Hegseth Quietly Admits U.S. Might Be Behind Iran Girls’ School Strike

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth acknowledged Friday that the U.S. military had opened a comprehensive investigation into the attack on an Iranian elementary school.

Yet seconds after he tacitly acknowledged evidence indicating America’s role in the bloodshed, Hegseth insisted that the United States “never” targets civilians during foreign conflicts.

Responding to a reporter’s query about the February 28 incident, which left at least 175 dead—most of them children, Hegseth said that the department would not let leaks to the press “lead us or force our hand into indicating” what occurred, “because the truth matters.”

He did, however, reveal that U.S. Central Command “has designated an investigating officer to complete a command investigation.”

“The command investigation will take as long as necessary to address all the matters surrounding this incident, and the investigating officer is from outside CENTCOM and is a—is a general officer,” Hegseth said. “But I will note to this group and to the world, there’s only one entity in this conflict between us and Iran that never targets civilians, literally never targets civilians.”

In the weeks since the attack, a growing mountain of evidence has suggested that the U.S. military was responsible for the strike in Minab, a city in the southern Iranian province of Hormozgan.

A U.S. assessment report leaked last week found that the strike was “likely” the fault of an American Tomahawk missile. It noted that American forces did not intentionally target the school and could have hit it in error. One hypothesis included the possibility that the U.S. had relied on dated intelligence that incorrectly assumed the school was part of an Iranian military base.

“The Pentagon does not typically conduct such investigations of another country’s military operations,” reported The Washington Post.

Outgoing Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem gave a border wall contract to a company that illegally smuggled workers into the country, provided them guns, and ignored them when they got involved in a shootout. 

The Daily Beast reports that the Texas-based SLSCO Ltd. has two contracts with DHS worth a total of $1 billion to build the border wall in Laredo and Del Rio, Texas. Noem personally approved the contracts. The company also has a contract to build the “Alligator Alcatraz” detention facility in Florida, and during the first Trump administration, won bids of close to $2 billion to build the border wall. 

But SLSCO, a major Republican donor, was accused in court of smuggling Mexican nationals into the country as workers, later giving them guns to work as guards. Two of the company’s former security contractors, an ex-FBI special agent and a former sheriff’s deputy in San Diego, filed a lawsuit against SLSCO over alleged “human and weapons smuggling” over the U.S. border with Mexico. 

The lawsuit states that the pair started working for the company in 2019 and discovered migrants working illegally for SLSCO at border wall sites in southern California, as well as armed Mexican nationals working as guards. In July of that year, those guards reportedly got into a firefight with a different group of migrants who were trying to steal from SLSCO construction sites. 

But after the two contractors raised the issue with their superiors, nothing happened. The ex-FBI agent then told the bureau about the smuggling and the shootout, and shortly afterward, the two contractors were fired, which they allege was retaliation. But the lawsuit never made it to court because the two plaintiffs dismissed the case voluntarily. SLSCO doesn’t seem to have ever commented publicly about it, according to The Daily Beast.  

It’s yet another black mark on Noem’s disastrous tenure at DHS. The agency shot and killed two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis on her watch while carrying out the Trump administration’s violent mass deportation agenda. Noem also faced criticism for hiring an eight-day-old company for a $220 million ad campaign for ICE, spending millions on luxury jets, and buying 2,500 trucks for ICE that the agency can’t even use, among numerous other misdeeds. What other ill-advised purchases has she saddled taxpayers with? 

A federal judge has quashed the Justice Department’s subpoenas directed at Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell.

In a scathing 27-page opinion, Judge James Boasberg said Friday that the government has produced “essentially zero evidence” to substantiate its criminal case against Powell.

“A mountain of evidence suggests that the Government served these subpoenas on the Board to pressure its Chair into voting for lower interest rates or resigning,” Boasberg wrote. “On the other side of the scale, the Government has produced essentially zero evidence to suspect Chair Powell of a crime.”

Donald Trump’s myriad tweets railing against the Federal Reserve chief—and their clear correlation to the DOJ’s probe—did not help the government’s case.

“The President spent years essentially asking if no one will rid him of this troublesome Fed Chair,” the judge continued. “He then suggested a specific line of investigation into him, which had been proposed by a political appointee with no role in law enforcement, who hinted that it could be a way to remove Powell. The President’s appointed prosecutor promptly complied.

“Those facts strongly imply that this investigation was launched for an improper purpose, as were the resulting subpoenas,” Boasberg wrote.

U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro, a Trump appointee whose office is leading the investigation, promised to appeal the decision.

The judge “has neutered the grand jury’s ability to investigate crime; as a result Jerome Powell today is ​now bathed in immunity, preventing my office from investigating the Federal Reserve,” Pirro claimed, accusing Boasberg of being an “activist judge.”

