The #MAGA movement trying to overturn the #SameSexMarriage ruling after overturning #RoeVWade and the #SecretaryOfDefense making the #IranWar a holy war while #Iran stays calm after the U.S.'s psyop of calling #AyatollahMojtabaKhamenei gay is quite telling
#Obergefell_v_Hodges #uspol #politics #SecretaryOfWar #Pentagon #DepartmentOfDefence #DepartmentOfWar #AyatollahKhameneiGay #AyatollahMojtabaKhameneiGay #ChristianNationalism #SecondTrumpAdminstration #TrumpAdministration2026 #PeteHegseth
Perfect! Just like “Sir”…
"We’ll see what happens" ™️ -
#TrumpVirus “strategy” / #BrainSpurs
#KashPatel #PeteHegseth #dictator #corruption #incompetency #dementia
Trump's DUI hire is doing a great job, isn't he?
#Iran #WarWithIran #TrumpsWar #Trump #USMilitary #PeteHegseth #DUIHire
Lazy Caturday Reads
Good Day!!
Orazio Orazi (1848–1912) – La siesta
The news continues to be confusing and depressing.
We are supposedly in a war, and the enemy has shot down two of our planes and hit two helicopters. An airman has been missing in Iran for 2 days now. But the “president” is spending time posting insults to Bruce Springsteen and the New York Times on his social media site. So far, he has said nothing publicly about the missing serviceman.
What else is Trump focusing on during the war that he unilaterally started? Releasing a new budget demanding even more defense spending, cuts to domestic programs, and–incredibly–money to rebuild Alcatraz. Oh, and he’s sent his VP to campaign for reelection of the right-wing president of Hungary.
Meanwhile, the Secretary of Defense is firing generals because he’s afraid of losing his job.
Here’s the latest.
The background from NBC News: U.S. fighter jet downed over Iran, one pilot rescued, official says.
U.S. forces were searching for an F-15E crew member after a two-seater fighter jet went down over Iran, a U.S. official said Friday. The other crew member has been rescued.
Iran shot down the F-15E Strike Eagle, a U.S. official said, and the American military was scrambling to find the second aviator after a regional governor offered a bounty for its crew.
A U.S. aircraft that was mobilized to support the search and rescue mission was also struck by Iranian fire after the F-15E jet was downed, a U.S. official told NBC News.
That aircraft, a single-pilot A-10 Thunderbolt, known as a Warthog, made it to Kuwaiti airspace, where the pilot ejected and the aircraft crashed, the official said. The pilot is safe and the A-10 is down in Kuwait, according to the official.
Two U.S. military Blackhawk helicopters that were involved in search and rescue efforts were also struck by Iranian fire, but the service members were unharmed, according to a U.S. official.
Iran’s media published photos alongside claims from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) that it had shot down the F-15E. The Pentagon and the White House did not immediately comment on the claims.
The governor of Iran’s Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad province in Iran’s southwest, where Iranians were reported to have been searching for the missing pilot, on Saturday denied reports that the second American crew member had been found and arrested, according to Iran’s semiofficial Mehr news agency.
The regional leadership of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps also denied that “the second pilot of an F-15E fighter jet has been captured and detained by special airborne forces,” Mehr also reported.
By Ksenya Istomina
The latest from BBC Live Updates: Search continues for missing US airman from downed F-15 as Iran says strike near nuclear plant kills one.
US and Iranian forces are searching for a missing American crew member after a US warplane was shot down – verified video appears to show the US operation.
The missing airman, a weapon systems officer, was aboard a US F-15 fighter jet that was downed in southern Iran. A pilot who was also on board has been rescued, US media report.
Iranian officials are urging citizens to find them “alive” and are offering rewards for their capture, according to state media.
Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump says Iran has 48 hours to make a deal or reopen the Strait of Hormuz or “all Hell will reign down on them.”
Iran says the area around the Bushehr nuclear power plant has been attacked with one person killed – the global nuclear watchdog says no increase in radiation has been reported, but calls for “maximum military restraint” to avoid a nuclear accident.
Lyse Doucette at BBC News: Risky moment for US as search continues for missing airman.
This is a moment fraught with risk.
It’s a risky US operation to rescue the missing crew member, even though they’ve all prepared for years for this kind of moment.
It is also fraught with political peril.
If Iran finds this airman, and he’s paraded on TV, it will be a propaganda victory for Iran, and a political humiliation – and worry – for the US.
And, it would provide Tehran with a prisoner of war – a bargaining chip at a time when efforts to end this war are already stuck, despite US President Donald Trump’s claims of great progress.
It’s a moment which could give real meaning to the name of this US military operation – Epic Fury.
Retaliation when it comes will be risky for Iran, the region, and a world already suffering economic shocks.
