Thursday, April 16, 2026
Trump's Minions:
Another Finger Puppet:
Divider in Chief:
Sunday, March 15, 2026
Dispatches April 2026
GLOBAL CHAOS AS TRUMP’S IRAN WAR SENDS MARKETS DIVING. President Donald Trump’s unprovoked and unconstitutional war against Iran is sending shockwaves across the global economy in the form of skyrocketing oil prices and diving financial markets, Brad Reed noted at Common Dreams (3/9).
The prices of both Brent crude oil and WTI crude oil futures on March 9, the 10th day since Trump ordered the attack on Iran, surged past $100 per barrel, as countries across the Middle East announced production cuts in the wake of chaos and destruction caused by the Iran war.
The impact of the price surge on the US stock market was immediate, as the Dow Jones Industrial Average opened Monday trading down by more than 600 points, while the Nasdaq dropped by 300 points.
According to a report from the Wall Street Journal, both Iraq and Kuwait have announced oil production curbs because they have been unable to ship their supply through the Strait of Hormuz and have thus run out of space to store excess petroleum.
JPMorgan Chase analyst Natasha Kaneva noted to the Journal that this is the first time in recorded history that the Strait of Hormuz has ever been completely closed off for shipping, and warned the economic consequences would be severe.
“To me, it was not just the worst-case scenario,” Kaneva said of the strait’s closing. “It was an unthinkable scenario.”
The Journal wrote that Trump’s decision to launch a war with Iran has already sparked “the most severe energy crisis since the 1970s,” which is now “threatening the global economy.”
Petroleum industry analyst Patrick De Haan wrote in a March 9 analysis that US drivers should expect to feel the impact of this oil shock in the coming days.
“Gasoline prices in many states could climb another 20 to 50 cents per gallon this week, with price-cycling markets potentially seeing increases as early as today,” De Haan projected. “Diesel may rise even more sharply, with increases of 35 to 75 cents per gallon possible as global distillate markets react.”
In a March 9 analysis posted on his Substack page, Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman dove into the logistics of stopping and restarting oil production, and argued that the impact of the strait’s closure will grow significantly as time goes on.
“As the Strait remains closed, producers are shutting down, and this isn’t like turning off a tap that can be quickly restarted,” Krugman explained. “There’s apparently a real nonlinearity here: a two-week closure of the Strait has much more than twice the adverse impact on global oil supply as a one-week closure. If this goes on for multiple weeks... oil prices, which retreated slightly off their highs early this morning, could go much higher.”
Krugman said that the shock was not yet bad enough to make an economic crisis inevitable because the US is much less dependent on oil than it was in the 1970s.
Nonetheless, Krugman cautioned, “the situation is scary.”
Punchbowl News noted that Trump has not been helping his party by expressing indifference bordering on hostility to Americans’ concerns about how his war will impact their personal finances.
“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 in a March 8 Truth Social post. “ONLY FOOLS WOULD THINK DIFFERENTLY!”
TRUMP’S ‘SLAUGHTER AT SEA’ CONTINUES, AS US MILITARY KILLS 6 MORE IN EASTERN PACIFIC. With the Trump administration’s unprovoked war on Iran spiraling out of control, sending oil prices skyrocketing and leading to war crimes allegations against the US, the public’s attention has largely shifted away from the White House’s bombings of boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean—but the killings of six men on March 8 made clear that the administration has no intention of ending its deadly attacks on boats it claims, without providing evidence, are involved in drug trafficking, Julia Conley noted at Common Dreams (3/9).
US Southern Command said in a social media post Sunday evening that, at the direction of Gen. Francis Donovan, it had struck a vessel “operated by designated terrorist organizations.”
The announcement echoed previous communications about lethal boat strikes since last September, claiming that the vessel “was transiting along known narco-trafficking routes in the eastern Pacific and was engaged in narco-trafficking operations,” but citing no evidence the US forces used to make that determination.
The bombing was the 42nd strike carried out by the Trump administration in six months, according to Adam Isacson of the Washington Office on Latin America.
The New York Times reported that at least 156 people have been killed in the boat strikes, while Isacson placed the number at 158. He emphasized that the victims’ “guilt for a noncapital crime” remains unknown.
Drug trafficking in the Latin America region has typically been treated as a criminal offense, with US law enforcement agencies sometimes working with the Coast Guard to intercept boats suspected of carrying illicit substances to the US, arresting those on board, and confiscating the drugs.
Under President Trump’s second administration, the Department of Defense has insisted boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific pose an imminent threat to the US and that an influx of drugs from Latin America qualifies as an attack on US soil.
The deadly bombings the Pentagon has carried out as a result have led legal experts to accuse Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and others involved in the strikes of war crimes and murder.
Trump claimed to Congress in October that the US is in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels in Venezuela, but Congress has not authorized attacks on boats or inside Venezuela.
On March 13, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights was scheduled to hold its first-ever hearing on the legality of the US boat strikes, following a push for action from human rights groups.
‘WHILE NO ONE’S LOOKING,’ TRUMP DOJ SETTLES ANTITRUST CASE WITH LIVE NATION-TICKETMASTER. The Trump Justice Department on March 9 reportedly reached a tentative deal with Live Nation—the owner of Ticketmaster—to settle a Biden-era antitrust lawsuit that aimed to break up the company, accusing it of illegally monopolizing the live entertainment industry, Jake Johnson noted at Common Dreams (3/9).
News of the settlement, which would not require a breakup of Live Nation, came days after the trial began, with a lawyer for the Trump Justice Department’s decimated antitrust division saying last week that the company abuses its market power and earns its massive profits “through illegal action.” The antitrust division’s counsel in the case, David Dahlquist, was apparently not made aware of the settlement until he appeared in court March 9.
Lee Hepner, senior legal counsel at the American Economic Liberties Project, said it is “highly unorthodox for the Justice Department’s lead litigator to be left out of the loop on the settlement and highly prejudicial to the jury’s deliberations.”
“According to every observer, this trial was already going well for the Justice Department and states,” said Hepner. “They had just won summary judgment and a jury had already heard evidence of Live Nation’s longstanding pattern of retaliation against venues who had attempted to open the market to competition. State AGs are once again left to clean up the mess left by this Administration’s incompetence.”
Under the settlement, which must be approved by a judge, Live Nation “would pay a fine of up to $280 million and divest itself of at least 13 amphitheaters across the country as it opens up its ticketing processes so that competitors can share in the sale of tickets,” the Associated Press reported.
