The Pentagon Is Directing Companies to Censor Iran War Information

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.

Dumb comments from Lauren Boebert aren’t exactly rare, but her latest is a real doozy.

“You can’t make this stuff up!!” the Colorado representative wrote on X Monday. “ICE agents show up at airports, and suddenly TSA wait times in Minneapolis drop to less than five minutes! Called it!!”

She accompanied the post with a shaky 18-second clip of herself reiterating what she’d already written, with an additional dig at Democrats for creating “three-plus hour wait times” at other airports.

Of course, Democrats have put forward a grand total of eight bills to fund the Transportation Security Administration. All have been roundly rejected by Republicans and President Donald Trump because they don’t reinstate funding for the whole of the Department of Homeland Security, which includes ICE.

Republican Senator John Kennedy even admitted on Fox News Monday that Trump had nixed a plan that would fund TSA and not ICE.

But that wasn’t even the biggest gaffe of the tweet. That was the fact that there are currently no ICE agents working in the Minneapolis airport. Boebert was quickly hit with a community note that pointed this out.

“Apparently you can ‘make this stuff up!!’” one user wrote.

Wait times are indeed less than five minutes at the airport, speaking to the dedication of the unpaid TSA workers in Minneapolis.

Republican Senator John Kennedy is blaming President Trump for blocking legislation that would have paid Transportation Service Administration agents and ended the present air travel nightmare lines.

“Senator Cruz and I came up with a plan.… The Democrats have offered to open up everything but ICE,” Kennedy told Fox News on Monday, referring to the partial shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security, which includes ICE and TSA. “Ted and I said, ‘OK, let’s accept their offer.’ And then at the same time, we would offer a bill for reconciliation where we don’t need any Democratic votes to do whatever we wanted to do with ICE. And that way we’re out of the shutdown and DHS is back open.

“Senator Thune submitted that to President Trump, as is his right. He said no. No deals with the Democrats,” Kennedy continued. “It would’ve worked. We could’ve had TSA paid by the end of the week. But the president said no deal.”

The next day, Kennedy went back on Fox News and claimed that Trump had “reconsidered and may be on board. I don’t know for certain.”

Kennedy’s statements shatter any and all GOP arguments that Democrats are somehow at fault for this partial shutdown. He plainly admitted that this could have all been wrapped up before the weekend, but Trump himself struck it down. All the lines, the chaos, the delays, and the empty pockets are on the president.

“It turns out that if you control the House, Senate, and presidency and are the ones deciding if you reopen the government, it really is your shutdown to own!” Fox News’s liberal host Jessica Tarlov said Tuesday on X.

Trump has yet to comment on where he stands now.

Donald Trump is about to spend billions of taxpayer dollars to make Elon Musk’s fantasies a reality.

Speaking on Fox News Tuesday, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman formally announced that the agency was planning to go back to the moon. “But this time, when we go back, we’re gonna go back to stay,” he said. “We’re going to build President Trump’s moon base.”

At NASA’s “Ignition” event on Tuesday, Isaacman outlined the agency’s multistage plan to enact Trump’s lofty space policy. In an executive order signed in December, Trump demanded astronauts return to the moon by 2028 and establish a lunar outpost by 2030 in order to “enable the next steps in Mars exploration.”

“The moon base will not appear overnight,” Isaacman said. “We will invest approximately $20 billion over the next seven years and build it through dozens of missions.”

Isaacman, a billionaire private astronaut, is a close ally of Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX who served a short stint at the White House in the hopes of manifesting his science fiction pipe dreams, which included colonizing Mars.

Isaacman was originally nominated to serve as NASA’s administrator last year, but his nomination was withdrawn amid internal MAGA beef that saw Musk tossed from the White House. Isaacman’s nomination was revived in November, just two weeks after interim NASA administrator Sean Duffy suggested he’d invite other companies to compete with Musk’s SpaceX for contracts to build a lunar lander.

Speaking to hundreds of representatives from commercial aerospace companies, Isaacman put out a call for proposals to supplant the NASA-run Space Launch System rocket as well as Orion, the capsule astronauts use to fly to the moon. NASA is hoping to contract at least two companies for that task, according to The New York Times.

