Hegseth Brags About “Death and Destruction” Raining Down in Iran

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth spoke unapologetically about causing “death and destruction from the sky all day long” in Iran at a press briefing Wednesday.

“We’re playing for keeps. Our warfighters have maximum authorities granted personally by the president and yours truly. Our rules of engagement are bold, precise, and designed to unleash American power, not shackle it,” Hegseth said, attempting to speak menacingly. “This was never meant to be a fair fight, and it is not a fair fight. We are punching them while they’re down, which is exactly how it should be.”

Is Hegseth hinting at a planned U.S. takeover of the country? That would require ground troops and billions more tax dollars. The Trump administration hasn’t ruled it out, worrying some members of Congress. On top of that, Hegseth proudly crowed Monday that this war with Iran has “no stupid rules of engagement, no nation-building quagmire, no democracy-building exercise, no politically correct wars,” meaning that “playing for keeps” doesn’t mean a proper transition of power.

Through Hegseth, the Trump administration is saying that it doesn’t care about civilian casualties, war crimes, or any kind of well-being for the Iranian people. It’s more bravado and machismo, making the “shock and awe” of the Iraq War of the early 2000s seem quaint by comparison. In fact, Hegseth’s references to a quagmire suggest that the U.S. will not be treating Iran like Iraq—there’s no plan or regard for what Iran will look like after the bombing ends. Instead, the goal is to level Iran, human rights be damned.

State Secretary Marco Rubio just ate his own words.

The White House is scrambling to find a palatable explanation for U.S. involvement in the Iran war after Donald Trump rejected Rubio’s public rationale.

During a visit on Capitol Hill Monday, Rubio suggested that the U.S. jumped to action due to intelligence that indicated Israel was going to strike Iran. U.S. involvement was, according to Rubio, necessary to thwart retaliation against U.S. interests.

“It was abundantly clear that if Iran came under attack by anyone … they were going to respond and respond against the United States,” Rubio said. “We knew there was going to be an Israeli action. We knew that would precipitate an attack against American forces. And we knew that if we didn’t preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties.”

But that was apparently not the pitch that Trump approved. Responding to questions from reporters at the White House the following day, the president rejected any indication that Israel had pushed the White House to act.

“No. I might have forced their hand,” Trump said. “We were having negotiations with these lunatics, and it was my opinion that they were going to attack first. They were going to attack. If we didn’t do it, they were going to attack first. I felt strongly about that.”

Hours later, Rubio also changed his tune—though his tone was noticeably more stressed.

“Yesterday, you told us that Israel was going to strike Iran and that’s why we needed to get involved. Today the president said Iran was going to get—” started a reporter, before Rubio interjected.

“No. Were you there yesterday? That’s false. I was asked very specifically—were you there yesterday?” said Rubio.

“Yes, I asked the question,” responded the reporter.

Eventually, Rubio relented that the White House “knew the attack was going to happen anyway.”

Mike Waltz, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., also tried to downplay Rubio’s comments. “[Rubio] clarified that those comments, those clips, are being taken out of context,” Waltz told CNN Tuesday night. “He was answering a very narrow operational question.”

So far, six U.S. soldiers have been killed in the conflict, as have more than 20 Iranian officials, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Eighteen American soldiers have also been seriously injured. More than 1,000 Iranian civilians have been killed, including 176 children, dozens of whom were at a girls’ school in the country’s south.

Meanwhile, more than a dozen countries have been roped into the conflict since the U.S. began bombing Iran—including France, the U.K., and Greece—effectively destabilizing the entire region while disrupting global markets and oil production.

A contingent of Texas Republicans are pushing for an immediate pause on all immigration into the U.S. after local authorities revealed a naturalized citizen was their primary suspect behind a mass shooting that rattled downtown Austin Sunday.

More than 70 Texas state House Republicans tacked their names onto a letter to Congress demanding that U.S. immigration services immediately halt operations until “proper vetting protocols” were put in place to waylay broad concerns of terrorism, reported The Texas Tribune.

“The American people—and the people of Texas—demand immigration policies that place the safety and welfare of Americans first,” reads a copy of the letter shared by state Representative Jared Patterson.

That’s just one of four possible options the state GOP offered to alter America’s current immigration process.

The caucus also included a demand to fully fund the Department of Homeland Security. Funding for the agency lapsed on February 13, sparking a partial government shutdown that has singularly affected the agency. Republicans and Democrats in Washington have been unable to reach a bipartisan consensus on whether to reform the violent department, which is still struggling after unwarranted violence by ICE agents in Minnesota that ultimately saw federal officers kill two U.S. citizens.