The National Independent Venue Association (NIVA), a trade group representing thousands of independent live entertainment venues, festivals, and promoters, noted in a statement that the reported $280 million settlement amount “is the equivalent of four days of [Live Nation’s] 2025 revenue, which means they could potentially make it back by this Friday.”
“The reported settlement does not appear to include any specific and explicit protections for fans, artists, or independent venues and festivals,” said Stephen Parker, NIVA’s executive director. “Reported details also indicate that ticket resale platforms could be further empowered through new requirements for Ticketmaster to host their listings, which would likely exacerbate the price gouging potential for predatory resellers and the platforms that serve them.”
“If these facts are true,” Parker added, “NIVA views this as a failure of the justice system.”
The antitrust lawsuit against Live Nation was filed in 2024 after a nearly two-year investigation launched amid mounting public outrage aimed at Ticketmaster, spurred in part by its botched presale of Taylor Swift concert tickets in 2022. Then-President Joe Biden’s Justice Department filed the complaint in partnership with 30 state attorneys general, most of whom vowed to continue the fight without the Trump administration’s support.
“For years, Live Nation has made enormous profits by exploiting its illegal monopoly and raising costs for shows,” said New York Attorney General Letitia James. “My office has led a bipartisan group of attorneys general in suing Live Nation for taking advantage of fans, venues, and artists, and we are committed to holding Live Nation accountable.”
The settlement deal comes weeks after Gail Slater, the former head of the Justice Department’s antitrust arm, was pushed out by DOJ leadership. Prior to Slater’s removal, Live Nation executives and lobbyists had reportedly been negotiating the terms of a possible settlement with senior Justice Department officials outside of the antitrust office, heightening corruption concerns.
Emily Peterson-Cassin, policy director at the Demand Progress Education Fund, said in a statement that “this settlement amounts to a slap on the wrist that tinkers around the edges of the real problem: Live Nation’s monopoly.”
‘’FBI HAS THE RECORDS’: 2020 ARIZONA AUDIT INFO SUBPOENAED. The FBI has served the Arizona State Senate a grand jury subpoena for voting records related to the 2020 presidential election in Maricopa County, Arizona, in the latest sign that the federal government is working to investigate an election that President Donald Trump lost more than five years ago, Brad Reed noted at Common Dreams (3/9).
As the New York Times reported March 9, the grand jury subpoena “was issued in recent days to the Arizona State Senate, which oversaw a sprawling but partisan audit of the vote result that was ordered by Senate Republicans in Maricopa County” months after Trump lost the 2020 race to former President Joe Biden.
Warren Petersen, the Republican president of the Arizona Senate, confirmed that he had received and complied with the subpoena, and revealed in a social media post that “the FBI has the records” related to the post-2020 audit.
As noted by MS NOW reporter Vaughn Hillyard, the audit in question was conducted by Cyber Ninjas, a now-defunct online security firm that confirmed Trump’s defeat in the Grand Canyon State.
“The Cyber Ninjas found that, in fact, Joe Biden had won the county, per their hand count, by 360 more votes than originally believed,” Hillyard explained.
The Trump administration’s subpoena of the audit records comes at the same time that it is demanding Democratic Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes hand over his state’s voter registration data.
As explained by the Brennan Center for Justice, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) is “seeking access to highly sensitive voter information, including partial Social Security numbers,” as part of its subpoena.
The Brennan Center also said it teamed up with the Campaign Legal Center to file a brief to oppose the Trump administration’s lawsuit against Arizona, which it described as “part of an unprecedented nationwide effort to force states to turn over private voter data.”
The FBI in January executed a search warrant at the Fulton County Election Hub and Operations Center that allowed federal agents to seize 2020 election ballots, tabulator tapes, digital data, and voter rolls.
Shortly after the raid, Fulton County Commissioner Mo Ivory predicted that this kind of operation would likely be spreading to other counties and states.
“Fulton County is right now the target,” Ivory said. “But it is coming to a place near you. This is the beginning of the chaos of 2026 that is about to ensue.”
TRUMP’S UNIQUELY UNPOPULAR WAR ON IRAN. You almost couldn’t design a more unpopular war. Not only do very few Americans support President Donald Trump’s attacks on Iran starting Feb. 28, but our chief ally in the ongoing conflict, Israel, also faces its lowest favorability in the U.S. in decades, Andrew Mangan reported at DailyKos (3/8).
Just 39% of Americans support Trump’s latest attacks on Iran, according to an average of 12 nonpartisan polls that Daily Kos collected. An average of 50% oppose the attacks, and 16% are unsure. (Those do not total 100% due to not all polls containing all response options.)
And there is reason to believe that support for the war is closer to its ceiling than its floor. A CNN/SSRS survey did not allow respondents to choose “unsure” as an option, and when forced to pick a side, 41% of Americans support the strikes, making for only a 1-percentage-point improvement from the average. Meanwhile, 59% oppose them—a 9-point jump over the average.
Historically, wars tend to begin with much higher levels of support. Just days after the U.S. invaded Iraq in March 2003, Gallup found that 75% of Americans supported sending in troops. The same was true of the Afghanistan War (89% support in November 2001) and the Vietnam War (61% support in September 1965).
But as those wars dragged on and their financial burdens mounted alongside their casualties, domestic support dropped away. Just five years after the invasion of Iraq, Gallup recorded that 63% of Americans thought sending troops was a mistake. Even the Afghanistan War, started in response to the nation’s worst terrorist attack, hit net-negative support shortly before its end in 2021, after nearly 20 years of fighting.
Fear of starting a “forever war,” like the ones Trump campaigned against in 2024, has driven his administration to downplay how long the war on Iran might last.
“Four to five weeks,” Trump told The New York Times.
But most of the public isn’t buying that timetable. Just 25% of Americans think the war will be over in a matter of days or weeks, according to a CBS News/YouGov poll. That’s roughly the same share that thinks the U.S. will be embroiled in Trump’s Iran war for years (22%). Even the fact that 1 in 4 Americans say they’re “not sure” how long it will go on expresses pessimism about the campaign.
“We are just getting started,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said, as if that was what the American public wanted to hear.
Trump has refused to rule out deploying ground troops to Iran, but if he did that, public opinion would likely sour even further. Just 24% of Americans support a hypothetical troop deployment, while 58% oppose it, a survey from the Angus Reid Institute found.
