It’s really hard to keep track of all the horrors these days. Thanks to President Donald Trump’s secret surprise dead-of-night attack on Iran, which unsurprisingly has fueled a widening conflict across the Middle East, it was easy to miss the news that the United States suffered yet another mass shooting.
But you have to hand it to Texas Republicans for their impressive ability to multitask. Not only were they able to deploy their patented, unending xenophobia to cheerlead Trump’s unjustified, illegal attack on Iran, but they also managed to keep some bigotry in reserve to blame the latest mass shooting on literally anything but guns.
A body is removed after a mass shooting at at Buford's Backyard Beer Garden on March 1 in Austin, Texas.
Early Sunday morning, Ndiaga Diagne, 53, a Senegalese national and naturalized U.S. citizen, opened fire in a bar in downtown Austin, Texas, killing two people and wounding 14 more before being killed by police. Diagne was wearing a hoodie that said “Property of Allah” and … you know where this is going, right?
Yes, Diagne’s status as a naturalized citizen was, of course, catnip to the worst elected officials in Texas, and they’ve already swung into action to use it as a way to attack immigrants writ large.
According to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, Diagne was not adequately vetted when he was granted citizenship. How was he not adequately vetted? When did all of this inadequacy take place? Abbott didn’t bother to provide any details to support that claim.
Diagne’s past crimes did get trotted out, of course, and they include such monstrous acts as a misdemeanor charge for a collision that resulted in vehicle damage, and “illegal vending” in New York City 25 years ago.
Rep. Chip Roy, currently vying to follow in the absolutely repugnant footsteps of Ken Paxton and become Texas’ attorney general, took the opportunity to demand that Congress vote to functionally end nearly all immigration.
And Paxton, for his part, took time away from running for a Texas Senate seat to repost a nice little racist call for “no more Islamic immigration” over at Elon Musk’s online Nazi bar.
But how about that “Property of Allah” sweatshirt, right? Surely that was a staunch declaration of Islamist warfare by Diagne, right? Surely this is an act of terrorism!
Maybe—or the dude might just have bought one of the innumerable knockoffs of a sweatshirt Mike Tyson wore 30 years ago after he converted to Islam. Perhaps President Trump could ring Mike and ask him about it, since they are such buddies and Tyson is now apparently a MAHA spokesman?
Now, Texas Republicans would be attacking Diagne as a terrorist regardless, because these people’s tendencies to be hateful racists are unstoppable. However, focusing on immigration and terrorism also allows them to avoid ever grappling with the fact that it’s the guns, stupid.
But conservatives are never going to wrestle with that. They’re in thrall to a death cult, and they’ve taken the rest of the nation along with them. So, our country will continue to have mass shootings, and GOP lawmakers will continue to blame literally anything else.
Getting to hate immigrants—particularly those who might be Muslim—is just an added benefit for people like Abbott, Roy, and Paxton.
At 12:45 AM on March 3, 1991, a bystander captured a video of motorist Rodney King being beaten by a swarm of police officers in Los Angeles. King, a Black man, had pulled over after a police chase through the city.
King, who had been tasered twice already before the video even began, was filmed beset by four white officers using batons and their feet to beat the unarmed King mercilessly, leaving him with skull and facial fractures, a broken leg, and lasting brain injuries.
In an era long before high-definition video cameras were embedded in nearly every cellphone, this footage was extraordinary because of its uniqueness. It starkly documented the kind of police brutality that civil rights advocates and community members had alleged for decades.
What has not faded with time is the sense of injustice that followed. In April 1992, a jury acquitted all four officers on charges related to excessive force, prompting nearly a week of civil unrest and riots across Los Angeles.
Getting laid offcan lead to months of uncertainty. But what happens when those months turn into years? When Jacob Sandy left his job as a software engineer in December 2023, he never imagined that he’d still be without work more than two years later.
At the time, the tech industry was undergoingmassive job cuts, a response to overzealous hiring during the pandemic. Sandy’s employer, a cloud computing platform that helps automate business workflows, did not engage in sweeping layoffs. But he said he began to suspect his employer wanted its staff to quit voluntarily.
“It just felt like they were making it miserable and hoping we’d leave,” said Sandy, who lives in San Diego with his school age son. “And for whatever reason, I decided that was the better option.”
Sandy said that his first year of unemployment was largely his own choice and that being without a job was initially good for his mental health, until it wasn’t.
“I had prepared financially for a year, and I probably started looking very lightly after about six months,” he said. “But what I noticed is all of the recruiting systems around that time were starting to switch over to a more automated, or AI influenced, system. And so I was getting completely ghosted on any applications.”
