Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Wednesday faced Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) during a contentious line of questioning about the deaths of American citizens at the hands of federal agents.

The House Judiciary Committee ranking member probed Noem on why she attacked slain Minnesota protesters Renée Nicole Good and Alex Jeffrey Pretti as "domestic terrorists" before knowing any of the facts of the case.

Raskin walked through some statements from friends and family about Good and Pretti, who expressed compassion and love for all people.

Noem refused to walk back any of the mistakes by DHS in the days following the shootings.

"Based on what you know today, madam secretary, based on what you know today, were Renee Good and Alex Pretti domestic terrorists?" Raskin asked.

Noem claimed that there was still an "ongoing investigation," implying that the investigation could still find evidence that they were domestic terrorists.

"You didn't wait for the investigation or evidence. You proclaimed they were domestic terrorists at the time," said Raskin. "Why did you do that?"

Noem said only that the federal agents go "into dangerous situations." She went on to say that those situations included "violent rioters."

"So, you're proud of the fact that you called them domestic terrorists?" Raskin asked.

Over and over he probed her about the language she used, and over and over she refused to apologize or correct the record.

Appearing before the Senate on Tuesday, Noem refused to even look at American citizens who were arrested, detained and brutalized by agents in her department.

CNN data analyst Harry Enten reported on Wednesday that the impending runoff for the GOP may be at the top of the news after Tuesday's primary election in Texas, but there's a huge story in the numbers.

The top takeaway is that the Texas Democratic Primary may not have been close, but it was the highest ever turnout in a primary ever. It was so significant, he said, that Democratic turnout was more than the GOP turnout. However, the state has significantly more Republicans than Democrats.

"We're already up to 2.3 million. And that's only with 92 percent of the estimated vote in that will climb ever higher," said Enten.

The one that came closest was the race between President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in 2008.

"As I said, the word to describe this is tremendous," Enten said.

"It's not just that this 2.3 million is such a large portion, the largest ever for a Texas Senate Democratic primary," he explained. "It's that more people voted in the Democratic Primary than the Republican Primary. Look at this, the share of Texas midterm primary ballots. Look at this 2000s average was less than a million."

In the past, there has been a 3-to-2 ballot selection in Texas primaries, with more choosing the GOP ballot than the Democratic ballot. This election, that changed.

"So far, Democrats, more people are actually choosing the Democratic ballot. This is extremely, extremely unusual," Enten said. It's particularly unusual given there is a highly contested Republican Senate race."

Former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance is disputing a Wednesday claim by President Donald Trump's administration that it can sideline investigations by Bar Associations around the country.

According to Bloomberg Law, the Justice Department is working to "suspend stat bar ethics investigations" targeting DOJ lawyers. The DOJ has clashed with judges across the U.S. and judgment, behavior and legal violations have prompted complaints to state Bar Associations as a result.

According to the proposal, which was posted in the Federal Register on Wednesday, the DOJ wants to do its own internal review of the lawyers rather than the regulatory association. Critics see it as diminishing the power of the Bar Associations as a whole.

Commenting on the report on X, Vance called it "bunk."

"State bars license attorneys and consider misconduct allegations. Historically, state bars have deferred to DOJ‘s internal discipline process as a courtesy, but they are not obligated to, and the AG has zero authority to suspend state bar operations," Vance said about Attorney General Pam Bondi.

"DOJ can’t avoid investigation and incredible allegations of clear, ethical violations, like lying to or misleading judges and failing to follow court orders if state bars want to pursue them," Vance added. "The process is usually long and involves wrist slaps instead of jumping straight to disbarment, but egregious cases deserve serious discipline."

University of Michigan Law School Professor Barbara McQuade agreed.

"All DOJ lawyers are members of a state or DC bar, and subject to its ethics rules and penalties, up to disbarment. Subverting state bar authorities would give DOJ lawyers carte blanche to violate ethics rules," she said about the report.

Self-described "recovering lawyer" Jeff Jacobs commented, "You would think that, given the ethical implications of many of the actions by this DOJ and its state-licensed attorneys, the administration would go out of its way to avoid antagonizing state bar associations."

In January, the Texas Supreme Court ended the 42-year reliance on the American Bar Association for law school accreditation because the ABA has diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) requirements. Florida has now done the same. Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) has proposed his own accreditor for Florida law schools instead.

If Bondi's proposal moves forward after a public comment period, “whenever a third party files a bar complaint alleging that a current or former Department attorney violated an ethics rule while engaging in that attorney’s duties for the Department, or whenever bar disciplinary authorities open an investigation into such allegations,” the attorney general “will have the right to review the complaint and the allegations in the first instance,” it states.

Bondi is calling ethics probes into attorneys at the DOJ part of an anti-Trump "weaponization" effort.

President Donald Trump made a damning admission by commenting on the war with Iran, and two political reporters illuminated just how careless he has been.

Speaking on Greg Sargent's "New Republic" morning podcast, Zeteo.com's Asawin Suebsaeng noted that during his comments Tuesday, the president speculated on the worst things that could happen. It indicated to them that Trump really hadn't thought through the Iran war.

"I guess, the worst case would be we do this and then somebody takes over who’s as bad as the previous person, right?" Trump asked the audience.

"You’d think he would have thought of that before," said Sargent. "He suggests here that he doesn’t expect that to happen. But it seems to me that what he really revealed here is that he hasn’t even bothered to imagine what additionally could go wrong — badly undermining his case. What did you make of it?"

Suebsaeng agreed that it was the damning admission about the decision to go to war.

"President Trump and the rest of the gang running the federal government right now are going about this with the exact same level of nobility and care and solemn posture that you or I would take while flipping through Hulu trying to find something new to watch," complained Suebsaeng.

What he said the team at Zeto discovered is that each time Trump was given briefings, he was completely uninterested in alternative options. There were plans and scenarios

"These were all things that, if he cared to pay attention, were put in his ear and in front of him over and over again in the weeks or months leading up to this thing," Suebsaeng said. "And you know what? Donald J. Trump said and decided firmly: I’m the decider. I think it’s worth it, f—— all that noise that you’re putting in my ear right now. We’re doing it. Let’s just do it and be legends. And he pulled the trigger on it."

He cited The New York Times reporting that said at least one top general had concerns about the war, and all Trump did was "tune it out — just closed his ears to all of it," Suebsaeng added.

Sargent said that Trump essentially undermined his own case for war by "basically admitting to how poorly thought through the aftermath of this truly is. And then note how he says it’s a good thing that the leadership in Venezuela was left virtually intact. So, does Trump want a change at the top in Iran or not? Does he want regime change or not? This is something they just can’t answer."

The DownBallot Substack by longtime elections reporter David Nir noted another red-to-blue pickup after Tuesday's elections.

In Arkansas, Democrat Alex Holladay won a seat that he nearly captured in 2024 when he ran against state Rep. Carlton Wing.

Wing has given up the post, however, to accept a position running the local PBS station.

The 70th District, just outside Little Rock, is a district that President Donald Trump carried in 2020 by a four-point margin, data showed. But Nir's calculations found that in 2024, Harris narrowly won the same district.

Nir noted that Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders didn't want to hold the election and instead scheduled it for June. It would have left the seat empty for eight months. So, Democrats sued and won, forcing the election to March.

Democrats have enjoyed huge successes in special elections throughout Trump's first year in office. However, the off-year elections in Virginia and New Jersey proved to be an outright bloodbath for Republicans.

The Independent reported last month that Republicans privately fear another bloodbath in November.

Brig. Gen. Steve Anderson told CNN after the Wednesday morning Pentagon press conference, "somebody's smokin' something."

During his briefing, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth was asked how Iran had nuclear weapons when the administration said last year that they obliterated the weapons in the "12-Day War."

Hegseth told reporters that President Donald Trump believed Iran "had no intention of making a deal." He claimed that Iran didn't have nuclear weapons; rather, they "had the intentions" of getting such weapons. This conflicts with Trump's ongoing claims that Iran was at work on nuclear weapons again.

"They can’t do the nuclear… They’ve got to stop with the nuclear," Trump said in January at the World Economic Forum.