Democrats have agreed to pass the package so long as Republicans concede to 10 demands on how to reel in ICE agents, such as requiring them to identify themselves, take off their masks, and obtain judicial warrants before forcing their way onto private property. GOP congressional leadership, however, has not been willing to change the status quo at all.

Second on the Lone Star Republican agenda to rehab DHS is guidance to “immediately freeze all H-1B Visas” until the federal agency can conduct a “comprehensive audit of existing visa holders.”

Finally, conservative state lawmakers asked that the country “redirect resources toward identifying threats” within American borders.

“This requires a concerted, well-funded effort to cross-reference immigration records, law enforcement databases, and intelligence reports to identify individuals who pose a credible threat to American citizens,” the letter reads. “This is not optional—it is essential.”

State Representative Cole Hefner, chair of the House’s Homeland Security, Public Safety & Veterans’ Affairs Committee and lead signatory, told the Tribune that the letter was a team effort by the entire House caucus.

Six House Democrats are breaking with their party to support a different, more lenient war powers resolution that would grant President Trump a 30-day extension on his war on Iran, according to Punchbowl News. Each of those six Democrats has received somewhere from $300,000 to $3 million from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC. 

The Democrat representatives voting for another month of war are:

• Josh Gottheimer (New Jersey)
• Jimmy Panetta (California)
• Henry Cuellar (Texas)
• Greg Landsman (Ohio)
• Jared Golden (Maine)
• Jim Costa (California)

“Our war powers resolution allows for the short-term, targeted strikes on the regime’s missiles and bombs, requires Trump to come to Congress for a vote, and specifies ‘no ground troops,’” Representative Landsman wrote Tuesday. “Destroy the regimes [sic] ability to destroy more lives or cause any more mayhem or violence. Nothing more.” 

The sentiment was not a popular one. The initial war powers resolution, co-sponsored by GOP Representative Thomas Massie and Democrat Ro Khanna, would immediately block any U.S. military action without congressional approval under the 1973 War Powers Resolution. It is set for a  Wednesday vote, but it doesn’t stand a chance of becoming law. Even if it passed both chambers of Congress, it doesn’t have sufficient support to override a Trump veto. 

“I truly cannot understand how anyone could decide, sure I trust Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth to wage a regime change war in Iran,” Pod Save America host Tommy Vietor wrote Tuesday on X. “Have at it for 30 days, fellas, the[n] we’ll check back in. Mindbogglingly stupid.”

“NEWS: six democrats introduce alternate war powers resolution that is not a war powers resolution, but instead maintains the status quo while looking Vaguely Concerned in the event the war becomes politically toxic which it already is,” Citations Needed host Adam Johnson wrote sarcastically. 

“There is not by any reasonable measure ‘a discomfort with the @RoKhanna resolution among House Dems,’” the Center for International Policy’s Dylan Williams said. “This is the pro-war fringe of the caucus giving themselves a phony oversight vehicle to point to. No one should be fooled by it. A vote against Khanna-Massie is a vote for war.”

In just four days of bombing, the Trump administration and the Israeli government have killed at least 787 Iranians, including about 180 children at an elementary girls’ school. Now six Democratic hawks want to give them 30 more days. 

Donald Trump is offering a Band-Aid to fix the broken global supply chain as his illegal war with Iran spirals out into a regional conflict—but is it just another moneymaking scheme?

The president announced on Truth Social Tuesday that he’d ordered the U.S. Development Finance Corporation, or DFC, to provide political risk insurance “at a very reasonable price” to “ALL shipping lines”—but “especially Energy”—traveling through the Persian Gulf.

Trump’s announcement comes after the price of gasoline spiked 11 cents overnight and the price of natural gas increased 5 percent. As part of a series of retaliatory strikes on nearby nations, Iran struck energy facilities in Qatar and Saudi Arabia and disrupted traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, where a fifth of all oil trade must pass through, causing crude oil prices to jump 7 percent.

Trump had a solution to that too, it seems, and not a good one. “If necessary, the United States Navy will begin escorting tankers through the Strait of Hormuz, as soon as possible,” he wrote. “No matter what, the United States will ensure the FREE FLOW of ENERGY to the WORLD.”

Trump is casually suggesting that the United States direct millions of taxpayer dollars to fund military protection for ships carrying oil and gas, amid an ongoing major combat operation that most American taxpayers do not support and their representatives did not authorize.

