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

MAGA Senator Exposes How Trump Killed Deal to End Shutdown on Fox News

A Republican senator publicly says Trump blocked a bipartisan path to reopen most of DHS and pay TSA workers, undermining GOP claims that Democrats alone are responsible for the shutdown impasse.

Congress

Mar 24, 2026

Sources

https://www.thedailybeast.com/maga-senator-exposes-how-trump-killed-deal-to-end-shutdown-on-fox-news

Summary

Sen. John Kennedy said on Fox News that a Cruz-Kennedy plan to reopen most of the Department of Homeland Security and pay TSA workers quickly was rejected by President Trump. The story frames that rejection as a deliberate “no deals with Democrats” choice while Republicans continued publicly blaming Democrats for the stalemate. It matters because the shutdown’s consequences—missed TSA paychecks, rising absences, and airport disruptions—are being driven as much by internal GOP strategy and Trump’s demands as by any single-party “refusal to negotiate.”

Reality Check

The key stabilizing fact is that there appears to have been an actionable, narrow path to reopen most of DHS and resume TSA pay that a Republican senator says Trump personally vetoed—so “Democrats shut it down” is, at best, incomplete. Separately, multiple outlets have reported that TSA absentee rates and airport disruption have worsened as the shutdown continues, adding operational pressure regardless of which side wins the messaging fight. The unresolved policy dispute is not “DHS funding” in the abstract; it’s specifically whether ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations gets funded as part of the reopening package and whether unrelated priorities (like the SAVE Act) are being used as leverage.

Detail

Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) told Fox News’ The Will Cain Show that he and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) developed a two-step plan to end the DHS shutdown. Kennedy described the plan as: accept Democrats’ offer to reopen most of DHS, then pursue ICE funding separately through budget reconciliation (avoiding the 60-vote threshold). Kennedy said Trump rejected the approach with a “no deals with the Democrats” directive and claimed TSA could have been paid by the end of the week under the plan. The Daily Beast report says Senate Majority Leader John Thune previously brought a similar “everything but ICE” proposal to Trump, which Trump also rejected. The article reports Trump tied a DHS deal to passage of the SAVE Act/SAVE America Act (proof-of-citizenship voting bill), despite it lacking a clear 60-vote path in the Senate. Reuters reporting cited in the article: on Sunday, more than 3,450 TSA officers (nearly 12% of the workforce) did not show up for work, and more than 400 TSA workers have quit since the shutdown began in mid-February. Airport operational impacts cited include Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson advising passengers to arrive four hours early and airport leaders warning Congress of escalating disruptions. By late Monday, senators were reportedly back at the White House trying to salvage a framework that funds most of DHS (including TSA) while excluding ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations; some DHS components like CBP and HSI would remain funded with added guardrails. The White House response quoted in the article did not address Kennedy’s account and instead blamed Democrats for “recklessly” shutting down DHS and forcing TSA employees to work without pay.

Norms Impact

Trump’s big Iran move could blow up in his face in time for the midterms

War expanded by presidential order while Cabinet accountability is withheld, shifting the nation toward conflict-by-messaging rather than transparent, answerable governance.

Executive

Mar 2, 2026