in history: 400 million barrels globally, including 172 million from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
Trump is also discussing plans to supply naval escorts to tankers traversing the Strait and arranging insurance for those vessels — a crucial factor for shippers weighing the risk.

An oil tanker on fire after an apparent Iranian attack in Iraqi waters. Photo: Media Office of Iraqi Ports via Reuters

The urgency became clear yesterday when two oil tankers were attacked in the Persian Gulf.

Videos of a massive blaze in Iraqi waters spread rapidly on social media. Reuters published still images from Iraq's state-run ports authority that it said show one of the vessels on fire.

🧮 By the numbers: Trump prefers oil at $50 a barrel. The industry prefers a floor of around $60. Despite Trump's intervention, oil topped $100 per barrel last night and this morning, after spiking as high as $120 earlier this week.

Iran has threatened to push prices to $200 a barrel, which would translate to roughly $5 per gallon at the pump for U.S. drivers, according to some analysts.

Another Trump adviser said: "The president is bullish on the success of the operation thus far — and feels the country will realize he was right, per usual, once it's over and the objectives are fully met."

"He genuinely believes, as many in the White House do, that gas prices will fall substantially when this is over — and long enough before the midterms where it will not be a problem."

The bottom line: "I wouldn't say he's looking for an exit strategy," said a confidant who spoke with Trump by phone. "But he doesn't want this to last longer than it needs to."

⛽ Go deeper: Trump faces limited gas-price options on Iran, by Axios Future of Energy author Ben Geman.

March 15

I Know Secrets of Trump’s Hold Over These Cowards

Ana Navarro pulls back the curtain on how Marco Rubio, Lindsey Graham, and others transformed from fierce Trump critics to loyal allies.

Donald Trump’s former rivals in the GOP are now firmly on his side because “the trappings of power are very attractive,” The View co-host Ana Navarro says.

Navarro, appearing on The Daily Beast Podcast, detailed the transformation of Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham, and, in particular, Marco Rubio.

All three had challenged Trump during the 2016 Republican primary. Cruz called him a “coward” and a “rat,” while Rubio said he was a “con artist” and that people who supported him were falling into a “trap.” Graham called Trump “a race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot” on national television.

Rubio, 54, and Graham, 70, are among those Navarro knows who have since done “180s,” she said.

“I have seen person after person who I personally knew and admired and thought were different, do complete 180s,” the former Jeb Bush adviser told co-host Joanna Coles. “I have known Marco Rubio since he was very young. We’re the same age. We grew up in Republican politics in South Florida. I’ve known Pam Bondi for decades, since she was attorney general of the state of Florida.”

Navarro said she knew Graham “when he was John McCain’s wingman, not Donald Trump’s.” She added, “He’s a completely different person than he was.”

The reason, she said, was simple: power.

“So many people in Congress, so many people that are serving in this administration, so many people that I see on TV [are] defending the indefensible and the unjustifiable because it means they have access to power,” she said.

“Let’s be clear, the trappings of power are very attractive,” Navarro, 54, continued. “It’s great to be invited to the White House. It’s great to be able to go to the Christmas parties. It’s great to be able to ride on Air Force One and be able to call up the White House and talk to whomever you want. All of those things are heady things. I know; I’ve done them.”

In Rubio’s case, Navarro said the fact that the secretary of state grew up “a poor kid from West Miami” has meant that having his own plane, attending state dinners, and being generally “in the center of things” is especially appealing.

“But the question is: are you willing to compromise every principle you supposedly stood for, every conviction you supposedly had, every belief you supposedly held in order to stay in that circle of power?” Navarro asked.

Rubio, she said, has to convince himself that by essentially “selling his soul” to Trump, he has been able to do good things.

“I think he believes getting rid of [Venezuelan President Nicolas] Maduro is a good thing,” she said. “I think he believes a dead ayatollah is a good thing. I think he believes that the possibility of regime change in Cuba is a good thing.”

The Daily Beast has reached out to the State Department, Graham’s office, and Cruz’s office for comment.

A White House spokesperson said in a statement: “Ana Navarro is a dingbat moron whose pea-sized brain has been warped by a debilitating, yet very serious, condition called Trump Derangement Syndrome. Sadly, she has to live out the rest of her days on The View and CNN, away from the public.”

Navarro concluded by saying that the career paths of anti-Trump Republicans like Bush, her former boss, and former Sen. Mitt Romney are increasingly restricted.

“There are two ways to exist in the Republican Party right now,” she said. “Either you are a Trumper and you approve and...defend everything he says and does, and that benefits your political career, or you’re not, and you’re probably going to lose your primary, or you’re going to retire, or or you’re just not going to be part of it.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/i-know-secrets-of-donald-trumps-hold-over-these-cowards-ana-navarro/?

ps:Why waste your time in asking them if it's true or not? They'll just deny it!!!!!

