The Right Wing

President Donald Trump’s praise for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh might hamper any future nominees, a story in Reason opines.

Trump has been angry that two out of the three justices (Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett) that he appointed to the Supreme Court voted against him in their recent tariffs ruling. He called them "an embarrassment to their families" in one particularly vehement jab.

But Reason contends “what's actually embarrassing is the kind of praise that Trump is now heaping upon the one Trump-appointed justice who did vote in his favor,” i.e. Kavanaugh.

Trump can’t seem to move on from his tariffs defeat. "The decision that mattered most to me was TARIFFS!" Trump posted on social media. And "the Court knew where I stood" and "how badly I wanted this Victory for our Country."

He added, "The Democrats on the Court always 'stick together. But Republicans do not do this. They openly disrespect the Presidents who nominate them to the highest position in the Land."

Kavanaugh may have cringed a little bit when he read that, Reason said, adding, “If not, he should have.”

That’s because Trump is praising Kavanaugh, Reason claims, “for exhibiting deference and fidelity to the president who gave him his job. In effect, Trump is publicly patting Kavanaugh on the back for acting grateful and toeing the line.”

What’s worse than Kavanaugh’s potential humiliation is what Trump’s praise may foreshadow. It will also likely “demean any future SCOTUS nominees that Trump may get to put forward.”

If Justice Samuel Alioto retires, as rumors suggest, the Trump nominee to replace him would face an extremely uncomfortable question at their confirmation hearing.

“That nominee will undoubtedly be asked if he or she can be trusted to rule against the president who appointed them if that's what the Constitution required in a particular case,” Reason wrote. “In the past, answering such a question would have been a total no-brainer for any nominee: "Of course I'll put the Constitution first, Senator! What kind of lickspittle do you think I am?"

But perhaps the nominee may think twice about showing such independence and drawing Trump’s wrath. Perhaps such “disrespect” would even lead to Trump pulling the plug on the nomination, Reason concludes.

There have been disagreements within the GOP in recent weeks as Congress has debated and struggled to pass a number of key pieces of legislation. According to Politico, House Republicans are heading into yet another “chaotic 2-week sprint” as they try to bridge the legislative divide before the fast-approaching recess, “and prove that their narrow and deeply fractious majority can still get something done.”

At the moment, they are grappling with internal revolts over three key votes.

First, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). GOP leadership wants to pass a clean extension of FISA’s Section 702, which allows the government to spy on noncitizens abroad without a warrant. Some conservatives, however, want to impose additional guardrails to bolster privacy.

The numbers are close, so if Republicans lose more than a single vote, the extension would fail. Unfortunately for Speaker Mike Johnson, at least two Republicans have expressed opposition to passing a “clean” FISA so far. With a two-week recess looming, this makes it increasingly unlikely that it will pass before the April 20^th deadline.

At the same time, the House is struggling with the 21^st Century ROAD to Housing Act, a piece of bicameral legislation designed to support affordable housing that has already passed in the Senate. Co-sponsored by Democrat Elizabeth Warren and Republican Tim Scott, the bill would prevent investment firms from buying single-family homes en masse, bolster new home construction efforts, and streamline inspection processes.

GOP holdouts in the House, however, oppose the bill because it doesn’t include what are for them make-or-break policies, like a permanent ban on a central bank digital currency. They are pushing for a bicameral conference to negotiate the addition of these points, and the removal of what they call “socialist” provisions added by Warren, which Politico says is “an unrealistic demand that would serve as a de facto death knell for the entire effort.”

Finally, there is the ongoing fight over the SAVE America Act, the Trump-backed election reform bill that Democratic opponents argue is an attempt to disenfranchise voters. The Senate GOP is currently arguing over the best way to approach the bill, as slim margins mean it does not have the votes to pass without running into a legislative filibuster. While Trump and his allies have tried to push Majority Leader John Thune to nuke the filibuster and force Democrats into a talking filibuster — a situation that would allow Republicans to pass the legislation by a simple majority vote once the floor was ceded — Thune has repeatedly dismissed such approaches.

“The votes aren’t there, one, to nuke the filibuster and the votes aren’t there for a talking filibuster. It’s just a reality,” said Thune. “I’m the person who has to deliver sometimes the not-so-good news that the math doesn’t add up, but those are the facts and there’s no getting around it.”

Tightening mail-in voting rules could wind up backfiring for its Republican backers, say lawmakers and experts who spoke to Bloomberg News.

President Donald Trump has been pushing hard on new mail-in voting rules, even as his GOP colleagues worry that it will hurt them most. They fear the measure could eliminate legitimate registered voters who help carry elections and prefer that option.

Trump favors limiting mail-in ballots with only a few exceptions, claiming fraudulent voting led to his 2020 defeat by Joe Biden. His push is backing the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, or SAVE America Act (S. 1383; BGOV Bill Analysis). That would require voters to show documentary proof of citizenship to register.

About 64 percent of eligible voters participated in the 2024 presidential election and 46 percent for the 2022 midterms, according to the Pew Research Center. Of those, some 29 percent of voters cast ballots by mail in 2024, while nearly one-third did so in 2022, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Right now, the legislation doesn’t specifically limit voting by mail. But attaching restrictions on mail-in voting is anticipated when the bill comes up in the Senate this week, Bloomberg reports. Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) is among those seeking an amendment to get “rid of this mass mail-in balloting scam,” as he terms it, with some allowances for military and elderly voters.