At the same time, it is easy to imagine Trump claiming premature victory in the near future, only for the conflict to carry on or metastasize, much like former President George W. Bush’s boast of “Mission Accomplished” just six weeks after the U.S. invaded Iraq. The war lasted for another 400 weeks.
WHY TRUMP BROKE HIS PROMISE TO MESS WITH TEXAS SENATE RACE. Republicans were breathing a little easier on March 4 after Donald Trump said he would intervene to end a bruising GOP runoff in the Texas Senate race.
Yet nearly a week later, Trump still hadn’t made good on his promise to endorse in the race and force the candidate he doesn’t pick to drop out. And a new poll from a Democratic super PAC shows Republicans will be in trouble in November no matter which GOP nominee emerges—which could keep Trump on the sidelines, Emily Singer reported at Daily Kos (3/9).
“Cornyn is radioactive with the MAGA base. Paxton has baggage. And James Talarico is leading,” Lauren French, spokeswoman for poll sponsor Senate Majority PAC, wrote in a post on X.
After neither Sen. John Cornyn nor Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton received at least 50% of the vote in the state’s March 3 Republican primary, Senate Republicans both publicly and privately lobbied Trump to endorse Cornyn, practically begging their Dear Leader to get involved and push Paxton out of the May 26 runoff election because they view him as the less electable candidate.
Anonymous Republicans told reporters that Trump would be backing Cornyn, whom establishment GOP leaders view as more in line with the Texas electorate.
However, the reports led prominent right-wing figures—including Trump’s eldest son—to go berserk about the possibility of the president picking Cornyn over MAGA darling Paxton. That possibly spooked an already hesitant Trump from getting involved in the GOP civil war playing out in the race.
On March 9, Democrats released an internal poll that found Talarico leading both Cornyn and Paxton in a November matchups.
“Public Policy Polling’s newest Texas survey finds no meaningful difference in electability between John Cornyn and Ken Paxton,” the PPP polling memo says, along with head-to-head findings that show Talarico leading both Cornyn (44% to 43%) and Paxton (47% to 45%).
The poll also found that Cornyn is more unpopular than scandal-tarred Paxton—who has been impeached, indicted, and had affairs with at least two women who were not his wife—eliminating the establishment Republican argument that Cornyn is more electable.
According to the poll, just 24% of Texas voters have a favorable view of Cornyn, while a slightly higher 30% have a favorable view of Paxton.
Cornyn’s approval rating is lower likely because Republican voters view him far more unfavorably than Paxton—yet another data point that could keep Trump from getting involved. The poll found just 38% of Trump voters view Cornyn favorably, while 55% view Paxton in the same light.
That data point alone could keep Trump on the sidelines, since he could view an endorsement as betraying his voters.
Trump, for his part, is close with Paxton, as he (unsuccessfully) aided in Trump’s illegal plot to overturn the 2020 election and has fought Trump’s culture war battles in the courts. Cornyn, on the other hand, said Trump should not have run again in the 2024 election and only endorsed Trump once it became clear that he was going to be the GOP nominee. Even a possibly dementia-ridden Trump is sure to remember that slight.
Even if Trump endorses Cornyn, Paxton said he wouldn’t heed Trump’s demand to drop out of the race, which at the end of the day would leave Republicans with the same ugly proxy war they were looking to avoid. And polling released ahead of the primary suggested that Trump’s endorsement may not even be enough to help Cornyn win.
Ultimately, it looks like Texas’ Senate race will be competitive. The national electoral environment looks to be increasingly hostile for Republicans as Trump has broken his campaign promises of lowering prices and keeping the country out of new foreign wars.
And Talarico—who has made his Christian faith a cornerstone of his campaign—is a uniquely intriguing Democratic candidate.
The PPP poll found that he has a positive favorability rating, with 41% of Texans viewing him favorably as opposed to the 35% who hold the opposite view, even as Republicans have hit him with attacks on his policy positions.
“These numbers suggest a close race regardless of who the GOP nominates,” the PPP memo stated. “The Texas Senate race will be highly competitive; driven by Talarico’s broad approval, and Cornyn and Paxton’s liabilities.”
REPUBLICAN SENATOR PULLS TRICK BY ANOINTING HIS SUCCESSOR. Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont) pulled a bait-and-switch on GOP primary voters March 4, withdrawing his name from the ballot minutes before the filing deadline and thus denying potential successors the chance to prepare to enter the race, Emily Singer noted at Daily Kos (3/5).
Meanwhile, behind the scenes, Daines had coordinated with his successor of choice—Montana U.S. Attorney Kurt Alme—to ensure Alme was the only Republican on the ballot.
Even Donald Trump appeared to be in on the scheme. He immediately endorsed Alme in a post on Truth Social. “Kurt is exceptional, and I will be giving him, based on Steve’s strongest recommendation, my Complete and Total Endorsement,” Trump wrote.
The collusion led the political handicapping outlet InsideElections.com to recategorize the seat as more competitive, going from “Solid Republican” to “Likely Republican.”
Still, Montana’s Senate race remains a reach for Democrats.
Trump won the state by 20 points in 2024. That was too much for Sen. Jon Tester (D), to overcome. He lost to Tim Sheehy by 7 points.
However, former University of Montana President Seth Bodnar is running as an independent, and he seemingly has Tester’s backing. If a blue wave crashes across the 2026 midterms, then an open-seat race with bad blood on the Republican side could lead to problems for Trump’s party.
Ultimately, this is the second time in a week that Montana Republicans have tried to pull the wool over GOP voters’ eyes with last-minute retirements that have denied potential candidates the chance to gather the signatures to run.
Republican Rep. Ryan Zinke of Montana announced on Monday that he isn’t seeking reelection. He and Trump immediately backed right-wing radio host Aaron Flint to be his successor, a sign that there was collusion in this instance as well.
Of course, it’s incredibly hypocritical of Republicans to deny their voters a choice of nominees in races—something Trump is also trying to do in Texas with an allegedly forthcoming endorsement in the GOP primary runoff.
It was Trump himself who slammed then-President Joe Biden’s decision to drop out of the 2024 presidential race and anoint then-Vice President Kamala Harris as his successor, calling it a “coup” and a “vicious, violent overthrow of a president.”
House Republicans even reprimanded Democratic Rep. Chuy García of Illinois for doing the very thing Daines just pulled.
It turns out that Trump and his party thinks it’s wrong for a politician to anoint a successor only when they are a Democrat.