After five weeks of war, the US and Israel have inflicted serious damage on Iran’s military capabilities.
But the defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, has repeatedly declared they’ve achieved “total air dominance.”
That boast has been burst.
Meanwhile…. Allison Quinn at The Daily Beast: Trump Ignores Frantic Search for Pilot to Rage at Newspaper.
President Donald Trump took to Truth Social early Saturday not to address the public on the fate of a U.S. service member at the center of desperate search efforts in Iran, but to complain about The New York Times.
At the heart of the 79-year-old president’s post, as usual, was himself.
Rachael, by Thomas John Carlson
“The Failing New York Times, whose lack of credibility, and their constant Fake News attacks on your favorite President, ME, has caused its circulation to absolutely PLUMMET, referred to our severely weakened and extremely unreliable ‘partner,’ NATO, as the North American Treaty Organization,” he wrote….
The newspaper’s communications team acknowledged the mistake that Trump had seized upon, saying the name of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization had been “misstated.”
Trump’s post comes a day after Iran shot down an Air Force F-15E fighter jet over the country, marking a dangerous new turn in a war now into its fifth week.
Iran has since placed a bounty on the aircrew, and a dramatic search and rescue mission ensued, resulting in one crew member being rescued by American forces. The second remains missing, and both the White House and Pentagon have been silent on the status of rescue efforts.
Trump, asked Friday about the missing service member, told NBC News the situation wouldn’t affect negotiations to end the war, saying, “It’s war. We’re in war.”
It’s not news, but it’s always stunning when Trump demonstrates his complete inability to feel empathy.
More disturbing war news from The Washington Post: Chinese firms market Iran war intelligence ‘exposing’ U.S. forces.
As the war in Iran erupted five weeks ago, social media sleuths across Western and Chinese platforms flagged a wave of viral posts detailing equipment at U.S. bases, the movements of American carrier groups and granular breakdowns of how military aircraft were assembling for strikes on Tehran.
The intelligence came from a fast growing new market: Chinese firms — some with links to the People’s Liberation Army — marrying artificial intelligence with open-source data to market information they claim can “expose” the movements of U.S. forces.
Beijing has sought to distance itself from any direct involvement in the Iran war, but the firms — many of which have emerged in the past five years as part of the government’s push to harness private AI for military use — are capitalizing on the conflict.
U.S. officials and intelligence experts are divided over whether Chinese firms’ publicly marketed tools pose a genuine threat or are being credibly used by U.S. adversaries, but say the surge in private-sector offerings points to a growing security risk and reflects Beijing’s intent to project the strength of its intelligence capabilities.
Beijing has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into supporting private firms developing AI with practical defense applications under its civil-military integration strategy, and last month announced plans to supercharge those efforts as part of a broader five-year national strategy….
Private firms have long used open-source data — including flight trackers, satellite imagery and shipping data — to generate market intelligence. But the growing AI capability of Chinese firms is making these tools more powerful, underscoring the growing challenge of concealing U.S. military movements from adversaries.
Nate Frizzell, Already Home
On Trump’s new budget proposal:
Bobby Kogan at MSNOW: Trump’s new budget proposal is historic — in one of the worst ways possible.
On Friday, the Trump administration submitted its annual budget request to Congress. The document called for dramatically reducing what the United States government does for Americans. The budget called for steep cuts to funding for education, housing and health, funneling resources toward the military as the war in Iran reaches its fifth week. This shift would leave the portion of the budget known as “nondefense discretionary,” or NDD funding, which accounts for most domestic activities aside from Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and SNAP, at its lowest level since at least Dwight D. Eisenhower’s presidency.
These NDD programs have already suffered more than 15 years of disinvestment, including particularly sharp cuts over the last three years. In total, the president called to cut NDD funding (excluding Veterans Affairs medical care) by $83 billion below last year’s levels.
When Trump signed the “big, beautiful bill” last July, he enacted the largest cuts to Medicaid and SNAP in history. The same law provided enormous tax cuts that disproportionately further enriched the very rich. Taken together, it instituted the largest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in a single law in U.S. history. The new budget proposal would double down on his legacy of cutting programs that ordinary Americans, and especially those already struggling to make ends meet, rely on.
Fortunately, the proposed cuts are all but certain to be dead on arrival — not just because congressional Democrats will reject them, but because congressional Republicans can’t pass them. In 2023, House Republicans appropriators attempted to write funding bills with “only” $60 billion in cuts to nondefense programs. With Democrats in control of the White House and the Senate at the time, those bills were primarily a messaging exercise rather than a sincere attempt at legislation. And yet $60 billion proved too extreme even for the extreme House Republican conference, which pulled five of its 12 bills, abandoning the process altogether.
