You would think that, during a war that has provoked one of the largest state sponsors of terrorism, the president and his party would want the Department of Homeland Security fully funded. You would be wrong!
On Tuesday, Senate Democrats introduced a bill that would fund the Department of Homeland Security in full, except for ICE and Border Patrol. Notably, the latter two agencies already have multi-year funding in place, thanks to the Big Ugly Bill. So, the Democrats’ offer was very generous.
But Republicans want nothing less than full capitulation to their demands. Instead of accepting an offer that would have funded TSA, the Coast Guard, and cybersecurity agencies, GOP Senator Katie Britt objected to the Democrats’ unanimous consent request to grant funding to DHS. See The Hill, Sen. Katie Britt blocks bill from Sen. Patty Murray to fund DHS agencies other than ICE, CBP.
The Democratic offer may have been too generous. On Wednesday, reports revealed that ICE is participating in Trump’s delusional investigation to establish nonexistent fraud during the 2020 presidential election. See Democracy Docket, ICE’s investigative arm is now probing Arizona’s elections. (“As the Trump administration moves to relitigate past elections, the investigative branch of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is probing Arizona’s 2020 election results, Arizona’s attorney general Kris Mayes told Democracy Docket Tuesday.”)
ICE is already acting as Trump’s secret police force, asserting the right to detain and deport immigrants without regard to the Fourth Amendment requirement of a judicial warrant based on probable cause or the Fifth Amendment requirement of due process. If ICE is now expanding its mission to pursue Trump’s conspiracy theories regarding the 2020 presidential election, Democrats in Congress should continue to refuse to fund DHS, the parent agency of ICE.
Republicans are playing games with the safety and security of Americans. On Wednesday, law enforcement agencies in California reported receiving an alert from the FBI that Iran had been planning terrorist attacks in California by drone. See ABC News, FBI warns Iran aspired to attack California with drones in retaliation for war.
Initially, confusion reigned because the FBI had made no public announcement of the threat. Later in the day, the FBI issued a formal statement that said, in part,
“We recently acquired information that as of early February 2026, Iran allegedly aspired to conduct a surprise attack using unmanned aerial vehicles from an unidentified vessel off the coast of the United State Homeland, specifically against unspecified targets in California, in the event that the US conducted strikes against Iran,” according to the alert distributed at the end of February. “We have no additional information on the timing, method, target, or perpetrators of this alleged attack.”
The appalling lack of information regarding the threat may be due, in part, to the fact that Kash Patel has gutted the elite counterintelligence team at the FBI devoted to intercepting global terror threats, with special emphasis on Iran. See CNN, (3/3/26), Kash Patel gutted FBI counterintelligence team tasked with tracking Iranian threats days before US strikes, sources say.
As the NYTimes reported on Wednesday, the Trump administration badly miscalculated Iran’s ability to engage in asymmetrical economic warfare and counterstrikes that spread the US war throughout the Middle East. See NYTimes, How Trump and His Advisers Miscalculated Iran’s Response to War (Gift article, accessible to all.)
Per the Times,
On Feb. 18, as President Trump weighed whether to launch military attacks on Iran, Chris Wright, the energy secretary, told an interviewer he was not concerned that the looming war might disrupt oil supplies in the Middle East and wreak havoc in energy markets.
Even during the Israeli and U.S. strikes against Iran last June, Mr. Wright said, there had been little disruption in the markets. “Oil prices blipped up and then went back down,” he said. Some of Mr. Trump’s other advisers shared similar views in private, dismissing warnings that — the second time around — Iran might wage economic warfare by closing shipping lanes carrying roughly 20 percent of the world’s oil supply.
The extent of that miscalculation was laid bare in recent days, as Iran threatened to fire at commercial oil tankers transiting the Strait of Hormuz, the strategic choke point through which all ships must pass on their way out of the Persian Gulf. In response to the Iranian threats, commercial shipping has come to a standstill in the Gulf, oil prices have spiked, and the Trump administration has scrambled to find ways to tamp down an economic crisis that has triggered higher gasoline prices for Americans.
