Sunday, April 05, 2026
Saturday, April 04, 2026
Chump's dementia leads him to desire even more war
Donald Chump kept a low profile today. Possibly he learned of the latest polling results? Sam Stevenson (NEWSWEEK) reported this morning:
Public sentiment is shifting as the administration confronts fallout from the Iran war, mounting economic pressures, and a political calendar already tilting toward the midterms.
Slipping support among low-income voters, a key part of Trump’s electoral coalition, adds to the stakes.
A new CNN poll conducted by SSRS between March 26 and March 30, 2026, found Trump’s approval ratings at their lowest point yet across three major policy areas: the economy, foreign affairs and inflation.
The survey was based on a random national sample of 1,201 adults, interviews were conducted using a mix of online and telephone methods, with results weighted to reflect the U.S. adult population, and the margin of sampling error for the full sample was plus or minus 3.2 percentage points.
Friday, a US fighter jet was shot down in Iran with two service members on the plane. While one was recovered quickly, another one was missing on Friday and for most of today. Greg Jaffe, Eric Schmitt and Helene Cooper (NEW YORK TIMES) report:
An Air Force officer whose fighter jet had been shot down in Iran was rescued by U.S. Special Operations forces in a risky Saturday night mission that took commandos deep into enemy territory, said current and former U.S. officials briefed on the operation.
The rescue followed a life-or-death race between U.S. and Iranian forces that stretched over two days to reach the injured airman. As U.S. forces converged on the downed airman, a firefight erupted, a former senior military official briefed on the operation said. In the end, the United States extracted the officer in an operation that involved hundreds of special operations troops.
A second aircraft, an A-10 Thunderbolt, was shot down in a separate incident the same day. The pilot ejected over Kuwaiti airspace and was rescued. Two HH-60G rescue helicopters sent to recover the F-15E’s crew were also hit by Iranian fire, injuring US personnel aboard before returning to base. In all, four American aircraft were struck in a single day—the worst losses of the five-week war.
The shoot-downs came two days after Trump addressed the nation in a prime time speech in which he threatened to destroy Iranian society. “We are going to hit them extremely hard over the next two to three weeks,” Trump said Wednesday. “We are going to bring them back to the stone ages, where they belong.” He threatened to hit “each and every one of their electric generating plants,” and said he had not yet struck Iran’s oil only because doing so “would not give them even a small chance of survival or rebuilding.”
“We are on track to complete all of America’s military objectives shortly, very shortly,” Trump said in the same speech. “They have no antiaircraft equipment. Their radar is 100 percent annihilated. We are unstoppable as a military force.” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth declared on March 31: “Iran knows that, and there’s almost nothing they can militarily do about it.” Forty-eight hours later, Iran shot an American fighter jet out of the sky.
As the Intercept noted, “Neither the White House nor the Pentagon responded to requests for comment on how Iran could down an advanced US aircraft when the country supposedly no longer possesses anti-aircraft weaponry.” The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) claimed responsibility for the shoot-down.
Alexander Ward and Michael R. Gordon (WALL STREET JOURNAL) point out:
Just 48 hours after President Trump had all but declared Tehran was militarily defeated and looking for a deal to end the war, Iran downed two American warplanes.
Trump’s repeated declarations that the war is nearly over are colliding with the gritty battlefield reality, some U.S. officials and analysts said.
And while Chump hid out today, his request for the next defense budget to be increased by approximately 42% to $1.5 trillion further called his previous insistence to be opposed to never-ending wars into question. In his speech on Wednesday night, he got wrong Iran's capabilities, yes, but he also was wrong the federal government when he said in the speech that the US government cannot afford to fund child care or Medicaid or Medicare because the government must focus on military spending.
Then why do we need the federal government?
If you believe Chump's lie, then there's no need for a federal government.
Chump, in his advanced dementia, appears to believe that the US government now exists solely for pursuing his wars of choice. As he prepares for attacks on Cuba and Greenland and who knows where else in his deranged mind.
Daniel Hampton (RAW STORY) reports:
President Donald Trump's closest allies in the Middle East are privately sounding the alarm as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth pushes the president to escalate the Iran war by targeting civilian infrastructure — including power plants and desalination facilities that millions of people depend on to survive, the Wall Street Journal reported Saturday.