Bloomberg cites research that claims vote-by-mail laws don’t consistently favor one party over the other.

“Once they started mail-in voting, people just loved it,” Utah state Rep. Christine Watkins (R), who represents a rural district in the state, said to Bloomberg. “I know federal law trumps us—no pun intended—but people here wouldn’t like” getting rid of mail voting.

Several red states have also introduced bills tightening voting by mail rules. The Voting Rights Lab reports 43 restrictive bills have been proposed across 19 states this year.

Both parties are closely watching how changes to mail-voting rules could affect turnout in key districts, Bloomberg reports.

“Mail ballots can be the difference between winning and losing,” Matt Wylie, a GOP strategist based in South Carolina, said to the wire service. “If voters who normally cast ballots by mail have to show up on Election Day instead, fewer Republicans will. You risk losing seats you shouldn’t lose by going to war with something that can be a valuable tool.”

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) said earlier this month that he plans to add “good amendments along the way” to SAVE America.

Thune claimed “ballot harvesting” is the “real threat,” referring to the practice of collecting and submitting ballots on behalf of other voters.

“As a general rule, if people are requesting ballots, and they’ve got legitimate reasons for requesting them, I think a lot of states use that process and use it pretty well,” Thune said.

The United States remains under a cloud of international criticism after it bombed a girls' school in Iran and tried to blame it on Iran itself. Now it's being revealed that the CIA gave President Donald Trump the false intelligence, but made it clear after 24 hours that it was a U.S. bomb. Still, Trump ran with the allegation that it was Iran that hit their own people.

According to The Guardian, the CIA believed that the missile may not have been from the U.S. because "the fins appeared to be positioned too low for it to be a Tomahawk cruise missile." But they quickly realized it was, in fact, a Tomahawk missile from the U.S., and the sources said they briefed the president on the reality.

The truth didn't matter to Trump, however, as he "had already settled on the explanation that Iran was responsible for the strike." Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth refused to say one way or another so as not to contradict Trump. Instead, he told reporters that it was under investigation.

Trump's biggest problem with the lie is that he accepted the reality that it was a Tomahawk, and falsely said that Iran had such missiles when it is "used only by the US and a handful of allies, including the U.K., Japan and Australia," the report explained.

“Giving Trump preliminary information is dangerous because he can turn it into a total embarrassment,” a former CIA officer told The Guardian. “If the principal asks you a question, the best thing to say is you don’t know. Knowing how hard it is to go back later to correct the record.”

Former intelligence members blame the briefers and Trump for the public embarrassment.

The most recent numbers show that at least 175 people, mostly children, were killed in the blast at the school.

The report said that the updated numbers mean that the strike is "one of the deadliest targeting errors in recent decades."

The investigation Hegseth referenced is trying to uncover why the intelligence claimed that it was a military target when it was well-known that it was a school. The Australian version of ABC News reported that it was even clear on Google Maps that the IRGC naval base was separated from the colorfully painted school by a large wall. The wall has been there since 2013. The school was converted sometime between 2013 and 2016, The Guardian said.

The Pentagon investigation has been focused on why the intelligence was outdated and whether it was double-checked.

International humanitarian law (IHL) is a set of rules designed to protect those who are not directly involved in the conflict. It includes aid workers, medical professionals, the sick, injured and children. The U.S. has signed and ratified Geneva Conventions of 1949. Breaking those rules is considered a war crime.

The Guardian explained that the Defense Intelligence Agency and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency look at imagery to build a "target database" using a program called Maven Smart System.

A former senior defense official explained that there are years of analysis that go into the system and "layers of oversight." However, once "entered into the database as a possible target, it may not necessarily be reviewed again until a strike is considered." The target list is generated by the system using Maven and "artificial intelligence tools such as Claude, Anthropic’s large language model," the report explained.

In late February, around the time Trump decided to go to war, he instructed all federal agencies to stop using Anthropic's AI technology. PBS News reported at the time that Anthropic has long demanded that the government not use its system for "fully autonomous weapons systems" and mass surveillance.

On Feb. 23, five days before the bombing, Axios reported that the Pentagon and Elon Musk's AI company, Grok, had reached an agreement under which his AI tools would be used instead. xAI agreed to allow its system to be used for everything, including military and warrantless surveillance. So, it's unclear which systems were responsible for putting the girls' school on the target list.

The head of Centcom, Adm. Brad Cooper, told reporters last Wednesday the United States is “leveraging a variety of advanced AI tools" for the attacks.

The Washington Post reported last week that two Israeli officials claimed the girls' school "was not cross-checked or discussed with the Israel Defense Forces before it took place."

Human Rights Watch has called for a war crime investigation.

President Donald Trump's obsession with ending mail-in voting, even for those who are sick or serving in the military, has several Republicans at odds with him, according to The Hill, and the brewing conflict could further sink the SAVE America Act.

Trump has pushed hard for Republicans in Congress to pass the bill, which would require proof of citizenship for individuals registering to vote and a photo ID at polling places, based on his long-debunked claims that undocumented immigrants are committing widespread voter fraud. While it was able to pass in the House, the SAVE Act has stalled out in the Senate due to the filibuster, and now, some of its other provisions are causing a stir among Republicans.