“After Midnight Hammer, they were warned to make no future attempts to rebuild their weapons program, and in particular nuclear weapons, yet they continue. They’re starting it all over… One thing is certain: I will never allow the world’s number one sponsor of terror, which they are by far, to have a nuclear weapon," Trump said during his State of the Union address, mere days before the strikes.

CNN's Natasha Bertrand reported that Trump administration officials acknowledged during a closed-door briefing on Capitol Hill on Tuesday that they have major concerns about Iran's drone program because they haven't been able to intercept all of them, as evidenced by the six dead American soldiers in Kuwait.

During the briefing on Wednesday, both Hegseth and Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine agreed that the drones do pose a bigger problem than they anticipated.

The other problem, according to several reports, is that the U.S. is running out of weaponry because the administration has burned through the stockpile so quickly.

It was reported on Tuesday by several outlets that the military lacks the supplies to continue at the current level.

“It’s not panic yet, but the sooner they get here, the better,” a regional source told CNN.

Even the pro-Trump "America First Post" reported that Trump burned through five years of Tomahawk inventory in just three days.

Speaking to CNN after the press conference. Brig. Gen. Steve Anderson pointed to Gen. Caine's comments that they were switching from "stand-off munitions" to "stand-in munitions."

"What he's saying is that we're running out of precision-guided munitions," the retired general said. "That's what he's saying. That we're going to take advantage of our air superiority, our ability to loiter over targets and use other type munitions. In fact, the Secretary of Defense even talked about using dumb bombs, gravity-based bombs, and not laser-guided bombs."

He was asked if Hegseth's claim that the U.S. can outlast Iran was accurate.

"That's not how I see it at all. I mean, you know, it's going to take an awful lot to dig these people out. I mean, what we saw today was essentially the same briefing that was given in 2003 by Donald Rumsfeld and General Richard Myers," said Anderson.

He recalled that when they announced the attack on Iraq, there was also no clear definition of the objectives.

"But what we saw was the Secretary of Defense was a tough, macho guy talking about killing and shamelessly sucking up to the POTUS, but he really wasn't giving any specifics on what the long-term objectives are," Anderson continued. "And I would say that we're going to be in the same situation we were in Iraq. We're going to be able to knock out their defensive capabilities, their offensive capabilities, establish air superiority, but they're going to go underground. These are tough, resilient people. They're going to be able to outlast us."

He cautioned that if anyone thinks the U.S. can "bomb them into submission from the air, somebody's smoking something."

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) lost it with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem during a Tuesday hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, and one reporter thinks he knows why.

Tillis ripped Noem for shooting a puppy, failing to allocate disaster funds and obstructing justice. But, according to The New Republic's Greg Sargent, a letter might provide an important clue about what really motivated Tillis' attack.

The Homeland Security Inspector General wrote a letter saying that leaders under Noem "systematically obstructed" his inquiries, including a "specific pending criminal investigation."

“Does anybody have any idea how bad it has to be for the OIG in this agency to come out and do this publicly?" asked Tillis during the hearing. “That is stonewalling, that’s a failure of leadership, and that is why I’ve called for your resignation.”

The document, confirms quotes from the Wall Street Journal that Inspector General Joseph Cuffari, a Trump appointee, "attempted to access a database controlled by DHS, but was blocked from it unless he revealed details of the investigation to individuals who do not have a need to know, and who may be related somehow to the allegations or individuals under investigation.”

The letter posted by Sargent details 11 instances in which DHS leaders blocked the IG's investigations.

"In one instance, the inspector general said that Customs and Border Protection wouldn't allow his staff to access the database that has 'up-to-date data on CBP's border screening and admitting processes; OIG is unable to independently review data or conduct comprehensive risk analysis,'" the claims said of an incident in May 2025.

TSA denied the inspector general access to look at its Secure Flight System database. It means they couldn't do "risk analysis." Ultimately, they turned over some "data extracts," but the IG said it couldn't validate if they were real.

These weren't the only times CBP, TSA or ICE refused to allow oversight.

"One other key thing: The DHS's inspector general identifies multiple instances in which DHS is restricting access to information related to ICE and CBP, making it impossible for the IG to examine data/procedures. That's crying out for more scrutiny," wrote Sargent.

Another letter sent to Congress in February complained that DHS refused to address “significant” findings about airport security checkpoints that it told Noem about in a classified briefing.

Noem has been criticized over the past year for turning her DHS role into a kind of year-long cosplay photo-op, while ignoring actual homeland security.

Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.) was furious during the Republican caucus lunch, Punch Bowl News reporters said on Tuesday.

Citing multiple sources in the closed-door meeting, Young is seething over the White House's and GOP leadership's failures over the war waged over the weekend against Iran.

He specifically "bemoned" the "lack of oversight or hearings" on the matter in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which is chaired by Sen. James Risch (R-Idaho).

Warhawk Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) came to President Donald Trump's defense, arguing that this was a time that Republicans should be supporting their leader.

Punch Bowl's senior congressional reporter Andrew Desiderio said that Young left the meeting, reiterating that he's "inclined" to vote against the war powers resolution Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) proposed.

It's a shift from over the weekend when WFYI reported that Young said, “No one wants more conflict in the Middle East, but Iran can never have a nuclear weapon."

Trump announced last summer that he had "obliterated" Iran's nuclear program in the strikes.

“The American people will have questions pertaining to the nature of threats, risks to our troops and homeland, and objectives sought," Todd added.

Minnesota U.S. Attorney Daniel Rosen and a representative of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement were summoned to court on Tuesday, where a judge will decide whether or not Rosen should be held in contempt of court. The first half of the morning proceedings, however, involved the attorney getting into it with the presiding judge.

The Minnesota Star Tribune reported that the order is connected to a combination of 28 other cases over wrongful-detention accusations. There are more than 1,000 petitions that have been filed by detained immigrants in local courts and the backlog is frustrating judges, who are in turn issuing "rare rebukes" of Justice Department prosecutors and threats of contempt.

Such was the case with Rosen, who appeared before the judge on Tuesday morning. Local community lawyer Daniel Suitor noted in a thread on the hearing that it didn't begin well. Rosen "introduced himself to some members of the media and then asked to be let into the courtroom early."

That request apparently wasn't granted as Rosen ended up "stand[ing] awkwardly at the door, waiting." He took a photo of Rosen's nose mere inches from the door.

Once the hearing began, Judge Jeffrey Bryan demanded that the government provide evidence of cause for the office's failure to comply with his court orders. The main case is about the court's demand for federal agents to return the property of a person detained and swiftly rushed off to Texas. Once the person was released, he wasn't given back his identification and other documents.

Suitor said that Rosen wasn't cooperating from the beginning, dodging Judge Bryan's questions about who was at risk of contempt.

Judge Bryan said it could be Rosen or Assistant U.S. Attorney Tony Fuller. Bryan said it would be a low point in history to hold the attorneys in contempt, recounted Suitor.

"Rosen is fighting with Bryan. Says he and Fuller have been smeared," Suitor posted in an ongoing BlueSky feed. "Bryan orders him to stop talking over him, denies permission to respond to those alleged remarks, orders him to answer what's asked. Rosen, after some evasion, admits that no one is contesting receipt of the orders in question.

He said that Rosen then gave a big "colloquy" where it became clear that Rosen didn't want to answer questions that involved him admitting that the court has the authority to order contempt. Finally, Rosen acquiesced. He said that generally that's the case, but disagrees that it is in this instance.

Judge "Bryan asks whether Rosen is arguing on his clients' behalf whether habeas relief even exists anymore," said Suitor.

Republican Sen. Thom Tillis (N.C.) has only ten more months left in office, and he didn't waste his opportunity to face off against Secretary Kristi Noem, who leads the Department of Homeland Security.

"What we've see is a disaster under your leadership," he told her, specifically naming President Donald Trump's deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, who reportedly set quotas for the department. Tillis complained that what Homeland Security should be doing is going after domestic terrorists like those who destroyed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.

"Maybe we'll have time for you to respond, but I'm giving you a performance evaluation," he exclaimed, interrupting her efforts to comment.

