Mar 222026
 


Edward Hopper Hotel window 1955


Trump: US “Close to Meeting Objectives” and “Considering Winding Down.” (CTH)
US “Degrades” Threats To Hormuz Traffic As Iran Missile Strike Fails (ZH)
World’s Largest Gas Field Hit: How Close Is A Global Energy Crisis? (RT)
The Shadow War Against President Trump (Josh Hammer)
Robert Mueller Dies. Trump’s Reaction Was VERY Trump. (Matt Margolis)
Letitia James and Transgenderism Wreck America This Badly (O’Brien)
Report Reveals That Democrats Are Plotting Against Chuck Schumer (Matt Margolis)
BOMBSHELL Bill Clinton/Epstein Info Drops (MN)
Chicago Ramps Up Taxes and Debt in Familiar Death Spiral (Turley)
Elon Musk Offers Lifeline To TSA Agents As Dems Hold Paychecks Hostage (ZH)
The Democrats’ Strategy on the SAVE Act Is Imploding (Matt Margolis)
What Is It With The Fickle Europeans? (Victor Davis Hanson)
Battle for Hungary: How the EU Plans to Defeat Viktor Orban (RT)

 


 

https://twitter.com/Sassafrass_84/status/2035058582173990988?s=20

 


 


Contradictory messages?!

Trump: US “Close to Meeting Objectives” and “Considering Winding Down.” (CTH)

President Trump released the following message via Truth Social:

“We are getting very close to meeting our objectives as we consider winding down our great Military efforts in the Middle East with respect to the Terrorist Regime of Iran: (1) Completely degrading Iranian Missile Capability, Launchers, and everything else pertaining to them. (2) Destroying Iran’s Defense Industrial Base. (3) Eliminating their Navy and Air Force, including Anti Aircraft Weaponry. (4) Never allowing Iran to get even close to Nuclear Capability, and always being in a position where the U.S.A. can quickly and powerfully react to such a situation, should it take place. (5) Protecting, at the highest level, our Middle Eastern Allies, including Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait, and others. The Hormuz Strait will have to be guarded and policed, as necessary, by other Nations who use it — The United States does not! If asked, we will help these Countries in their Hormuz efforts, but it shouldn’t be necessary once Iran’s threat is eradicated. Importantly, it will be an easy Military Operation for them. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

~President DONALD J. TRUMP

Read more …

“Vastly Expands Threat Radius”

US “Degrades” Threats To Hormuz Traffic As Iran Missile Strike Fails (ZH)

President Trump’s late in the day Friday comments proclaiming “I think we’ve won” suggested he might be readying the announcement of an offramp or at least de-escalation, but that speculation has proven premature as things definitely escalated overnight. For apparently the second time of Operation Epic Fury, Iran’s flagship enrichment site at Natanz nuclear facility has come under attack. Iran’s nuclear agency confirmed the strike but is keeping details deliberately vague, saying nothing about how it was carried out or what weapons were used. What it did emphasize, however, is that “no nuclear radiation” was released.


Natanz – alongside the Isfahan nuclear facilities – sits at the core of Tehran’s nuclear program, long viewed as a prime target in the US-Israel campaign to cripple Iran’s ability to produce an atomic bomb – though it remains that even Iran’s current wartime leadership is saying it has no intent to produce a nuclear weapon. The AP says Natanz was earlier struck at least once at the opening of the conflict, writing: “The facility, Iran’s main uranium enrichment site, was hit in the first week of the war and several buildings appeared damaged, according to satellite images.” All of this, along with steady the overnight and early morning heavy bombing of Tehran marks a definite escalation despite Trump having floated the idea of “winding down” operations in the late Friday comments.

Iran Vastly Expands Threat Radius: Diego Garcia
Another huge escalation and development: British officials are staying tight-lipped after an attempted Iranian strike on the key Indian Ocean air base on Friday reportedly failed, offering no details on what exactly happened. But this risks pulling in the UK, which has appeared reluctant to directly participate in Trump’s operation. Britain has generally condemned “Iran’s reckless attacks.” Just hours after Iran targeted the Diego Garcia base, Britain confirmed US bombers can continue using UK facilities – including the same base – for operations aimed at stopping Iranian attacks on shipping in Hormuz.

“Iran fired two intermediate-range ballistic missiles at Diego Garcia, a joint U.S.-U.K. military base in the middle of the Indian Ocean, according to multiple U.S. officials,” The Wall Street Journal details. “Neither of the missiles hit the base, but the move marked Iran’s first operational use of IRBMs and a significant attempt to reach far beyond the Middle East and threaten US-UK interests.”

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“Rising LNG prices would be particularly bad news for Europe, which has become heavily reliant on LNG in light of its rejection of Russian pipeline gas. [..] The US, as a LNG exporter, would benefit from rising prices.

World’s Largest Gas Field Hit: How Close Is A Global Energy Crisis? (RT)

Although the natural gas reservoir housing South Pars is the world’s largest, Iran’s ability to export gas is limited by sanctions. Therefore, damage to the field or related facilities is mainly a domestic issue. The majority of the gas extracted from South Pars goes to the domestic market, although some is exported to Iraq and Turkiye. Israel struck the South Pars field and the infrastructure that services it at the nearby Asaluyeh processing hub on March 18. Iran retaliated with strikes on Saudi Arabia, the UAE and, most critically, Qatar’s Ras Laffan Industrial City, the world’s largest LNG export hub.