At Trump's behest, the SAVE Act would also eliminate mail-in voting or absentee voting, even for those serving overseas, living out-of-state or dealing with an illness. The president has long claimed that voting by mail, which was more widely embraced by Democrats in 2020, is another source of fraud, despite providing no evidence to support the idea. According to a Tuesday report from The Hill, this provision has gone down poorly with several Republicans in states where these voting methods are widely popular.

The provisions in the bill to tackle mail-in voting were reportedly added in a "last-minute push" from Trump, and have left a number of GOP lawmakers "p——ed off," to the point where the bill might not have enough votes even if the filibuster rules are changed.

"Republicans from rural states are concerned that eliminating mail-in balloting for people unless they have strong excuses like serious illness, disability, military duty or travel will hurt GOP-leaning voters in remote areas who then would be forced to travel long distances to vote," The Hill explained.

Sens. Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, to notable critics of Trump, have already pledged to vote against the SAVE Act, while sources also indicated to The Hill that votes from Sens. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and John Curtis of Utah are in doubt.

"I’m a no because we don’t have a plan," Tillis said. "There’s no path for success. I was a no on the talking filibuster path, and this one is going to produce the same result."

One anonymous Republican told the outlet that Trump's anti-mail-in voting push was "problematic."

“I think it’s problematic because in some of these states, 60 or 70 percent of people vote by mail," the lawmaker said. "You don’t want to disenfranchise them. Some states have really encouraged it over the years."

There have always been crazy people online, admits host Mona Charon on her podcast for The Bulwark. But now, she said in a conversation with Will Sommer who writes the False Flag newsletter, “It is unbelievable how far things have gone.”

Candace Owens, Charon says, “strikes me as a lunatic,” She cited Owens’ contention that Emmanuel Macron's wife, Brigitte, is a man, or that Erika Kirk played a role in her husband’s assassination.

These people have real influence,” said Sommer,and they have had real successes in manipulating the political scene, as with Owens undermining Turning Point USA’s influence.

“And often, that can affect what happens in the White House.”

The average person, Sommer added, may look at them and understand they’re crazy. “But it can be helpful to understand what they’re up to.”

No matter how outlandish, those on the receiving end of the attacks have to react. Witness Erika Kirk meeting with Owens after her accusations gained steam. Although that meeting didn’t sway Owens, who continued on the attack.

Charon. noted that “there’s a theme that runs through a lot of these people that you chronicle, and that is antisemitism.” That led to the mention of Nick Fuentes.

Sommer noted that “Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, Nick Fuentes dabble in much more antisemitism” than right wing pundits ever dared before.

Carlso, Charon said, is “deeply frightening” to her. “Of all of them, he is the one who deeply scares me.” That’s because of his charisma, she said.

Sommer agreed that Carlson has the ability to bring people along on even the wildest rides, noting his “testicle tanning” segment. But Carlson is also canny and playing on some of the same themes that VP JD Vance is. If Carlson decides to run for president, that makes him dangerous, Sommer said, because unlike Vance, he’s not burdened by the Trump administration. “So (Carlson) doesn't have to defend the war in Iran.”

Also coming in for scrutiny was Steve Bannon, even though he’s “made a lot of enemies on the right,” Sommer said, and Marjorie Taylor Green, who was tagged with the antisemitism brush as well.

Outside of MAGA circles, Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Brendan Carr is drawing strong criticism for threatening retaliation against broadcasters who cover the Iran war in a negative way. Carr, in a March 14 post on X, formerly Twitter, wrote, "Broadcasters that are running hoaxes and news distortions - also known as the fake news - have a chance now to correct course before their license renewals come up. The law is clear. Broadcasters must operate in the public interest, and they will lose their licenses if they do not."

On the right, those comments are being condemned by The Lincoln Project's Rick Wilson and MS NOW's Joe Scarborough. And conservative historian Robert Kagan, in an interview with The Bulwark's Bill Kristol published on March 16, warned that Trump may use the Iran conflict as an excuse for silencing dissent.

"One reason I worry Trump is willing to let this war go on for months is that it's a potential weapon against domestic opposition," Kagan told Kristol. "Brendan Carr just threatened to start looking into the broadcast licenses of news organizations running coverage the Trump Administration doesn't like. They could use this to silence the media further, or pressure corporate chiefs to rein in their news organizations. And that doesn't even get to national security authorities — whether it's around elections or some other context, justified by the fact that we're at war and facing threats. Can we trust the FBI under Kash Patel to tell us a threat is real, rather than manufacture one? What happens when there are anti-war protests? Do they get labeled domestic terrorists for protesting a great patriotic war?"

Kagan continued, "I've always thought (Trump policy adviser) Stephen Miller was particularly enthusiastic about the Venezuela action not because he cared about who was ruling Venezuela, but because of the domestic authorities it might give him to wield. I worry the Iran war, as it continues, could open the same opportunity. Trump would not be the first leader in history to find a foreign war useful for domestic consolidation."

During the interview, published in Q&A form, Kagan laid out a variety of ways in which he believes the Iran conflict is going badly for Trump.

"From the Europeans' perspective," Kagan told Kristol, "this war has been a real strategic disaster for two main reasons. First, oil prices have skyrocketed, and even before Trump lifted sanctions on Russia — over the unanimous objection of the other G7 leaders — that was going to increase Russian income. It's a real lifeline to (Russian President Vladimir) Putin. Second, American forces are — perhaps unexpectedly — burning through major stocks of weaponry, particularly Patriot and other interceptors that Ukraine depends on heavily to defend its cities from Russian attacks."