“This is wrong and without legal authority,” she added.

Powell has been the subject of the president’s ire for months, facing enormous Oval Office criticism for his repeated refusal to cut interest rates as Trump sees fit. The investigation was ostensibly about the cost of renovations to the Fed’s office buildings, which occurred under Powell’s stewardship but which were nonetheless wildly exaggerated by the president as a pretext to attack Powell.

The law mandates that the Fed be politically independent, yet Powell has argued that Trump is attempting to diminish confidence in the central bank in order to gain more influence over America’s monetary policy.

“This is about whether the Fed will be able to continue to set interest rates based on evidence and economic conditions—or whether instead monetary policy will be directed by political pressure or intimidation,” Powell said in January when the subpoenas were first announced.

This story has been updated.

The U.S. is deploying to the Middle East a Marine expeditionary unit that can conduct ground operations if needed.

Multiple outlets reported Friday that the amphibious assault ship USS Tripoli, which is based in Japan, is being sent to the Middle East, along with multiple other warships and fighter jets. The attached 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit has thousands of Marines and sailors and can offer land, amphibious, and aviation support.

The move could be to potentially aid the U.S. Navy in escorting ships through the Strait of Hormuz—but it does not inspire faith in the success or point to the conclusion of the war on Iran, especially given that it will take the Marines 10 days to two weeks to reach the region. Just hours ago, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth stated, “We’re on plan to defeat, destroy, disable all of their meaningful military capabilities at a pace the world has never seen before … their missile force is shrinking daily.”

Iran’s retaliatory blockade and oil tanker attacks on the Strait have cost the United States $11 billion so far, according to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.

Donald Trump rambled about immigrants’ bad “genetics” Friday, during an unfiltered white supremacist rant. 

Speaking on the phone to Fox & Friends host Brian Kilmeade, Trump complained that while some immigrants simply shouldn’t have been let into the United States, others “go bad.”

“There’s something wrong there. The genetics are not exactly your genetics, it’s one of those problems, Brian,” Trump said. “It’s a terrible thing, and it happens, it happens too often.”

Critics slammed Trump’s comment as blatantly racist and speculated that the president might admire more about Adolf Hitler than just his economic and political machinations.  

“Trump is an old school eugenicist nativist. He actually is fine with immigrants as long as they have the right ‘genes,’” David J. Bier, director of immigration for the Cato Institute, wrote on X. “This argument was the basis of the creation of the restrictive US immigration system 100 years ago.”

“He’s a white supremacist. He doesn’t hide it,” Zeteo’s Mehdi Hasan wrote on X. 

This isn’t the first time Trump’s fearmongering about immigrants has crossed the line into talk of genetics. 

Speaking to a conservative radio show host in October 2024, Trump claimed that former Vice President Kamala Harris had allowed murderers with “bad genes” to live in the United States. The year before, Trump channeled the language of Hitler while suggesting that immigrants were “poisoning the blood of our country.”

A dark money group is offering influencers $1,500 for one negative social media post about progressive Illinois House of Representatives candidate Kat Abughazaleh.

MS Now reported that Democracy Unmuted, a secretive, unofficial organization that registered its website two weeks ago, offered TikTok and Instagram influencer Amanda Informed $1,500 to push anti-Abughazaleh rhetoric on social media. She declined, and made the offer known to the media.

Democracy Unmuted is made up of “individuals from the [Illinois] area who have served in the highest offices and been at top of their game in the media,” Matt Anthes, founder of the digital political advocacy firm Advocators, told MS NOW’s Brandy Zadrozny.

“The money didn’t feel right coming from someone who’s not disclosing where the money is coming from,” Amanda Informed told MS NOW. “That’s not something that I want to be involved in. I want to make sure that it’s coming from a source that is not doing nefarious things like interfering with elections.”

Anthes was the one who sent Amanda the offer. But even he remains secretive about the group’s members and funding, stating, “We don’t comment on or disclose the identity of our clients. What we can tell you is that all of our dealings and practices are fully compliant with FEC rules and regulations, including those at our creative agency partner, Upstart Factory.”

According to the memo Amanda received, Democracy Unmuted is asking political influencers on TikTok and Instagram to “encourage voters to look past viral personalities and ask real questions about who is running and why.”

The group alleged that Abughazaleh is a political newcomer, grew up wealthy, and didn’t know her district well enough. “Kat’s campaign appears designed for attention rather than impact,” it stated.

Some influencers may have accepted the money. Missouri-based political influencer Justin Kralemann—who goes by “The Woke Ginger” on social media—essentially read Democracy Unmuted’s anti-Abughazaleh talking points word for word in a recent Instagram and TikTok post, while wearing a hat reading “WOKE” and mispronouncing Abughazaleh’s name.

