Hegseth: We Negotiate With Bombs

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth just perfectly summed up Donald Trump’s reckless military campaign in Iran.

Speaking in the Oval Office alongside Trump Tuesday, Hegseth insisted that the Pentagon had established its own role in ongoing negotiations.

“The air campaign that we’ve conducted, that Israel’s conducted alongside us, was one for the history books, truly. And it’s because we have a president of the United States that, when he sends his warfighters out to fight, he unties their hands to actually go out and close with and destroy the enemy as viciously as possible from moment one,” Hegseth said.

“And that’s why we see ourselves as part of this negotiation as well. We negotiate with bombs.”

How exactly is that working out for Hegseth? Not so great.

The Pentagon is reportedly planning to deploy 3,000 troops from the 82nd Airborne Division to the Middle East, despite Trump’s claim that U.S. officials have held productive conversations with Iran. Iranian officials have flat-out ignored requests to negotiate with the United States, and denied having entered talks. Some have speculated Trump’s surprise announcement was merely an attempt at market manipulation.

As Iran sent another wave of attacks across the Middle East Tuesday, Trump insisted they wanted to “make a deal.” Meanwhile, the Strait of Hormuz is still closed under threat of attack from Iran, halting global trade and sending energy prices soaring.

Still, Hegseth suggested that the U.S. keeping its finger on the big red button is helping things. “You have a choice as we loiter over the top of Tehran, as the president talked about, about your future. [The] president has made it clear that you will not have a nuclear weapon, the war department agrees. Our job is to ensure that.”

Neiyerver Adrián Leon Rengel, a 28-year-old Venezuelan man deported by the Trump administration to CECOT prison in El Salvador, is trying to make sure what happened to him will never happen again.

CBS News confirmed Leon Rengel had filed a first-of-its-kind federal lawsuit on Tuesday against the United States, seeking $1.3 million in damages for false imprisonment and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

Leon Rengel was one of hundreds of immigrants deported to CECOT, a notoriously inhumane institution, for four months, before being released in a prisoner swap in July 2025. He alleges that he was beaten and abused by guards, and forced to drink the water that he and other prisoners had washed themselves in.

“There came a point when I thought about hanging myself with the sheet they gave us,” Leon Rengel told CBS News in Spanish.

A report from Human Rights Watch has documented how Venuezelans endured “arbitrary detention,” “torture,” and sexual abuse at CECOT.

The lawsuit also alleges that Leon Rengel, who had an active asylum case at the time of his deportation, had no criminal record besides one misdemeanor—in which he paid a small fine for possession of drug paraphernalia—and that the Department of Homeland Security incorrectly determined he was a gang member because he had a tattoo of a lion and a hair clipper.

Leon Rengel told CBS News he was a barber and was not part of any gang. Others at CECOT have also said they were told their tattoos were the reason they were detained.

DHS continues to claim Leon Rengel was a gang member, though it told CBS that providing any proof of this would “undermine” national security.

Regardless of whether you think immigrants should be allowed to cross the U.S.-Mexico border, the federal government is meant to abide by due process laws and wait for deportation cases to be heard before taking action. The Trump administration not only illegally sent people out of the country but sent them to prisons to be tortured. It amounts to one of the cruelest of the many crimes committed by the Trump regime. We can only hope Leon Rengel gets his day in court.

Texas Representative Chip Roy knows exactly how his own bill, the SAVE America Act, could make it harder for married women to prove their identity.

“We’ve got some folks out there that are trying to stir the pot on this allegation that it somehow is a barrier for married women to be able to vote because they’ve got to deal with getting IDs with name changes and all those things,” Roy said in newly released footage from a February 2025 Zoom meeting with the Election Integrity Network. The secretly recorded footage was obtained and released by the media group Called to Activism.

“Although frankly I’m trying to not to elevate the issue too much, my chief of staff had to go get a new ID in Virginia. Virginia’s adopted the REAL ID system, so she had to go through a bunch of hoops. She’s gonna have to go back to the DMV twice because they want the paperwork for it.”