Go figure.
THE ONLY REFUGEES LEGALLY SETTLED IN THE US SINCE OCTOBER WERE WHITE SOUTH AFRICANS. Not a single refugee who isn’t a White South African has been legally resettled in the United States since October, according to the State Department’s most recent arrivals report, Stephen Prager noted at Common Dreams (3/5).
The report, published in February, shows that from the start of October 2025 and the end of January 2026, just 1,651 people were admitted under the US Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP), which allows those fearing persecution based on race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or social group to apply for refuge in the United States.
Aside from just three, every single one of them was from South Africa.
Three Afghan refugees were also reported to have been settled in Colorado in November. But since then, their admission has been indefinitely suspended, and those who have entered may be at risk of deportation.
During that same period a year earlier—the final months of the Biden administration—a total of 37,596 refugees arrived in the US, with the greatest numbers coming from the Middle East, South Asia, and Africa.
The Trump administration dramatically curbed refugee admissions during its first year in power. On his first day back in office last January, President Donald Trump suspended USRAP processing, leaving around 600,000 people in the pipeline suddenly stranded, including roughly 10,000 who’d already booked flights.
Around 130,000 of those refugees had already been through the State Department’s meticulous and taxing vetting process, and were instead “left to languish in refugee camps around the world after being given the promise of safety and a new life in America,” as a group of Democrats in Congress put it.
The next month, however, Trump carved out an exception to the suspension exclusively for White South Africans, who he has falsely claimed face a “genocide,” and severe “discrimination” from land redistribution policies intended to correct extreme apartheid-era inequalities.
Saturday, March 14, 2026
Editorial: Trump Gets a Taste for War
Donald Trump started the war early Saturday morning, Feb. 28, urged on by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as U.S. and Israeli forces shelled military and civilian sites in Iran, without bothering to get approval from Congress. Trump claims he was justified in attacking Iraq because “Iran has waged a 47-year war against the United States,” and he said he expects this war to be relatively short, expecting unconditional surrender.
Trump apparently believes that “war” dates back to Nov. 4, 1979, when Iranian students seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and took American hostages after President Jimmy Carter allowed the deposed Shah of Iran to enter the U.S. for medical treatment. The hostages were released on Jan. 20, 1981, after Ronald Reagan was inaugurated. The U.S. and Iran had a hostile relationship until President Barack Obama in 2015 reached an agreement with Iran under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) aiming to ensure a peaceful nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief. Iran restricted its uranium enrichment capabilities, reduced its stockpile of enriched uranium, and allowed for international monitoring by the International Atomic Energy Agency. But Trump withdrew the U.S. from the agreement in 2018 and put sanctions back in place, resulting in Iranian stopping compliance. Trump further undermined any confidence in U.S. good intentions in January 2020 when he ordered the assassination of Qasem Soleimani, commander of Iran’s Quds Force, when Soleimani was traveling to meet Iraq’s prime minister.
In his second term, Trump in June 2025 ordered U.S. bombers to drop 30,000-pound bombs on two key underground uranium enrichment plants, which Trump said obliterated Iran’s nuclear program that Israel viewed as an existential threat. A Pentagon spokesman said the bombing likely set back the program two years. But in the new year Trump has been itching to engage in full-scale war and regime change — the very sort of “forever war” he promised he would not do.
In waging these wars, U.S. Secretary of “War” Pete Hegseth said the U.S. will not abide by “stupid rules of engagement,” and he boasted of raining down “death and destruction from the sky all day long.”
According to the Human Rights Activists News Agency, part of a US-based human rights monitor for Iran, at least 1,168 civilians were killed in the first week of U.S.-Israeli attacks. The Iranian government on the seventh day of the war put the death toll at 1,332 people.
The war started Feb. 28 with a series of Israeli airstrikes that targeted Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, supreme leader of Iran, and other high-ranking Iranian officials.around Tehran. In addition to Khamenei, who was 86 and ailing, the strikes also killed Khamenei’s wife, daughter, son-in-law, three of his grandchildren, and his daughter-in-law.
Trump said he expected to have a role in selecting the new leader of Iran, and he discounted Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba, a 56-year-old cleric whom Trump dismissed March 5 as “a lightweight.” Trump added, “I have to be involved in the appointment, like with Delcy [Rodriguez] in Venezuela.” Three days later, the “lightweight” was appointed without Trump’s input. Axios reported “Mojtaba is expected to be more hardline than his father, and his ascent means the Iranian regime may get more repressive.”
Daoud Kuttab of Al Jazeera on March 2 noted it is highly unlikely that Khamenei’s successor would be as open to negotiations as his father was. Statements by Omani interlocutors during talks in Muscat and Geneva pointed to major concessions on the nuclear issue that Khamenei was prepared to make. It is unlikely that his replacement would have the political space to follow suit.
In the first week of the year, more than 3,643 civilian sites were damaged in attacks attributed to the U.S. and Israel, according to the Iranian Red Crescent Society—including 3,090 homes, 528 commercial centers, 13 medical facilities and nine Red Crescent centers.
At least 192 children were killed across the Middle East in the first week of the war. Most of them were girls ages 7-12 who were killed on the first morning of the attack when a girls’ elementary school in the southern Iranian town of Minab was shelled.
At least 175 people were reported killed in the attack, which unnamed officials have said was “likely” carried out by the United States, according to Reuters. HuffPost reported that Pentagon officials briefed Congress that the US “was most likely responsible.” U.S. and Israeli officials claimed Iranian military were responsible for the attack.
Eyewitnesses and relatives of victims told Middle East Eye that the attack was a “double-tap” strike, in which survivors and first responders appeared to be targeted following the initial bombing. An Al Jazeera investigation has concluded that the attack was likely “deliberate.” Human Rights Watch said the bombing of the school should be investigated as a possible war crime.
Hegseth said during a March 4 press conference the Pentagon was investigating the matter, but offered no further indication of concern.
That same day, the unarmed Iranian warship IRIS Dina was torpedoed by a U.S. submarine in the Indian Ocean returning from a multinational naval training exercise hosted by the Indian government.
The U.S. submarine left the area without seeking survivors, but Sri Lanka’s navy recovered 87 bodies and rescued 32 survivors from the IRIS Dena, with 10 Iranian sailors unaccounted for..
Iran’s Foreign Minister framed the sinking as an attack on a vessel that had been under Indian diplomatic protection.