Hegseth has personally briefed Trump on a legal rationale for striking Iran's bridges and roads, arguing that Iran's military could theoretically use them to move missiles and drone materials, the Journal reported. A White House official added that destroying power plants could "foment civil unrest," potentially complicating Tehran's path to a nuclear device.
But current and former military lawyers warn that it breaches the laws of armed conflict.
AP reports on the anti-Chump, someone who truly believes in peace:
Pope Leo XIV, carrying a tall, lit candle through a darkened and silent St. Peter’s Basilica, ushered in Christianity’s most joyous celebration with his first Easter vigil service as pontiff Saturday night, urging that Easter would bring harmony and peace to a world torn by wars.
Easter for Christians commemorates Christ’s triumph over death with his resurrection following his crucifixion. Lighting the candle before he entered the basilica, the pope intoned: “The light of Christ who rises in glory.”
[. . .]
With the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran in its second month and Russia’s ongoing campaign in Ukraine, Leo has repeatedly called for a halt in hostilities. On Palm Sunday, he said that God doesn’t listen to the prayers of those who make war or cite God to justify their violence,
Let's wind down with this from Senator Patty Murray's office:
Trump proposes slashing domestic investments while increasing defense spending by half a trillion dollars more
ICYMI: Trump on Wednesday: “It’s not possible for us to take of daycare, Medicaid, Medicare … We have to take care of one thing: military protection.”
Washington, D.C. — Today, Senator Patty Murray, Vice Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, issued the following statement on the release of President Trump’s fiscal year 2027 budget request, which proposes increasing defense spending by roughly half a trillion dollars while slashing and even defunding key domestic programs that American families count on every day.
“The vision President Trump has outlined for America in his budget is bleak and unacceptable. President Trump wants to slash medical research to fund costly foreign wars. It doesn’t get more backward than that, and the only responsible thing to do with a budget this morally bankrupt is to toss it in the trash.
“After passing the largest cuts to health care in American history, all to fund billionaire tax breaks and give ICE more money than most militaries, President Trump now wants Congress to defund dozens of programs that help students so that he can send other people’s kids to fight a war with no justification. And after sending prices skyrocketing with his stupid tariffs and reckless war, President Trump is now proposing to eliminate programs that help families afford the basics—like LIHEAP.
“This week, President Trump said that our country cannot afford to help families with child care or health care—but his own budget proves what a ridiculous farce that is. Imagine how many families we could help if, instead of giving the Pentagon more money than they can even figure out what to do with, we cut people’s heating bills in half and made child care affordable for every family in America.
“Our national defense budget should not be dictated by a president who is sending servicemembers into harm’s way in reckless foreign wars—and who woke up one day and decided to send his aides scrambling to figure out how on earth they could spend half a trillion dollars more, which the Pentagon can’t possibly spend responsibly. Donald Trump might be happy to spend more money on bombs in the Middle East than on families here in America—but I am not.
“Last year, I said I’d rip up President Trump’s budget and make sure Congress wrote a new one instead—that’s exactly what we did and will do again. The American people want their tax dollars going toward investments that help everyone and make life more affordable—the basics like utilities and child care. Those are the investments I am going to fight for. Trump wants to build a ballroom—I want to build more affordable housing, and only one of us sits on the Appropriations Committee.”
President Trump’s budget proposes slashing domestic investments by $73 billion while massively increasing the defense budget by roughly half a trillion dollars more (through both annual appropriations and reconciliation) in order to achieve an unprecedented $1.5 trillion defense budget that dwarfs all other non-defense discretionary (NDD) spending. This sum does not include a separate supplemental funding request expected for the Iran war.
- President Trump arbitrarily announced on Truth Social in early January that he wanted a $1.5 trillion defense budget—and sent his aides scrambling to produce a request that met his topline.
- Trump’s budget seeks to dramatically cut back on domestic investments as American families struggle to make ends meet with higher costs, and as there are already immense strains on the non-defense budget, which has been roughly flat for three successive fiscal years, while defense spending has continued to grow. Non-defense programs will be further strained with the expiration at the end of fiscal year 2026 of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), which has supported key non-defense priorities with tens of billions of dollars in funding each year.
President Trump’s budget proposes a $404 million cut in funding for the Hanford nuclear clean-up site—and proposes eliminating contingency funding for the Office of River Protection’s High Level Waste (HLW) facility.