Kagan continued, "So on both ends — helping Russia and hurting Ukraine — this has been a major setback for Europeans. And it's clear that the Trump Administration couldn't care less about the effect on Europe…. The Gulf States in particular are wondering whether they've joined the right team. They thought they had a pretty good arrangement with the Iranians: a kind of live-and-let-live agreement. So, they didn't favor the war and were overruled. And now, it turns out the United States can't really protect them."

Marjorie Taylor Greene, the former Republican congresswoman, tore into President Donald Trump during a Monday CNN appearance, accusing him of a "complete betrayal" of his MAGA voters over his ongoing war with Iran.

Trump's joint military assault on Iran with Israel has entered its third week, and despite the president's claims that the operation is proceeding well and ahead of schedule, there remains no clear end in sight. Iran's retaliation by closing the Strait of Hormuz waterway has also caused gas prices in the U.S. to skyrocket, risking even more severe voter backlash in the midterms as voters continue to grapple with inflation.

Speaking with CNN's Pamela Brown on Monday, Greene, a one-time ally of President Donald Trump turned fierce critic, tore into the president, saying that the war in Iran would have been a foolish gamble for any president, let alone one who campaigned so heavily on avoiding costly overseas conflicts.

"It makes absolutely no sense, Pamela, going into midterm elections," Greene said. "Let's remove Donald Trump out of it. Let's just put any president in there. Why would an American president lead his political party into the midterms, waging a full-scale major war, completely unprovoked on Iran, on behalf of Israel? And that's the way most Americans see it. They see this is for Israel, not for America."

She continued: "Why would an American president do that, which is forcing gas prices to hike right here going into spring break, where families are going to be driving out of town, going into summer? Declaring and waging a major full-scale war that seems to have no end in sight. That is not de-escalating. It's escalating every single day. And it just doesn't make sense... I went to, I can't even tell you, countless rallies all over the country for President Trump, campaigning for him and Republicans, because we wanted to win. And we said on every single rally stage, no more foreign wars, no more regime change. It's time to put America first, and this is a complete betrayal of those campaign promises."

Greene added that the support for the war in her home state of Georgia is largely divided along generational lines. Older baby boomers, who "watch Fox News all day long," are supportive of the war, while younger generations — including Gen X, Millennials and Gen Z — "are completely against it."

She also agreed with the notion that the longer the conflict continues, the more it will hurt Vice President JD Vance's chances in 2028, despite his supposed opposition to the operation behind the scenes.

"I meant everything I said on the campaign trail in 2024," Greene added later. "The part that is disheartening to me is that it appears to not only myself, but many others, that President Trump did not mean it, and we are basing that on his actions and his decisions and the priorities that he has made important and first to him, which are a 100% departure of what we campaigned on in 2024... I'm America first. I'm conservative. I have a voting record to prove it, but I cannot support this president when he completely turns his back on MAGA and what he sold to the American people for so many years."

After Marco Rubio’s election failed to gain traction during the 2016 presidential primaries, forcing him to drop out after winning just three states, it for a moment appeared as if his greatest legacy would involve the water bottle incident during his 2013 State of the Union rebuttal. Then at the beginning of Donald Trump’s second term, Rubio was named Secretary of State, which came as something of a surprise after the president had spent years disparaging the former Florida senator, calling him names like “nervous basket case” and “Little Rubio.”

Since then, however, Rubio has become known as a willing collaborator on Trump’s security and foreign policy, and is today among the top figures in the administration. Now some of the GOP aim to leverage that rising profile, as there is a growing “shadow” effort to elect him president in 2028.

While many spent the first year of Trump’s second term guessing that JD Vance was the heir apparent to head the upcoming GOP ticket, things took a sharp turn in February of this year when Trump started questioning advisors and donors about a Vance-Rubio or even Rubio-led campaign. After that, reports ABC, donors within the party began discussing ways to boost Rubio’s chances in 2028, in what insiders have called a rising “draft Rubio” movement.

Support for Rubio was buoyed by the war in Iran, which has not only positioned him as the president’s willing war partner, but has set him in contrast to Vance, who has spoken out against the war and is connected to anti-war conservatives like Tucker Carlson. This has pushed hawkish MAGA voices like Laura Loomer to declare Vance has a “Tucker problem,” and to throw support behind a 2028 Rubio campaign.

"RUBIO RISING ... Get ready for 2028!," Loomer posted earlier this month.

The wider public, however, does not seem optimistic about either potential candidate. In a recent NBC poll, voters held net negative opinions of both, with Vance down 11 points and Rubio down by 7.

Brash, dehumanizing talk has long been central to Donald Trump’s way of speaking and his administration’s approach to communication. He has frequently used words like “vermin,” “parasite” and “poison” to describe his political opposition, migrants and other targeted communities, to the point where a UN committee has warned that he is inspiring hate crimes.

But now, according to renowned historian and journalist Anne Applebaum, in the context of the war in Iran, his use of such “cartoonish” and “sinister” language may result in “tragedy” not only at home, but for people around the world.

As Applebaum points out, Trump and in-circle allies like Pete Hegseth have leveraged dehumanizing words and memes before, but in Iran, they’ve taken it to new genocidal levels. As she writes, “They talk about Iranians — not the fundamentalist regime, but the Iranian people — as if they are not human.”