For workers across all sectors, hiring has slowed. While January’s jobs report showed stronger than expected growth, a deeper look atnewly updated government datarevealed that employers added just 181,000 jobs last year, an anemic rate of hiring and more than a million fewer jobs than previously believed. The unemployment rate has alsoedged upto 4.3% from 4.0% a year ago.
“The hires rate today looks a lot like the hires rate did coming out of the Great Recession,” said Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute. “And you pretty clearly see that the labor market softened over the years. We saw that payroll employment growth slowed pretty substantially.”
The stagnant job market, with littlehiring or firing, makes it harder for unemployed workers to find their next job. One in four jobless workers is considered long-term unemployed, meaning they have been looking for work for more than 27 weeks, the highest rate since the pandemic.
Akilah Adams, an executive assistant based in Atlanta who has been looking for work since June 2025, echoed Sandy’s frustration with the lackluster job market.
“Right now, it’s just an extremely different market than any market that I’ve been unemployed in,” said Adams, who worries that she will have to settle for a lower paying job. She’s encountered several scams during her job search, including an interview with an AI chatbot that offered to hire her on the spot in exchange for personal information.
A Black woman in her early 40s, Adams said she faces extra barriers to finding a job due to her race and age. And the unemployment numbers support her concerns. At the start of 2025, Black women had an unemployment rate of 5.4%. By December, it had jumped to 7.3%, the highest rate infour yearsand almost three points higher than the national average of 4.4%.
Black women — who are overrepresented among the employees of the federal government — were hard hit byrecent federal job cuts.Lossesin manufacturing and in professional and business services, where women disproportionately work, also added pressure. The retreat fromDEI initiativesboth in andoutsidegovernment may have affected the job prospects of Black women as well.
Adams said that a lot of Black women she knows are starting their own businesses and monetizing their skills in response to the shaky job market. Within a month of losing her job, she launched an LLC, offering her services as a remote assistant, but the business has been slow to take off. In January, she had one client who kept her busy for about two hours a week. “So that’s definitely not going to pay any bills,” she said.
Adams is also competing with workers across the globe, who can offer much lower rates. She’s seen ads for remote assistants based in the Philippines, where workers earn significantly less than they do in the U.S.
Adams has the support of her husband, who works full time, but others aren’t so lucky.
For Charlotte Wilson Langley, a children’s television writer living in Los Angeles, the options for staying afloat are dwindling fast as both she and her husband lack stable employment.
During Christmas last year, Wilson Langley was applying for retail jobs without success. She’s been repeatedly told she’s overqualified. Meanwhile, she is living on credit and selling her clothes on Poshmark just to make ends meet.
“Every time that I was able to make my rent last year felt like a miracle,” said Wilson Langley.
Wilson Langley spent years trying to break into the entertainment industry and eventually landed a staff writing job for a Disney series at the beginning of 2022. But when the season ended the following year, she wasn’t able to find more TV work. Since then, she has been piecing together part-time jobs, including passing out juice samples at Costco.
She laments the lack of support for those who are struggling with long-term unemployment. Unemployment benefits in California top out at$450 a week, which doesn’t begin to cover rent for a one bedroom apartment in Los Angeles, where the average rent is well over$2,700 a month.
At one point, Wilson Langley’s unemployment benefits ran out and there was a six-month period where she had no assistance.“It does not work, and it is failing people,” she said.
Saba Waheed, director of the UCLA Labor Center, said that a stronger social safety net could help those struggling with long-term unemployment, especially in the wake of industrywide shifts.
Waheed said policymakers could learn from the government’s response to massive job loss caused by COVID-era shutdowns and that some of those same tactics could be applied to help workers struggling with long-term unemployment. She suggested enacting eviction moratoriums and extending unemployment benefits as ways to create a safety net for all workers.
“There were strategies that were used during COVID that were actually really useful,” said Waheed.
For Jacob Sandy, the software industry — long seen as a growth sector and a provider of high-wage jobs — doesn’t feel like a sure bet anymore. He worries about shifts in his profession, including the impact of artificial intelligence on jobs.
Feeling low and desperate after months of searching for work, he is considering switching industries all together. “I’m looking at doing an apprenticeship as an electrician or going into one of those fields, just because those seem to always be in demand,” he said.