More concerning globally is not the South Pars strike but the retaliatory attack against the LNG hub at Ras Laffan. This is where the gas from the North Field, which is the Qatari side of the same reservoir that South Pars taps, is processed. The North Field – also called the North Dome – is responsible for about 20% of global LNG supply, practically all of which is processed at Ras Laffan. Qatar has admitted that the attacks caused “significant damage.”

While the complex had already been largely shut since early March due to the war, analysts at Wood Mackenzie now warn that damage to the hub could delay any restart and “fundamentally reshape the global LNG outlook. Rising LNG prices would be particularly bad news for Europe, which has become heavily reliant on LNG in light of its rejection of Russian pipeline gas. Other major consumers of LNG include Japan, Turkiye, and India. The US, as a LNG exporter, would benefit from rising prices.

The damage could be long term
Importantly, unlike many other leading gas fields, the geologically unified reservoir feeding South Pars and the North Field is only at 10% depletion, meaning 90% of the gas is still there. The significance of this cannot be overstated. The gas from the world’s largest reservoir – and one expected to play a critical role in meeting future global demand – may not be extractable if the infrastructure on both sides is destroyed. This becomes an issue not just of near-term prices but the state of structural physical supply. Any sustained disruption to Qatari production would reverberate across the global gas market. Losing even part of Qatari output for an extended period would tighten supply, drive prices higher, and leave import dependent economies scrambling for alternatives.

Unfortunately, alternatives may be scarce. The LNG market was tight even before the war. US LNG export capacity was already near its limits, meaning the country s ability to offset lost Persian Gulf supply is constrained. Meanwhile, repairing damaged LNG facilities is a highly complex and costly undertaking that could take years. Projects implemented in the Ras Laffan Industrial City cost $70 billion to build, according to Qatar News Agency. So even if a ceasefire is reached today, the damage already sustained could reverberate for years.

Read more …

“Kent resigned this week in flamboyant fashion, rationalizing his stunt with hyper-conspiratorial, antisemitic rhetoric better suited for a Code Pink rally than government letterhead.”

The Shadow War Against President Trump (Josh Hammer)

The joint American-Israeli military operation against the Iranian regime is now three weeks old, but there is another war — a more silent one — raging here on the home front. President Donald Trump’s second administration is facing a highly coordinated shadow war — one waged both by some influential outside voices on the right and, more dangerously, by their subversive allies within Trump’s very own government.


If this campaign is not confronted and decisively defeated, the result will be calamitous: a second Trump term that drifts into lame-duck status not due to a voter backlash but because of an insurrection from within. What this column has previously referred to as “Operation Divide MAGA” has reached fever pitch. And Trump, to his great credit, has begun to settle all the MAGA family business. But an even more concerted effort is needed to clean out the Augean Stables once and for all.

First, let’s take a step back.
In any healthy political coalition or movement, debate is inevitable and often desirable. But what we have seen from certain high-profile podcasters, such as Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly, is nothing less than a full-scale assault on Trump and his agenda. These provocateurs first outed themselves last summer, when they all but accused Trump of covering up a global (Mossad-tied?) pedophile ring over his Justice Department’s handling of the Epstein files. But above all, the podcasters’ subversion has focused on foreign policy — most recently, on Iran and Operation Epic Fury.

Trump is a conservative nationalist. His foreign policy is rooted in confidence and “peace through strength”-style deterrence. Yet Carlson, Kelly and their fellow travelers have blasted the Iran conflict as everything from “evil” (Carlson) to “clearly Israel’s war” (Kelly). The not-so-dynamic duo is thus accusing the man they quite literally campaigned for in 2024 of engaging in heinous acts and of being the unwitting dupe of a foreign government.

True, Carlson and Kelly do not actually speak for the MAGA base: A brand-new poll from J.L. Partners shows that 83% of Republican voters support Epic Fury. Moreover, Republicans agree with Trump over Carlson and Kelly on foreign policy by a whopping 84%-6% margin. But still: Their platforms are enormous. When Carlson, Kelly and their allies consistently excoriate the leading priorities of the administration they purport to support, the effect is Republican voter confusion, resentment and depression as we head toward November in a midterm election year.

Even worse, the shadow war subversives are not merely shouting into their microphones from the rafters. They have allies inside the administration, with whom they are all but assuredly coordinating, engaging in outright sabotage against the one man — the president of the United States — who was actually elected to wield the “executive Power” of the federal government and serve as commander in chief. The most alarming developments are emerging from within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard. A former Democratic congresswoman with a pro-Moscow slant once seen as a heterodox ally, Gabbard now oversees an environment that increasingly bears the markings of an anti-MAGA coup.

Take Gabbard’s recent rehiring of Dan Caldwell. Dismissed last year by his (former longtime friend) Secretary of War Pete Hegseth amid allegations of leaking, Caldwell is now back in a highly sensitive role. Leaks of this nature are not bureaucratic slip-ups; they are direct assaults on national security and the integrity of the constitutional chain of command. It is difficult to interpret the isolationist-leaning Gabbard’s move as anything other than a direct shot across the bow at Hegseth — and, by extension, the boss Hegseth has so passionately defended since Epic Fury began, Trump.

