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

‘Catholic’ Karoline Leavitt Insults Vatican on First Day of Lent

A White House spokesperson is pressuring the Vatican to legitimize a president-chaired “Board of Peace” that claims control over billions and troops without transparent membership, pledges, or oversight.

Executive

Feb 18, 2026

Sources

https://www.thedailybeast.com/leavitt-launches-ash-wednesday-blast-over-vatican-peace-snub/?via=desktop&source=Reddit

Summary

The White House press secretary publicly rebuked the Vatican after it declined to participate in President Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace.” The presidency is being recast as chair of an ad hoc international body to direct Gaza reconstruction and security outside established multilateral crisis-management channels. Our foreign policy and public resources are being tethered to a leader-centric structure that concentrates decision-making in the president’s office while withholding basic accountability details like funding sources and control.

Reality Check

This conduct normalizes a presidency that treats foreign reconstruction funds and military deployments as instruments of a personal diplomatic brand, weakening the guardrails that protect our rights from executive overreach. On these facts alone, it is not clearly chargeable as a federal crime, but it squarely violates core anti–abuse-of-office norms by concentrating control of a $5 billion reconstruction effort in an ad hoc body chaired by the president while withholding basic accountability details. When public power is used to strong-arm institutions into validating a leader-centric “international body,” the precedent is a government that answers to narrative and loyalty rather than transparent process and lawful constraint.

Detail

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt criticized the Vatican on Wednesday, the first day of Lent, after Cardinal Pietro Parolin said the Vatican would not participate in President Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace” and that crisis situations should “above all” be managed by the United Nations.

Leavitt made the remarks during a White House press briefing, calling the Vatican’s position “deeply unfortunate” and asserting that peace should not be “partisan or political or controversial.” She said the “Board of Peace” is set to oversee the rebuilding of Gaza with Trump as chairman and described it as having “tens of member countries.”

Leavitt said Trump will announce at the board’s first official meeting on Thursday at the Institute of Peace in Washington, D.C., that member states have pledged $5 billion for Gaza reconstruction and thousands of troops to maintain peace and security. She did not identify which countries pledged funds or troops, saying details would be made available. A senior administration official provided a list of 48 countries said to be involved, and scheduled speakers include Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Jared Kushner, Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, and U.N. Ambassador Mike Waltz.

Norms Impact

Steve Bannon courted Epstein in his efforts to ‘take down’ Pope Francis | CNN

A former White House adviser privately enlisted a convicted sex offender to help “take down” a sitting pope—normalizing political warfare through unaccountable, coercive networks beyond public oversight.

Executive

Feb 14, 2026

Sources

https://www.cnn.com/2026/02/14/world/bannon-epstein-take-down-pope-francis-latam-intl

Summary

Newly released US Department of Justice files show Steve Bannon exchanged messages with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in 2019 about strategies to “take down” Pope Francis. A former senior White House adviser is shown courting a criminal financier as a political collaborator while pursuing transnational influence campaigns against a major religious institution. The practical consequence is a clearer picture of how power networks can attempt to weaponize faith, media projects, and donor-style backing to pressure institutions outside democratic accountability.

Reality Check

This conduct points to a corrosive precedent: influential political operatives treating institutions of conscience as targets and seeking leverage through private, unaccountable intermediaries, weakening the safeguards that protect our civic life from clandestine power plays. On the facts provided, the messaging itself is not clearly a federal crime; it reads as political scheming and reputational warfare rather than an identifiable statutory offense like conspiracy (18 U.S.C. § 371) tied to an unlawful objective. The democratic harm is still acute: courting a convicted sex offender as a strategic partner signals a willingness to subordinate basic governance ethics to raw influence operations, the exact pathway by which our institutions become instruments instead of checks.

Detail

Newly released files from the US Department of Justice include 2019 messages between Steve Bannon, a former White House adviser to President Donald Trump, and Jeffrey Epstein, a convicted sex offender. In the messages, Bannon discussed opposition strategies involving Pope Francis and wrote in June 2019, “Will take down (Pope) Francis,” adding “The Clintons, Xi, Francis, EU – come on brother.”

The documents indicate Bannon continued messaging Epstein after Epstein’s 2008 conviction and shortly before Epstein’s later arrest on sex trafficking charges. The files also show Bannon referencing Frédéric Martel’s 2019 book “In the Closet of the Vatican” and appearing to propose Epstein as an executive producer for a film adaptation, writing, “You are now exec producer of ‘ITCOTV.’”

Epstein had emailed himself the book on April 1, 2019, and later sent Bannon an article titled “Pope Francis or Steve Bannon? Catholics must choose,” to which Bannon replied “easy choice.”