"You failed at FEMA," he continued, citing funding allocated for North Carolina and how slow the department has been to release the money. Those funds are being held up by her, he said.

"I'm gonna give you time to answer it under penalty of perjury so we can get an answer," Tillis said.

He went on to cite the federal law that created the Homeland Security department, saying, "You're violating the law, either knowingly or unknowingly," by not distributing funding approved by Congress for FEMA.

He then pivoted to talk about how important it is to have the backs of law enforcement and that it means making sure law enforcement is protected but also held accountable when they do something wrong. What has happened in Minneapolis, he argued, has been wrong and a complete failure.

"Now secretary, I read your book last week," Tillis continued, mentioning the passage where Noem admits to shooting a puppy. "I train dogs. You are a farmer. You should know better."

Tillis noted that a 14-month-old dog isn't the kind of dog that is expected to be perfectly trained. He described it as a kind of "teenager" and not the kind of animal that is taken on a hunting trip.

"Then you have the audacity to say it's a leadership lesson," Tillis shouted at her for shooting the dog.

"Those are bad decisions made in the heat of the moment. Not unlike what happened in Minneapolis," he said, tying the two incidents together.

Tillis went on to question why DHS can't admit that it made horrible mistakes in Minneapolis, do the proper investigations and hold those responsible accountable.

He then asked who Tom Homan worked for, DHS or Trump, and she said he works for the president. He said the reason for that is that Trump clearly saw what a horrible failure she was at her job and had to bring Homan in to clean up the mess.

"That is why I call for your resignation," he closed, continuing to demand answers from her office. He said further that he wouldn't allow a single nominee to go through the Senate until she responds to his questions.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was confronted by three U.S. citizens during her hearing before the Senate on Tuesday, as one official demanded answers about why Americans were being snatched by Homeland Security agents, brutalized and arrested under trumped-up charges.

The consistent answer from Noem was that she didn't know. She repeatedly stated that she was unaware of the specific cases.

"I don't know that situation," Noem said about an agent who fired five times into Marimar Martinez in Chicago.

Rep. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) read the statements by the agent who shot Martinez that were turned over in court. The agent bragged that he shot five rounds, but she had seven holes. He also took a trophy photo of her as she lay bleeding, nearly to death. While the DOJ attempted to go after Martinez for impeding them, the judge threw the case out.

Noem said that she didn't know the particulars of that case either.

It has been a month since Martinez's attorney spoke out on television about her story publicly and just shy of a month since Martinez appeared before a committee on brutality at the hands of federal agents under DHS.

"When people look back at this time in history, there's at least some record of the actual truth of what happened here," lawyer Christopher Parente told CNN at the time.

"Have you met with these citizens?" Blumenthal asked. Noem had not, though she didn't turn around to look at them.

Leonardo Garcia Venegas was detained for hours by DHS officials when they came onto his construction site and nabbed him. Over and over he shouted, "I'm from here!"

DHS still has a press statement on its website alleging that the claims about what happened were somehow false and that ICE doesn't arrest or deport non-citizens. The "facts" outlined in the statement have been proven time and again in court.

In the Venegas case, Noem said she didn't know the particulars but would look into it.

Martinez's situation in particular is among those, as she was arrested for somehow impeding federal officers as she was driving past them, and they fired into her car, CNN reported.

"I don't know the details, but I will look into it," Noem promised.

"I don't know why you can't join me in saying it was wrong to shoot her, almost cause her death and then brag about it. Wouldn't you agree it was wrong?" Blumenthal asked.

"The way you portrayed it, it appears to be, but let me look into the case," Noem answered.

Blumenthal later asked if the agent who shot her and bragged about it was still on duty and still had a gun.

"I don't know the details. I will find out and get that info to you," Noem claimed.

Blumenthal asked if Noem would agree that he shouldn't be on the job. She would only commit to looking into the case.

Javier Ramírez testified before Congress in January that his home was stormed by federal agents with high-powered rifles. He heard one of the agents yelled, "Get him! He's Mexican!" and he was thrown to the ground.

"Wouldn't you agree that targeting someone because he is or looks like he is Mexican when he is a U.S. citizen is wrong?" Blumenthal asked.

Noem maintained that they don't target people based on their appearance or ethnicity. She also swore that medical attention is given when someone needs it, but conceded it's within 12 hours.

President Donald Trump has long held that his trade war and imposed tariffs would help rebuild the U.S. manufacturing base. One company that promised to buy into his philosophy is now fleeing to Mexico and laying off American workers.

The U.S.’s largest appliance manufacturer, Whirlpool, had been a champion of Trump, welcoming him to an Ohio plant in 2020, where he touted the "Made in America" label that goes on every machine. He pledged to Whirlpool at the time that he'd impose a 50 percent tax on any washing machine imported from a foreign country.

The company promised Trump in 2018 that, in exchange for tariffs, it would increase manufacturing in the U.S. By 2019, consumers were the ones footing the bill for the tax increases, the Wall Street Journal reported.

“And while the tariffs did encourage foreign companies to shift more of their manufacturing to the United States and created about 1,800 new jobs, the researchers conclude that those came at a steep cost: about $817,000 per job," reported the New York Times.

Now those U.S. jobs are headed to Mexico, said the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, which represents the plant's workers.

The Des Moines Register noted that 481 people in Iowa are now without a job, and the overwhelming majority of those come from Whirlpool. The company is the last headquartered in the U.S. that makes large appliances, the report said.

Cedar Valley Corp. LLC is also closing its doors in Iowa. The company was created in 1971 and is laying off 89 workers in the state.

Wells Fargo Bank cut 49 employees in Iowa, too, in February.

The farm and construction manufacturer CNH will finish the closure of its facility in late May. The plant was where the backhoe was invented.

In 2025, there were 108,000 manufacturing job losses in the U.S. and the downward trajectory continues as 2026 begins, the Cato Institute reported.

Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz commented last month that the economy is “not great right now. And the prospects are that it’s going to get worse.”

Just last month, Trump promised a “golden age” of manufacturing.

Bryan Betancur is wanted by police after social media videos show him engaging in inappropriate behavior with customers of the Washington Metro.

The Silver Spring, Maryland, resident was convicted on Jan. 6-related crimes before President Donald Trump issued a blanket pardon for all activities.

Betancur has been recorded touching women without their consent on the subway and stroking their hair. There are also anti-stalking orders that he violated, a post on X, Metro Transit Police said.

According to the New York Post, Betancur is a self-proclaimed white supremacist who would film himself petting a women's hair.

He has an active arrest warrant for an alleged assault and battery offense while riding a Silver Line train in Virginia on March 1, reported WJLA.

Betancur had been on parole for a burglary charge when he attended the Jan. 6 attacks at the U.S. Capitol. His ankle monitor placed him at the scene, officials explained.

Bryan Betancur “has made statements to law enforcement officers that he is a member of several white supremacy organizations” and “has voiced homicidal ideations, made comments about conducting a school shooting and has researched mass shootings,” according to a federal affidavit.

He also expressed an interest in being a "lone wolf killer," the affidavit also said.

People are growing increasingly uneasy as President Donald Trump's attacks on Iran are looking more and more like they could be part of a right-wing religious fanatic's fantasy for the apocalyptic.

The Cradle Media's Jonathan Larsen wrote that American soldiers were given a pep-talk about the war in Iran. A U.S. combat-unit commander told them that the attack is part of “God’s divine plan." He said that President Donald Trump was “anointed by Jesus” for the specific purpose to ignite Armageddon.

“U.S. Troops Were Told Iran War Is for 'Armageddon,' Return of Jesus Advocacy group reports commanders giving similar messages at more than 30 installations in every branch of the military," Larsen wrote.

The comments come as part of a lawsuit brought by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation; however, it is only one of "110 lawsuits brought in 48 hours from over 40 units across 30 installations," the report said. The complaints came from Christians, a Muslim and a Jewish soldier.