Consider also Joe Kent, who until recently served under Gabbard as director of the National Counterterrorism Center. Kent resigned this week in flamboyant fashion, rationalizing his stunt with hyper-conspiratorial, antisemitic rhetoric better suited for a Code Pink rally than government letterhead. Within hours after tendering his resignation, Kent announced he would be joining — who else? — Carlson to tell his story. An alleged serial leaker, Kent is now under FBI investigation for spilling national security secrets. Unsurprisingly, Iranian regime propaganda television gobbled up the interview and regurgitated it for an impressionable English-speaking audience.

That Kent came to Carlson’s platform to try to get ahead of the FBI investigation revelation is not coincidence. It is all orchestrated. After being fired by Hegseth last year, Caldwell similarly ran to Carlson to tell his side of the story. Moreover, one of Caldwell’s higher-ranking colleagues at ODNI, Will Ruger, shares Caldwell’s professional background in the isolationist Koch network. Surprise! The White House Presidential Personnel Office, formerly directed by ex-Rand Paul staffer Sergio Gor (since shipped halfway around the world to India), has allowed in individuals across the defense, intelligence and national security spaces that are functionally anti-MAGA. Perhaps this was done for self-serving reasons. Perhaps Gor and PPO were under the understanding that MAGA is something other than what the boss says it is.

Frankly, it does not really matter. Because the boss has now spoken. He’s cast Carlson and Kelly out of MAGA in emphatic fashion. And after Kent’s obnoxious resignation stunt, Trump said of those (like Kent) who do not believe Iran is a threat to the United States: “We don’t want those people.” Translation: Get out. The message could not possibly be clearer.

But is Trump’s PPO listening? Is Gabbard’s ODNI fully in line? Gabbard, in Senate testimony this week, couldn’t bring herself to agree with her boss’s assessment that Iran posed an “imminent threat” prior to the launch of Epic Fury. It’s time for the president to team up with White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and other arch-loyalists, such as Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, and clean house. The internal anti-MAGA sabotage must be ended, and the external anti-MAGA sabotage must be combated. The success of the remainder of Trump’s second term hangs in the balance.

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Mueller is defined by his stuttering performance in the hearing afterwards. Hard to believe that actually happened.

Robert Mueller Dies. Trump’s Reaction Was VERY Trump. (Matt Margolis)

Robert Mueller, the former FBI director who spent nearly two years investigating the Russian collusion hoax in the 2016 presidential election, died Friday night at the age of 81. His family confirmed the news Saturday in a brief statement asking for privacy. “With deep sadness, we are sharing the news that Bob passed away,” his family said in a statement Saturday. “His family asks that their privacy be respected.” Mueller’s death was not unexpected. In August 2025, his family disclosed that he had been battling Parkinson’s disease since 2021. He served as FBI director from 2001 to 2013, making him the second-longest-serving director in the bureau’s history after J. Edgar Hoover.


The New York Times has more: “A button-down, lockjawed rock-ribbed exemplar of a vanishing caste, the liberal Republican, Mr. Mueller became the F.B.I. director just a week before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. He went on to impose the most significant structural and cultural changes in the history of the F.B.I., seeking to transform the bureau into a 21st-century intelligence service that could protect both national security and civil liberties. And his counterterrorism agents were the first to blow the whistle on abuses at the secret prisons that the C.I.A. had established after 9/11 to detain, interrogate and, in some cases, torture terrorism suspects.

But he may be best remembered for what he did after he left the F.B.I., when he was summoned to investigate a sitting president. The Justice Department named Mr. Mueller special counsel on May 17, 2017, eight days after Mr. Trump dismissed the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, who was investigating the interactions between the Trump campaign and a Russian covert operation to help him win the White House. The president’s reason for dismissing Mr. Comey was no secret. The next day, in the Oval Office, he told the Russia foreign minister and the Russian ambassador: “I just fired the head of the F.B.I. He was crazy.” Mr. Trump continued: “I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off.”

It gets worse from there, so I’ll move on. Trump wasted no time responding to the news. Within hours of the news breaking, he posted on Truth Social: “Robert Mueller just died. Good, I’m glad he’s dead. He can no longer hurt innocent people!”Mueller’s investigation was a constant sore spot for Trump, who was ultimately vindicated when Mueller failed to find the evidence of collusion that Democrats were counting on. Trump called the final Mueller report a “complete and total exoneration” after it was released.

Despite the Mueller report’s findings, Hillary Clinton has long claimed that the 2016 election was stolen from her. “You can run the best campaign, you can even become the nominee, and you can have the election stolen from you,” Clinton said back in 2019. Democrats and the mainstream media have all incorrectly implied or claimed that the Mueller report confirmed that Trump colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election.

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“James wants to bully doctors to keep providing ‘gender care’ treatments ..”