At the same time, Trump’s offer for cheap insurance doesn’t quite pass the smell test.

The president did not specify how he would ensure the insurance would be reasonably priced. His post could indicate that the U.S. government plans to subsidize the insurance, which could mean spending even more taxpayer dollars.

The DFC offers investors political risk insurance to protect assets lost due to a range of conditions including “declared or undeclared war.” Those funds are held by a Corporate Capital Account used for the DFC’s investments and operating expenses, but excess collections are typically credited to the Department of the Treasury, according to a congressional research report from 2022.

In essence, Trump helped to start a war in the Middle East, and then offered to sell insurance to anyone afraid their stuff might get destroyed. That sounds like what some might call a racket.

France and the United Kingdom have entered the Iran conflict.

French President Emmanuel Macron ordered France’s nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, the Charles de Gaulle, to move from the Baltic to the Mediterranean Sea.

In a prerecorded speech that aired on French television Tuesday afternoon, Macron told his countrymen that he had also deployed Rafale fighter jets, air-defense systems, and airborne radar systems in the preceding hours to aid the Middle East offensive.

“This requires our support. That is why I have decided to send additional air-defense assets there as well, along with a French frigate, the Languedoc, which will arrive off the coast of Cyprus later this evening,” Macron said. “And we will continue this effort as much as necessary.”

Hours earlier, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced that his country would send a warship and helicopters to Cyprus, where a drone hit an outlying U.K. military base. The development occurred around the same time that Donald Trump said he was “not happy” with the U.K.’s decision to withhold base access on the island from U.S. military forces.

“This is not Winston Churchill that we’re dealing with,” Trump told reporters at the White House, seated beside German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.

The U.S. and the U.K. had clashed on the issue over the weekend, though Starmer capitulated to Trump’s demands by Sunday, permitting U.S. forces to use U.K. bases to strike Iran. British officials believe that the drone strike on their base in Cyprus occurred before Starmer’s revised guidance was issued, reported The Wall Street Journal. British forces have so far been unable to note with certainty which government was behind the drone strike.

“The strike on RAF Akrotiri last night is deeply concerning, an example of the dangerous and indiscriminate attacks by Iran & its proxies,” British Defense Secretary John Healey wrote on X, noting in another post that there were no casualties on the island and damage was minimal. “Our best assessment is that the drone was fired before the Prime Minister’s statement last night on the US use of UK bases.”

Greece also issued military support to Cyprus after the airstrike, ordering two frigates and a pair of F-16 fighter jets to the island on Monday.

“Following the unprovoked attacks on the territory of Cyprus, Greece will … contribute in every possible way to the defense of the Republic of Cyprus in order to address the threats and illegal actions taking place on its territory,” Greek Defense Minister Nikos Dendias said in an address on Monday.

More than a dozen countries were roped into the conflict just 72 hours after the U.S. began bombing Iran, effectively destabilizing the entire region while disrupting global markets and oil production.

New Jersey Senator Cory Booker called out Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem Tuesday for repeatedly lying under oath about her agency’s operations.

During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Noem lied or played dumb multiple times about her agency’s alleged misconduct, including detaining U.S. citizens and children, federal agents entering school property, and ICE violating court orders.

Moments after asserting that she ran a tight ship at DHS, Noem claimed she couldn’t give an “accurate number” of U.S. citizens detained by ICE as of last October. Booker pointed out that public records indicated at least 170 incidents of DHS detaining U.S. citizens, including 20 children.

Noem insisted that DHS did not detain children and separate them from their parents. In reality, ICE has detained hundreds of children, and families of mixed legal status are being regularly torn apart by the administration’s relentless immigration crackdown.

Booker pressed Noem on how long detentions last for American citizens. “We don’t detain American citizens,” Noem replied.

“You are not speaking truthfully under oath,” Booker interrupted, pointing to the case of Isaias Pena Salcedo, a U.S. citizen who was held by ICE for 70 hours, even after he showed federal agents his passport.

Booker also called out federal immigration agents giving themselves permission to violate the Fourth Amendment and conduct warrantless raids on private homes.

“You have situations where your officers are violating the sanctity of people’s homes, arresting and detaining them, and holding their children, and you’re acting as if you don’t know about it and saying that under oath,” the New Jersey Democrat said.

Booker then pushed back on Noem’s outrageous claim that she was not familiar with the shooting of Marimar Martinez, a U.S. citizen who was shot five times by federal agents in Chicago. Not only was the officer who shot her caught bragging about it—but former CPB chief Greg Bovino reached out afterward to congratulate him. In fact, the officer claimed over text message that Noem herself had also offered him her support.