The Christian nationalist theory that Israel has a God-given right to much of the Middle East is one espoused by U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee. In a speech at a Christian Zionist church in Jerusalem in December, Huckabee conveyed his " purpose is to convert Israeli Jews to belief in Jesus in order to bring about the End Times," explained Religion Dispatches.

The concept is bad for anyone seeking peace in the Middle East, one 2024 report by Forward explained.

The sect of Christianity that Huckabee believes in holds that if they are able to remove Palestinians from the Holy Land, then Jesus Christ will return. He believes in “dispensational premillennialism,” which Forward describes as a belief that “the Rapture will come,” and deliver all evangelicals to Heaven as Israel is invaded by the armies of the world. It will cause Armageddon and prompt the return of Jesus Christ.

The language is making some fearful that the war waged wasn't really about Iran never obtaining nuclear weapons, which Trump claimed he destroyed last summer. It's a holy war, desperate to force Armageddon.

"Maybe it’s a bad idea to put people in charge of government who are eager for the rapture," lawyer and self-described nerd John Collins commented.

"Love when I'm in the military and my boss is, like, 'Time for Armageddon!'" commented author and journalist Emily St. James.

Writer and former Cato Institute policy analyst Will Wilkinson wrote, "Personally, I don’t think we should bring about Armageddon."

"One thing about the U.S., we definitely do not have insane religious zealots in charge," said Heidi N. Moore, previously of the Wall Street Journal business side.

Writer and elections lawyer at the Cato Institute, Walter Olson, quoted a line from the 1965 song "So Long, Mom (A Song for World War III)" with lyrics by Tom Lehrer: "And this is what he said on/ His way to Armageddon.”

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is in spin mode about the U.S. soldiers killed in Kuwait as part if the new war with Iran, military officials are telling CBS News.

According to the report, the soldiers who died were in "a makeshift office space" in a tactical operations center at the Shuaiba port in Kuwait. The U.S. ally is entering day four of the barrage of attacks from drones and missiles.

When speaking to the press on Monday morning, Hegseth claimed that there was an incredible weapon that Iran had that managed to make it past air defenses and the fortifications. It turns out that was false.

"You have air defenses, and a lot's coming in, and you hit most of it," Hegseth said Monday during the Pentagon briefing. "Every once in a while, you might have one, unfortunately, we call it a squirter, that makes its way through. And in that particular case, it happened to hit a tactical operations center that was fortified, but these are powerful weapons."

Three top military officials dispute that the operations center was "fortified." Speaking to CBS News, they said it was little more than a triple-wide trailer that left American soldiers no protection. The trailer had some "T-walls" surrounding it, large concrete walls that an individual can walk through when accessing the building, but would protect it from any nearby explosions or shrapnel. There was zero protection for the trailer itself. So, when drones attacked from above, they were sitting ducks.

Two officials told CBS that the attack struck the trailer dead center.

Three officials told the reporters that there was a discussion before the strike about it concentrating too many soldiers in one place which "wasn't defendable."

A fireball engulfed the trailer, which added to the complications in retrieving the bodies of the U.S. soldiers. Two sources told CBS that they never even heard warning sirens ahead of the attack, despite top equipment designed to detect and alert anyone on the ground.

The larger problem, they said, is that the warning siren hadn't worked all week. There's also no counter-rocket system that can shoot down drones like that. There were requests for some kind of protections but the Trump administration never sent anything.

"We basically had no drone defeat capability," the source told CBS.

One of the sources lamented, "I'm sorry for their families' losses. They were nice people doing what their nation asked of them."

Along with the six killed, 18 have been seriously injured.

Ahead of the strikes, the U.S. evacuated the embassy in Israel but nowhere else. The State Department has now called on every American across the entire region to leave Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, the UAE and Yemen.

Complexified host Amanda Henderson welcomed the co-hosts of the “Saved By The City” podcast, Katelyn Beaty and Roxanne Stone, to talk about how Christianity for women has evolved in just the past 30 years.

The conversation recalls the 1990s era of "purity rings," the jewelry young girls wore to promise they were married to God until they found a man. Henderson remembered that being a woman meant homeschooling your children and submissiveness. That has changed.

Henderson said that the old ways have given way to a world "where the most recognizable in conservative Christian culture are as likely to be shooting their dogs as baking their sourdough."

The conversation began as the women shared their experiences growing up in the church and trying to maintain it as part of their lives at a time when Christianity, particularly non-denominational and evangelical Christianity, began a shift to the right. The early 2000s brought abstinence-only programs and a movement against LGBTQ+ people.

They note that it all began happening when the media itself was shifting. The "women of faith" conferences began, and evangelical women began producing books and content; all-female music groups like Point of Grace broke into pop culture music.

The hosts of "Saved by the City" used their show to track the shift that happened around the COVID-19 pandemic. Some of it came from "burnout" and "exhaustion," they said. Other shifts came as a result of influencer culture, where attractive white women could pretend not to work outside of the home and produce content about cooking, families and children couched in the universe of living as a submissive, traditional wife.

In a recent special on Christian nationalism, CNN host Pamela Brown spoke with some who have left their church's world of submissive wives. They noted that content creators pretending to be "trad wives" have very clear jobs creating those videos and blog posts. Most are making a killing doing it.

The shift of female roles in the U.S. happened so quickly compared to other cultural shifts. Women went from being nothing more than wives and mothers to going to school, entering the workforce and flourishing. Being a wife and mother became recognized as a job in and of itself. As women worked harder and did more, they excelled over their male counterparts. Stone and Beaty said the result has been evident in the church, where women are leaving conservative Christianity while men are flocking to it.

The anti-empathy movement has grown more in the past year. The group agreed that a lot of that anti-compassion image is coming from people like Laura Loomer and Secretary Kristi Noem. Noem famously went viral after publishing a book in which she confessed to shooting a dog she could not train.

The podcasters explain there is also the movement of militant Christian moms. The difference, they said, comes from the audience. In some ways, the militant mom content is more for men, while the wispy curtains and natural makeup are aimed at female viewers, even if they're both saying the same things.

President Donald Trump was photographed from the side during a medal ceremony on Monday, showing a large red mark that some observers said looked like a rash of some kind.

The redness was so noticeable that the word "shingles" was number one in the X trends in the News section mere moments after his speech.

"President Trump is using a very common cream on the right side of his neck, which is a preventive skin treatment, prescribed by the White House Doctor. The President is using this treatment for one week, and the redness is expected to last for a few weeks," the statement from Dr. Sean Barbella, Trump's doctor, said in a statement, according to CBS News.

It didn't stop speculation and mockery online, with some claiming it was a disease Trump picked up on trafficker Jeffrey Epstein's island, others questioning if it was syphilis, scurvy, or even leprosy.

"Statement from Trump's physician on the rash on the side of the president's neck (as photographed from the Medal of Honor ceremony today) ... The question now is what exactly is this a preventative for? And why does the president need this treatment?" questioned CNN reporter Alayna Treene.

"The man is molting right in front of a media that fully ignores it," complained Tara Dublin, sometimes host at SiriusXMProgress.

"Bruising on his hands, swollen ankles, rashes on his neck… it’s getting bad," commented activist Harry Sisson.

"Sending all possible love and support to this rash," quipped Evan DeSimone, content creator for TubeFilter.

President Donald Trump's youngest adult child is the latest to be mocked with a new fake website calling on him to enlist.

DraftBarronTrump.com was launched over the weekend when his father started a war in Iran.

"America is strong because its leaders are strong. President Trump proves that every day. Naturally, his son Barron is more than ready to defend the country his father so boldly commands. Service is honor. Strength is inherited. Dog (sic) Bless Barron," the site says.

"This site is dedicated to honoring the strongest and bravest voices in war. When power is projected abroad, it is only right that strength exists at home. If you’re looking for proven genes, inherited courage, and unquestionable resolve, look no further than the Trump family. Leadership starts somewhere," it continues, with photos of the president appearing to fall asleep in the Oval Office.

It goes on to make up fake quotes of endorsements from the president, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, lending their support.

“People come up to me, with tears in their eyes, and they say, ‘Sir, you’re the strongest. Send Barron off to war.’ I’ve always been strong. Very strong. Stronger than anyone expected. Some say the strongest ever. And strength matters. Believe me," the fake quote says.