Letitia James and Transgenderism Wreck America This Badly (O’Brien)

If you need a reminder of just how much Joe Biden wrecked the country while he was in the White House, here is yet another example. A Biden judicial appointee in Oregon ruled against Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and his Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on issues tied to controversial transgender medical treatments, and that’s just the start. While this would not come as a surprise to any thinking person, the more you peel the layers back on this story, the more it affirms just how bad Biden was for America. Judge Mustafa Kasubhai decided that in December, when the HHS issued a declaration that dubbed certain gender procedures and treatments unsafe and ineffective for minors, the federal agency went too far. These treatments included puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and sex-change bottom and top surgeries.


Kasubhai said that Kennedy did not follow the appropriate administrative processes when HHS made the declaration. HHS reportedly informed doctors and health providers that if they provide these treatments to minors, the administration might exclude them from such federal health programs as Medicare and Medicaid. What this latest ruling does is give certain relief to doctors and providers who want to continue to making bank by destroying the lives of children through such life-altering treatments. Here is where it gets worse. Celebrating the judge’s decision was a familiar name and face.

“Today’s win breaks through the noise and gives some needed clarity to patients, families, and providers,” said New York’s attorney general Letitia James, who served as lead counsel on the lawsuit. “Health care services for transgender young people remain legal, and the federal government cannot intimidate or punish the providers who offer them.” Not coincidentally, in another case we’ll get to in a bit, she is the one who is trying to intimidate a hospital that wants to shut its ‘gender care’ operation down, and she is trying to bully the hospital into keeping it going.

In this case, Judge Kasubhai said with regard to Robert Kennedy’s declaration, “The notion that ‘I will go forward and issue a declaration and see if we can get away with it’ is not a principle of governance that adheres to the overarching commitment to a democratic republic that requires the rule of law to be regarded and respected and honored as a sacred.” In this case, 21 states and the District of Columbia filed suit against HHS, Kennedy, and HHS’s inspector general over the declaration. The plaintiffs claimed that Kennedy’s declaration sought to coerce doctors to stop providing those controversial treatments for minors, while doing an end-around on certain legal requirements for when an administration seeks to institute a policy change.

One thing the suit contended that the Trump administration did not do and should have done was to give the public notice and a chance to comment before material changes were made to federal health policy. What HHS actually did was make its declaration after consideration of a peer-reviewed report and its conclusions. The report recommended that behavioral therapy be the first option provided to gender-confused minors. HHS called for doctors to give this option the best possible chance and more time to work, rather than choosing the chemical and surgical route right from the start. Separately, in February, I reported on the fallout from a $2 million award to a victim of “gender affirming care” treatments in yet another case.

Right after that judgment, the American Medical Association (AMA) renounced gender surgeries on children, and the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS) did the same. While the Trump administration and the real world have clarity on the risks to children of gender mutilation and treatments, the Democrats are dead set against fixing some massive problems they created on gender issues. As with anything where the left is involved, it only gets even more complicated at this point.

James wants to bully doctors to keep providing ‘gender care’ treatments
In yet another case, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has had to step in and warn James that it might be compelled to defend New York hospital NYU Langone Health if she decides to push the healthcare provider to reverse its decision to stop providing certain “gender care procedures” for minors. That’s right. A hospital wants to stop messing with kids’ lives through “gender care,” and James wants to prevent that. This has led to a showdown between the federal government and James. The DOJ sent a letter to James on March 18, telling her that she cannot use her state’s anti-discrimination law to force NYU Langone to provide what Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche described as “sex-rejecting procedures” for minors.

 


 

During Kasubhai’s confirmation hearings in 2023, Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and John Kennedy (R-La.) shredded the leftist judge with his own words. Cruz described the judge’s record as “so far out of the mainstream” that all of the Judiciary Committee’s questions were directed toward him. The Republicans then focused on a ruling Kasubhai handed down that invalidated Eugene, Ore.’s citywide curfew during the 2020 riots over George Floyd’s death.

Kennedy zeroed in on Kasubhai’s own courtroom rules, which instructed attorneys and others in his courtroom to provide their “pronouns and honorifics,” and to use them when referring to others in the courtroom. As Rush Limbaugh would say, “for those of you in Rio Linda,” honorifics are the titles we use as a preface to our names – things like Mr., Ms., etc. During Kasubhai’s confirmation hearing, all the red flags were there. Marxism, wokism, racism, “equity,” the whole bit. Even his rather bizarre poetry and writings. After watching this video from the confirmation hearings, it’s no wonder Kasubhai is doing his level best to carry out the Biden manifesto, which, though unsaid, amounts to one simple objective – destroy America as we know it.

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“.. a batch of senators dubbed “Fight Club” who are particularly incensed by Schumer’s approach to the midterms.”

Report Reveals That Democrats Are Plotting Against Chuck Schumer (Matt Margolis)

Based on the polls, Republicans may be sweating the midterms right about now, but Democrats are dealing with something uglier — a full-blown leadership crisis hiding in plain sight on Capitol Hill. The Wall Street Journal dropped a bombshell on Friday: Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is facing a level of internal revolt that has some members of his own caucus quietly counting heads to see if they can push him out. Schumer’s political future has been less than certain ever since he voted to keep the government open a year ago. His poll numbers tanked, and rumors flew of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) challenging him when he’s up for reelection in 2028. There have also been reports that Democrats were looking to oust Schumer from leadership, and it looks like that hasn’t died down.