The SAVE America Act would require that Americans present proof of citizenship like a passport or birth certificate to register to vote. If a person’s current name does not match their document, they would have to provide extra documentation to provide their identity. (The REAL ID system has similar requirements to obtain state identification.)

Roy and other Republicans claim the bill will fight against voter fraud—which is exceedingly rare—but it will likely just make it harder for the some 69 million married American women who have changed their names to vote, as well as trans voters who have changed their names.

“That’s just part of the issue with how we try to set up the ability to identify people,” Roy continued in the video. Despite describing in detail the very challenge married women would face if the SAVE Act passes, he then denied the bill would create any voting hurdles for married women.

“But there’s no barriers at all to married women being able to vote,” he nonsensically concluded, failing to hear his own ignorance.

Though he had just highlighted a potential hurdle that married women may face when they register to vote, Roy claimed that “there’s no barriers at all to married women being able to vote” with the SAVE America Act.

If Donald Trump says he’s ready for peace with Iran, why is the Pentagon planning to deploy thousands of troops from the 82nd Airborne Division to the Middle East?

The Department of Defense is plotting to deploy 3,000 members of the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, two U.S. officials told The Wall Street Journal. The orders are expected to be signed Tuesday afternoon.

While the decision to put boots on the ground has not been made, the officials told the Journal, deploying the elite, rapid-response paratrooper division does expand the range of options Trump can take in Iran. The decision comes just days after Trump announced that the U.S had held “productive talks” with Iranian officials moving closer to a “complete and total resolution of our hostilities in the Middle East, with a five-day pause on strikes against energy infrastructure.

Iranian officials have denied that the country is in talks with the United States, and some have speculated Trump’s announcement was merely an attempt at market manipulation. At the same time, Israel launched fresh attacks on Tehran Monday despite Trump’s gesture at peace.

The 82nd Airborne Division, comprising up to 5,000 soldiers, specializes in missions that include parachute assault, reinforcing U.S. embassies, and enabling emergency evacuations. Earlier this month, the U.S. Army spontaneously canceled a training exercise for the elite division, sparking concerns that they would be deployed to the Middle East. It seems now that those concerns were well-founded.

President Trump took questions after Markwayne Mullin was confirmed as homeland security secretary on Tuesday, and dropped a strange detail about the ongoing negotiations to end the war in Iran.

After a journalist asked Trump why he would bother trying to negotiate with Iran if, as the president has claimed, he doesn’t trust their leadership, Trump replied:

“Because they’re going to make a deal. They did something yesterday that was amazing, actually. They gave us a present. And the present arrived today. And it was a very big present worth a tremendous amount of money. And I’m not going to tell you what that present is, but it was a very significant prize.… That meant one thing to me—we’re dealing with the right people.”

It is simultaneously funny and depressing to hear that Iranian leaders have realized they can essentially just bribe Trump with an expensive gift. It’s a similar strategy to that recently employed by María Corina Machado, the Venezuelan opposition leader who presented her Nobel Peace Prize to Trump in January, sparking allegations that she was trying to curry favor with the president. (Trump was thrilled by the gift but later snubbed Machado anyway.)

Reporters prodded Trump about what the present was. The president wouldn’t say exactly but hinted that it “was oil and gas related” and “related to the flow, and to the Strait [of Hormuz].” Perhaps an agreement giving Trump and his cronies exclusive access to an oil field?

Negotiations to end the war have gotten off to a rocky start. After Trump claimed on Monday that Iran and the U.S. had held “productive conversations regarding a complete and total resolution of our hostilities,” Iranian officials came out and said the talks had never happened.

Despite the fact that U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran are very much ongoing, as is Iranian retaliation, Trump also claimed in his remarks that the “war has been won” and “the only one that likes to keep it going is the fake news.”

The Trump administration suffered another loss in court after a federal judge ordered them to bring a Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipient they deported to Mexico while she was in the process of applying for lawful permanent residency.