Stray - Andrea K. Höst*, 5/5, 278 pages Lab Rat One - Andrea K. Höst*, 4/5, 272 pages Caszandra - Andrea K. Höst*, 4.5/5, 306 pages Gratuitous Epilogue - Andrea K. Höst*, 4.5/5, 126 pages Would seem like I get the urge to reread this every second year or so :-P It keeps surprising me how little known this series is. I really wish the right people would discover this and turn it into a movie already. It would work perfectly on screen.
We are Legion - Dennis E. Taylor, 4/5, Audiobook ~10hrs I listened to the audiobook narrated by Ray Porter (who also narrated "Project Hail Mary"). As always, he did an exceptional job.
I mostly really loved this. It's the kind of sci-fi that's right up my aisle, and I listened to it at every chance I got.
But for probably the last 40% of the book I found myself thinking, "How is this going to end?" Though there were plotlines galore (or at least 4 major ones), they didn't seem to be leading towards any specific climax, so I started to suspect that the author would just chose a natural stopping point, end the book there, and then continue to plotlines in the next book.
And - without having read the next book - it seems like that's exactly what he did. There was no real resolution to any of the plot lines. No major cliff-hangers either, so it didn't bother me as much as it could have, but it made me a tad confused, what Dennis E. Taylor was actually trying to achieve with this book.
From the sound of it (having read reviews), the rest of the series follows pretty much the same structure, so as much as I enjoyed this first book in the series, I think I'll leave it at just the one.
My favourite plotlines were definitely the ones with the Deltans and the ones back at Sol.
Whiteout - Ken Follett, 4/5, 473 pages Not high literature, but good entertainment all the same. I was hooked from the start, and found myself greatly invested in the story. Ken Follett uses very vivid imagery - to the point that I found myself thinking "What was that movie I watched last night ... oh wait! It's my book!"
My main beef with the story is that pretty much all the characters were very two-dimensional. Toni's ex was a bastard for no real reason, her sister entitled, her mother an enabler, the journalists stereotypically obnoxious etc. Especially the ex annoyed me, as he just seemed needlessly antagonistic. Also, the main romance seemed ... unnecessary, for want of better word. Not unrealistic as such, but gratuitous.
Anyways, despite what it might sound like, these really were minor nitpicks, and I really enjoyed the book as a whole. This is the first non-historical-fiction book I've read by Ken Follett, but it's every bit as captivating as I've come to expect from him. Also, bioterror is fascinating - and horrifying!
The Pumpkin Spice Café - Laurie Gilmore, 2.5/5, 354 pages I'm glad this wasn't the first Laurie Gilmore book I read, or I'm not sure I would have continued on with the series. It's definitely been the weakest so far - both in terms of plot and romance. I liked Jeanie and Logan well enough separately, but oh my goodness, they need to learn how to communicate! It made for a deeply frustrating couple of chapters.
I'd seen the solution to the "mystery" a mile off, and found the motivation extremely weak. I'm glad Laurie Gilmore gave up on the cozy mystery aspect in the other novels (at least the ones I've read so far) and focused on fleshing the characters out more instead.
Treasure Witch - Tess Lake, 3/5, Audiobook ~7hrs Hidden Witch - Tess Lake, 3/5, Audiobook ~7hrs Cozy fantasy/mystery. Very formulaeric, but enjoyable enough.
The Long Game - Rachel Reid, 4/5, Audiobook ~13hrs Not quite as good as "Heated Rivalry", but still very enjoyable, and I liked reading about "what came next" for both Shane and Ilya. I liked the focus on mental health, and appreciated that though Shane and Ilya occasionally had difficulties communicating, they never questioned their love for each other. It was never their relationship on the line - just the issue at hand. SUCH a refreshing change!
Books Read: 20 Pages Read: 3,738 Hours Listened To: 75 Book of the Month:We Are Legion - despite my issues with the ending, I still loved it. And Ray Porter is an amazing narrator. Biggest Disappointment:The Pumpkin Spice Café - fortunately I know she gets better!
The MIT Technology Review has a good article on Moltbook, the supposed AI-only social network:
Many people have pointed out that a lot of the viral comments were in fact posted by people posing as bots. But even the bot-written posts are ultimately the result of people pulling the strings, more puppetry than autonomy.
“Despite some of the hype, Moltbook is not the Facebook for AI agents, nor is it a place where humans are excluded,” says Cobus Greyling at Kore.ai, a firm developing agent-based systems for business customers. “Humans are involved at every step of the process. From setup to prompting to publishing, nothing happens without explicit human direction.”
Humans must create and verify their bots’ accounts and provide the prompts for how they want a bot to behave. The agents do not do anything that they haven’t been prompted to do.