According to this latest report, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) sat down to dinner with progressive activists at a French restaurant in Georgetown last month, during which Murphy told the group that some lawmakers had already done informal vote counts to gauge whether enough support existed to remove Schumer from leadership. Murphy added that Schumer had the votes to survive — for now. Murphy is among a group of senators and top advisers who have grown increasingly dissatisfied with Schumer’s leadership, according to people familiar with the conversations. That group includes Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who has been initiating conversations with other senators to gauge frustrations with Schumer, some of the people said.

Sen. Tina Smith of Minnesota has also been active in discussions about her frustrations with Schumer, and her advisers have spoken with other Senate staff about different scenarios to challenge Schumer’s leadership, other people said. In an interview, Murphy said he is frequently asked about Senate leadership, but he doesn’t have a count of who would vote to remove Schumer and doesn’t recall mentioning one. “Could someone infer from that that someone was keeping a count? Maybe, but that’s not what I meant,” Murphy said. “I meant that he has the support of the caucus.” He said he still supports Schumer.

Despite Murphy’s attempts to downplay the situation, more than four dozen interviews with Democratic senators, candidates, current and former aides, activists, and advisers point to the same conclusion: concern about Schumer’s leadership is widespread and growing. Apparently, routine meetings between Democratic chiefs of staff on Senate business that keep veering off script into conversations about Schumer and what can be done to pressure him to step aside after November’s elections.

Murphy, Warren and Smith are part of a batch of senators dubbed “Fight Club” who are particularly incensed by Schumer’s approach to the midterms. This group of progressives believes that Schumer favors centrist candidates in some key races and is disregarding the enthusiasm a new crop of outsiders is stoking. The senators maintain a Fight Club chat on Signal where they have discussed how to counter Schumer’s preferred candidates, according to people familiar with the conversations. The existence of the group was reported earlier by the New York Times. And there’s a money angle, too.

Donor frustration with Schumer has already been hurting a super PAC aligned with the Democratic leader, donors and consultants said. Senate Majority PAC was outraised by the Republican leadership-aligned super PAC last year; the Democratic super PAC started 2026 with $36 million in the bank and $12.4 million in debt, while its GOP counterpart had $100 million and no debt, according to Federal Election Commission filings. Schumer, for his part, remains defiant, but the report suggests that internal pressure is still building. The activist wing of the party is still sour over the government funding fights and apparently doesn’t think that he’s standing up to the Trump administration adequately. The GOP certainly has its midterm headaches. But division among the Senate Democrats is something that it could exploit.

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Not sure I understand this or what would make it relevant. What did the alter ego do that the ego did not?

BOMBSHELL Bill Clinton/Epstein Info Drops (MN)

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna appeared on Bill Maher’s show and confirmed what the Epstein document dumps have long hinted at: the former president wasn’t just flying on the Lolita Express — he was operating under an entirely different identity in the files. This revelation lands as the House Oversight Committee presses forward with its investigation, following the Justice Department’s release of millions of pages under the Epstein Files Transparency Act signed by President Trump. Lawmakers and victims are still pushing for the remaining 2.5 million documents that remain hidden or heavily redacted, according to recent reporting.


Bill Clinton’s connection to Jeffrey Epstein runs deep and documented. The former president flew on Epstein’s private jet multiple times in the early 2000s, often for Clinton Foundation-related trips, and maintained social ties with both Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell long after red flags emerged. He has repeatedly denied any knowledge of Epstein’s crimes or visits to the island. Luna laid it out plainly during the interview. When Maher questioned bringing Hillary in, asking, “You have Hillary Clinton come in? This is like three gazillion pages of men behaving badly. And the witness you want is a woman?” Luna shot back: “She was issued a bipartisan subpoena, meaning the Democrats wanted her in, too. Cause Bill Clinton was all over those logs.”

She continued: “We can get at the whole Jeffrey Epstein ties because I actually talked to Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton specifically about that, presenting them with the actual document that showed that he had a COMPLETE OTHER ALIAS.” Maher responded: “You get a lot of information that we don’t all have.” Luna replied: “I’m happy to come back.” Maher closed: “We want you. I appreciate it.” What was Bill Clinton doing with another alias? The question hangs heavy. In the files of a convicted child sex trafficker, a second identity isn’t a coincidence — it’s a red flag screaming for answers.This isn’t the first time the Clintons have scrambled to contain the Epstein fallout. Bill Clinton’s chief of staff raged after half-naked photos of the former president surfaced in the latest Epstein drop.

Back in 2024, reports also revealed Clinton allegedly threatened Vanity Fair to kill articles about his “good friend” Jeffrey Epstein. The pattern is clear: suppression, denial, and now — an alias. While the Clintons sat for depositions earlier this year, insisting they saw nothing wrong, Luna’s committee work keeps peeling back layers the deep state hoped would stay buried. The American people are watching. The files don’t lie, and neither do the subpoenas. Every new detail like this alias proves why the fight for real accountability matters — because when the powerful hide behind fake names in pedophile networks, it’s not just scandal. It’s a warning that the old guard still thinks the rules don’t apply.

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I smell a bailout.