“People always say I’m stupid, which is totally unfair, because I understand a lot about pancakes. Pancakes are complex. You’ve got batter, heat, timing. If you rush it, you ruin everything. I think about pancakes a lot. Mostly pancakes," the fake quote from Eric Trump reads.

The campaign took off over the weekend, with #DraftBarron trending on X.

There was also a fake letter from Rep. Dr. Ronny Jackson (R-Texas) about the younger Trump's fitness for service.

The campaign popped up after the bombing as those angry about another war complained that people like the president's son won't be the ones fighting and dying on the ground in Iran. Four U.S. soldiers have already died in the war.

President Donald Trump has campaigned for the past decade on "America First" and promising "no new wars." The breach of that promise may not be a shock to Trump foes, but to his supporters, a new war is not what they were promised.

Monday's Bulwark chat with Sam Stein and Will Sommer noted the MAGA anger bubbling, particularly after American soldiers were killed. As of Monday morning, a fourth American death was announced.

"There is, I think, a pretty significant voice on the right opposed to the war on day two," Sommer said. "And so, where is this headed? You know, if they're talking about four or five weeks, I think there's going to be more and more of that."

Stein noted that longtime defense contractor Erik Prince, who founded Blackwater, which profited heavily during the Iraq War, spoke to Steve Bannon about the war, saying, "I'm not happy about the whole thing. I don't think it was in America's interest."

It's an unusual comment, given Prince has long been a supporter of war and profited handsomely from it.

"It's going to uncork a significant can of worms and chaos and destruction in Iran now. Who takes over? You still have tens, hundreds of thousands of IRGC people that will be positioning to be number two, to be the next rulers of that country. I don't see how this is in keeping with the president's MAGA commitment. I'm disappointed," Prince continued.

Stein called it "mind-blowing."

Sommer joked it was "Aries, the god of war," weighing in, saying, "You know, I'm not so sure about this one."

He thinks that Prince's trepidation is likely because the billionaire is "heavily involved with the Emiratis and folks like that who are kind of caught in the middle here."

The Bannon wing of the GOP tends to prefer isolationism, and he sees it as a waste of political capital. When asked about it by the New York Post, Trump made it clear, "I don't care about the polling."

"I'm just gonna be frank," Bannon said, "if it's gonna be a hard slog, that was not pitched in the 2024 campaign. It just wasn't. We're going to bleed support."

He was speaking to the hawkish Frank Gaffney, Sommer noted. Gaffney agreed with Bannon.

Sommer also pointed out that during the Monday morning press conference hosted by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, the friendly right-wing content creators were asking the same questions the national media was asking: What's the plan? Hegseth made it clear he wasn't going to talk about it.

They went on to discuss the Charlie Kirk angle of Iran, in which he opposed a war, noting that regime change wasn't easy. That said, Kirk also made the argument "in Trump we trust."

It prompted Sommer to say that MAGA is now trying to turn on a dime to say "trust the plan."

"What's the plan?" wondered Stein.

The Justice Department filed an emergency motion at the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday against the state of Michigan over its refusal to share voter rolls without personal information redacted. According to voting rights lawyer Marc Elias, the DOJ had some serious problems with typos in the copy.

First, he remarked on social media, they misspelled "voters" as "votors."

Emergency was spelled "Emeregency."

Even the United States didn't get off the hook, spelled as "United Staes" by the Justice Department.

"And, it included a non-party in the caption. These are the people who want access to your voting records and who my team fights in court every day," Elias noted, sharing the document from the docket.

The motion demands that the Sixth Circuit expedite the administration's efforts to get voter files before the November election. They claim that they need all of the voter rolls in their entirety because it "raises an issue of urgency with regard to the security of elections in the U.S."

Trump's demand for voter rolls included 25 primarily blue states. However, on Friday, he added five more to his list. Those included Utah, Oklahoma, Kentucky, West Virginia and New Jersey.

One of Trump's biggest supporters, Gov. Kevin Stitt (R-Okla.), announced he has no intention of cooperating with the demand.

He wrote on Facebook, “Oklahoma is a model for secure elections. We’ve banned ballot harvesting, require voter ID and verify results with post‑election audits. Because in Oklahoma, every legal vote counts. That’s why we’re a national leader in election integrity.”

The bombing campaign against Iran has just begun, President Donald Trump told CNN's Jake Tapper on Monday.

Tapper said that he spoke with the president Monday morning about what's to come in the war against Iran and Trump told him things are just getting started.

In the nine-minute phone interview, he gave props to service members and bragged, "We're knocking the crap out of them."

"We've got the greatest military in the world, and we're using it," Trump said.

The comments came a little over an hour after the allied-Kuwait accidentally shot down a U.S. F-15 fighter jet, which costs approximately $90 million to $97 million per unit as of late 2023, Breaking Defense reported. The six soldiers inside were able to eject and survived.

Tapper said he asked Trump how long the operation would last and Trump said he wasn't sure but didn't want it to be too long.

"I always thought it would be four weeks. And we're a little ahead of schedule," said Trump.

So far, Trump has given three answers to that question. To Axios, Trump claimed a few days. He told ABC News "four to five weeks," and speaking to Tapper, Trump implied four weeks or less.

When Tapper asked how many more strikes would come against Iran, Trump said he's only getting started.

"Right now we want everyone staying inside. It's not safe out there," Trump told Tapper.

"And then the president said it's about to get even less safe. He said, 'We haven't even started hitting them hard. The big wave hasn't even happened. The big one is coming soon,'" Tapper relayed.

He said that there were a lot of other messages he'll talk about on his show Monday afternoon, but those were the top line items.

President Donald Trump spoke to reporters upon landing at Andrews Air Force Base late Sunday night after his weekend at Mar-a-Lago. What was noticeable is that he appears to give several different ideas and contradictory visions on the future of his war in Iran, the New York Times pointed out.

"He said he hoped the military and Guard Corps would surrender their weapons to the people, even though the same hardened forces killed thousands in the streets in Jan.," commented Times reporter Trip Gabriel.

National security expert Marcy Wheeler commented, "The Mad and Senile King is just using reporters as a sounding board to see what might sound good in the press."

She shared an X post from The Economist's Middle East correspondent Gregg Carlstrom, who observed Trump told the Washington Post that aim is "freedom for the people" of Iran. Meanwhile, he told the New York Times that the timeline is "four to five weeks," which Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth reiterated in his Monday morning press conference. Trump claimed to the Times he has "three very good choices" on who could take over Iran.

Then, when speaking to ABC News, Carlstrom characterized Trump essentially saying, "actually, nevermind, we killed those choices."

Meanwhile, Trump told Axios that the timeline was "end it in two or three days" if Iran makes a deal.

"Wait, I thought it wasn't a war?" questioned historian Jane Haigh.

Author and lawyer Mark Raines commented, "Of course. Trump's positions change by the minute and are often contradictory. It somehow works because his supporters don't have any ideological consistency. They believe in whatever Trump is saying at that moment... It's a cult. It's always been a cult."

"Groundhog Day. Wrote this March 2012. The absurd contradictory narrative on Iran: strong enough to warrant a response worthy of an existential threat - weak enough to be threatened w/ war every other day and eventually be attacked with little thought," said historian Rouzbeh Parsi.

"Trump keeps saying contradictory things about the war in Iran. It makes it hard to know what to believe. And the war just widened for Israel with Hezbollah," agreed journalist and writer Bill Addis.

"I’m sorry a WHAT?" national security lawyer Bradley P. Moss asked, responding to Hegseth's bizarre claim, that Iran "could use a conventional umbrella to continue a pursuit of nuclear ambitions."

"Four U.S. service members have died. This is the Pentagon's explanation to their families," reporter Kelsey Reichmann said about the same quote from Hegseth.

"Note, Pete's voice goes up several notches, gets very high and girly when he is pressed on whether we will have boots on the ground," said law professor Jen Taub about whether the U.S. would send soldiers into Iran.