On President Trump’s proposed budget for Hanford, Senator Murray said:
“Hanford is the largest nuclear cleanup site in our country, and it is not only dangerous, but costs more in the long run to cut corners on nuclear waste cleanup. Trump’s proposed budget is a slap in the face to the Tri-Cities, threatening the Hanford cleanup mission and the community with this absurd budget request. This proposal is completely unacceptable. I’ll be doing everything I can to set this president straight on the importance of the Hanford cleanup—and if he still doesn’t get it, I’m going to make sure Congress funds it anyway. The federal government has a moral and legal obligation here—and as long as I help lead the appropriations committee, Congress is going to meet that obligation.”
More toplines on President Trump’s budget request will be distributed later today and made available HERE.
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The following sites updated:
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Donald Trump Isn't Sounding Like Himself13 hours ago
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Democrats Need New Stories20 hours ago
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Those trashy McMahons grifters22 hours ago
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Pam has a ton of s**t on her nose22 hours ago
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Idiot of the Week22 hours ago
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Who will Chump fire next?1 day ago
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Fight the layoffs at GM’s Factory Zero and throughout the auto industry!
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Brothers and sisters, | ||||||||
General Motors has again idled its flagship Factory Zero plant in Detroit, temporarily laying off the 1,300 workers on the last shift left running at the factory. The layoffs are part of an escalating wave of job cuts throughout the auto industry, carried out with the complicity of the UAW bureaucracy. | ||||||||
GM had adjusted profits of $12.7 billion for 2025, following record profits of $14.9 billion in 2024. The company spent $6 billion on stock buybacks for wealthy investors — while workers are thrown out of their jobs. Workers produced that wealth. They should not be sacrificed to further enrich shareholders. | ||||||||
The UAW apparatus has not called a single membership meeting, organized a single protest, or issued a single concrete demand to stop these layoffs. The bureaucracy's silence is not passivity — it is complicity. The chauvinist nationalism of Fain and the UAW apparatus aligns them directly with Trump, pitting American workers against their brothers and sisters in Canada, Mexico, and around the world. | ||||||||
Workers at Factory Zero and other plants should build rank-and-file committees to enforce a zero-layoff policy and the return of all laid-off workers to their jobs. The transformation of the auto industry must be placed under democratic workers' control and reorganized to meet social needs, not the further enrichment of wealthy shareholders. | ||||||||
William Lehman for UAW President | ||||||||
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You are receiving this email because you opted-in to receive email from the list Campaign updates from Will for UAW President Will for UAW President, PO Box 37174, Oak Park, MI 48237 |
Friday, April 03, 2026
The Snapshot
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has fired the highest-ranking Army officer in the country in the middle of the U.S. war on Iran.
On Thursday, CBS News reported that Hegseth had asked Gen. Randy George, the Army’s chief of staff, to step down and retire. The Biden appointee’s term was set to end in 2027; Army chiefs of staff typically serve four-year terms. George joins more than a dozen high-ranking military officers who have been fired since Hegseth and his ultra-hawkish ideology took over at the Pentagon.
The tension with Mr. Hegseth was not rooted in substantive differences over the direction of the Army, military officials said. Rather it is the product of Mr. Hegseth’s long-running grievances with the Army, battles over personnel and his troubled relationship with Army Secretary Daniel P. Driscoll, the officials said.
Over the last year, General George and Mr. Driscoll had formed a tight partnership, officials said.
Mr. Hegseth has also clashed in recent months with General George and Mr. Driscoll over the defense secretary’s decision to block the promotion of four Army officers to be one-star generals.
Two of the officers targeted by Mr. Hegseth are Black and two are women on a promotion list that consisted of 29 other officers, most of whom are white men. Mr. Hegseth’s highly unusual decision to remove the officers prompted some senior military officials to question whether they were being singled out because of their race or gender, officials said.
Mr. Hegseth had been pressing Mr. Driscoll and General George for months to remove the officers from the promotion list. But Mr. Driscoll and General George refused, citing the officers’ long records of exemplary service.
Two weeks ago, General George asked Mr. Hegseth to meet with him to discuss the removal of the four officers from the one-star list, as well as the general’s view that Mr. Hegseth was interfering unnecessarily in Army personnel decisions overall, the officials said. Mr. Hegseth refused to meet with General George about the matter, they said.
[. . .]