Maria de Jesus Estrada Juarez came to the U.S. from Mexico in 1998 when she was 15 years old and received DACA protection in 2013. Last month, the Sacramento, California, resident showed up at an immigration hearing with her 22-year-old U.S. citizen daughter, only to be greeted by federal agents, detained, and deported.

But on Monday, U.S. District Judge Dena Coggins declared Juarez’s deportation unlawful and demanded that the Trump administration return her to the United States by March 30, calling it a “flagrant violation of the regulatory protections afforded to her under DACA.”

“It is difficult to argue that Petitioner’s removal constitutes anything less than an ‘extreme circumstance,’” Coggins wrote in her order. “Less than 24 hours after Petitioner’s good faith appearance to pursue lawful permanent resident status in this country — she was removed to a nation where she had not lived in over 27 years pursuant to an order purportedly entered against her when she was fifteen years old.”

The Justice Department claims that Juarez’s DACA status did not exclude her from deportation, while the Department of Homeland Security has yet to publicly comment. In the past, DHS has tried to argue that DACA status is not protection from deportation, even though the status of the program is tied up in court.

President Trump currently has a negative approval rating with male voters as the demographic groups he leaned on for support continue to abandon him.

CNN’s Harry Enten broke down recent polling on air Tuesday.

“Donald Trump and Republicans won in 2024 because of support from male voters … and male voters are abandoning Donald Trump,” Enten said. “In November of 2024, he beat Kamala Harris among them by 13 points. By 13 points. Look at where he is now on his net approval rating. Down he goes! It’s a 20-point shift away from Donald Trump. He is now seven points underwater, at this particular point, among men. I think it is very difficult for Republicans to do well in this midterm cycle. If Donald Trump is underwater with men.

“Yikes! Yikes, yikes, yikes! Men under the age of [45] on Trump. He won them in 2024 by five points. Look where he is now.… Down we go to negative 19 points. That’s nearly a 25-point switcheroo against the president of the United States when it comes to men under the age of 45,” Enten continued. “Those men that had switched their allegiances over to the Republican Party are seeing what the president is doing. They don’t like what the President is doing, and they are very much soured on the president of the United States, men under the age of 45.”

The primary catalyst for this reversal is of course the economy.

“We’ve spoken about it over and over and over again. The cost of living. It’s inflation. In October 2024 … Trump was trusted more than Kamala Harris by 10 points on this issue. Now we’ve got a 40-point switcheroo in the other direction,” Enten said. “His net approval rating on the cost of living among men is underwater by 30 percentage points.”

This poll is absolutely brutal, and it isn’t the only one. Last month, centrist think tank Third Way found that only 38 percent of 1,462 men between the ages of 18 and 29 approve of the first year of Trump’s second term. Fifty-eight percent say Trump has “negatively impacted their finances.” Sixty-five percent are struggling to pay the bills. And 61 percent believe that the president isn’t carrying out his campaign promises.

Trump’s decisions as president—the worldwide tariffs, the war on Iran, the lack of action on housing and affordability—are negatively impacting the same issues he campaigned on, and now the people who voted for him seem to be having some regrets. The upcoming midterm elections will be a rude awakening.

Minnesota officials sued the Trump administration Tuesday, accusing it of withholding information related to the killings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good, who were shot by federal officers in Minnesota earlier this year.

The lawsuit claims federal authorities “took exclusive control of evidence,” and refused state and local authorities basic information following both killings, as well as the non-fatal shooting of Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis, who was shot by a federal agent in Minneapolis.

“Instead of sharing information, federal authorities took exclusive possession of evidence that had been collected, and they denied Minnesota investigators access to key information,” the lawsuit reads. The state argues this failure to cooperate violates its “responsibility to protect against and address violence within its borders, including by prosecuting homicides, attempted homicides, and assaults.”

All three shootings were part of Operation Metro Surge, the destructive incursion of more than 3,000 armed federal immigration officers into Minnesota to arrest, detain, and and take down anyone who got in their way. The Department of Homeland Security said it arrested more than 4,000 undocumented people between December 2025 and February 2026, in what it called what as “the largest DHS operation ever.” It cost Minneapolis more than $200 million in damages.