March 15

Pentagon Reveals the Jaw-Dropping Cost of Trump’s War in First Week

The estimate was for the first week alone.

President Donald Trump’s surprise war on Iran cost the United States over $11.3 billion dollars in its first week.The Pentagon briefed Congress about the estimated cost of “Operation Epic Fury” earlier this week, according to the Associated Press.

The figure is equivalent to $33 per person across the entire 342 million population of the United States.

In just the first weekend of the war, the Pentagon told Congress that it had spent $5.6 billion on advanced munitions—including Tomahawk cruise missiles—alone.

An American Tomahawk missile was behind the bombing of an Iranian elementary school on the first day of the war, according to preliminary findings from a military investigation into the matter.

The strike, which killed more than 175 people, mostly children, was the result of a targeting error by the U.S. military, The New York Times reported on Wednesday.

Trump, 79, said on Monday that “whatever the report shows, I’m OK with that,” after falsely claiming that Iran had access to Tomahawks and fired on their own school.

Domestic gas prices across the nation have also skyrocketed in response to the global conflict, as oil flows from the Gulf have been all but cut off since Iran closed off the passageway on March 2. The number of ships traveling through the vital shipping lane has gone from its daily average of 60 down to 12, according to hormuzstraitmonitor.com.

Trump, 79, has downplayed the economic impact of the conflict, telling Americans, who largely don’t support U.S. attacks on the Middle Eastern country, that the rising costs are a “small price to pay.”

“Short term oil prices, which will drop rapidly when the destruction of the Iran nuclear threat is over, is a very small price to pay for U.S.A., and World, Safety and Peace,” he wrote in a Truth Social post on Sunday. “ONLY FOOLS WOULD THINK DIFFERENTLY!”

Trump’s Energy Secretary, Chris Wright, shared in a statement on Wednesday that the U.S. will release 172 million barrels of oil from the nation’s Strategic Reserve, starting next week.

“For 47 years, Iran and its terrorist proxies have been intent on killing Americans,” Wright said in the statement. “They have manipulated and threatened the energy security of America and its allies. Under President Trump, those days are coming to an end.”

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed on the first day of the U.S. and Israeli joint aerial bombing campaign, along with several top officials, including the defense minister and the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Al Jazeera reports that over 1,200 people have died and over 12,000 have been injured in Iran since the fighting began on Feb. 28.

Eight American service members have died since the conflict began, six of whom were killed by an Iranian retaliatory drone strike on a mobile operations center in Port Shuaiba, Kuwait. The Pentagon also confirmed on Wednesday that 140 American military personnel have been injured.

The White House did not immediately return a request for comment.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/pentagon-reveals-the-jaw-dropping-cost-of-trumps-war-on-iran-in-first-week/?

March 15

MAGA Millionaire Delivers Cold News to Struggling Americans

The half-billionaire MAGA senator said Americans can expect prices to remain high for a while.

Florida Senator Rick Scott, one of the wealthiest lawmakers in Congress, gave some bad news to Americans struggling at the pump.

Scott, 73, told CNN’s Kate Bolduan on CNN News Central on Wednesday that thanks to President Donald Trump’s war on Iran, Americans expect inflated gas prices at home to last “for a while.”

“We want prices to come down. I think, unfortunately, prices are gonna be up for a while until this ends,” Scott, whose estimated net worth exceeds $500 million, said. “But with Venezuela coming, American oil and gas coming, with hopefully a positive resolution to this conflict, then prices will come down even further.”

The national average gallon of gas costs over $0.60 more than it did a month ago, according to AAA, thanks largely in part to Trump’s surprise war with Israel against Iran that launched on Feb. 28.

Commercial shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has dropped considerably since the conflict began, as Iran declared the vital trade passageway closed on March 2. Its normal daily average of 60 ships traveling through has shrunk to 12, according to hormuzstraitmonitor.com.

“Is it gonna be easy to get the Strait of Hormuz open? It never was gonna be easy,” the MAGA senator said. “Iran has a lot of small ships; they can put out mines. It’s going to be very difficult.”

“We all want gas prices to come down,” Scott added. “This president doesn’t want gas prices higher. But we have to be realistic.”Trump, 79, said in a Truth Social post on Sunday that inflated oil prices at home were a “small price” for Americans, who largely don’t support U.S. attacks on Iran, to pay.

“Short term oil prices, which will drop rapidly when the destruction of the Iran nuclear threat is over, is a very small price to pay for U.S.A., and World, Safety and Peace,” Trump wrote. “ONLY FOOLS WOULD THINK DIFFERENTLY!”

In less than two weeks, the U.S. attacks on Iran, dubbed “Operation Epic Fury” by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, have already cost the country billions of dollars—including $5.8 billion in advanced munitions within the first two days of the operation.