Chicago Ramps Up Taxes and Debt in Familiar Death Spiral (Turley)

As a Chicago native, I have watched my home city unravel under the policies of Mayor Brandon Johnson and the ultra-left city council. Controlled by groups like the teachers’ union, the city has continued to spend lavishly on progressive causes and bloated pension funds while destroying its own economy. The city has a more than $1 billion budget gap, with a roughly $150 million deficit. Roughly, two-fifths of the budget is now going toward debt service and pension costs. The city council is following a familiar death spiral. It is turning to higher taxes against the very industries that it needs to drive the economy. That now includes a roughly 20 percent tourist tax on hotels. These politicians are doing what the Chicago fire failed to achieve: kill a major city.


Johnson has been pushing for irresponsible measures to grab cash now and pay later schemes. Johnson and the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) lost a fight to secure a $200 million loan to avoid having to reduce the budget or staff. Johnson and the union pushed for a corporate “head tax.” Barely able to convince many companies to stay in the state, Chicago would actually make it more costly to hire Chicagoans with an additional $ 21-per-employee tax. The city council just approved an $830 million borrowing plan to finance infrastructure projects by selling bonds. Notably, the council had to bar Johnson from giving the money to the teachers’ union, given his history of dependency on the union. However, the bond will now make the debt crisis even more acute. The bond agreement allows someone else to pay the massive accrued debt after 20 years.

Chicago now spends 40% of its money on debt servicing. At the same time, Johnson has pushed for city-run grocery stores, and his government has stopped buying treasury bonds for political reasons. Now, pursuant to Ordinance 2026-0022544, the city will raise the tax on hotel rooms within that district to 19% from 17.5%, which includes a combined city, county, and state tax, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. The increase will apply to any hotels with more than 100 rooms. Hotel costs are already prohibitively high, and the added tax hits the convention tourism side of the economy. The editorial board of the Washington Post took note of Chicago’s worsening situation and wrote “it takes a long time to kill a city, and the bigger the city, the longer it takes.”

The city is following the same pattern of blue states driving businesses and high earners away. After taking control with Abigail Spanberger’s election, Virginia Democrats immediately pushed for a slew of new taxes and spending plans. In New York, Gov. Kathy Hochul, who during her campaign told wealthy New Yorkers to “just jump on a bus and head down to Florida where you belong, OK?” She added, “Get out of town. Because you do not represent our values. You are not New Yorkers.”

They took her advice in droves. Now she is bewailing that her tax base is collapsing. This week, she asked “high-net-worth” people to support the “generous social programs we want to have in our state” and go to Florida to “see who you can bring back home, because our tax has been eroded.” The point is to preserve the “generous social programs” by asking people to come back who fled due to the high taxes needed to support such programs. New York City, which is pushing for higher taxes, currently has a $115.9 billion budget for 8.48 million people. That is almost as much as the $117.4 billion budget for the entire state of Florida with 23.3 million people.

This week, a study showed that New York is now spending $81,000 per homeless person in a town where the average take-home pay is $40,600. It is projected to increase to nearly $97,000 in the coming year. From Chicago to New York City, Democratic leaders continue to spend wildly as top earners and employers flee. They are quickly learning that, as Margaret Thatcher noted, it works until you run out of other people’s money.In Chicago, the city council is now drifting toward bankruptcy like a ship of fools. For those of us who love our home city, it is a painful thing to watch. Despite a history of corruption under the Daley machine, the city was always a pro-growth town that attracted industries. It is now following Detroit’s path toward insolvency as politicians kick the debt can down the road for someone else to pay.

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“Remember, these illegals are the future voting bloc of the Democratic Party, meant to seize political control by disenfranchising citizens ..”

Elon Musk Offers Lifeline To TSA Agents As Dems Hold Paychecks Hostage (ZH)

The Department of Homeland Security shutdown entered its 36th day on Saturday after Senate Democrats blocked yet another funding bill for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Transportation Security Administration, and other federal agencies, triggering weeks of chaos at airports nationwide, including long TSA checkpoint lines during the peak of the spring break travel season.Early Saturday morning, Elon Musk, closely tracking the DHS funding lapse, wrote on X that he would personally pay the salaries of TSA agents to get them back to airports and help avert further chaos.


On Friday, a motion to advance a funding bill failed 47-37, falling short of the 60 votes needed to overcome a Democratic filibuster. John Fetterman (Pa.) was the only Democrat to vote “yes” on the DHS funding bill. Sixteen senators from both parties were absent for the vote. This marks the fifth time Democrats have blocked the Homeland Security Appropriations bill since DHS funding ended in mid-February. Democrats have been absolutely furious over any funding bill for ICE and Cust oms and Border Protection (CBP) that does not include reforms to immigration enforcement operations. That is mostly because they are watching President Trump erode their political power by deporting the very illegal aliens their party allowed to invade the nation under the Biden-Harris regime.

Remember, these illegals are the future voting bloc of the Democratic Party, meant to seize political control by disenfranchising citizens. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) is planning to force a vote sometime today on a proposal to fund the TSA. “The chaos at TSA is reaching a boiling point. We need to reopen it as quickly as possible. That is what Senate Democrats are intent on doing,” Schumer said. By the end of the week, 10% of all TSA workers did not show up for work – just below the record 10.22% absentee rate set at the start of the week. Nearly 400 agents have quit so far in the months-long shutdown, according to DHS.