“It’s important to look past viral personalities and ask who is running and why,” the Woke Ginger said, a near exact quote from the brief. Even still, he has stated that he was not paid for the video.

A literal secret group paying random influencers across the United States to smear one of the more progressive congressional candidates of 2026 should be a massive scandal, but America’s laissez-faire campaign finance laws have made it possible, and completely legal.

“Dark money groups have grown to exercise tremendous influence.… With a lot of these competitive races, these groups can spring up overnight,” said Abigail Bellows, senior policy director of anti-corruption at Common Cause. “These dark money groups use these shadowy vehicles for political participation that really undercuts voters.… It just breeds distrust.”

Abughazaleh’s campaign responded, calling the claims defamatory and asserting that they were funded by foreign interests.

“We have become aware of a coordinated influencer campaign attacking Kat Abughazaleh that appears to be funded through opaque entities exploiting loopholes in federal election law. The materials being circulated are filled with false and defamatory claims about Kat’s background and campaign,” their statement read. “At a minimum, this raises serious questions about transparency and whether voters in Illinois’ 9th District are being targeted by undisclosed money and potentially foreign-linked actors across social media platforms.”

On a new website, Democracy Unmuted claimed that they were “called out” by MS NOW. “Here’s what they didn’t tell you: Reporter Brandy Zadronzny has [sic] long-running relationship and a joint podcast with Ben Collins, partner of candidate Kat Abughazaleh.” But while that may be interesting, it has little to do with the topic of Zadrozny’s article—that a secret organization is offering influencers $1,500 to read from their script.

Abughazaleh is running against a massive primary pool of 15 other Democrats for the chance to replace retiring Representative Jan Schakowsky in Illinois’s 9th congressional district.

Two weeks after he directed American forces to bomb Iran, Donald Trump has revealed he has no notion of when the war will end.

The White House has thus far refused to provide the slightest semblance of a timeline for the latest unfounded Middle East war. But in an interview with Fox News’s Brian Kilmeade Friday, Trump admitted that he also has no clear goal for the war, clouding the possibility for a finite end to the conflict.

Responding to a question about the skyrocketing price of oil and the resulting economic ripples, Trump claimed that the U.S. would “bounce right back so fast” when the war is over.

“When are you going to know when it’s over?” asked Kilmeade.

“When I feel it. When I feel it in my bones,” Trump responded.

There’s been absolutely no concrete evidence from the White House that the violence will end soon. In the same interview, Trump noted that U.S. forces could fight the war “forever.”

“We have unlimited ammunition,” Trump said. “We have, of the high level and medium level—the medium and medium-high level—we have virtually unlimited ammunition, and we’re using it. We’re using it, we could go forever.”

Yet U.S. military officials have stressed that fighting Iran has drastically depleted America’s missile defense systems. In a closed-door meeting with lawmakers on March 3—just days after the conflict began—Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine reportedly said that Iran’s Shahed attack drones were proving to be a more difficult problem than U.S. intelligence initially predicted.

The Shahed drones are capable of flying low and slow, a facet of their design that has made them difficult targets for U.S. air defenses. The military has been mostly successful at intercepting them, using Patriot interceptor missiles—which are designed to destroy ballistic missiles or aircraft—in order to do so. But there’s a significant cost imbalance as a result of the glaring gap in America’s war plan.

Iran’s drones are small, simple to manufacture, and cost roughly $20,000 to produce. They can be launched from almost anywhere, and use GPS to find their target. They’re typically launched in swarms to overwhelm opposing defense systems.

Patriot missiles, meanwhile, cost between $3 million and $4 million per unit. An entire Patriot battery system can cost as much as $1.1 billion, including the launcher, radar, and missiles. As a result of the missiles’ enormous price tag, production of America’s highly sought-after Patriot system is relatively slow compared to its demand. In 2025, Lockheed Martin created 620 units of the Patriot missile. Iran, in comparison, is capable of producing about 10,000 drones per month, reported Reuters.

Brynn Tannehill, a former Iran analyst for the U.S. Naval Reserve, emphasized in The Atlantic that the U.S. and its Gulf allies were chewing through “scarce and costly munitions at an astounding rate.”

The depletion of resources is doubly concerning following The Washington Post’s
reporting last week that Russia was funneling military intelligence to Iran to assist in targeting U.S. forces. So far, Iran has systematically destroyed U.S. missile defense systems across the Middle East, such as radars and command infrastructure. In the early days of the war, an Iranian drone attack on a Kuwait operations center killed six U.S. soldiers and seriously wounded dozens more.