Another New York Times report by Edward Wong and Michael Crowley, "Since January, when Mr. Trump began threatening new action against Iran, his administration has presented varying and contradictory statements on what it wanted from the negotiations, a sign that the diplomacy was probably doomed even before it began — perhaps by design, some analysts said."

The Daily Beast reported Monday after Hegseth's briefing that he was just as all-over-the-place as Trump.

Other observers couldn't help but notice that the administration keeps citing 1979 as the starting point of the "war." Repeatedly, Hegseth claimed that they started the war, but the U.S. would finish it. It prompted some to ask if the administration was confused about who the actual leader of Iran was because their names are similar.

It seems Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) also didn't know the difference between former Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini, who was in power in 1979 and Ali Khamenei, who Trump killed on Saturday.

"I just learned that Ayatollah Khamenei and Ayatollah Khomenei are not the same person. Here's my plan for regime change in Iran," the parody X account "NYTPitchbot" quipped.

The Texas primary is fast approaching, and the Republican Party is now scrambling, worried that President Donald Trump is going to hurt their plot for a hostile takeover.

The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that all three-way primary races are likely to head to runoffs after Tuesday's election. The infighting with so many candidates on the ballot is even more prominent in the U.S. Senate race, where Trump hasn't endorsed a candidate. Sen. John Cornyn is vying for his fifth term, while Attorney General Ken Paxton is fighting for his own federal gig.

"The race has turned personal and hostile, with a Cornyn-affiliated group running a TV ad that focuses on Paxton’s increased personal wealth while in office and his contentious divorce," the report said. "The ad calls Paxton a 'fraud,' highlights infidelity allegations raised during his divorce and says he is now 'wrecking another home, sleeping around with a married mother.'"

Paxton currently leads in the polls, despite his 2023 impeachment on bribery and misuse-of-office charges to aid a political donor. He continues to deny the allegations.

Trump is waiting on an endorsement, one person familiar with his thinking told the Journal. He wants to see how things look in the runoff, meaning he isn't likely to endorse for the primary race.

The one problem the GOP faces is that having Paxton at the top of the ticket gives Democrats the best chance they've had in decades of winning a seat in the state.

“Paxton puts the seat at risk,” the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) said in a February memo. Their internal polling showed that “Cornyn is the only Republican candidate who reliably wins a general election matchup” against both Democratic contenders.

The report explained that Tuesday will be a major indicator of both parties' attitudes, particularly amid a new war in the Middle East. For the GOP, the Journal said that it's a test of whether the GOP primary voters are still ruled by MAGA.

Paxton touts himself as the MAGA warrior willing to take a chance on a long-shot 2020 election case to fight Trump's loss. Cornyn, the Journal noted, has a voting record consistent with the president, despite what could be seen as deliberate caution. The third option is U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt, a long shot, who has campaigned with Trump over the years and has never run statewide before.

Democrats are resistant to spending any money in the state, but if Paxton is the GOP nominee and Rep. James Talarico is the Democratic nominee, "those plans might change," the report said.

President Donald Trump launched strikes into Iran Saturday morning in the second bombing campaign on the country. CNN's Kaitlan Collins couldn't help but notice that his reasoning behind it doesn't make much sense.

Speaking to Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-Calf.), who sits on the Foreign Affairs Committee, Collins recalled, "a lot of the president's supporters had heard [in 2024], no more regime change, no more endless wars. The vice president, JD Vance, I asked him about this and what exactly the argument was here, given they said seven months ago that they had obliterated Iran's nuclear arsenal."

When she asked Vance about it, how they were going to justify to the American people that a war against Iran was necessary, he said he wouldn't "make any news on Iran today."

"But the principle is very simple: Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon if they try to rebuild a nuclear weapon, that causes problems for us," Vance continued.

It prompted Collins to question: "Congresswoman, do you understand how the United States can go from having obliterated Iran's nuclear program as the White House insisted last summer, to now saying that part of the justification for these strikes is to ensure that they cannot have a nuclear weapon?"

Jacobs said that it makes it clear there's no real plan around the attack.

"I think this just goes to show how completely incoherent their strategy is or lack thereof. And look, I know a lot of my colleagues are also trying to justify this, saying that Iran shouldn't have a nuclear weapon. I agree Iran should never be allowed to get a nuclear weapon. We had a deal that, while imperfect, was actually working towards getting there, and instead Donald Trump pulled us out of that deal," Jacobs said.

Indeed, Badr Albusaidi, Oman's foreign minister, spoke with Vance, he told CBS "Face the Nation," and relayed the message that "the peace deal is within our reach.”

He also added, “I don't think any alternative to diplomacy is going to solve this problem.”

- YouTube youtu.be

President Donald Trump attacked Iran early Saturday morning, striking targets that they intend to continue for several days. He also encouraged citizens to rise up against their government. Other than that, it appears there is no real plan from the U.S.

Publications across the internet matched one major messasge on Saturday afternoon, asking what the plan is.

"'Massive' War Launched by a Man With No Plan. Again," the Mother Jones headline by David Corn reads. "Trump Has No Plan for the Iranian People," The Atlantic's Anne Applebaum headlined her piece. Even the LGBTQ+ publication The Advocate reported on the voices of those "who say the operation was undertaken without congressional authorization and without a plan for what comes next." Even the right-leaning Sky News called the war "a gamble."

In the latter, the analysis concluded, "The history of wars in the Middle East shows that no plan by either side survives first contact with the enemy."

The Advocate cited Pete Buttigieg, a Navy lieutenant who served in the War in Afghanistan.

“The President has launched our nation and our great military into a war of choice, risking American lives and resources, ignoring American law, and endangering our allies and partners,” the former transportation secretary wrote Saturday on Bluesky. “It does nothing to help with the urgent problems here at home that Americans face every day.”

“This nation learned the hard way that an unnecessary war, with no plan for what comes next, can lead to years of chaos and put America in still greater danger," he added in a seperate post.

"What Trump did not say was that he had a plan," Corn wrote for MoJo. "It’s easy for an American president to bomb a country. It’s much tougher to figure out what to do in the aftermath."

He noted that it has been an ongoing problem for Trump, who never has a plan for anything. Such was the case when Trump promised he could end the war between Ukraine and Russia in 24 hours. He even bragged that he likely could do it before he even took office on Jan. 20, 2025. More than a year later, the war continues.

"He had no plan to do so," Corn wrote.

Trump has been fighting that problem for years. In his first administration, the GOP came inches away from repealing the Affordable Care Act, a huge policy promise to "repeal and replace Obamacare." Their problem is that there was no plan to replace it with.

There was a running joke in the first administration that every week was "Infrastructure Week," part of Trump's ongoing effort to usher in a major nationwide infrastructure project to repair the country's aging infrastructure, such as highways, bridges, internet, plumbing, and sewage systems. The White House would announce "Infrastructure Week," and continue identifying problems, but not proposing any plans to fix it.

"The mere act of bombing Iran will not by itself create a stable regime," Applebaum wrote for The Atlantic.

This problem has already plagued Trump for weeks, she explained.

"On at least eight occasions during Iran’s nationwide uprising in early January, Trump encouraged Iranians to 'take over their institutions' and promised that American help was 'on its way.' But just last month, days after the Iranian regime massacred thousands of its own citizens, President Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, sent out the opposite message," Applebaum said.

Witkoff suggested that Iran needed “a deal that ought to happen.” Meanwhile, Vice President JD Vance was just as clueless, saying that America’s interests in Iran are limited.

“If the Iranian people want to overthrow the regime, that’s up to the Iranian people,” Vance told reporters. “What we’re focused on right now is the fact that Iran can’t have a nuclear weapon.”

She closed by saying that everyone is behind a "stable, law-abiding Iran," in the hopes that it "will help build a stable, law-abiding Middle East."

To do that, however, she wrote that "Iran needs not a new dictatorship but self-determination and a pluralist government that respects basic rights. Right now, the Trump administration is not trying to build one."

Historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat spoke with former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance for her Substack just as the United States began a bombing campaign against Iran.