It is not difficult to find evidence of this. Applebaum cites, for example, Hegseth’s assertion that “the only ones who need to be worried right now are Iranians that think they’re going to live” and his abhorrence of what he calls “politically correct wars.” He has repeatedly dispelled any form of military restraint as “woke,” to the point where he was being accused of war crimes months before the war in Iran. At the same time, Trump has made incredible claims to wave off civilian casualties, such as blaming the Iranian government for the bombing of a girls’ school that resulted in the deaths of 175, even though footage makes it very clear that the bombing was done via an American Tomahawk missile.

For the Iranian people, this mindset could very easily spell disaster. But as Applebaum explains, Trump and Hegseth’s posturing could mean calamity for people all over the world.

Some have accused the president, for example, of being blatantly dismissive of the deaths of American soldiers. During an event to honor servicemembers killed, so nonchalant was Trump's dress and demeanor that Fox News actually aired clips of an entirely different ceremony, prompting widespread accusations that the network was trying to make it appear as if he was taking the situation more seriously than he was.

“No ‘news’ org would ever make this ‘mistake'," said veteran journalist Bill Carter. "This was clearly a deliberate choice to try to protect Trump from criticism they knew would rain down on him."

Fox later apologized for the switch, calling it a mistake, with Fox host Johnny "Joey" Jones saying he was "embarrassed and ashamed" about it.

And the damage extends far beyond the US and Iran. As Applebaum points out, the Persian Gulf states that have in recent years enjoyed rising stability and security suddenly find themselves targeted by Iranian missile strikes, dashing their image of thriving safety. Oil and water infrastructure throughout the Middle East has been damaged, which will give rise to wide-ranging economic and environmental calamity. In the US, home buyers are seeing mortgage rates climb. In Vietnam, gas stations are running dry. And farmers around the world worry about surging fertilizer prices and unreliable shipping.

None of this will be easy to fix anytime soon. As Applebaum writes, it’s “not just collateral damage, but permanent damage.”

During the Vietnam War on January 27, 1973, President Richard Nixon issued an executive order calling for an end to the military draft in the United States. The Vietnam War continued until 1975, but Nixon's order marked the beginning of a transition to an all-volunteer military. Then, in 1980, during the Iranian Hostage Crisis, President Jimmy Carter reinstated draft registration — making it mandatory for males in the U.S. to register for the draft when they reached adulthood.

The draft itself, however, hasn't existed in the U.S. since the 1970s. But in an article published on March 16, Salon's Chauncey DeVega warns that with the U.S. now at war with Iran, a growing number of MAGA Republicans are talking about bringing back the draft.

"As President Trump's war against Iran spirals out of control," DeVega warns, "there is a growing concern he will order a ground invasion to remove the country's leaders and take control of its vast supplies of oil. The consensus among military and foreign policy experts is that such a move would be disastrous — and that its failure could be catastrophic enough to permanently damage America's standing as a superpower. But horrible outcomes have, at least to this point, not stopped Trump and his enablers from making irresponsible and dangerous decisions…. On March 8, Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo asked White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt a direct question. Would Trump consider ground forces or reinstating the draft to fight Iran?"

DeVega continues, "'I know a lot of politicians like to do that quickly,' she replied, 'but the president, as commander-in-chief, wants to continue to assess the success of this military operation. It's not part of the current plan right now, but the president, again, wisely keeps his options on the table.'"

DeVega notes that "reinstating a military draft" in the U.S. "would face enormous practical and political obstacles."

"The draft has not been part of American culture for 50 years, and Congress would need to update the Military Selective Service Act," DeVega explains. "Since the Trump Administration has yet to make a coherent case for why this war is necessary, many Americans would likely simply refuse to comply…. As a political matter, a draft for an already-unpopular war would likely leave Americans outraged and make landslide victories by Democrats over Republicans in the midterms and beyond a near certainty. Such a move could even cause a generational political realignment away from Trumpism and the GOP."

According to Steven Cash, director of the group Steady State, the Trump Administration would have a lot of explaining to if it seriously moved forward with an effort to bring back the draft.

Cash told Salon, "Absent a dramatic change in the nature of the conflict, the political system would struggle to justify a draft to the American public — and this is particularly true against a background of conflicting, and in some cases, patently false, reasons offered so far for a surprise attack on Iran. A draft becomes politically plausible only when the nation believes it cannot defend itself without it. At that point, the question would no longer be political convenience, but national survival."

In recent weeks, President Donald Trump has taken time out of his busy schedule to relitigate the 2020 election, which he lost to former President Joe Biden. And Republican lawmakers hoping to keep their seats in November really want him to stop talking about it.

Politico reported Monday that all it will take is a "savvy Democrat" to "put a Republican on the spot" and turn their election into a disaster.

Trump subpoenaed 2020 election documents in Arizona and in Fulton County, Georgia this year. But inside the GOP, there's a growing view that focusing on Trump's "stolen election claims and voter fraud will kneecap them in the general election."

“You’ve got to at least touch that base,” a Georgia-based Republican strategist told Politico. But “once you’ve got the nomination, then I think it really collapses down into economic issues.”

But even touching on the issue could cause problems for Republicans.

Buzz Brockway, a GOP strategist and former Georgia state representative, told Politico, “A savvy Democrat will put a candidate on the spot and say, ‘You agree with [Trump], don’t you?’ and make a mess." Republicans have “got to figure out a way to deflect that question somehow, in a plausible way that doesn’t alienate this loud minority.”