These workers have been without pay since mid-last month, when the Democratic Party began using these agents as political pawns. The severity of the government shutdown this time has not yet reached the crisis level of travel disruption seen during the 43-day shutdown late last year, when air traffic controllers were used as leverage in political disputes, disrupting air travel nationwide. To prevent such issues in the future, perhaps privatization talks for these agencies should begin. Is it possible that an unhinged, eft-wing judge might try to block Musk from offering to pay TSA agents’ salaries during the funding lapse?

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“65% of Democrats, 95% of Republicans, 79% of independents, 80% of white voters, 80% of black voters, and 77% of Hispanic voters.”

The Democrats’ Strategy on the SAVE Act Is Imploding (Matt Margolis)

Chuck Schumer stepped onto the Senate floor Thursday and lied about the popularity of the SAVE America Act. “But what have MAGA Republicans chosen to focus on this week?” Schumer asked. “Voter suppression. That is what the Republican Senate is wasting our time on, pushing a voter suppression bill that most Americans do not support — a bill that appeals to only the most fringe element of the MAGA base.”


We’ve tracked the numbers on this bill closely, and the polls are about as one-sided as it gets in American politics. A recent Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll found that 71% of Americans support the SAVE America Act, including 69% of independents and even half of Democrats. A whopping 81% support Voter ID, with 79% of independents and 70% of Democrats on board. Requiring proof of citizenship to vote get 75% support. Removing non-citizens from voter rolls pulls 80%. Even sharing unredacted voting rolls with the Department of Homeland Security — arguably the bill’s most contentious provision — gets 61% backing.

Oh, that’s just one poll, right? Wrong. Pew Research puts support for voter ID at 83%, with wide majorities across racial and partisan lines. Gallup found 84% favor voter ID, including 67% of Democrats. And Rasmussen puts support at 75%, with support trending upward over the past decade. Poll after poll, the same story keeps emerging. But wait, it’s been a few months now, and Democrats have been blasting the SAVE America Act the entire time. Surely, the numbers have changed, right? Wrong. We have a brand-new CBS News survey on the subject, conducted this week. It found that 80% of Americans support requiring a photo ID to vote, including 65% of Democrats, 95% of Republicans, 79% of independents, 80% of white voters, 80% of black voters, and 77% of Hispanic voters.

Proof of citizenship to register draws 66% overall, with 93% of Republicans, 61% of independents, 60% of black voters, and 63% of Hispanic voters in favor. The only cohort that didn’t support the citizenship requirement was Democrats, with only 43% supporting.

https://twitter.com/IAPolls2022/status/2034767257226629317

Democrats have spent weeks hammering the SAVE America Act with “voter suppression” messaging, hoping repetition turns fiction into fact. It hasn’t worked. The polling has held steady. Support hasn’t budged. If anything, this CBS poll just confirmed that the public isn’t buying the narrative they’re selling. Trust me, Chuck Schumer knows how to read a poll, and you can bet Democrats are tracking public opinion on the issue, looking for any nugget in the crosstabs that gives them a glimmer of hope. But there isn’t any. Americans have spoken on this issue.

Schumer has been in Washington long enough to know exactly what the data says. This means his floor speech wasn’t about ignorance; it was a calculated decision to stand on the Senate floor and call the most broadly popular election integrity bill in recent memory “unpopular” and a “fringe” priority. That tells you everything about how seriously Democrats take the voters they claim to represent.

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What, Vic?

“You know, this is the third time Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine.”

What Is It With The Fickle Europeans? (Victor Davis Hanson)

What is it with the fickle Europeans? I know that they have different interests than ours, but we’re both Western entities. You’d think that we’d be more collaborative on the effort to disarm and denuclearize Iran. But a lot of strange things are happening. The traditional use of the Diego Garcia critical airbase in the Indian Ocean, run by the British, but often leased to us and allowed us to have a very valuable base for our long-range bombers. The British initially refused to allow us to use it. And then, only under conditions that it would be used for defensive purposes. I don’t know what that means. But I think they forgot the 1982 Falklands War. They were in big trouble going all the way across the world to attack a country in the Western Hemisphere.


We were trying to be on friendly relationships so that [Argentina] wouldn’t join the other communist nations. And of course, we offered them 2 million gallons of gasoline. We offered them the use of a carrier if they needed it. We gave them sophisticated intelligence. Without the United States’ help, they would’ve had a very hard time retaking it. So, what’s happened?And then Spain has said that we can’t use at all the NATO base there in Spain. [President Emmanuel] Macron in France and [Chancellor Friedrich] Merz in Germany have also said they’ve expressed reservations.

President Donald Trump is now trying to say, you know, we’re using all of our assets to disarm this common threat to the West. Could you just send a few ships to help us, you know, patrol the Strait of Hormuz? And they’re reluctant. This gets back to the United States, who pays an inordinate amount of the NATO budget. And it keeps having to, you know, to harangue and hammer. “Please, please defend yourself. We are here to help you, but we’re across the ocean, 3,000 miles away. And this is in your interest. You know, this is the third time Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine.”