What happened on Moltbook is a preview of what researcher Juergen Nittner II calls “The LOL WUT Theory.” The point where AI-generated content becomes so easy to produce and so hard to detect that the average person’s only rational response to anything online is bewildered disbelief.
We’re not there yet. But we’re close.
The theory is simple: First, AI gets accessible enough that anyone can use it. Second, AI gets good enough that you can’t reliably tell what’s fake. Third, and this is the crisis point, regular people realize there’s nothing online they can trust. At that moment, the internet stops being useful for anything except entertainment.
Right-wing radio host, conspiracy theorist, and Trump cheerleader Alex Jones has found himself in yet another uncomfortable position after President Donald Trump launched an attack on Iran over the weekend.
Jones has spent decades arguing that past U.S. military actions were illegitimate and part of a wide-ranging conspiracy. But now he’s been silent about Trump’s war, bringing two competing sides of Jones’ public persona into conflict.
During his show on Saturday,Jones noted reports of thebombing of a girls’ school in Minab, Iran, where 165 people were killed and another 96 were injured.
“This is gonna rage the world against Israel and the United States,” Jones lamented. “Trump used the nineteen eighties bombing that killed 200 plus servicemen as the reason we're doing this. Well, then what do they get to do because of this?”
He argued that the bombing campaign betrayed what was “supposed to be America first.”
Alex Jones attends a rally in support of President Donald Trump ahead of the insurrection of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
“I don't like the turn of events. I don't like the direction we're starting to go,” Jones said. “This is a big, big, big deal, and this is a gigantic problem.”
Over the years, Jones haslong argued that a dizzying array of world eventswere the work of a shadowy group of “globalist” elites as part of the so-called “New World Order.”
Among the events that “globalists” purportedly engineered are 9/11 and the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012. Jones has no real evidence of these conspiracies and has repeatedly changed the purported details of who was involved and why.
It was his promotion of these conspiracies that brought Jones into alignment with Trump, who pushed the notoriously racist “birther” conspiracy about former President Barack Obama.When Trump appeared on Jones’ show during the 2016 presidential campaign, he praised Jones as having “one of the greatest influences” he had ever seen.
Since then, Jones has stood by Trump—supporting his policies, attacking his detractors, and forwarding more outlandish claims. At one point during the 2016 cycle, Jones claimed that he waspersonally coordinating with Trump on conspiracies about Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
After Trump was elected,Jones said that he spoke to him on the phone and even took time on airto praise Trump’s penis. Yes, really.
But since Trump returned to office, things have taken a turn for the worse for Jones.
Alex Jones during an episode of “Infowars” in 2021.
His company, Infowars, has beenforced to sell off its assets after Jones lost the lawsuit brought against him by the surviving families of the Sandy Hook shooting. Jones used the show to claim that the shooting was a “false flag,” encouraging his listeners to go after the families of the kids who were shot and killed.
Jonesalso complained last year that he was betrayed by Trump, who spent years promising to release the Epstein files only to pull back once in office. Jones has frequently cited the Jeffrey Epstein case as proof of his “globalist” rantings.
Last yearalso saw the departure of Jones’ longtime employee and on-air personality Owen Shroyer, who said he was pressured to soften his criticisms of Trump.
Now Jones’ career of cheering on Trump—precisely the sort of elitist he once claimed was the poster boy for the “globalists”—has led to this moment.
Trump granted Jones access in exchange for support, only to be precisely the same kind of leader on which Jones built his career opposing.
President Donald Trump continues to find new ways to stress out Americans. During a Medal of Honor ceremony Monday, onlookers noticed a nasty rash on Trump’s neck right along his collar.
A rash is visible behind President Donald Trump’s ear on March 2.
"President Trump is using a very common cream on the right side of his neck, which is a preventative skin treatment, prescribed by the White House Doctor,” Dr. Sean Barbabella said in a statement. “The President is using this treatment for one week, and the redness is expected to last for a few weeks.”
Some news outlets noted that a far less inflamed-looking rash in the same area is visible in photographs from mid-February.
This is just the latest troubling visual malady to draw attention as Trump launches wars, crashes the economy, and rambles at public events.
During his bizarre speech at the World Economic Forum in Davis, Switzerland, in January, his left hand appeared swollen and bruised. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt claimed that Trump hurt his hand while signing the charter for his ironically named “Board of Peace.”
But that explanation raised eyebrows, particularly because Trump’s right hand has also frequently appeared bruised or heavily covered in makeup, which the White House has attributed to excessive handshaking.