“The Surge created widespread fear among Minnesota residents, both citizens and noncitizens. It caused hundreds of millions of dollars in economic harm. And it flooded Minnesota’s federal courts with lawsuits challenging the unlawful detentions that resulted from the operation,” the plaintiffs, which include Attorney General Keith Ellison, and Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty, wrote.

Minnesota officials previously accused federal officers of non-cooperation after the DHS took over the investigation into Good’s killing, a decision that was defended by outgoing DHS Secretary Kristi Noem. Noem is listed as a defendant in the lawsuit alongside Attorney General Pam Bondi.

The state urges cooperation in criminal investigations is essential not only to justice, but a functioning judicial system.

“At stake is not only Plaintiffs’ access to evidence central to these shootings but also a fundamental principle of our constitutional system: that the States retain the sovereign authority—and responsibility—to investigate crimes committed within their borders.”

This story has been updated.

The Pentagon is working with private companies to control what we know about Donald Trump’s reckless military campaign in Iran.

Leaked U.S. military guidance obtained by independent journalist Ken Klippenstein Tuesday revealed instructions to dozens of commercial satellite operators about how to describe the extent of the damage in Iran.

The Pentagon warned against using language that assumed “operational conclusions,” such as “Target destroyed” or “Target eliminated.” Instead, the language should describe only “observable infrastructure damage.”

Rather than saying things like “Strike successfully destroys facility,” companies were urged to say things like “Imagery shows the structure largely collapsed with debris covering the building footprint.”

Perhaps the U.S. military was hoping to avoid more claims that Iranian assets had been “obliterated” that they would have to walk back afterward. In any case, the Pentagon appears to be exercising censorship over what Americans are allowed to know, allowing Trump to prosecute his war in Iran with impunity.

Roughly 100 companies operate reconnaissance satellites, comprising a $6 billion to $7 billion industry. Those companies have commercial clients as well as contracts with the federal government, incentivizing them to comply with any advisory guidelines from the Pentagon.

“While there’s a case to be made that they [the companies] should fight it, almost everyone makes the vast majority of their revenue from government contracts in this industry and, after Anthropic, nobody is interested in putting up a fight,” a source familiar with the guidance told Klippenstein. “I think it’s also another layer of trying to make things [about the war] seem less bad than they are.”

The Pentagon cut ties with Anthropic earlier this month, labeling the company a supply chain risk after the company insisted on guardrails for the use of its Claude AI model.

Klippenstein argued that the Pentagon’s censorship campaign may have already been a success. Planet Labs, one of the largest commercial satellite imaging companies, blocked public access to imagery of the Iran war for two weeks after the U.S. and Israel launched attacks on February 28. The company claimed it had made that decision after consulting with military and intelligence experts.

Trump’s top adviser couldn’t hold back a sigh as the president scrambled to justify the war in Iran at a roundtable event in Memphis on Monday.

A stream from Memphis ABC showed Miller turn his head, puff out his cheeks, and take a deep breath as the president urged the importance of bombing Iran before it was “virtually impossible to stop them.” The White House deputy chief of staff then returned his seemingly exasperated gaze back to the president.

Trump and Miller were joined by FBI Director Kash Patel, Attorney General Pam Bondi, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth at the roundtable event on crime and public safety in Memphis.

The clip has gone viral on social media, and many are interpreting Miller’s sigh as an unintentional show of disagreement with Trump’s reckless war in Iran, which has already killed more than 1,500 Iranians and 13 U.S. soldiers.

Despite the slipup, in the same discussion Miller showed complete devotion to Trump’s crackdown on crime, which has included the deployment of federal troops into Memphis and five other U.S. cities—a decision that’s already cost taxpayers nearly $500 million.

“What President Trump has done on border security and public safety is a national miracle that will be studied not only for generations but for centuries to come,” Miller said. The national miracle he’s referring to has included thousands of deportations, violent ICE kidnappings, and the deaths of two U.S. citizens.