“The case was thrown out of court, and you represent here that you don’t know about it,” Booker said incredulously, displaying a poster of the text messages behind him.

Booker didn’t stop there: “Are you aware of your officers’ activities in places like schools? Are you aware of your officers’ activities at our public schools?”

“Sir, we don’t go into schools and do targeted law enforcement operations,” Noem replied.

That was yet another lie. Booker cited multiple instances where federal immigration agents had entered school property as part of enforcement operations, including a January raid on the grounds of a high school in Minneapolis, and an incident just last month when federal agents blatantly lied to Columbia University staff in order to abduct a student from her dorm. Booker also referred to an incident in February, in which a group of children fled from a school bus stop in New Jersey as an ICE operation unfolded nearby.

“Secretary Noem, these are kids. They’re terrified in our communities. How do you think that affects them, when children in my state go running, fleeing, and often you all pursue children?” he asked.

Booker also hit back at Noem’s claim that her agency complied with court orders, citing a chief judge in Minnesota who found that ICE had violated nearly 100 court orders since the beginning of January. He cited another judge in New Jersey who determined in February that DHS had violated 52 separate court orders, “all involving cases where immigrants successfully challenged the legality of their detention.”

“You are violating the separation of powers, violating court orders, and routinely violating the civil rights of Americans. This is a reckless and out of control agency that you are responsible for,” Booker said.

“Either you are incompetent or you are violating laws with impunity. You should step down from your position. If you don’t, you should be removed by this president, and if not, Congress should impeach you.”

“I appreciate the encouragement,” Noem replied.

Donald Trump admitted in the White House Tuesday that he didn’t have an evacuation plan for Americans in the Middle East before bombing Iran.

“Thousands of Americans are stranded. Why wasn’t there an evacuation plan?” a reporter asked Trump while he was meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.

“Well, because it happened all very quickly. We thought, and I thought, maybe more so than most, I could ask Marco [Rubio], but I thought we were going to have a situation where we were going to be attacked,” Trump said, going off on a tangent about Iran attacking countries around the region.

Nowhere in Trump’s response to the reporter’s question was there any concern about Americans who find themselves stuck in the Middle East with flights grounded.

U.S. embassies in the region have warned stranded U.S. citizens that they’re on their own, after the State Department urged Americans in 14 different countries to use any “available commercial transportation” to evacuate. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Tuesday directed Americans to the State Department’s Smart Traveller Enrolment Program, an old service that helps facilitate contact between American expatriates and U.S. embassies.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration’s seeming abandonment of Americans stuck in countries facing Iranian or Israeli attacks has drawn flak from politicians on social media. Former Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene complained on X that “American tax payers are forced to give Israel $3.8 BILLION every single year, and here is our own U.S. embassy in Jerusalem telling Americans good luck getting out, you are on your own.”

“Warnings to citizens to evacuate 3 days into this war, when airspace is closed, is a clear sign of ZERO strategy and planning by the Trump admin,” Democratic Senator Andy Kim posted on X. “Now Americans have limited options to evacuate at an extremely dangerous moment with no government assistance. This administration is failing its citizens.”

“So the State Department is forcing everyone to immediately leave the region but is also refusing to help people leave the region,” fellow Democrat and Senator Chris Murphy concurred. “The strike itself is illegal and disastrous but their lack of readiness for what comes next is unforgivable as well. Incompetence everywhere.”

All of this goes to show that the Trump administration did not have a plan for the aftermath of war on Iran, or for what to do with the collateral damage. Not only are American service members stuck in harm’s way, but ordinary citizens are too.

An irate Senator Thom Tillis offered a sharp rebuke of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem at a Senate Judiciary hearing on Tuesday afternoon, attacking her for her aggressive immigration quotas, her detainment of American citizens, and murdering her dog and family goat.

“Why am I disappointed with Secretary Noem? Because we’re not going after enough people who did this damage at the expense of running numbers that Stephen Miller wants out of the White House. We just want numbers! We want 1,000 a day, 6,000 a day, 9,000 a day, because numbers matter, right? No, they don’t matter. Quality matters, not quantity,” Tillis yelled. “And what we’ve seen is a disaster. Under your leadership Ms. Noem, a disaster.”

“Time after time after time, I’ve been disappointed,” he said. Tillis also questioned Noem’s blocking or delaying of FEMA disaster aid, and criticized the DHS killings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good, saying that it “cast a pall” on other agents he thought were doing a good job.