A bandage is seen on the hand of President Donald Trump on Dec. 7, 2025.
Under public pressure, the White House admitted in July that Trump was diagnosed with chronic venous insufficiency, a common condition in people over 70 that, in severe cases, can contribute to more serious conditions like deep vein thrombosis or arterial disease.
This diagnosis aligned with Trump’s boast of taking a whole lot of blood-thinning aspirin prophylactically—but it doesn’t necessarily account for all of his skin maladies.
At 79 years old, Trump now undergoes "semiannual" physicals at Walter Reed, where he’s boasted that he’s aced “very hard” cognitive tests.
Montana Republican Ryan Zinke on Monday announced he will not seek a fourth term in the U.S. House, a surprise decision that gives Democrats a prime pickup opportunity in the 2026 midterm elections
Zinke said his retirement is due to "multiple surgeries" he's undergone since he returned to office, as well as the fact that he will need to undertake more, requiring "considerable" recovery time.
"My judgement and experience tell me is it better for Montana and America to have full-time representation in Congress than run the risk of uncertain absence and missed votes," Zinke said.
Democrats had been hammering Zinke on his support of President Donald Trump's destructive tariffs, which have hurtfarmers and ranchers in the state.
“Republicans agree: Ryan Zinke’s repeated votes to support reckless, price-spiking tariffs prove to Montanans that Zinke is to blame for their rising costs," the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee said in a statement on Thursday, pointing to a New York Times article in which GOP consultants expressed fears that congressional Republicans' refusal to rein in Trump's tariffs would hurt them in November.
Republican Rep. Ryan Zinke of Montana, right, talks with Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania in 2024.
Trump, for his part, carried Montana's 1st District by about 12 percentage points in 2024, according to data from The Downballot. However, in 2020, Trump won the seat by just 7 points. In a blue wave, it's seats like this that could fall, especially when there is no incumbent.
Indeed, since Trump reentered the White House, Democrats have been overperforming their 2024 margins by an average of 13 points, according to The Downballot’s data. That’s the type of environment in which Democrats could flip the 1st District.
The Cook Political Report, a political handicapping outlet, rates the race a "Likely Republican" contest. However, the outlet said in 2025 that the district is a "potentially enticing pickup opportunity for Democrats" due to the seat's geographic makeup. The district includes Montana's liberal bastions of Missoula and Bozeman, as well as two large Native American reservations.
As for the race, a handful Democratic candidates had announced bids: Sam Forstag, a union leader and wildfire fighter; Ryan Busse, the 2024 Democratic nominee for governor; and Matt Rains, a veteran and farm union head.
A good tell about how nervous Republicans are about their outlook in November will be the quality of GOP candidates that announce bids to replace Zinke. If top-tier Republicans opt out of the race, it’s a tell they want to keep their powder dry for an election cycle more favorable to their party.
Ultimately, Zinke is the 32nd House Republican to either announce their retirement or decision to run for another office. That large number suggests GOP lawmakers know they will be in the minority when the next Congress is sworn in.
In fact, Republicans' hold on the majority is so tenuous that House Speaker Mike Johnson is forcing a dying GOP lawmaker to stick around rather than resign to spend his final days with his family.
Zinke may have seen the writing on the wall and decided that retiring was the best course of action.
Today I am cranky and angry for no real reason. I mean, yeah, the ongoing dystopian hellscape that we're in, but that's an ongoing background hum. No, today is wanting to snap at everyone and everything. Which is an interesting change from feeling low or anxious, which is usually what the Brain Raccoons dish out, but I still don't like it.
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The Stroppy One had a lightbulb moment and suggested that I check the side effects of the mass of meds that I take to see if any of them can cause nightmares. Interestingly that included steroids, antibiotics, Flonase, and daily steroid inhalers. I've stopped using Flonase, and that does seem to have made the nightly nightmares ease up. Now I need to do the same research to see if any of my meds cause acid reflux, because even tho' I'm on pantoprazole twice a day, acid reflux has been waking me up most nights. My Wegovy dosage hasn't increased, so that's not the trigger. But I need to figure it out, because if the acid reflux is bad enough, it can (say it with me now) trigger bronchitis for me. So fun.
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Today's tarot card: the 4 of Bats (4 of Swords), which is all about needing rest and calm. ANVILS FALLING FROM THE SKY.
The Department of Education unfurled huge banners on the face of the federal agency’s Washington headquarters celebrating “250 years of academic excellence,” but the figures they chose to highlight deserve a double take.