If House Republicans could not stomach $60 billion of cuts that had no chance of becoming law, they certainly can’t write bills calling for $83 billion in actual cuts to services on which Americans rely.
The proposed defense funding increases are similarly extreme. The budget is calling for $1.5 trillion in a $445 billion increase above this year, with $1.15 billion coming from annual appropriations and the remaining $350 billion from the budget reconciliation process. First off, the proposal is not tethered to actual policy. To be clear, the president first proposed this $1.5 trillion number nearly two months before the U.S. attacked Iran, so the administration can’t even credibly claim this is related to specific new requirements created by the war.
Read the rest at the link.
This bit from the Trump budget is beyond insane. The New York Times: Trump Seeks $152 Million to Begin to Turn Alcatraz Back Into a Prison.
President Trump is asking for $152 million from Congress to try to transform Alcatraz, the popular tourist attraction, back into a maximum-security prison.
The request, included in a 2027 fiscal year budget proposal released on Friday, is the most concrete step the president has taken so far to realize an idea he first mused about last year on social media, when he said he wanted the island in the San Francisco Bay to be enlarged and rebuilt “to house America’s most ruthless and violent offenders.”
But the plan faces immense political and practical roadblocks. It has generated enormous pushback in San Francisco, where tourism is one of the biggest industries and Alcatraz is at the top of many visitors’ itineraries.
And Alcatraz, which has not housed an inmate in more than 60 years, is largely in ruins. It has no running water or sewage system. Much of the island, known as “The Rock,” is covered in bird droppings. All supplies must be brought in by boat.
The new White House budget proposal seeks $5 billion for the Bureau of Prisons to improve the nation’s “crumbling detention facilities,” including the makeover for Alcatraz. The $152 million would cover the first year of costs for the “President’s commitment to rebuild Alcatraz as a state-of-the-art secure prison facility,” it states. The full cost of restoring and reopening Alcatraz would be far higher.
Mayor Daniel Lurie of San Francisco last year called the proposal to turn Alcatraz back into a federal prison “not a serious proposal.” Asked on Friday for his thoughts on the Trump administration’s budget allocation, his spokesman pointed back to those same comments and said he had nothing more to say.
Representative Nancy Pelosi, whose congressional district includes most of San Francisco, said that Alcatraz was a historic museum that belonged to the public. “Rebuilding Alcatraz into a modern prison is a stupid notion that would be nothing more than a waste of taxpayer dollars and an insult to the intelligence of the American people,” she said in a statement, vowing to fight the plan.
Meanwhile, Trump sent JD Vance to Hungary to campaign for Victor Orbán.
Politico: Operation Save Orbán: Trump deploys Vance to Hungary.
U.S. Vice President JD Vance is set to land in Budapest on Tuesday for a high-stakes intervention that underscores how far the White House is willing to go to shore up Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán before the April 12 national election.
Orbán is flailing in the polls, as anti-corruption opposition candidate Péter Magyar surges ahead in his bid to claim power in Budapest after 16 years of leadership by the ruling Fidesz party.
Cat Nap, Susan Blackwood
Vance’s visit, scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday, was framed by Hungarian government spokesperson Zoltán Kovács as a celebration of deep ties between the two countries. “The visit highlights the strong and enduring alliance between Hungary and the United States,” he wrote on X on Friday.
The outspoken U.S. vice president will hold talks with the MAGA-allied Orbán and then give a public address, during a trip that directly involves Washington in the final stretch of a heated election campaign.
It echoes an American effort in Argentina last year, where U.S. officials including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent intervened to support President Javier Milei ahead of national midterm elections, to keep a key hemispheric, ideological ally in a strong position.
In multiple speeches and remarks over the 15 months since President Donald Trump returned to office, senior U.S. officials have made clear they believe Europe is on the wrong political path, and that the nationalist-populist Orbán is a model for the continent to follow.
The Hungarian prime minister has promoted his vision of illiberal democracy, while frequently clashing with Brussels over the EU’s direction on migration, Russia and minority rights.
Unbelievable.
Trump’s incompetent Defense Secretary has been on another firing spree.
Colin Demarest at Axios: Hegseth’s wartime firing of top generals stuns officials: “It’s insane.”
The ousters of Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George and Army Gen. David Hodne blindsided military leaders and have generated concern among defense officials about the implications for the war in Iran and the longer-term adoption of new tech and tactics.
Why it matters: George and Hodne join a growing list of generals and flag officers booted by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. These abrupt exits have reshaped the Joint Chiefs of Staff, intel-collecting agencies and combatant commands.
Driving the news: George’s dismissal was motivated by clashing personalities and not disagreements over where the Army is headed, according to two U.S. officials.Friction point: The firings come while elements of the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division are bound for the Middle East. The service is also responsible for integrated air-and-missile defenses.