Earlier this week, it became clear that the White House had months earlier been offered the opportunity to buy tech that would have given U.S. forces a dramatic advantage against Iran. The offer was extended by Ukraine, and the the intel was battle-tested: Ukraine has more experience fighting Shaheds than practically any other country, downing the same design under Russia’s flag (Russia rebranded the military tech as “Geran drones”).

The decision to snub the offer has since been discussed as one of the biggest miscalculations thus far in the Iran war.

Donald Trump admitted Friday that Russia is likely helping Iran in its war with the U.S., but doesn’t think it’s a big deal.

Fox News’s Brian Kilmeade asked Trump in a radio interview if he thought Russian President Vladimir Putin is helping Iran in its war with the U.S.

Trump replied, “I think he might be helping them a little bit, yeah, I guess, and he probably thinks we’re helping Ukraine, right?”

Kilmeade then asked Trump if the U.S. is helping Ukraine, and Trump said, “Yeah, we’re helping them also, and so he says that, and China would say the same thing, you know. It’s like, hey, they do it and we do it, in all fairness.”

It’s a blatant admission from the president that he doesn’t care about Russia opposing the U.S. in a war, and a more implicit admission that he knows his decision Thursday to temporarily relax sanctions on Russia will help the country in its war against Ukraine, even if it does alleviate skyrocketing oil prices. The U.S. has backed Ukraine since Russia invaded the country in 2022.

The unprompted mention of China would seem to suggest Trump doesn’t care about its assistance of Iran either, or perhaps it’s a poorly worded reference to U.S. defense agreements with Taiwan. In any case, Trump’s comments fuel ongoing questions as to whether he really considers Russia an adversary—even if the country is providing Iran with help to attack U.S. troops and interests—and how much he actually prioritizes aiding Ukraine.

The Trump administration and its fellow Republicans are going nuts over a CNN report that the White House didn’t adequately plan for Iran closing the Strait of Hormuz.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth called the report “fundamentally unserious,” openly welcoming the day the news outlet gets taken over by conservative billionaire David Ellison.

“More fake news from CNN: reports that the Trump administration underestimated the Iran war’s impact on the Strait of Hormuz. Patently ridiculous, of course. For decades, Iran has threatened shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. This is always what they do, hold the strait hostage. CNN doesn’t think we thought of that,” Hegseth said at a press conference Friday.

Press secretary Karoline Leavitt called the story “100% FAKE NEWS” in a long post on X, claiming that “a goal of the Operation itself, to annihilate the terrorist Iranian regime’s navy, missiles, drone production infrastructure, and other threat capabilities is quite literally intended to deprive them of their ability to close the Strait.” This belies the fact that Iran took control of the strait days ago and that no ships have been able to cross it without its approval.

Republican Senator Tom Cotton, who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, said on X that “whoever leaked this lied,” regarding the idea that Trump did not plan for Iran to close the strait.

“CNN should do some fact-checking,” Cotton said. “The U.S. has planned for Iran to try and close the strait for decades.” It’s puzzling, though, how the report could be both a leak and a lie at the same time.

White House communications director Steven Cheung shared Cotton’s post, adding that “when [CNN reporter Zachary Cohen] is on the byline, you know it’s FAKE NEWS. His unnamed sources are former Obama and Biden people, Iranian Regime sympathizers, low-level Democrat staffers on the Hill, and liberal donors/activists.”

GOP Senator Tim Sheehy said, “It is categorically false that they did not plan for Iran closing the Strait of Hormuz. Lawmakers and national security officials have known for years that this was Iran’s plan once their backs were against the wall,” again ignoring the fact that the U.S. was unable to prevent the strait’s closure.

A CNN spokesperson Friday said the network stands by its reporting. It seems that the Trump administration is aghast at the criticism it is facing but refuses to acknowledge that the strait is closed right now with all oil exports from the region halted except for Iran’s. Attacking the media won’t change the facts on the ground or in the water.

A prison guard on duty during Jeffrey Epstein’s death has been asked to testify to the House Oversight Committee.

Tova Noel is scheduled to appear for a transcribed interview on March 26, as part of the panel’s ongoing investigation into the alleged sex trafficker.

Noel and Michael Thomas were the two federal prison guards on duty at the Metropolitan Correctional Facility in New York when Epstein was found dead in August 2019. They were previously charged with falsifying reports to conceal their failure to perform adequate checks on the alleged sex trafficker. Those charges were dismissed in 2022.

Noel’s summons could fan the flames of conspiracy theories that Epstein did not kill himself in his jail cell.

The Oversight Committee has heard closed-door testimony on Epstein from prominent people, including Bill and Hillary Clinton. The committee has also subpoenaed Attorney General Pam Bondi for a deposition on her handling of the Epstein investigation. If her track record of discussing Epstein is any indication, it won’t go well.