Three of the six faces draped on the building are late conservative figures Booker T. Washington, Catharine Beecher, and Charlie Kirk. Zooming out, these people represent broader ideologies being pushed from within the Trump administration.
A memorial for Turning Point USA CEO and co-founder Charlie Kirk is seen at Utah Valley University on Sept. 13, 2025, in Orem, Utah.
Washington became controversial for his stance on segregation. As a Black educator and former slave, he urged the Black community to build their skills from within the confines of racial inequality rather than try to level the playing field.
In 1895, Washington gave a famous speech telling Black people to "cast down your buckets where you are," which was code for tolerating racial discrimination and instead focusing on building vocational skills where they were.
Beecher, on the other hand, was an educator and writer who founded schools for women and campaigned for their education. But she also was anti-suffrage, speaking out against the movement that fought for women’s right to vote and run for office. While she advocated for education, Beecher ultimately believed that a woman’s place in society was in the home—and in service to her husband.
Then there is Kirk. The late podcaster and far-right activist who was shot and killed in September 2025 while appearing at a college campus has no formal title as an educator in any capacity. But the West Point reject and community college dropout did uphold values trumpeted by the Trump administration.
On the surface, Kirk was against the structure of higher education, despite his frequent presence on college campuses to “debate” students and push extremist ideologies.
Kirk often posted videos of his so-called debates, which included moments where he argued that single Black mothers should receive less government assistance because it incentivizes absentee fathers.
The Education Department, which is headed by WWE co-founder Linda McMahon, defended its choices in a statement to The Guardian, saying, “We are proud to honor visionary leaders whose contributions have shaped the future of education for generations.”
Three other banners draped on the building’s facade feature Benjamin Franklin, MLK Jr., and Anne Sullivan.
“Their work reflects Benjamin Franklin’s timeless belief that ‘an investment in knowledge pays the best interest,” the statement said, adding that “as our country marks a historic 250th milestone, this moment invites us all to join in the pursuit of fostering educational opportunity that empowers every learner to rise, contribute, and help shape a brighter future for generations yet to come.”
But the Trump administration’s decision to glorify these particular figures is just one piece of its larger effort to dismantle “woke” ideology and introduce MAGA-approved cultural icons.
In other words, the administration so hell-bent on making sure history is being told “correctly” seems to be insistent on only telling it from a certain point of view.
The right-wing pundits who usually defend President Donald Trump's most idiotic moves are not pleased with his decision to start an open-ended war with Iran. They’re issuing surprisingly forceful statements condemning the Trump administration's inability to state a clear rationale for getting into yet another Middle East conflict.
From Federalist co-founder Sean Davis to right-wing pundit and misogynisticpig Matt Walsh to former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, many on the right are wondering what the fuck Trump is doing getting into a war rather than focusing on domestic problems as he promised to do during the 2024 presidential campaign.
Regarding the Iran strikes, the truly detestable Walsh got it exactly right in this post on X:
So far we’ve heard that although we killed the whole Iranian regime, this was not a regime change war. And although we obliterated their nuclear program, we had to do this because of their nuclear program. And although Iran was not planning any attacks on the US, they also might have been, depending on who you ask. And although we are not fighting this war to free the Iranian people, they are now free, or might be, depending on who seizes power, and we have no idea who that will be. The messaging on this thing is, to put it mildly, confused.
Davis, who hadcheered Trump’s regime-change strikes in Venezuela, had similar criticisms but went a step further, writing in a post on X: "As soon as one pointless cash cow war demanding our money ends, another one magically begins. At some point it would be nice if we had leaders who cared more about freedom and security and prosperity in our own country than they do in some stupid sandbox 10,000 miles away."
Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Greene both condemned the war for sucking up resources that could be used in the United States.
Former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, shown in 2025.
"We’ve spent $8 trillion in the Middle East. That’s 100 X annual federal spending on roads and bridges. Picture how great our country could be if we’d spent that $ here. Imagine how affordable groceries & housing would be if we hadn’t printed all that $," Massie wrote in a post on X, to which Greene replied, "FACTS!!!"
Even defense contractor Erik Prince, who profited off the Iraq War boondoggle, said he isn't in favor of whatever the Trump administration is doing in Iran.
"Look, Steve, I'm not happy about the whole thing," Prince said on former Trump adviser Steve Bannon's podcast on Sunday. "I don't think this was in America's interests. It's going to uncork a significant can of worms and chaos and destruction in Iran now."
The fact that prominent MAGA cheerleaders are speaking out against the war is a sign of just how politically devastating this conflict could be for Trump and the Republican Party.