Hegseth has named a former aide, Gen. Christopher LaNeve, to replace George.
Steven Nelson of The New York Post weighed in on this: Hegseth’s ‘paranoia’ of being replaced explains purge of top general — as ally emerges for Army secretary’s role.
WASHINGTON — Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s “paranoia” about Army Secretary Dan Driscoll taking his job fueled the firing of the Army’s top general, current and former administration officials tell The Post — as a top contender emerges to replace Driscoll if he’s canned next.
Hegseth on Thursday demanded the resignation of Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George — Driscoll’s top aide — in the middle of the Iran war for reasons that were not publicly stated.
Marie Witte, Mittens
“This is all driven by the insecurity and paranoia that Pete has developed since Signalgate. Unfortunately, it is stoked by some of his closest aides who should be trying to calm the waters,” an official said, referring to Hegseth’s March 2025 group chat with national security officials that inadvertently included a reporter.
Two other Army generals — Gen. David Hodne of the Army’s Transformation and Training Command and Maj. Gen. William Green of the Army’s Chaplain Corps — were dismissed in the purge, with the department only saying “it was time for a leadership change.”
“[Hegseth] has got a big conflict with Driscoll. And he’s been told by the White House he can’t fire Driscoll, at least for the moment,” a source close to the Trump administration said.
“[Hegseth] is very concerned about being fired and he knows that Driscoll is one of the top contenders, or a natural contender, to succeed him. So what Pete has been doing is taking anyone he perceives to be close with Driscoll and going after them. And this is the latest and most spectacular [example] of that.”
Driscoll is a close friend of Vice President JD Vance, with whom he attended Yale Law School after both men served in the Iraq War. His name was floated as a possible Hegseth successor last summer and the Pentagon boss’s suspicions deepened last fall when Driscoll served as a Ukraine war negotiator.
“This is not just one of those things where Pete is focused on DEI. That’s not what this is about. He keeps going after the Army in particular,” the second person said.
I don’t know what’s going through Hegseth’s so-called mind other than his next drink. Dakinikat wrote about the “DEI” issue in the firing yesterday.
One more before I end this post–another update on the Jeffrey Epstein South Carolina story from The Post and Courier: FBI records detail potential witnesses of SC Epstein victim. They aren’t public.
FBI agents prepared handwritten interview notes that contain names of possible corroborating witnesses and other information detailing a woman’s accusations that Jeffrey Epstein lured her into his deviant orbit when she was a teen on Hilton Head Island and sexually abused her.
The Post and Courier reviewed 30 pages of FBI agents’ notes, which have not been publicly released. The notes, made by agents in a series of 2019 interviews, offer a few new details about her claim that she traveled with Epstein to the New York area in the 1980s. She alleged that she encountered Donald Trump during a visit and was once forced into a sex act. The White House has assailed her claim, describing it as backed by no evidence.
Chanela by Grażyna Jeżak
The agents’ unredacted notes were not disclosed in the millions of Epstein documents released so far by the U.S. Department of Justice. They flesh out some aspects of her claims that she crossed paths with Epstein in the Lowcountry before he built a global sex-trafficking operation.
The Post and Courier compared the notes with official summaries, known as 302s, that agents prepared after the interviews. Some details in the handwritten notes never made it into the prepared summaries, which were heavily redacted by the Justice Department before their public release as required by law.
During one interview, for instance, an agent scribbled that the woman provided the names of four young teen girls who, by her account, attended a pool party on Hilton Head when Epstein came by. This was during the time when, she alleged, Epstein was sexually assaulting her and plying her with drugs and alcohol. Details about the four friends were not visible in the FBI’s 302 reports and may have been redacted in an effort to protect victim privacy.
It is unclear whether the FBI ever pursued leads offered by the alleged victim. One of the women identified in the interview notes as a high school friend told The Post and Courier that she was never contacted by the FBI.
Agents’ notes from a fourth interview with the alleged victim in 2019 were not available for The Post and Courier to review.
You can read the whole thing at the link. There’s no paywall this time. The Post and Courier has been doing great work on the Epstein story.
That’s it for me today. What’s on your mind?
#2027FederalBudget #ChineseFirmsMarketIranWarIntelligence #defenseSpending #DonaldTrump #downedFighterJet #GeneralDavidHodne #GeneralRandyGeorge #IranWar #JDVance #JeffreyEpsteinInSouthCarolina #missingAirman #PeteHegseth #rebuildingAlcatraz #SavingViktorOrbán
Zuri (he/him) ❌️👑 | 🕐 CET
Touaregtweet
StacesCases2 🇨🇦 📎
Michael Fenichel
Henry Stone
Bi Sasquatch
Iwpost
Sky Dancing