The Pentagon offered a different view. Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, described the strike at a March 4 briefing as a demonstration of unmatched American military capability.
“To hunt, find and kill an out-of-area deployer is something that only the United States can do at this type of scale,” Caine said.
U.S. officials have maintained throughout Operation Epic Fury that Iranian naval vessels operating in international waters remain valid military targets, regardless of recent port calls.
The war has been a boon for the U.S. oil industry.
Oil prices surpassed $100 a barrel March 9, as Middle East nations announced production cuts in the wake of chaos and destruction of oil facilities in Iran, which has closed the Strait of Hormuz, through which much of the oil to the West must pass.
In the U.S., where oil production facilities remained intact, the average price of a gallon of regular gasoline rose to $3.539 on March 10, up 61.8 cents from a month earlier, according to AAA motor club. Diesel was selling for $4.78 a gallon, up $1.121 over a month. And it’s all profits for U.S. oil companies.
In a post on social media on March 8, Trump criticized the mounting concerns and cast the price hikes as temporary.
“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, noting, “ONLY FOOLS WOULD THINK DIFFERENTLY!”
You may judge Trump through his enablers in Congress at the midterm elections in November. If Trump allows it. — JMC
Friday, March 13, 2026
The New Nazis
The New Nazis:
Donald Trump is on a rampage of distraction. Revelations from the Epstein files are closing in and he needs to cause chaos, possibly upend the midterm elections, possibly assume the mantle of dictator, or both.
So, he's starting wars, sending his ICE thugs to arrest innocent people, and shutting down free speech.
Sadly, most of the Republican party is going right along with him.They're enabling this wannabe dictator and they're holding the country hostage.
They are the new Nazis.
Art by Kevin Kreneck. For more Graphics and Greeting Cards, go to https://kkreneck.wixsite.com/mysite
Trump's Nuts
Trump's nuts:
Observers have noted Trump's apparent dementia and cognitive decline.
He's old and his brain is slipping - sometimes dramatically. Whether threatening to invade other countries, forgetting where he is, getting Iceland and Greenland mixed up, or just getting lost in his own word salad; the man is an embarrassment. He's the butt of jokes told by our allies overseas.
Unfortunately, he's also the US president, so he's a really dangerous joke.
Art by Kevin Kreneck. For more Graphics and Greeting Cards, go to https://kkreneck.wixsite.com/mysite
President Piggy
President Piggy:
Trump has leveraged the presidency into millions of dollars for himself, his family and his inner circle.
The tariffs are of special concern. Senators Schiff and Galagos are calling for investigations into possible insider trading as they relate
to Trump's suspicious use of tariffs.
Art by Kevin Kreneck. For more Graphics and Greeting Cards, go to https://kkreneck.wixsite.com/mysite
The Nazi in Trump's Brain
The Nazi in Trump's brain:
Stephen Miller Has taken on an increasingly important role in the Trump administration.
Whether it's rolling back civil rights, the forced separation of children from their parents at the southern border, or simply targeting marginalized communities, Stephen Miller's effect on the Trump administration has been corrosive.
He openly embraces notoriously racist and anti-immigrant far-right extremists groups.
He's the Nazi always sitting in Trump's increasingly feeble brain
Art by Kevin Kreneck. For more Graphics and Greeting Cards, go to https://kkreneck.wixsite.com/mysite
Monday, February 16, 2026
Dispatches March 2026
TRUMP EXPLOITS 250TH ANNIVERSARY OF US INDEPENDENCE FOR YET ANOTHER GRIFT. Allies of the Trump administration, in partnership with the White House, are reportedly using the upcoming 250th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence as another opportunity to solicit deep-pocketed donors, enticing them with promises of access to the president and other rewards, Jake Johnson noted at Common Dreams (2/9).
The New York Times reported Feb. 8 that donors who give at least $1 million to Freedom 250—a group announced by President Donald Trump in December—have been promised a path to “gain access to, and seek favor with, a president who has maintained a keen interest in fundraising, and a willingness to use the levers of government power to reward financial supporters,” including through his crypto scam and ballroom project.
Trump has described Freedom 250 as a “public-private partnership” dedicated to organizing “a celebration of America like no other” later this year. Listed as official corporate sponsors of the initiative are prominent corporate names, including ExxonMobil, Mastercard, and Palantir.
The Times obtained a donor solicitation document circulated by Meredith O’Rourke, Trump’s top fundraiser. Donors who give at least $1 million to Freedom 250 “will receive prominent logo placement at Freedom 250 events,” which are expected to include UFC fights and an IndyCar race.
Freedom 250 appears to have been created to dodge oversight that applies to America250, a bipartisan congressional commission formed to plan official celebrations of the nation’s semiquincentennial.
“American history is being subordinated to Trump’s cult of personality,” Dan Friedman and Amanda Moore wrote in Mother Jones’ March-April issue. “The president’s face is suddenly everywhere—next to George Washington on America250-themed National Parks passes; alongside Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt on giant banners hanging from federal buildings; on a $1 coin under consideration by the US Treasury.”
“Faced with sporadic pushback from a congressional commission overseeing America250 and from career officials at various agencies, Trump is now seeking to evade even these modest constraints,” they added, pointing to the launch of Freedom 250.
Public Citizen demanded a congressional probe of Freedom 250’s activities, which the watchdog organization’s co-presidents described as a “potential diversion of taxpayer funds for highly partisan purposes.” According to the Times, roughly $10 million in taxpayer funds has “already been redirected to Freedom 250 from America250 for a fleet of six mobile museums called ‘Freedom Trucks’ that rolled out last month.”
“Donald Trump and his henchmen have sabotaged what should be a unifying moment and appear intent on instead creating a highly divisive, corporate-funded, ideologically extremist exercise,” said Public Citizen’s Lisa Gilbert. “Once again, nothing is sacred in the Trump administration, not even the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Everything is for sale to corporate and potentially foreign interests.”
BLACK CAUCUS CHAIR RAKES ‘BIGOTED AND RACIST REGIME’ AS TRUMP REFUSES TO APOLOGIZE FOR OBAMA APE POST. As President Donald Trump refused to apologize for a now-deleted social media post in which former President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle Obama are portrayed as apes, the head of the Congressional Black Caucus on Feb. 6 blasted what she called the “bigoted and racist regime” in the White House, Brett Wilkins noted at Common Dreams (4/7).