If the war drags on, if gas prices skyrocket, or if Trump orders boots on the ground—which he did not rule out on Monday—then this could depress the GOP base and cause what is already expected to be a bad midterm for Republicans into a catastrophic one.
It's unclear how long this deadly war will drag on.
Trump could get bored or angry if an unpopular Middle East conflict drags his abysmal approval rating down even further.
But Trump said Monday that he is jazzed about sending other people's children into harm's way, and that he isn't gonna move on so fast this time.
"There's nothing boring about this," Trump said. "Somebody actually said from the media, 'I think he'll get bored after about a week or two.' No, we don't get bored. I never get bored. If I got bored, I wouldn't be standing here right now."
President Donald Trump held a Medal of Honor ceremony at the White House Monday, where he opened with a speech about “Operation Epic Fury,” the war on Iran that he launched over the weekend, before turning to his bribe-funded ballroom project.
Trump told the audience that “everybody” wanted him to bomb Iran but “they just didn't have the courage to say so.”
x
President Trump on Operation Epic Fury: "Today the Unites States military continues to carry out large scale combat operations in Iran to eliminate the grave threats posed to America by the terrible terrorists regime." pic.twitter.com/uavXpZnX3y
He also claimed that the operation was “substantially ahead of our time projections.”
“But whatever the time is, it's okay,” Trump continued. “Whatever it takes, we will always—and we have right from the beginning, we projected four to five weeks—but we have capability to go far longer than that.”
After dismissing questions about his attention span for his newly launched war, Trump became distracted by the construction—and drapes—behind him, prompting a seamless transition into boasting about his ballroom project’s cost, timeline, and sounds of its construction.
“It'll be $400 million or less. Most people say $400 million or more—no, it'll be less,” he said. “But when I hear that sound, that beautiful sound behind me, it means money, so I like it. But my wife isn't thrilled. She said, ‘this is getting crazy.’ I said, ‘Don't worry about it. We'll be all finished up in a few months.’”
Trump originally claimed that his tasteless ballroom would cost no more than $200 million. Now he’s saying that his war will end in a few weeks … or more.
If there’s anything consistent about Trump’s projections, it’s their flexibility.
We beg your pardon, but President Donald Trump did promise us a Rose Garden. Too bad it is a hideous, ugly mess. But now it is a hideous ugly mess … with statues!
Trump arrived back at the White House late Sunday night, having just jetted back from starting an illegal war from the comfort of his resort in Florida, where he threw up some curtains and called it secure. Upon arriving back at the White House, Trump couldn’t really be bothered to answer questions about the United States soldiers killed in Iran, because who cares about that when you have new Founding Fathers statues, right?
Yes, between when Trump left on Friday and arrived home Sunday, some decorator minions made sure to give Trump a little treat when he got back: statues of Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson atop the now-paved Rose Garden. And apparently those statues were so top of mind for Trump that it was all he could talk about.
“Trump’s White House redevelopment plan” by David Horsey
CNN’s senior correspondent Kristen Holmes was there and later said that while Trump “usually stops and talks to the press,” this time, “he completely ignored us.” Sure, that makes perfect sense. Wouldn’t want to talk to the press about the major conflagration you just kicked off in the Middle East. Instead, said Holmes, Trump “stopped and admired” his new additions, urging reporters to “Come look at them, they’re unbelievable.” After that, Trump just walked away.
Laser-focused on what matters.
The new statues are just the latest addition to Trump’s ongoing project of turning Washington, D.C. into a monument to himself and his terrible taste. The once bucolic, beautiful, and historic Rose Garden is now a paved-over mess. It’s also a place for Trump to entertain, but only if you are fancy enough to be a member of Trump’s new “Rose Garden Club.”
How do you get in the club? You either need to be a political ally of the president or grease his palms, basically. On reflection, that sounds like a terrible club.
This latest desecration of the White House joins all the other gilded nightmares Trump has cursed us with. His love of gold leaf is so boundless that it has oozed all over, breaking free of the Oval Office and running amok outside. He tore down the East Wing so he could build what seems to be just a bigger version of a Mar-a-Lago ballroom, a ballroom he is so enamored of that he had to stop in the middle of a press conference about Iran on Monday to reflect on how “it will be the most beautiful ballroom.”
Again, laser-focused on what matters. We’re two days into what looks like a rapidly devolving conflict in the Middle East, a conflict Trump recklessly started, and it’s nothing but statues and ballrooms.