Ben-Ghiat had spoken to Vali R. Nasr, an Iran expert from Johns Hopkins, on Friday about the possibility of a war. He noted that it was a war that Israel wanted and that it was something that Benjamin Netanyahu and Mike Huckabee advocated for. The latter to men believe in the rapid expansion of Israel as part of a Christian nationalist agenda for a holy war.

Vance added that those online arguing that this is a "wag the dog" kind of war may not be wrong, as both President Donald Trump and Netanyahu have their own reasons for a distraction. Trump is desperate to dodge the continuation of the scandal around his connections to trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. Netanyahu is facing his own charges for fraud, breach of trust, and bribery in three cases.

The two celebrated some of the resistance efforts evident in Minneapolis and across the world, in which knitters have begun creating the Norwegian red hats that were a sign of resistance during the Nazi uprising.

Ben-Ghiat mentioned the "human chain" in Minneapolis that has been photographed, in which parents lock arms to help protect children entering or exiting their school and walking home. There is an ongoing concern that federal agents will continue to use children as bait against their parents, who may be undocumented.

In the history of resistance, Ben-Ghiat said things like rituals can involve every part of a person's body, hats on heads, arms linked, hands joined.

"You can use your body, which becomes like a mobile messaging unit everywhere you go to show your sympathies and show your support, even if you're not taking up arms against a foreign occupier," she explained. "And that's why, of course, that [the red hat] was banned, but how these things travel through time and space. And so here we have it being revived in Minneapolis. And that's very beautiful."

The protests in Italy against Silvio Berlusconi also involved those willing to link arms and surround the Ministry of Justice. In Hong Kong in 2019, when China decided to take it back, "these civic rituals that involve — embodied witnessing and making public space into a place of solidarity. And they're really moving."

Vance recalled those who were willing to link arms in Alabama during the Civil Rights era in which fire hoses and dogs were used as weapons against protesters.

Going through the history of resistance, Ben-Ghiat noted "the mothers of the plaza" and "grandmothers of the plaza" during the Dirty War in Argentina, gathered in public with nothing more than sticks with photos of loved ones who had disappeared.

"They didn't want them to be forgotten. So they came there and many of them had photos on sticks. And this spread to Chile. And in Chile, people actually had life-size photos of their loved ones or people they didn't know, but they were human rights activists disappeared," Ben-Ghiat said.

She said that America is "ripe" for a return to that kind of analog activism that includes public art and meaningful display.

Vance closed by asking Ben-Ghiat to help talk her off the ledge, noting she doesn't understand why there hasn't been a larger uprising.

"A lot of folks, I mean, we live in tough economic times. People are struggling to make ends meet. Yeah. I do understand that reality," Vance said. "But I also worry that we are yet again like the frogs in the pot being boiled, becoming complacent about Donald Trump's worst abuses."

Ben Ghait said that she looked at various movements and when such protests began in relation to movements against authoritarianism or fascism. She noted that in many cases, it took years before there was an uprising like the ones seen in Russia. Turkey was the same, she said, noting it was 2013 when Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had been prime minister for 10 years, when an uprising began. In Hungary, it began earlier because Viktor Orbán began changing the country's constitution immediately.

So, the two women urged those to join the March 28 "No Kings" protest, an organic movement that has grown since Trump began sending federal agents and National Guard soldiers into states.

President Donald Trump's efforts to take over Canada and tax the nation to the north have not gone over well. The U.S. has lost billions of dollars due to significantly lower tourism, but the latest battle has Republicans enraged.

Writing Saturday, The New Republic's Greg Sargent said that Trump's efforts to block the Gordie Howe International Bridge, which will connect Detroit, Michigan, to Ontario, have become a serious problem for GOP congressional candidates.

Sargent cited a report from The Detroit News saying the economy of the state is hurting.

As Canadian Deputy Mayor Greg Grimes said last week, he's stopped traveling over the water to Michigan. It was something he and his family loved doing. They'd go shopping or out to dinner. Since Trump, however, they stay on their own side, AlterNet reported.

He said that their family isn't the only one. Being the neighborly Canadian, Grimes tried to warn the small Michigan town across the river to Port Huron. He sent a kind email urging Port Huron City Manager James Freed, a conservative Republican, to also think beyond the economic impact and consider the longstanding friendship between the two towns. Freed didn't much care.

Now it appears Grimes' warnings were right. The lower number of Canadians entering the U.S. is having a significant impact on the Michigan economy.

"Canadian visits to southeast Michigan fell 30 percent from 2024 to 2025, said Visit Detroit CEO Claude Molinari," The Detroit News reported.

“That’s a large decline in a short amount of time,” Molinari added. “And it’s certainly having a detrimental impact on our area hotels, restaurants and attractions, which have been able to rely on consistent Canadian travel in recent years.”"

There were about 10 million fewer Canadians who came to the U.S. in 2025. There has been a steady drop for some time, likely due to the exchange rate. But The Detroit News called 2025's numbers "unique" in their "severity."

An official with the Michigan Chamber of Commerce said: “Canadians are very important to American businesses.”

This is a serious problem for three Republican-held congressional seats in Michigan, Sargent noted. There's also an open Senate seat as Sen. Gary Peters announced his retirement.

One district is the historic home of the "fabled Reagan Democrat," Sargent recalled, and it could finally flip away from the GOP in 2026. The 10th Congressional District sits just north of Detroit on Lake St. Clair. The district's economy is heavily reliant on Canada.

The Democratic candidate running for the seat is former prosecutor Christina Hines. Speaking to Sargent, she said, “Michigan and Ontario are uniquely connected. We should be protecting cross-border trade and cooperation—not escalating conflict.”

Democrats running in Michigan think that they can make overtures to repair the relationship with Canada, even if Trump is still in the White House.

First Lady Melania Trump is leading the United Nations Security Council next week, and it's prompting some to wonder what the angle is for the Trumps to benefit.

Writing for The Guardian on Saturday, columnist Arwa Mahdawi explained, "It is my working hypothesis that there are only two reasons a Trump ever does anything: money or malice."

So, she speculated, what is behind the new decision to take Mrs. Trump away from her meme coin, coffee table books, and filmmaking?

"I’m not sure holding the gavel at Monday’s security council session is particularly lucrative, so file this one under 'malice,'" wrote Mahdawi. "Foisting Melania on the Security Council as the U.S. assumes the body’s rotating monthly presidency sends a clear message to the world about just how seriously the Trump administration takes the UN. It feels like an attempt to undermine the credibility of the UN and multilateralism more broadly."

She recalled Trump's overall hatred that manifested during the COVID-19 crisis toward the World Health Organization in 2020, along with his ongoing abandonment of 66 other international organizations.

Daniel Forti, head of UN affairs at the International Crisis Group, told NPR that the "symbolism is unequivocal."

"It’s that the US really wants to dictate its own terms to the rest of the multilateral system and wants to work with the UN in a way where it really sets the agenda," he said.

Several months ago, Trump announced he was forming his own group of the united nations called the "Board of Peace," where he, and only he, will be the leader, and joining will cost $1 billion. The president announced last week that he was handing over $10 billion in taxpayer dollars to run the organization, though those funds have not yet been approved by Congress. The current goal is to rebuild Gaza, he said, but during a speech before the meeting last week, Trump claimed they are "going to go far beyond Gaza."

Mahdawi sees it as nothing more than "a vehicle for rampant profiteering."

Behind the scenes, Mahdawi said that a number of diplomats are fearful that it will become a shadow version of the United Nations, that favors the Americans.

"All of which must be very exciting for our first lady, who is clearly keen to try her hand at international diplomacy," Mahdawi closed. "Perhaps, after her valuable work experience stint at the United Nations on Monday, Melania will also find herself a nice little role on the Board of Peace. And maybe Ivanka Trump, who the president once thought about installing as the head of the World Bank, will also return to public life. Whatever happens, I think we can all agree that we’re terribly lucky to have such a talented ruling family. FIFA, I hope you’re paying attention; time to give Melania her own peace prize, don’t you think?"