Right now, nearly a dozen state and local Republican leaders want their candidates and officials to focus on what's happening with the economy and foreign policy.

“Part of me understands it, and part of me just wants to move forward,” said Monroe County, Michigan GOP chairman Todd Gillman, told Politico.

“Focus on the things that matter to everybody throughout the whole country,” he said, “or we’re going to have a problem in a few months.”

Polling repeatedly shows that the top issues for Americans right now are not election issues, but economic issues, the report said, citing a February Politico poll. Only 23 percent of Americans think elections are the top issue.

While there are still a lot of loyalists to Trump, many say that there is a risk "that voters simply don’t care — or have moved on," the report said.

Republicans, including his own followers, want him to focus on the economy, not old grudges.

In an article published by Rolling Stone on Friday, March 13, former CNN anchor John Avlon examined a disturbing trend: young MAGA Republicans flat-out praising Adolf Hitler and other members of their party looking the other way rather than condemning them. Avlon's article had a provocative headline: "The Republican Party's Nazi Problem Is Getting Worse. It Should Care," and the piece is still generating a lot of discussion —including biting comments from former GOP Rep. Joe Scarborough, who warned that the Republican Party is facing a "crisis that could tear conservatism apart."

During a Monday, March 16 broadcast of MS NOW's "Morning Joe," the Never Trump conservative was joined by fellow host Mika Brzezinski and told guest Avlon, "This is something we've been hearing for a very long time from leaders, and it's not just independents like yourself and former Republicans like myself. You have a guy like Rod Dreher. Rod, of course, he's supportive of Donald Trump. He's very supportive of (Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor) Orbán…. He thinks the Enlightenment was a mistake."

Scarborough continued, "This guy is no leftie, but after leaving Hungary to come back and spend some time in Washington, he wrote a post — and he said: You guys don't understand what an unbelievable crisis we have right now. This is a crisis that could tear conservatism apart. The bigotry, the racism, the fascism, the antisemitism — he said it's all over Washington, D.C. with younger Republicans…. This is a massive, massive problem."

Scarborough got no argument from Avlon, an ex-speechwriter for former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani who ran for a U.S. House of Representatives seat in New York's 1st Congressional District in 2024 but lost to incumbent GOP Rep. Nick LaLota.

Avlon told Scarborough and Brzezinski, "This is a massive problem, and it's coming up from the grass roots…. Particularly among young Republicans…. We've got a creeping antisemitism problem galloping, in the horseshoe theory of politics, on the far right and the far left. But the far right is being exposed as having outright Hitler admiration in their own words. And that's dramatically different and dramatically more dangerous, and it needs to be confronted."

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Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson is alleging that because of his vehement criticism of U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to go to war with Iran, the CIA is "preparing some kind of criminal referral" against him and giving it to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) "on the basis of a supposed crime." Carlson, in the past, was a passionate supporter of the MAGA movement, but like former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia), he views U.S. strikes against Iran as a betrayal of the "America First" agenda that Trump campaigned on in 2016, 2020 and 2024.

Never Trump conservative Rick Wilson and liberal journalist Molly Jong-Fast examined Carlson's allegation on a "Fast Politics" video posted on YouTube on Sunday night, March 15. And they stressed that people on the right are hardly exempt from Trump's retribution campaign against his critics.

Jong-Fast told Wilson, a former GOP strategist, "There are so many issues here. There's the possibility that Tucker is acting as a foreign agent. But then, there's the other possibility that they're going after media figures they don't like, which we saw with (former CNN host) Don Lemon."

Wilson replied, "Absolutely correct. I think there's a massive overlap between left and right people that Trump is going after — or has directed his people to go after. And I don't think it's happening in equal intensity and sequence for all of them…. They're going to go after people they don't like. You saw (Federal Communications Commission Chairman) Brendan Carr, over the weekend, saying: Oh, well, we're going to go after networks that don't cover the war like we want them to cover it. Well, that ain't how this s--- works, boss. But here we are."

The Never Trump conservative, however, was also critical of Carlson in the video, noting that like GOP operative and former 2016 Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, the former Fox News host has a history of supporting "vile" and "repressive" despots in Eastern Europe.

Carlson, in the past, expressed favorable views on Russian President Vladimir Putin. And Wilson noted that like many Trump officials, "Tucker is also a huge fan of" Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.

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During a late 2010s conversation on WURD-FM (a Black talk radio station in Philadelphia), one of the guests commented that if you think Millennials are liberal or progressive, wait until Generation Z becomes more involved in politics. But in the 2024 presidential race, Donald Trump made gains with Gen-Z voters — much to the frustration of Democrats. And Turning Point USA, the MAGA youth group founded by the late Charlie Kirk, is still trying to convert Gen-Z to far-right MAGA politics and evangelical Christian nationalism.

Turning Point, now led by Charlie Kirk's widow Erika Kirk, is heavily focused on college campuses. But in a video posted by the New York Times on March 15, reporters Michael Anthony Adams, Mark Boyer and Luke Piotrowski examine Turning Point's high school outreach with Club America.

According to the report, "At least eight Republican governors have partnered with Turning Point, vowing to bring Club America to all of their public high schools. But here in New York, where Democrats govern and a statewide embrace of TPUSA's conservative Christian ideology is unlikely, students like Jacob Kennedy are still trying to launch Club America, even if that means an uphill battle."