Tillis then took time to specifically address the pet dog Noem casually wrote about shooting and killing for no good reason around 2004 in her book No Going Back.

“I read your book last week.… Some of it distresses me, and I’ll give you a good example of one that does,” Tillis continued. “The passage where you talked about killing a dog that was 14 months old. I train dogs, alright? And you are a farmer, you should know better. You should know that if you’re going out to a hunting lodge and you’re putting pheasants out and you’re putting dogs out, you don’t take a puppy out there. A 14-month-old dog is basically a teenager in dog years.

“You decided to kill that dog because you had not invested the appropriate time and training, and then you have the audacity to go into a book and say it’s a leadership lesson about tough choices! It’s in your book … at that same lunch hour, you killed a goat because you said it was behaving badly.… My point is, those are bad decisions made in the heat of the moment, not unlike what happened up in Minneapolis.”

In No Going Back, Noem wrote that the dog, Cricket, was ruining a pheasant hunt by “chasing all those birds and having the time of her life” and killing some chickens. For some morbid reason, Noem decided the only option was to shoot Cricket dead in a gravel pit. And then she killed a family goat because it was “disgusting, musky, rancid.”

Tillis ended his time by demanding Noem’s resignation.

“I wanna submit this letter from the Office of the Inspector General that cites 10 different instances under Ms. Noem’s leadership where they’ve been misled and not allowed to pursue investigations that they think are critically important. Does anybody have any idea how bad it has to be for the OIG in this agency to come out and do this publicly? That is stonewalling, that’s a failure of leadership, and that is why I’m calling for your resignation. And if I don’t get an answer to these questions—”

Tillis was interrupted by applause.

“Please don’t do that for me. If I don’t get an answer to these questions … as of today, I’ll be informing leadership that I’m putting a hold on any en bloc nominations until I get a response. And in two weeks if I don’t get a response, I’m gonna deny quorum and mark up in as many committees as I can until I get a response.”

The Iran war could be entirely in vain, according to Donald Trump.

Seated beside German Chancellor Friedrich Merz at the White House on Tuesday, Trump spelled out that the worst-case scenario for U.S. involvement in Iran could see another authoritarian regime taking control of the country.

“What’s the worst-case scenario that you have planned for in Iran?” asked a reporter.

“Well, I don’t know if there’s a worst case,” Trump said. “We have them very much beaten militarily, from a military standpoint. They’re still lobbing some missiles, at some point they won’t even be able to do that because we’re hitting all of their carriers and missile stock.”

Staring at the ground, Trump took a moment to think. Then he spoke again.

“I guess the worst case would be we do this and then somebody takes over who’s as bad as the previous person, right? That could happen,” Trump said, leaning toward Merz. “We don’t want that to happen. That would probably be the worst.

“You got through this, and then in five years you realize you put somebody in who was no better. So we’d like to see somebody in there who would bring it back to the people,” Trump added.

Just one in four Americans say they support the war in Iran, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll published Monday. In the same survey, 56 percent of respondents said they believe Trump is too quick to use military force as a foreign policy solution.

That could very well be true, considering that the White House has yet to declare an official message—or a plan—for America’s involvement in the Middle East conflict. In fact, the White House has yet to even seek Congress’s approval for attacking Iran.

Per Trump’s own estimates, the war could rage for a few days, or several weeks, or “forever.” He told The Washington Post that the aim of the war would be “freedom for the people” of Iran, then told The New York Times that he had “three very good choices” for who could take control of Iran, and then told ABC News that the “attack was so successful it knocked out most of the candidates” for leadership.

The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that Trump initially stated that the Iranian mission was about “threat reduction,” then about “getting a deal,” then about “regime change” again. “And that was just on Sunday,” reported the paper’s Alex Ward.

Trump spoke about some objectives for the war during a Medal of Honor ceremony on Monday, but as of Tuesday afternoon has yet to directly address the American people regarding the war.

That’s a major departure from his predecessors who sat at the Resolute Desk, who universally recognized the need to immediately justify military intervention to the public. Woodrow Wilson spoke to the nation the same day he asked Congress to declare war against Germany during World War I, while Franklin D. Roosevelt gave a national address hours before the country declared war during World War II.

So far, six U.S. soldiers have been killed in the conflict, as have more than 20 Iranian officials, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Eighteen American soldiers have also been seriously injured. More than 700 Iranian civilians have been killed, including 176 children, dozens of whom were at a girls’ school in the country’s south.