Former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton walked into a House hearing and exposed the real cover-up involving the investigation files for trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

Columnist Paul Waldman penned a piece Saturday shaming Republicans in the House Oversight and Reform Committee for spending more time on "Pizzagate" conspiracy theories than on helping survivors of Epstein's decades of abuse.

While Republicans hoped to "embarrass Democrats," Waldman said, they "ended up embarrassing themselves."

While speaking to the committee, Secretary Clinton flipped the script on Republicans as they hoped to humiliate her. Instead, she highlighted just how unserious the GOP has been when it comes to handling the Epstein case.

"This is the nature of the Republican response to the unending Epstein scandal: from Congress, the kind of buffoonery represented by the Clinton deposition; and from the administration, an insistence that Trump is unconnected to or 'exonerated' from a scandal whose central figure long counted the president as a friend," wrote Waldman.

He went on to mock claims from President Donald Trump's Justice Department that it would investigate itself to better understand what went wrong in the Epstein investigation.

It noted that there isn't merely one set of missing documents, "But among the millions of pages of Epstein files that have been released were massive amounts of heavily redacted documents with names and other information blacked out. In some cases, that was done to protect the identity of victims, but not all."

He recalled reports from last July in which Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) wrote a letter to the DOJ saying he was made aware of as many as 1,000 FBI personnel sifting through the files to "'flag' any records in which President Trump was mentioned."

Bloomberg News later reported that Trump’s name was removed from all of the files for "privacy" reasons.

Thankfully, the DOJ isn't made up of "the skilled operators" necessary of carrying out an expert conspiracy. Instead, Waldman said the "bumbling partisan hacks. ... They’d have a tough time mounting a comprehensive cover-up of Trump’s ties to Epstein, simply because those ties are so public and extensive."

While Republicans might be trying desperately to tie Epstein to the Democrats, and make it go away, Waldman explained that the scandal is bigger than a typical political scandal. What happened to the girls and women is horrific, but the anger goes beyond getting them justice and dips into the anger Americans have over elite, powerful men getting away with such crimes. Both sides of the political aisle are angry, "no matter how many times Trump says he was 'totally exonerated.'"

There is no greater example of the powerful elite that gets away with whatever they want, Waldman said, recalling his father bailing Trump out of financial blundersand funding his projects. He even admitted in the "Access Hollywood" video that he can assault women and get away with it because he's "a celebrity."

“When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything," Trump said in the video.

"That’s the rot in the American elite that this scandal has revealed," Waldman closed. He argued that whatever distractions Republicans try to throw up, it won't help the scandal disappear.

President Donald Trump's past social media comments are coming back to haunt him as Americans wake up to discover the U.S. went to war overnight.

A little after 2 a.m. EST, Trump announced on television, "The lives of American heroes may be lost, and we may have casualties — that often happens in war." The late hour prompted some to wonder if Trump did it then to hide it.

Former ambassador and political scientist Michael McFaul recalled a 2019 tweet from President Donald Trump in which he claimed, "The United States has spent EIGHT TRILLION DOLLARS fighting and policing in the Middle East. Thousands of our Great Soldiers hae died for been badly wounded. Millions of people have died on the other side. GOING INTO THE MIDDLE EAST IS THE WORST DECISION EVER MADE....." McFaul remarked, "Guess he has changed his mind. Does anyone know why?"

"You have to wonder at a certain point if the FIFA Peace Prize no longer really means anything," quipped Bloomberg columnist Matthew Yglesias.

Another Trump tweet resurfaced from November 10, 2013, in which Trump claimed, "Remember that I predicted a long time ago that President Obama will attack Iran because of his inability to negotiate properly-not skilled!"

An exchange from late October between Trump's deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, and The Young Turks' Cenk Uygur indicated that Trump was the peacemaker while Vice President Kamala Harris was the warmonger.

"Cenk: I don't know how I can be more clear. Trump will end and prevent war in the Middle East. He wants peace. Harris and her neocon cabinet want war, war and more war," Miller wrote.

An Oct. 22, 2012, tweet from Trump read, "Don't let Obama play the Iran card in order to start a war in order to get elected--be careful Republicans!" reposted Mini Timmaraju, who leads Reproductive Freedom for All.

She also reposted a screen capture of a Stephen Miller tweet reading, "KAMALA WILL SEND YOUR SONS TO WAR." YouTuber Keith Edwards reposted the tweet above the video of Trump saying, "American heroes may be lost."

Another Stephen Miller tweet from Nov 1, 2024, claimed, "To anyone still gullible enough to fall for scummy media hoaxes: Trump said warmongering neocons love sending your kids to die for wars they would never fight themselves. Liz Cheney is Kamala’s top advisor. Liz wants to invade the whole Middle East. Kamala = WWIII. Trump = Peace."

"Trump's second term has been the worst case scenario," lamented former National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications and Speechwriting under President Barack Obama.

Several began questioning whether Trump's youngest son, Barron Trump, would enlist in the military.

The consistent message coming from many MAGA influencers and verified accounts is that they didn't want a war and they didn't vote for one. They indicate that they supported Trump because they believed his promises that he would not only end wars but not start any new wars.

Christian columnist Steve Eubanks commented, "Not what I voted for. In fact, the opposite of what I voted for."

"Angry at Trump tonight. Not what I voted for. Also, very bad for the midterms," one Utah Trump supporter posted.

GeoffB, a verified user who uses a "Three Percenter" logo as his avitar also posted that it was "not what I voted for." He shared a meme showing "Trump's kids" and "Netanyahu's kids" sitting in beach chairs in the water. Below it was a photo of soldiers in the desert saying, "your kids."

Dan Erickson replied to Rep. Tim Emmer (R-Minn.), complimenting the president for his "decisive action." Erickson said it wasn't what he voted for, using an AI-generated meme of Vladimir Putin and trafficker Jeffrey Epstein playing with a Trump puppet.

Self-described "Christian Nationalist" Jeremy Burtch also said, "This is not what I voted for."

President Donald Trump launched strikes on Iran early Saturday morning, claiming that talks over a nuclear agreement had broken down. Speaking after midnight, Trump warned, “The lives of American heroes may be lost, and we may have casualties — that often happens in war.”

The Guardian's diplomatic editor, Patrick Wintour, published an analysis saying that pausing the talks to wage war jeopardizes the chances of Iran taking the American president seriously.

In 2015, the U.S., the U.K., France, China, Russia and Germany agreed to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), a nuclear deal that Washington helped craft. Trump, however, withdrew from the agreement after taking office in 2017, and Iran moved quickly to reestablish its nuclear program.

Wintour noted that last summer, Trump’s administration organized a new round of talks, but three days before negotiators were due to meet for a sixth session, Trump ordered a 10-day campaign of strikes on what the U.S. said were Iranian nuclear sites.

CNN reported on air Saturday that the current bombing campaign will continue, with brief pauses to assess whether the strikes have hit their intended targets.

Wintour wrote that halting a second round of negotiations for what Trump called a war “must torpedo the chances of the Iranian regime ever taking a US offer of talks seriously. They have been stung twice.” One Iranian Telegram channel complained, “Once again, the US attacked while Iran was pursuing diplomacy. Once again, diplomacy does not work with the terrorist state of the US.”

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said he had been aware that Trump might abruptly end diplomatic efforts “but felt it was a risk worth taking.”

Badr Albusaidi, Oman’s foreign minister, tried to warn Trump that negotiators were on the brink of a deal, but was only able to reach Vice President J.D. Vance, according to Wintour’s report. Desperate to head off a war, Albusaidi went on CBS to describe how close the parties were to an agreement, saying it would be far better than the one struck under President Barack Obama. Still, Trump told the nation in the early morning hours that the bombing had begun.

“But this was neither an agenda nor a timetable that suited Trump,” Wintour wrote. “Indeed, Steve Witkoff, his special envoy, hinted at what the president wanted when he said Trump was surprised Iran had not yet capitulated.”

Speaking early Saturday, Trump said simply that Iran puts the United States and American forces abroad at risk.

Wintour concluded that “what is extraordinary is that Trump himself, prior to the attacks, made next to no attempt to articulate or justify to the American people, to Congress or to his allies his actions or his objectives.”