Perhaps Trump was inspired by Harlan Crow, Justice Clarence Thomas’s billionaire buddy who built a Garden of Evil dotted with statues of dictators like Romania’s Nicolae Ceausescu, then-Yugoslavia’s Josip Broz Tito, and throwing in Felix Dzerzhinsky, the first commissar of the Soviet secret police, for good measure. According to Crow, this is to “remind newer generations of the failure of the bad guys and the triumph of the good guys.”
Erecting statues of the bad guys does not actually seem like the best way to highlight that good triumphs over evil? It instead just kind of looks like Crow loves him some dictators. Perhaps Trump will have a place of honor there one day.
Let’s face it: We will see a statue of Trump much, much sooner, and it will be in the Rose Garden along with statues of the founders. This is absolute Dear Leader stuff, just like slapping his name on the Kennedy Center or Rep. Anna Paulina Luna’s bill trying to get Trump on Mount Rushmore.
Trump’s continued desecration of the White House is a small thing compared to his continued destruction everywhere else, but it still stings to watch him wreck the place.
Whether it was due to the early hour of the day or just to the blood-thirsty nature of the moment, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth appeared particularly unhinged during the first official news briefing about President Donald Trump’s attacks on Iran.
Hegseth praised Israel, the U.S.’s military partner in the Iran strikes, for joining in what he described as “unleashing the most lethal and precise air power campaign in history.”
Hegseth said that the campaign was being carried out “all on our terms, with maximum authorities. No stupid rules of engagement, no nation-building quagmire, no democracy-building exercise, no politically correct wars.”
It was unclear what "politically correct wars” Hegseth is talking about. Maybe that one against Nazi Germany? Despite his bluster, Hegseth seemed rankled by the suggestion that we are now involved in a regime change.
"This is not Iraq,” he said. “This is not endless."
His remarks, like most everything in the Trump administration, were not in sync with President Donald Trump’s own boasts to Fox News anchor Bret Baier. Trump claimed that U.S. and Israeli forces targeted an Iranian leadership meeting and took out “49 leaders.”
Hegseth also bristled at questions about the timeline for U.S. involvement, calling them “gotcha-type” questions, though he also warned that the Trump-initiated conflict “will include casualties. War is hell and always will be”
President Donald Trump’s attacks against Iran have already led to hundreds of deaths. Despite those deadly consequences, he has been incapable of providing Americans and the world a clear reason for beginning this violence.
The Red Crescent, a nongovernmental humanitarian organization,has reported that more than 550 Iranian residents have been killed following strikes the U.S. carried out alongside Israel. U.S. Central Command, commonly known as CENTCOM, noted on Monday morning that a fourth U.S. service memberwas killed in action.
Since announcing his attacks on Saturday, Trump has been in a media frenzy, spinning the violence to multiple news outlets, many of which he has previously derided as “fake news” for accurately reporting on him. In those interviews, Trump has offered an array of reasons for the attack.
Hetold The Washington Post that “freedom” for Iran was his motivation for attacking, claiming, “All I want is freedom for the people.” Then inan interview with Axios, he said the reason for the attack was failed negotiations with Iran over their nuclear facilities, saying, “I can go long and take over the whole thing, or end it in two or three days.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, left, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine take questions during a press briefing at the Pentagon on March 2.
But Trumptold The New York Times that the U.S. plans to continuously attack Iran for “four to five weeks” if necessary, and that it “won’t be difficult.”Speaking to ABC News, Trump justified the attack by referencing a purported 2024 plot by now-deceased Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei to kill Trump. “I got him before he got me,” Trump said. “They tried twice. Well, I got him first.”
Yet, in his press conference on Monday, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegsethsaid, “This is not a so-called 'regime-change war,' but the regime sure did change.” Healso referenced the notion of halting Iran’s “nuclear ambitions,” which clashes withTrump’s claim last year that previous strikes had “completely and totally obliterated” Iran’s facilities.
At the same time Trump and his senior leadership are failing to communicate why American forces are engaged in combat, there are already signs that Iran did not pose an imminent threat to American safety.
Pentagon officials reportedly briefed members of Congress and discussed Iran’s military arsenal, buttwo sources told Reuters that they offered no intelligence about a threat to American assets.
Before the attacks, the public wasskeptical about striking Iran, and Trump hasbeen underwater in his approval ratings on most issues. He has failed to stop discussionabout his ties to accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, and even members of his own party havebeen raising the alarm about weak economics and rising prices thanks to his illegal tariffs.
People are dying because of Trump’s actions in Iran, and he can’t—or won’t—say why.
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