Kennedy, an evangelical Christian fundamentalist, told the Times, "I have grown up in a Christian home, which follows mostly the values of conservative beliefs. It's my first year at a public school. I did not feel accepted to share my conservative beliefs and my religion."

But some of the New York State parents in the video want to make sure that liberal and progressive politics also have their outlets in high schools.

One of them stressed, "If there’s going to be a Club America, by God, there needs to be a Club Progressive."

Another had much more biting things to say about Turning Point and Club America's far-right agenda, commenting, "I would just like to say, 'Welcome to Germany, 1939.'"

Senate Republicans are “anxious about the midterms," and “the mood is shifting” among GOP leaders who once assumed they could coast to victory in November, Politico reports.

Politico spoke with 10 Republican senators and aides, many of whom "are now openly predicting a tough battle to hold onto control,” thanks in large part to President Donald Trump’s policies.

Their party is struggling “to keep the focus on affordability policies that lawmakers want to make the centerpiece of their midterm campaign,” Politico explains, as Trump wages an unpopular war in the Middle East that comes with rising oil prices and potential downstream impacts to the U.S. economy. “The Senate passed a major housing bill this week but it faces an uncertain future in the House. Trump himself told Republican lawmakers Monday that housing is not a top concern for voters,” the report adds.

Trump ally Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) told Politico he’s “glad he’s not on the ballot” as “Republican senators [warn] that the party writ large needs to hammer home cost-of-living measures.”

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), another Trump supporter, acknowledged “prices are high,” and told Politico he hopes Republicans will “take some votes to lower the costs.”

Trump, meanwhile, has set his sights on passing the SAVE America Act, an effort to overhaul U.S. elections and "institute tough new citizenship and photo ID requirements in order to cast a ballot,” Politico reports. But Senate Majority Leader John Thune is locked in conversations with the White House, and Thune has warned the president his chamber does not have the votes to pass the bill.

The president has even demanded Republicans nuke the filibuster to ensure passage of the SAVE America Act — but just last week, Thune had to deliver some “not so good news” to Trump on his demand.

“The votes aren't there to nuke the filibuster,” Thune explained. “It's just a reality. … The math doesn't add up.”

“Voting on the SAVE America Act is something we will do, but passage is not guaranteed,” he added. “I just wouldn't assume that that's going to happen.”

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has no idea he’s President Donald Trump’s “future victim,” British-American journalist Sarah Baxter writes in i Paper.

“We are beginning to see in real time what happens when a vain, looksmaxxing US secretary of war encounters death and destruction, and it isn’t pretty,” Baxter wrote Saturday. Looksmaxxing, as the New Yorker puts it, is “the practice of intensively optimizing one's appearance.” And for Baxter, who calls Hegseth a “cartoonish Johnny Bravo lookalike," the Pentagon chief is certainly a follower of the practice.

“With his ability to do 100 push-ups and 50 pull-ups in just over five minutes, he regards himself as the epitome of masculinity and bravery,” Baxter writes. “Instead of steeling the US public for the grit and sacrifice military action entails, the Pentagon chief has proffered a wham-bam caricature of the invincibility of untrammeled power[.]”

Listing numerous pitfalls that have emerged in the administration's ongoing war in Iran, Baxter argues “the war is playing out in an eerily similar way to events in Minneapolis, where masked agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Patrol killed two American citizens, Renée Good and Alex Pretti.” Kristi Noem, outgoing Department of Homeland Security secretary who oversees the agencies responsible for those deaths, has already been fired by the Trump administration, the reporter notes. And she believes Hegseth could be next.

Noting that last September, Hegseth spoke with a number of top generals who were summoned to Quantico, VA, Baxter explains the defense chief promised no “endless nation building” under his leadership. Still, as Baxter writes, the United States’ wars in Afghanistan and Iraq revealed “the reason for nation-building”: “New threats would arise and gains would be lost unless enemy nations became allies.”

But, she warns, “Hegseth is too foolish to realize this.” And the president, “seeking someone to blame, may have found his future victim.”

Indeed, the Hill reports Saturday that Hegseth and Trump “face perilous options” in Iran as they face “a difficult set of options in attempting to reopen” the Strait of Hormuz, a critical shipping route currently slowed to a crawl as Iran carries out attacks on tankers in the strait.

Hegseth on Friday “downplayed concerns of Iranian attacks,” the Hill reports. The defense secretary insists the Pentagon “has been dealing with it.”

But as the Trump administration confronts a problem of its own creation, Baxter warns it could be knives out for Hegseth.

President Donald Trump is acting a lot like Richard Nixon, another Republican president who engaged America in risky military gambits even as scandal destroyed his administration.

“Circumstances were different but the last time an ideologically motivated aspiring hegemon threatened the world’s oil supply was 1973, when the Soviet Union was observed making preparations to intervene in the Arab-Israeli war,” observed Holman W. Jenkins Jr., a longtime columnist at The Wall Street Journal. Jenkins described how Nixon alerted the military to Defcon 3, making him the last president who “resorted to an unvarnished nuclear threat.” After that “nuclear bluster permanently vanished from the U.S. presidential vocabulary, experts in diplomacy tell us, for reasons that boil down to a loss of credibility once Moscow could match the U.S. in nuclear firepower. Oddly, though, this now-standard narrative hasn’t been updated for Donald Trump’s first term, much less his second.”

Jenkins pointed out that Trump threatened North Korea with “fire and fury like the world has never seen” in 2017 and Iran with “consequences the likes of which few throughout history have ever suffered before” in 2018.