In addition to removing General George, Mr. Hegseth also fired Gen. David M. Hodne, who was promoted in October to lead the Army’s Transformation and Training Command, a key four-star position focused on Army modernization and doctrine.
Mr. Hegseth also fired Maj. Gen. William Green Jr., the Army’s top chaplain, an official said.
In the midst of a war, Hegseth is firing generals? A war that has gone very poorly and is extremely unpopular?
The American people don't like the war and they don't like Chump.
Let's wind down with this from Senator Patty Murray's office:
Committee Ranking Members argue that the scheme “will set the stage for more dysfunction in a federal student aid system that the Trump Administration has already made more expensive and confusing to navigate”
Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senators Patty Murray (D-WA), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Ron Wyden (D-OR), and Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) pressed Secretary of Education Linda McMahon and Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent to rescind their plans to move the administration of federal student loans to the Treasury Department (Treasury), the latest move in the Trump administration’s attempts to dismantle the Department of Education (ED).
The lawmakers are the Ranking Members of the Senate Appropriations Committee; Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee; Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee; Senate Finance Committee; and Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies.
“This latest illegal scheme from the Trump Administration threatens to trap student loan borrowers, students, and families in chaos and bureaucracy, all while American taxpayers are left to foot the bill for Treasury to administer programs that ED can and should administer itself,” wrote the lawmakers.
Congress recently reaffirmed on a bicameral, bipartisan basis that ED has no authority to transfer its statutory responsibilities to other agencies, stating that doing so would “create inefficiencies, result in additional costs to the American taxpayer, and cause delays.”
Contrary to that directive, ED’s most recent interagency agreement (IAA) transfers its responsibilities of managing student loans and federal student aid to Treasury, without Congressional authorization. Previous IAAs transferred ED’s management of career and technical education programs, adult education grant programs, along with dozens of programs for early childhood, elementary, secondary, and postsecondary education out of ED.
“The Trump administration’s record of haphazard decision making and utter disregard for the actual issues facing students, families, and student loan borrowers suggests that this IAA will be implemented in a way that leaves borrowers with limited options and little to no guidance while increasing the number of borrowers in default and economic distress,” warned the lawmakers.
The senators argued that the first phase of the IAA is likely to worsen the student loan default crisis, because it tasks Treasury — an agency with no experience in student loan administration — with collecting on defaulted student loan debt and helping borrowers exit default. They cited the Treasury Department’s reductions in force as reason to doubt the success of the new arrangement, in addition to a pilot study where Treasury was made responsible for collections and loan rehabilitation for several thousand student loan borrowers but only successfully completed rehabilitations for eight.
Further, the senators argued that the second and third phases of the IAA — in which Treasury will be tasked with potentially managing the entire federal student loan portfolio and administering the FAFSA form — are illegal and likely to throw the financial aid system into further disarray.
“Treasury’s lack of expertise in the federal student aid system could be disastrous for the implementation of the latter phases of the IAA, as the federal student aid system is highly complex and administrative errors could endanger access to financial aid or statutory debt cancellation,” wrote the senators. “This ill-advised plan also ignores the laws of Congress.”
ED’s IAA with the Department of Labor for Career and Technical Education and Adult Education, programs which are a fraction of the size and less complex than student loan programs, have cost ED over $1 million in extra program costs and resulted in weeks-long delays in grant disbursements, harming students and schools.
“(I)t is reckless for ED to enter into another IAA with no information or clarity on the cost,” said the senators.
“The ED-Treasury IAA will set the stage for more dysfunction in a federal student aid system that the Trump Administration has already made more expensive and confusing to navigate…We call upon you to rescind these IAAs immediately,” concluded the lawmakers.
The senators asked Secretary McMahon and Secretary Bessent to provide details on the cost of transferring student loan administration to Treasury, basic information on the staff responsible for and the timing of the IAA, and how Treasury will be held accountable for poor performance in administering its new student loan responsibilities by April 15, 2026.
Senator Murray has aggressively pushed back against Secretary McMahon’s efforts to dismantle the Department, including through the illegal use of IAAs, and she fought to insert ironclad language in the fiscal year 2026 funding bill for the Department that would bar Secretary McMahon’s use of IAAs to dismantle the Department—but Republicans refused to include new, binding language. The final agreement did, however, make clear there is no legal authority for the Department of Education to slough off core responsibilities through these agreements.
The full text of the letter is available HERE.
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