The media continues to focus on the disruption to oil supplies, but a bigger crisis may be looming in the liquefied natural gas (LNG) market. For technical reasons, it is difficult to stockpile LNG. For example, Taiwan is heavily dependent on LNG to produce semiconductors; LNG accounts for about 50% of Taiwan’s energy generation. Taiwan has a 100-day oil reserve but only an 11-day LNG supply. 27% of Taiwan’s LNG passes through the Strait of Hormuz. See From Middle East War to Taiwan’s Semiconductor Fabs: Why a Regional Conflict Could Shake the Entire World.
In little more than a week, Taiwan may start to see LNG shortages. That, in turn, may affect the output of semiconductors, which are in nearly every electronic device. Did anyone try to buy a refrigerator during the Covid shutdown? We did. There were none to be found—because refrigerators use semiconductors as controllers.
While the Covid analogy is not perfect—the Covid disruption was due to supply chain allocation and labor force issues—the endpoint is the same: The modern world is driven in large part by Taiwan’s semiconductor production. Any disruption poses a serious economic threat—an example of the cascading downstream effects that Trump and his advisers failed to anticipate.
Unlike oil, there is no global LNG reserve. But even efforts to cushion the effects of Trump’s war on global oil supplies are likely too little, too late. When the Strait of Hormuz is open, about 20 million barrels of oil transit the strait each day. The International Energy Agency announced it would release 400 million barrels from global reserves, and the US announced the release of 172 million barrels from the US strategic oil reserve, for a total of 572 million barrels to cushion the blow.
Unfortunately, the impressive release from reserves represents only four weeks of replacement supply for the Strait of Hormuz (and will require 120 days to release). If the Strait remains closed for two or three months, the economic dislocation will be unprecedented, which is why Iran claims it can drive oil prices to $200 per barrel. See Fox News, Iran warns oil could hit $200 per barrel as US, IEA release emergency reserves.
Trump declared on Wednesday that the US has “won” the war against Iran—on the same day that Iran struck three commercial vessels in the Persian Gulf, announced that it would attack US and Israeli banks in the Middle East, and zero ships exited the Persian Gulf. See Hormuz Crisis Dashboard, Real-Time Shipping Disruption Tracker. (Ships Affected ~3,200 vessels (4% of global tonnage), 2,700 vessels — Trapped inside Gulf; and 500 vessels— Waiting outside the Strait of Hormuz.)
To state the obvious, I am not an expert in global shipping, energy supply chains, or predicting the future. It feels to me, however, that much of the media is preoccupied with how many things the US blows up on any given day and is less focused on the intricate, interconnected, downstream effects of the war. Trump proudly boasted on Wednesday that the US is self-sufficient in oil production. That’s great, but if Taiwan can’t make chips to run our computers, TVs, cars, and precision-guided missiles, having a lot of oil may be irrelevant.
Why does this matter to those seeking to defend democracy and stop Trump’s slide into autocracy? Sadly, it is likely that the cascading domestic economic effects of Trump’s war on Iran will worsen significantly before they improve. I dearly hope I am wrong. But the facts suggest otherwise, even if the media’s attention is laser-focused on MAGA voters pumping gas. Those vignettes are instructive, even if too narrow. MAGA voters (like everyone) understand the price of gas and are sensitive to 50-cent increases between fill-ups.
We must be prepared to welcome those disillusioned voters to the resistance, even if they are temporary allies on select issues. And remember, no one likes to admit they were wrong. MAGA voters understandably believe they voted correctly based on the promises Trump made and on which they relied. For them, the issue is that Trump broke his promises about the economy, about not engaging in regime change and “forever wars,” and about the Epstein files. If their disillusionment helps drive a generational shift in power in Congress, we should tap into it to the fullest extent possible.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune schedules vote on SAVE Act.