“On Tuesday, in a sequel perhaps underreported given the now-established verbal conventions, Mr. Trump warned against interrupting the flow of oil in the Strait of Hormuz: ‘If for any reason mines were placed, and they are not removed forthwith, the Military consequences to Iran will be at a level never seen before,'’’ Jenkins added. Although “a nuclear attack isn’t in the immediate offing,” he nevertheless expressed concern that Trump’s rhetoric and policies make escalation inevitable.

Jenkins speculated that other governments are also worried that Trump will escalate things.

“Perhaps this is why China’s government has been at pains to signal its desire for this month’s Trump summit in Beijing to go ahead, even as China professes uncertainty about what Mr. Trump will be seeking,” Jenkins said. “Other interceders are also working to put a cap on the war. All concerned have good reason. The U.S., even under a less flamboyant president, would be prepared to risk a great deal to defend its prestige.”

He concluded, “Unless Iran gives Mr. Trump the ‘win’ he needs to end the violence, the American president’s path is likely to be one of escalation.”

This is not the first time Jenkins has returned to the Nixon era to explain Trump’s administration.

“Trump is running far ahead of his political support,” Jenkins said. “It wasn’t long ago Democrats were trying to stir up U.S. military personnel to disobey his orders. If we learned anything from Joe Biden, a president fighting to keep his head above water cognitively is a president who has a hard time keeping his administration adhering to his priorities.”

Indeed, Nixon’s adviser David Gergen told this journalist for Salon in 2018 that Nixon’s erratic foreign policy behavior alarmed his advisers so much that they quietly intervened.

“Nixon was the commander in chief, and [former Secretary of Defense Jim] Schlesinger in effect was saying, ‘We’re going to override the commander in chief if in fact we think it’s coming from some sort of aggressive personality or he’s just pissed off. Whatever it may be,'” Gergen told Salon while reflecting on how Trump’s mental health deteriorated in 1973 due to the stresses of the Watergate scandal and his alcoholism. “And I’ve asked people in the Defense Department, ‘Do you think there’s a similar arrangement today between [Secretary of Defense Jim] Mattis and the four-star generals?’ And the answer they’ve given me back — I don’t think there’s any reason to believe he’s giving such an order … [is] that if they’re given an order that they think comes from an erratic personality, they will double-check it with the secretary before they carry it out.”

President Donald Trump has committed “the most profound flip-flop in recent presidential history,” according to a former Democratic presidential chief of staff and US ambassador to Japan — and now the Republican’s political enemies can capitalize.

“We’ve just witnessed the most profound flip-flop in recent presidential history,” Rahm Emanuel, a former Chicago mayor and President Barack Obama adviser who is widely rumored to want to run for president in 2028, wrote for The Wall Street Journal on Friday. “When Donald Trump accepted the Republican nomination in 2016, he said: ‘We must abandon the failed policy of nation building and regime change that Hillary Clinton pushed in Iraq, Libya, Egypt and Syria.’ During his first term, he largely kept his word — but since retaking office he has adopted a trigger-happy approach.”

Emanuel added, “He has ordered strikes on eight countries in 14 months, roughly as many as in his entire first four years. The change is so head-spinning that some on the MAGA right have steam coming out of their ears.”

The longtime politician said that “you need not have lived through the Iraq or Libya debacles to realize that decapitating the Islamic Republic doesn’t guarantee that freedom and democracy will emerge in Tehran. Never has the U.S. managed to foment regime change from the air alone.” On a deeper level, Emanuel described Trump’s war against Iran as symptomatic of a deeper foreign policy incompetence that will last long after he leaves office. From there, Emanuel proposed new foreign policies from Europe and the Indo-Pacific to Africa and the Western Hemisphere.

“As Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney argued recently, the Trump administration has permanently ruptured the international system that was born from faith in America’s word and the architecture we created,” Emanuel wrote. “The next president is sure to discover that there’s no reset button beneath the Resolute Desk. Washington will need to pick up the pieces and create something new.”

Noting that presidential campaigns rarely turn primarily on foreign policy, Emanuel pointed out that they can prove to be a “disqualifier.”

“They want leaders they can be confident will secure America’s interests,” Emanuel wrote. “As we prepare to repair the long-term damage Mr. Trump has done, we need to reassure the American people that we have not only the discipline to follow the rules but a vision and agenda to further our country’s interests around the world.”

Emanuel, who identified with the centrist wing of the Democratic Party, is not the only non-liberal slamming Trump’s foreign policy. Steve Schmidt, a Republican strategist who served President George W. Bush, denounced Trump on Friday for demanding the Nobel Peace Prize and then declaring a series of unprovoked wars.

“He wanted the Peace Prize, and when he couldn’t get it, Trump lost his mind,” Schmidt wrote, quoting a February letter Trump wrote to Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre in which the president said “considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America.”

Schmidt added that Trump told Støre on Thursday, “I’m no longer interested in [the Peace Prize]."

Similar to Schmidt Jonathan V. Last, a conservative pundit for the popular website The Bulwark, denounced people who still support Trump despite his flip-flopping on war.

“Maybe the problem here is my use of the word ‘stupid’ as a catch-all when what I’m really talking about is a basket of failings,” Last argued. “There are people who understand what Trumpism is and affirmatively want a post-liberal society. And then there are those who would say that they do not want authoritarianism, but who threw in with Trump anyway.”