The advanced munitions used by the U.S. include Tomahawk cruise missiles, one of which, reports say, struck an Iranian elementary girls’ school, killing approximately 175 people, many of whom were children.

The president claimed on Monday that Iran was in possession of Tomahawks and could have been responsible for the tragedy. Only three countries, the U.S., the United Kingdom, and Australia, have Tomahawk missiles readily available for combat use. The UK and Australia are not involved in the conflict.

The Daily Beast reached out to Scott for comment.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/maga-millionaire-senator-rick-scott-delivers-cold-news-to-struggling-americans/#user-comments

March 15

Intelligence Leak Demolishes Trump’s Brags About ‘Winning’ War

“Unconditional surrender” doesn’t appear to be close.

The Iranian government is not about to collapse, U.S. intelligence has found, undercutting Donald Trump’s claim that his war was won.

On the eleventh day of the war, for which Trump has demanded Iran’s “unconditional surrender,” signs point to a protracted conflict if the U.S. and Israel maintain their assault.

The country’s leadership is largely intact and maintains control of the population, three sources familiar with intelligence reports told Reuters.

One source said a “multitude” of reports—the most recent of which was completed in the last few days—found “consistent analysis that the regime is not in danger” of collapse and “retains control of the Iranian public.”

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and dozens of top military officials were killed in the first day of the war. Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba Khamenei, was chosen to replace him. He has not given any public indication that he is negotiating a surrender.

Yet Trump has consistently maintained America’s success, claiming Wednesday that “they have no systems of control. We’re just riding free range over their country.”

On Monday, he told Republicans at a lawmakers’ retreat in Miami that the war had been “won in many ways.”

“We’ve already won in many ways,” he said, but admitted, “We haven’t won enough. We go forward, more determined than ever to achieve ultimate victory that will end this long-running danger once and for all."

He also told CBS News, “I think the war is very complete, pretty much.”

Then on Wednesday in Kentucky, Trump said, “We’ve won, let me tell you, we’ve won. You never like to say too early you won, we won... in the first hour it was over.”

Just minutes later, though, he was suggesting otherwise. “We don’t want to leave early, do we?” he said. “We got to finish the job, right?”

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Central Intelligence Agency declined to comment to Reuters.

White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said in a statement, “President Trump and the administration have clearly outlined their objectives with regard to Operation Epic Fury: destroy Iran’s ballistic missiles and production capacity, demolish their navy, end their ability to arm proxies, and prevent them from ever obtaining a nuclear weapon.”

“The United States Military is meeting or surpassing all of its goals, and the regime is getting absolutely crushed, as evidenced by the 90 percent decline in ballistic missile attacks,” she continued.

The Daily Beast has contacted the Pentagon for comment.

As the war has continued, Trump has faced questions about its goal and any plans he has for ending it. The growing list of U.S. casualties has compounded pressure.

An attack that killed six U.S. service members also caused traumatic brain injuries, memory loss, and other “urgent” health issues for dozens of others who were sent to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany for care, CBS News reported Wednesday.

Trump, on March 2, refused to rule out U.S. boots in the ground in Iran.

The U.S. appears to be relying in part on Iranian Kurdish militias based on Iraq to destroy the regime. But U.S. intelligence reports, sources also told Reuters, have been skeptical of their odds of success.

Specifically, the groups are short in weaponry and manpower.

The first week of the war cost the U.S. $11.3 billion, the Pentagon told Congress. Part of what U.S. taxpayers ended up paying for, a preliminary military investigation found, was the bombing of an Iranian girls’ school, which killed over 175 people, most of whom were children. Trump had previously claimed that Iran was responsible, but then backtracked. On Monday, he said that “whatever the report shows, I’m okay with that.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/intelligence-leak-demolishes-donald-trumps-brags-about-winning-iran-war/?

March 16

Trump administration kicks off new process to try to replace tariffs struck down by Supreme Court

The Trump administration on Wednesday opened a new trade investigation into manufacturing in foreign countries — an effort that comes after the Supreme Court struck down President Donald Trump’s previous use of tariffs by declaring an economic emergency. Read more.

Why this matters:

Trump and his team have made clear that they’re seeking to replace the hundreds of billions of dollars in lost revenues by using different laws to establish new tariffs. The administration is starting investigations under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, which could eventually lead to new import taxes.
The government is looking for what it deems to be persistent trade surpluses with the U.S. and policies such as subsidies and the suppression of workers' wages, among other factors. The entities subject to the investigation include China, the European Union, Singapore, Switzerland, Norway, Indonesia, Malaysia, Cambodia, Thailand, South Korea, Vietnam, the self-governing island of Taiwan, Bangladesh, Mexico, Japan and India.

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