“It’s very clear that there was an intent to harm people, to hurt people, with this video,” Congressional Black Caucus Chair Yvette Clarke (D-NY) said in an interview with The Associated Press. “Every week we are, as the American people, put in a position where we have to respond to something very cruel or something extremely off-putting that this administration does. It’s a part of their M.O. at this point.”
After dismissing the widespread revulsion—including by some Republican lawmakers—over Trump’s sharing of the racist election conspiracy video on his Truth Social network as “fake outrage,” the White House subsequently claimed that an aide “erroneously made the post,” which was deleted after nearly 12 hours online.
The president told reporters aboard Air Force One that evening, “I didn’t make a mistake” and that he is the “least racist president you’ve had in a long time.”
Trump launched his political career by amplifying the conspiracy theory that Barack Obama was not born in the United States and his 2016 presidential campaign by calling Mexicans “rapists.” Since then, he has made numerous bigoted statements about racial minorities, immigrants, Muslims, women, and others.
Brushing off the administration’s explanation for Trump’s post, Clarke said “they don’t tell the truth.”
“If there wasn’t a climate, a toxic and racist climate within the White House, we wouldn’t see this type of behavior regardless of who it’s coming from,” she contended.
“Here we are, in the year 2026, celebrating the 250th anniversary of the United States of America, the 100th anniversary of the commemoration of Black history, and this is what comes out of the White House on a Friday morning,” the congresswoman added. “It’s beneath all of us.”
Asked what it means that Trump—who rarely retracts anything—deleted the post, Clarke said, “I think it’s more of a political expediency than it is any moral compass.”
“As my mother would say,” she added, “‘Too late. Mercy’s gone.’”
Civil rights groups also condemned Trump, with Color of Change posting on Facebook that “this is white supremacy expressed from the Oval Office.”
“Trump resents what the Obamas represent: A Black family that is accomplished, respected, and widely admired,” the group continued. “Their success contradicts the worldview he has spent years promoting. His attacks follow a clear trajectory—from birther conspiracies questioning Obama’s legitimacy, to false accusations of treason, to now circulating imagery rooted in centuries of racial dehumanization used to justify slavery, lynching, and violence.”
“Republican leadership has been silent,” Color of Change added. “Elected officials who refuse to condemn this behavior are choosing to normalize it.”
NAACP president Derrick Johnson said in a statement that “Donald Trump’s video is blatantly racist, disgusting, and utterly despicable.”
Johnson asserted that Trump is attempting to distract from the cost of living crisis and Jeffrey Epstein scandal.
“You know who isn’t in the Epstein files? Barack Obama,” he said. “You know who actually improved the economy as president? Barack Obama.”
JUDGE DENIES DHS BID TO QUICKLY DEPORT FAMILY OF 5-YEAR-OLD LIAM CONEJO RAMOS. The Trump administration’s bid to expedite deportation proceedings against 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos and his family faltered Feb. 6 as a judge granted them more time to plead their asylum case, Brett Wilkins noted at Common Dreams (4/9).
Danielle Molliver, an attorney for Ramos’ family, told CNN that a judge issued a continuance in the case, postponing it to a later date.
The US Department of Homeland Security filed a motion Feb. 4 seeking to fast-track the Ecuadorian family’s deportation after Liam and his father a federal judge ordered them released from a Texas detention center Jan. 31.
Zena Stenvik, superintendent of the Columbia Heights Public Schools, where Ramos is a student, told CNN the Feb. 6 ruling “provides additional time, and with that, continued uncertainty for a child and his family.”
“Our concern remains centered on Liam and all children who deserve stability, safety, and the opportunity to be in school without fear,” Stenvik added. “We will continue to advocate for outcomes that prioritize children.”
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested Ramos and his father, Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias, in the driveway of their Columbia Heights home on Jan. 20 during Operation Metro Surge, the Trump administration’s ongoing deadly immigration crackdown in the Twin Cities.
They were taken to the Dilley Immigration Processing Center southwest of San Antonio, Texas. Run by ICE and private prison profiteer CoreCivic, the facility has been plagued by reports of poor health and hygiene conditions and accusations of inadequate medical care for children.
Detainees report prison-like conditions and say they’ve been served moldy food infested with worms and forced to drink putrid water. Some have described the facility as “truly a living hell.”
Ramos, who fell ill during his detention in Dilley, and his father were ordered released earlier this month on a federal judge’s order, and is now back in Minnesota.
Molliver accused the Trump administration of retaliating against the family following their release. Assistant DHS Secretary Tricia McLaughlin claimed that “there is nothing retaliatory about enforcing the nation’s immigration laws.”
Arias told Minnesota Public Radio Feb. 6 that he is uncertain about his family’s future.
“The government is moving many pieces, it’s doing everything possible to do us harm, so that they’ll probably deport us,” he said. “We live with that fear too.”
Congressman Joaquin Castro (D-Texas), who helped accompany Ramos and his father back to Minnesota, said at a news conference that DHS “should leave Liam alone.”
“His family came in legally through the asylum process,” Castro said. “And when I left the Dilley detention center, one of the ICE officers explained to me that his father was on a one-year parole in place, so they should allow that to continue.”
LEAKED DOCUMENT SHOWS FEW IMMIGRANTS DETAINED BY ICE HAVE VIOLENT CRIMINAL RECORDS. An internal US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) document shows just 14% of immigrants taken into custody by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in 2025 had either been charged with or convicted of violent criminal offenses document leaked to CBS News, Brad Reed noted at Common Dreams (2/9).
The DHS report also shows 40% of immigrants detained last year have no criminal record at all except for civil immigration law violations, such as living unlawfully in the US or overstaying a visa, which CBS News noted “are typically adjudicated by Justice Department immigration judges in civil—not criminal—proceedings.”
The internal document undermines President Trump’s past claims that his administration is focused primarily on deporting “the worst of the worst” undocumented immigrants, such as those belonging to criminal gangs. In reality, the document shows, less than 2% of immigrants detained last year had any sort of gang affiliation.
As noted in January by Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, ICE during Trump’s second term has grown more aggressive in detaining people with no prior criminal offenses save for civil immigration law violations.
In January 2024, for example, immigrants with no prior criminal record accounted for just 6% of ICE detainees. By January 2025, that percentage surged to 43%.
ICE has drastically ramped up its arrests of immigrants in the last year, as White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller has demanded that the agency hit arrest quotas of at least 3,000 per day.