So, don’t they have a fear of Iran? I mean, there was a joint missile defense project. Obama canceled it, in that infamous quid pro quo hot mic conversation where he made a deal with the Russians to give him space so he could get reelected. He would dismantle the Czech and Polish project to have missile defense. That was primarily for the protection of Europe. The United States was going to pay a great deal of it. Protection from Iran.= So, what’s going on? What explains this European schizophrenia? That they want to be an ally, but they don’t want to be an ally. They’re scared to death of a nuclear Iran, but they don’t want to do anything about it. They want the United States to handle it, but they want the United States to handle it and keep them out of it.

But most of their oil comes from the Middle East or North Africa. So, they are adamant that they want the supplies, reliable. They want the Strait of Hormuz open. They want the United States to ensure that. They want the United States to clear the Red Sea of Houthi attacks. We know all that, but they’re not there when we need them at all. And a very, you know, a very reasonable request. And so why is this? Well, I think there’s a lot of reasons. I think they’ve made some disastrous, internal and external choices in their policies. First of all, Germany has 16 percent of its population are immigrants that weren’t born in Germany. The vast majority of them are unassimilated, unacculturated, unintegrated Muslims.

Many of them, or most, under Angela Merkel policy. She was the German version of Alejandro Mayorkas, who opened the border and pretty much enacted this destructive policy. In other countries at 6 percent to 10 percent to 12 percent. But the key is there’s a force multiplier of these open-border illegal immigration policies. And that is the Muslim communities that immigrate are more radical often than the countries they left that were radical enough. They don’t want to be part of the West. They feel that their birth rate and their increased immigration will soon swamp these European governments. And the European governments are terrified of them.

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Not so fickle when it comes to power.

Battle for Hungary: How the EU Plans to Defeat Viktor Orban (RT)

Three weeks out from the most consequential European election of the year, the EU has aimed every weapon in its arsenal at Hungary, as Brussels prepares for its best shot yet at taking out Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Orban’s animosity toward the EU establishment runs deep. For more than a decade, the Hungarian prime minister has often been the bloc’s sole dissident: railing against its open-door migration policies, embrace of LGBT ideology, and “suicidal” plan to welcome Ukraine into the union. Orban has secured carve-outs from the EU’s anti-Russian sanctions that enabled Hungary to continue purchasing Russian oil, and is currently vetoing a €90 billion loan package for Kiev.


The EU has responded by withholding funds equal to 3.5% of Hungary’s GDP over his banning of LGBT propaganda and refusal to accept non-European migrants. With the future of its Ukraine project now on the line, Brussels has pinned its hopes on Peter Magyar and his Tisza party, which promises to overturn Orban’s domestic reforms and Budapest’s opposition to the EU’s designs in Ukraine and beyond. After the European Council failed to find a workaround to Orban’s veto at a March 19 meeting, the EU’s chief diplomat, Kaja Kallas, hinted that work was underway on a “Plan B.” Based on the strategy playing out in Budapest, ‘Plan B’ clearly involves a full-scale campaign of censorship and subversion to influence Hungary’s upcoming elections.

On March 16, European Commission spokesperson Thomas Regnier quietly announced that the EU had activated its Rapid Response System (RRS) to “combat potential Russian online disinformation campaigns” in the runup to the Hungarian election. The mechanism will be active until one week after the vote, Regnier said. While most Europeans have never heard of this system, the RRS has been a key tool in the commission’s censorship arsenal for years. It empowers EU-approved “fact-checkers” to flag online content as “disinformation” and request its removal from platforms – Regnier cited TikTok and Meta as two examples.

Theoretically, platforms such as Meta and TikTok participate in the system voluntarily. All major social media companies have to sign up to the EU’s ‘Code of Practice on Disinformation’. However, a trove of documents published by the House Judiciary Committee in Washington this year revealed that these companies were threatened – often explicitly – with punishment under the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) if they refused to tow the EU line.

The premise resembles a Mafia-style protection racket, with the deputy chief of the commission’s communications directorate telling platforms in 2024 that refusal to sign the codes of conduct “could be taken into account… when determining whether the provider is complying with the obligations laid down by the DSA.” The DSA is now in force, giving Brussels’ fact-checkers the final say over what constitutes “disinformation” ahead of the election.


The argument that these fact-checkers favor Magyar is well founded. Over four European elections in which the Rapid Response System was activated, the Judiciary Committee found that fact-checkers “almost exclusively targeted” right-wing and populist candidates and organizations. “Moreover, the requirement that these fact-checkers be approved by the European Commission creates a clear structural incentive for the participants to censor Euroskeptic opinion and content,” the committee noted.

Hungarian MEP Dora David, a former Meta employee and member of Magyar’s Tisza party, boasted last year that “we’ve seen companies change their behavior” based on the threat of DSA enforcement, citing Meta’s removal of pro-Orban content as an example.

The fact-checkers can count on sympathetic staff within the social media companies. After several members of Orban’s Fidesz party claimed that Meta has already started restricting the reach of their Facebook posts, commentators Joey Mannarino and Philip Pilkington identified Oskar Braszczynski as the employee likely responsible. Braszczynski, who works as Meta’s ‘Government and Social Impact Partner for Central and Eastern Europe’, has shared pro-Ukraine, anti-Orban, and pro-LGBT content on his personal social media accounts.

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