GOP majority leader John Thune will schedule the SAVE Act for a floor vote next week under existing Senate rules—which means that the filibuster will apply and the Act will go down to defeat. See Democracy Docket, Thune schedules doomed SAVE America Act vote, dashing MAGA hopes for filibuster fight.
If, as expected, the SAVE Act fails to pass in the Senate, any effort by Trump to implement its provisions by executive order will be seen by every court to consider a challenge to the order as an effort to usurp Congress’s legislative power. While a defeat on the Senate floor won’t end Trump’s efforts to implement the SAVE Act’s voter suppression, it makes the legal basis for doing so by executive order indefensible.
Epstein investigation updates.
The cover-up of Epstein’s crimes and the identity of his co-conspirators continue to unravel. Each day unveils evidence of a deliberate effort to conceal the full extent of Trump’s involvement with Epstein. There are three updates on Wednesday:
First, it appears that, based on testimony from Epstein’s accountant, the woman who accused Trump of abusing her when she was thirteen years old received a settlement payment from the Epstein estate. See Daily Beast, Epstein Accountant Spills Bombshell Payout to Alleged Trump Victim. The accountant’s testimony has not yet been released, and the Daily Beast story is based on Rep. Suhas Subramanyam’s notes of the testimony.
Second, the DOJ asked the state of New Mexico in 2019 (when Trump was president) to shut down an investigation into allegations of criminal activity at Epstein’s ranch. See Mediaite, James Comer Says Trump DOJ Shut Down Epstein Investigation.
Third, Oversight Committee Chair James Comer told Fox News,
The federal government asked New Mexico to stop their investigation, I believe, back in 2019 of that ranch. So there’s just so many questions about how the government failed, the victims and how government failed in trying to prosecute Epstein sooner. I mean, this whole thing doesn’t make sense. Everyone has conspiracy theories on how Epstein was able to get away with it. Was it because he was an agent? We don’t know, but we’re gonna find out and I’m glad that they’re on the ground now in New Mexico searching that property.
These developments confirm that the DOJ is attempting to conceal the truth from the American people, thereby denying justice to the Epstein victims and survivors. We must not relent on this issue. Continue to highlight Trump’s broken promises of transparency and accountability at every opportunity!
Concluding Thoughts
Trump’s illegal war on Iran is damaging the credibility and honor of the US military. After two weeks of evasion and dissembling by senior commanders, Hegseth, and Trump, insiders at the Pentagon leaked a preliminary report confirming that a US missile struck a girls’ school on the first day of the attacks. More than 150 people were killed, mostly young female students. See NYTimes, U.S. at Fault in Strike on School in Iran, Preliminary Inquiry Says | Outdated targeting data may have resulted in a mistaken missile strike, according to the ongoing military investigation, which undercuts President Trump’s assertion that Iran could be to blame. (Gift article, accessible to all.)
Military commanders knew within minutes of the attack that their missile struck a girls’ school, and yet they have not issued a public statement, apologized, expressed sympathy, or otherwise shown that they regret the loss of innocent life.
Instead, Pete Hegseth is pounding his chest like an adolescent schoolboy trying too hard to prove that he is tough. Admitting mistakes is, in Hegseth’s view, “politically correct.” In reality, he is an insecure, vain, incompetent man-child whose tenure as Secretary of Defense is an ongoing insult to the integrity and honor of every active duty soldier and veteran.
On Wednesday, it was reported that Pete Hegseth is banning photographers from the Pentagon press briefings because the Associated Press had taken photos of him he considered “unflattering.” Americans are dying in a war being directed by Hegseth, and he is concerned about how he looks for the camera.
When this is over, the military must go through a reckoning to determine how its leaders could have lost their way so badly in such a short period of time. Many institutions must go through the same process. But innocent lives are on the line every day in the war on Iran. We should expect more from military commanders in whose hands we have placed awful weapons of destruction. It is time for the military to step up and acknowledge the truth, admit their negligence or recklessness, and apologize.
Talk to you tomorrow.