While ICE has not yet reached that goal, they did make an estimated 393,000 arrests during Trump’s first year back in the White House, an average of more than 1,000 per day.
CBS News notes that the internal DHS document “does not include arrests by Border Patrol agents, who the Trump administration has deployed to places far away from the US-Mexico border, like Los Angeles, Chicago, and Minneapolis,” where they “have undertaken aggressive and sweeping arrest operations, targeting day laborers at Home Depot parking lots and stopping people, including US citizens, to question them about their immigration status.”
FBI SUMMONS STATE ELECTION OFFICIALS TO SECRETIVE MEETING AFTER TRUMP THREAT TO ‘NATIONALIZE’ MIDTERMS. State election officials were left unnerved after being summoned by the FBI to a mysterious conference to discuss “preparations” for this year’s midterm elections, which President Donald Trump has recently called for Republicans to “nationalize” in violation of the Constitution, Stephen Prager noted at Common Dreams (2/6).
On Feb. 3, election officials in all 50 states received an email from Kellie M. Hardiman, who identified herself as an “FBI Election Executive.”
Hardiman said the officials were invited to a call on Feb. 25 with “your election partners” at the FBI, the Department of Justice (DOJ), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the US Postal Inspection Service (USPIS), and the Election Assistance Commission (EAC).
The email, obtained via a public records request by Matt Berg of Crooked Media, did not specify the purpose of the meeting other than to say it was “to prepare for the 2026 US midterm elections.”
Hardiman added that the FBI and other agencies “would like to invite you to a call where we can discuss our preparations for the cycle, as well as updates and resources we can provide to you and your staff.”
At the end of the email, she reiterated, “We look forward to speaking with you in support of the 2026 midterm elections.”
Berg said he contacted the FBI for comment, to which a spokesperson responded: “Thank you for reaching out. The FBI has no comment.”
The email has heightened fears that the Trump administration is meddling in the midterms or planning to do so; he has suggested on multiple occasions that the elections should be “canceled” outright. Republican strategists are reportedly increasingly worried that the GOP could lose control of both the US Senate and the House.
Although the Constitution plainly states that elections are to be run by state governments, Trump earlier this week said Republicans should “nationalize” elections and “take control of the voting in at least 15 places” led by Democrats.
Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar told Berg he’d never heard of a conference call like this. He said he wrote back to Hardiman: “Is this real? Given what’s occurred over the last two weeks, I am concerned.”
The inclusion of the Department of Homeland Security as one of the election “partners” is also noteworthy, given the recent suggestion by Trump ally Steve Bannon that the president will “have ICE surround the polls,” referring to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The agency has increasingly acted as a sort of paramilitary force for Trump in the localities where it’s been deployed, most recently in Minnesota.
At Trump’s apparent direction, the FBI raided an election hub in Atlanta Jan. 28 to seize materials from the 2020 election to further his already disproven claims that his loss to former President Joe Biden was the result of fraud.
And it was reported that back in May, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard sent a team to Puerto Rico to seize voting machines in an effort to investigate another outlandish Trump claim that they were hacked by Venezuela. Sources with knowledge of the investigation told Reuters that no evidence of that conspiracy was uncovered.
“It’s unconstitutional for the president to do what he wants to do,” Aguilar said. “We understand that what he’s trying to do is really disrupt the midterm election, because the ‘26 election is critical to the ‘28 election.”
Aguilar said officials in Nevada are “constantly preparing and strategizing” for whatever Trump might attempt and said, “We have to prepare for that litigation at a moment’s notice, and we will be prepared in Nevada to push back.”
Danny Miller, an attorney who has worked for Renew Democracy and Democracy Forward, expressed fear about Trump’s coordination of federal law enforcement agencies to patrol elections, given that he has already supported one violent attempt to overturn his loss in 2020.
“Trump will try to do something far worse than January 6th before all is said and done,” Miller said. “It’s up to civil society to use all the tools of democracy to stop him.”
NEW PROJECT 25-BACKED TRUMP RULE GUTS PROTECTIONS FOR 50,000 FEDERAL WORKERS. The Trump administration on Feb. 4 finalized a major civil service rule change that makes it easier to fire certain federal employees and replace them with political loyalists—a move that critics say increases the likelihood of abuse of power, Brett Wilkins noted at Common Dreams (4/5).
The new policy at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM)—the federal government’s independent central human resources agency—reclassifies tens of thousands of federal workers as “policy/career,” making them effectively at-will employees and easier to terminate.
The policy, known as Schedule F, was first proposed by President Donald Trump during his first term, which expired before he could fully implement it. Former President Joe Biden rescinded the policy, but Trump revived it on his first day back in office in January 2025, despite warnings from experts who say it is illegal.
Schedule F is one of the policies recommended in Project 2025, the far-right initiative to boost the power of the presidency and purge the federal civil service.
OPM estimates that around 2% of the federal workforce, or approximately 50,000 employees, will be affected by the rule change, which the agency said is aimed at “strengthening accountability, improving performance, and reinforcing a merit-based federal workforce.”
Scott Kupor, who heads the OPM, said in a statement that the rule change “restores a basic principle of democratic governance: Those entrusted with shaping and executing policy must be accountable for results.”
“This rule preserves merit-based hiring, veterans’ preference, and whistle-blower protections while ensuring senior career officials responsible for advancing President Trump’s agenda can be held to the same performance expectations that exist throughout much of the American work force,” he added.
However, critics are sounding the alarm over parts of the new policy, including a provision allowing agencies to fire employees who “obstruct the democratic process by intentionally subverting presidential directives.”
“This rule is a direct assault on a professional, nonpartisan, merit-based civil service and the government services the American people rely on every day,” American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) national president Everett Kelley said in a statement.
“When people see turmoil and controversy in Washington, they don’t ask for more politics in government, they ask for competence and professionalism,” Kelley continued. “OPM is doing the opposite. They’re rebranding career public servants as ‘policy’ employees, silencing whistleblowers, and replacing competent professionals with political flunkies without any neutral, independent protections against politicization and arbitrary abuse of power.”
“A professional civil service means nurses and doctors can advocate for patient safety, inspectors can report violations, cybersecurity experts can warn about threats, and benefits specialists can tell the truth about what it takes to deliver services—without worrying they’ll be punished for it,” Kelley argued.
“Turning tens or maybe hundreds thousands of these professionals into at-will employees doesn’t make government more accountable,” he added. “It makes it more vulnerable to pressure, retaliation, and political interference, which is exactly the opposite of what the public is asking for right now.”
