Featured

Trump: Iran asked me to be Supreme Leader, but I said no thanks

Trump’s “Iran asked me to be Supreme Leader” joke at an NRCC fundraiser uses a real, deadly leadership crisis in Iran to normalize assassination-as-policy and blur what’s confirmed about the war and succession.

Mar 26, 2026

Featured

‘Men need to be perp-walked’ after Epstein files release, Massie tells BBC

A GOP lawmaker says the Epstein document releases are still falling short—because redactions and withheld material may be blocking accountability and survivor-centered justice.

Mar 25, 2026

Buried.News

The stories buried under the noise

Primary focus

Trump fires Kristi Noem as Homeland Security Secretary

A Cabinet secretary was forced out amid contracting and oversight scrutiny, signaling that executive control—not transparent accountability—can dictate leadership of the agency driving mass detention and deportation.

Mar 5, 2026

Featured

The Trump gold coin is not normal : Consider This from NPR

A federal design panel OK’d a Trump portrait for a commemorative gold coin, but the key question is whether Treasury can legally bypass long-standing limits meant to keep living politicians off U.S. money.

Mar 23, 2026

Featured

White House Confronted Over Huge Bets Made Minutes Before Trump’s Big War Move

A $580 million burst of oil-futures selling minutes before Trump’s Iran “talks” post raises a basic public-interest question: did anyone trade on advance knowledge of a market-moving national security decision?

Mar 24, 2026

Norms Impact

Leavitt Snaps at CBS Reporter for Asking About Trump’s Serial Fabrications

A president’s shifting, unverified claims were used to justify war while the White House disputed the Pentagon’s account to Congress—fracturing the norm that force follows accountable, evidence-based scrutiny.

Iran War

Mar 10, 2026

Sources

https://www.thedailybeast.com/leavitt-snaps-at-cbs-reporter-for-asking-about-trumps-serial-fabrications

Summary

The White House defended President Donald Trump’s stated justification for striking Iran after he claimed Iran was poised to attack U.S. targets within days and made other assertions he later said he could not prove. The administration’s public case for war leaned on assertions framed as “feelings” and undisclosed intelligence while disputing the Pentagon’s account to Congress that no intelligence showed Iran was planning to attack first. The practical consequence is a lowered threshold for initiating military action, with the public asked to accept shifting claims without verifiable evidentiary grounding.

Reality Check

When the executive branch normalizes launching war on shifting assertions framed as undisclosed “intelligence” or personal “feelings,” we lose the evidence-based guardrails that restrain unilateral force. Disputing what the Pentagon has told Congress while withholding verifiable support conditions the public to accept military action without accountable proof. Over time, this precedent weakens separation-of-powers oversight by making congressional and public scrutiny optional rather than binding. Our democracy cannot sustain war powers that operate on uncheckable claims and retreating statements instead of transparent, testable justification.

Detail

At a White House press briefing Tuesday, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt responded to questions from CBS News Chief White House Correspondent Nancy Cordes about President Donald Trump’s claims used to justify U.S. military action against Iran.

Cordes asked whether Trump was “making this up” after noting that neither U.S. nor Israeli leaders were making the same claims. Leavitt replied that the president “is not making anything up,” stating he was relying on “intelligence” and “facts” consumed by him and his negotiators.

Leavitt repeated the White House claim that Iran was going to attack the United States, while disputing the Pentagon’s communication to Congress that there was no intelligence suggesting Iran planned to attack first.

The exchange followed Trump’s Monday remarks in Florida asserting Iran would attack U.S. targets “within a week,” then offering additional shifting statements about his rationale for launching “Operation Epic Fury,” describing it as a “feeling” based on “facts.”

Trump also suggested Iran struck a girls’ school in Iran with a Tomahawk missile, then later said he had no proof and “just don’t know enough about it.”

Norms Impact

DOJ admits 47,635 Epstein files — including Trump allegations — were removed

A transparency law ordered full release, but DOJ pulled 47,635 Epstein files offline—reasserting executive control over disclosure while the records include allegations touching the sitting president.

Executive

Mar 4, 2026