Democracy Forward, which represents AFGE and another public sector union in a lawsuit challenging Trump’s revival of Schedule F, said in a statement Thursday, “The final rule continues to weaken more than a century of bipartisan civil service protections by allowing the administration to remove experienced, nonpolitical federal employees at will while stripping away civil service protections, meaningful oversight, and appeal rights.”
“Existing law already provides mechanisms to address employee misconduct,” the group added. “This rule is not about accountability, but about politicization.”
ECONOMIC FALLOUT FROM TRUMP POLICIES IS HERE — AND IT’S UGLY. As President Donald Trump tries to gaslight Americans into believing that he’s fixed the economy, a number of economic indicators are now flashing red as his idiotic trade and immigration policies are finally having the consequences economists warned about, Emily Singer noted at DailyKos.com (2/5).
On Feb. 5, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that the number of job openings has fallen to a more than five-year low, confirming Americans’ fears that it is really difficult to find a job right now.
As of the end of December, there were 6.5 million job openings, a decline of 386,000 from the month prior.
“The U.S. ‘hiring recession’ shows no sign of ending,” Navy Federal Credit Union chief economist Heather Long wrote in a post on X, adding that, “Firms aren’t even thinking about hiring (outside of healthcare and all-star AI talent).”
What’s more, layoffs in January were up 118% from the same point in 2025, the outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas said Feb. 5. Companies axed 108,435 workers in January, the highest number for any January since 2009, when the economy was cratering during the Great Recession.
Trump has been whining about polling showing that Americans believe the economy sucks and that he is to blame. In fact, he went as far as threatening to sue The New York Times when it released a poll showing Americans think he’s made the situation worse since he took office a year ago.
But the economic numbers show that Americans are right in their belief that the economy is on the brink. And no amount of lying from Trump can fix that.
IMMIGRANTS DELIVERED $14.5 TRILLION SURPLUS TO US ECONOMY OVER 30 YEARS: REPORT. A groundbreaking new report released Feb. 2 details how immigrants in the U.S. over the last three decades have contributed a massive surplus to the nation’s economy, resulting in a total of more than $14 trillion over that period because immigrant families generate significantly more benefits to fiscal health than they take away in the form of benefits received or downside costs, Jon Queally noted at Common Dreams (4/4).
The white paper by the libertarian free-marketeers at the Cato Institute, not a left-leaning outfit, builds on an existing model developed by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) to create a first-of-its kind analyses to determine “how immigrants, both legal and illegal, and their children affect government budgets” in a cumulative manner.
Looking at 30 years of data, the 95-page report — titled “Immigrants’ Recent Effects on Government Budgets: 1994-2023” — discovered that immigrants overall “generated a fiscal surplus of about $14.5 trillion” over those years. In part, the NASEM-Cato model shows:
• Every year from 1994 to 2023, immigrants have paid more in taxes than they received in benefits.
• Immigrants generated nearly $10.6 trillion more in federal, state, and local taxes than they induced in total government spending.
• Accounting for savings on interest payments on the national debt, immigrants saved $14.5 trillion in debt over this 30-year period.
• Immigrants cut US budget deficits by about a third from 1994 to 2023, and fiscal savings grew to $878 billion in 2023.
The paper concludes that “the average immigrant is much less costly than the average US-born American, and that immigrants impose lower costs per person on old-age benefit, education, and public safety programs.”
ARE TRUMP AND HIS TEAM TRYING TO LOSE THE MIDTERMS? President Donald Trump and the top idiots in his administration are running a master class in how to alienate voters ahead of a critical election, so much so that they should make a movie called “How to Lose the Midterms in 10 Days.”
Having already flipped many Hispanic voters back to Democrats with his cruel and deadly immigration enforcement, and turned moderates away with the general chaos he’s inflicted on American life, Trump and his top officials are now angering the gun lobby and right-wing Second Amendment supporters by—I kid you not—threatening to take away their guns, Emily Singer noted at DailyKos.com (2/3)
“[If] you bring a gun into the district, you mark my words, you’re going to jail,” Jeanine Pirro, U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, said Monday night on Fox News. “I don’t care if you have a license in another district, and I don’t care if you’re a law-abiding gun owner somewhere else. You bring a gun into this district, count on going to jail and hope you get the gun back.”
Yes, the Trump administration is now threatening to do the very thing Trump and Republicans have long said Democrats want to do: take your guns.
Republicans—whose gun worship has prevented reforms to decrease horrific mass shootings—were quick to condemn Pirro’s head-scratching comment.
“Shall NOT be infringed is NOT a suggestion,” Rep. Andrew Clyde, the unhinged Georgia Republican who wore an assault-rifle pin on his suit lapel after a spate of mass shootings, wrote in a post on X. “We need nationwide concealed carry reciprocity NOW. Our Second Amendment freedoms don’t disappear when we cross state lines or enter our nation’s capital city.”
“This is not how this works,” Rep. Chip Roy, Republican of Texas, wrote in response to Pirro’s comments. “[Attorney General Pam Bondi] needs to have a quick conversation & course correction here.”
“I bring a gun into the district every week,” Republican Rep. Greg Steube of Florida wrote in a post on X, tagging Pirro’s government-associated username. “I have a license in Florida and D.C. to carry. And I will continue to carry to protect myself and others. Come and Take it!”
“Second Amendment rights are not extinguished just because an American visits D.C. American gun owners who conceal carry are among the most law-abiding citizens in the nation. They are friends of law enforcement; they should not be targeted by law enforcement,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said in a post on X.
Pirro’s comments so angered the GOP that she had to issue an apology and clarification on Tuesday.
“Let me be clear: I am a proud supporter of the Second Amendment,” she wrote in a post on X. “Washington, D.C. law requires handguns be licensed in the District with the Metropolitan Police Department to be carried into our community. We are focused on individuals who are unlawfully carrying guns and will continue building on that momentum to keep our communities safe.”
This is just the latest instance in which the Trump administration has angered “Second Amendment people,” as Trump once infamously put it.
After intensive-care nurse Alex Pretti was shot to death by Trump’s newly unmasked immigration agents in Minnesota, Trump defended the officers and said Pretti’s killing was justified because Pretti was carrying a firearm in public.
“You can’t have guns. You can’t walk in with guns,” Trump said in days after Pretti was shot to death.
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