While NASA gears up to spend billions of dollars on a program that will not improve the lives of most Americans, the Trump administration has slashed the budgets of essential federal programs and uprooted health care subsidies.

The president’s newly confirmed Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has “no problem” with physically punishing his children, according to a newly resurfaced video.

“I’ll tell you right now, I do spank, I have no problem with that,” the Oklahoma senator said in a 2023 speech to the City Elders, a group dedicated to “governing the gates of every city in America to establish the kingdom of God.”

Mullin is the father of six children, including two twin girls, whom he described as unimaginably “loving” even after they were spanked.

“I can spank them and I’m still upset and they’ll come and crawl on my lap two minutes later and just hug on me,” he went on, before diving into a disturbing story about one of his daughters pleading for mercy before he hit her.

“‘No, Daddy. No, Daddy. No, Daddy! No! I’m sorry, Daddy, I’m sorry, Dad,’” Mullin told the crowd, animatedly imitating his child. “She’d just get madder and madder and she just couldn’t bring herself to even bend over for me to bust her butt.”

In the same address, the diehard MAGA loyalist and former MMA fighter also recounted threatening to hit his daughter’s boyfriend if he kissed her, and reminisced fondly about his own childhood beatings.

“If I ever see you kiss her in front of me, I’m dragging your face across the asphalt,” Mullins reportedly told the teenager, whom he said was a “good kid.”

“I was raised by the fear of a belt,” Mullin said of his own father’s discipline tactics, which he claimed taught him respect and discipline. “We got to discipline people. That doesn’t mean you gotta discipline with hatred, you can discipline with love.”

Mullin was nominated earlier this month after former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem was fired from her position. He was confirmed as Homeland Security Secretary on Monday.

Along with his promotion of childhood abuse, the man who will be in charge of leading Trump’s volatile immigration crackdown has also tried to physically fight a union leader, covered Trump from Epstein files scrutiny, and mistaken Pete Hegseth as the president of the United States—twice.

Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, Prince Mohammed bin Salman, is reportedly pressuring President Donald Trump to intensify his unpopular and unauthorized war in Iran.

Multiple sources who were briefed on the conversations told The New York Times that the prince sees the conflict as a “historic opportunity” to reshape the Middle East.

“Prince Mohammed has argued that the United States should consider putting troops in Iran to seize energy infrastructure and force the government out of power,” the Times reported. Saudi officials deny the claim that the prince wants the war to continue.

Trump has shown all 79 years of age in his comments about the war. He has claimed he can end things pretty much whenever, that the U.S. needs NATO allies to help, that we actually don’t need NATO at all, and that we have already won the war. On Monday, Iran flatly denied Trump’s claims that the two countries had held “productive conversations regarding a complete and total resolution of our hostilities.” In short, the president is waffling at a level that would make IHOP proud.

And now MBS is in Trump’s ear, reportedly telling him to escalate. Saudi Arabia sees even a debilitated Iran as a “a grave and direct security threat,” according to the Times. If Trump pulls out without completely destroying Iran’s government and military, the Saudis worry that Iran will retaliate against them.

The Saudis specifically fear strikes on their oil infrastructure. Iran has already struck Saudi refineries and siphoned off the Strait of Hormuz, crippling the global oil market.

The prince has a lot of influence over Trump, having already convinced him to announce the U.S. would take action in Sudan in 2025. But the Iran war is a different matter. The conflict is unpopular and confusing to Americans, and Trump is facing increasing pressure from his base to end things.

Oil traders wagered bets worth $580 million just minutes before Trump announced he had “productive conversations” with Iran to end the war, suggesting that the president’s announcement was nothing more than a ploy to manipulate markets.

Fifteen minutes before the president’s unexpected announcement at 7:04 a.m. Monday, about 6,200 Brent and West Texas Intermediate Futures contracts changed hands, the Financial Times reported Tuesday. Trading volumes for the two benchmarks skyrocketed at the same time, and the S&P 500 share went up shortly after the trade.

“The well-timed trades echoed the flurry of large highly profitable bets made on prediction market Polymarket on the timing of the US’s attacks in recent months on Iran and Venezuela,” the Financial Times wrote.

After pledging Saturday to destroy Iran’s power stations and energy infrastructure unless Tehran reopened the Strait of Hormuz, the president swiftly changed course and announced Monday he would postpone all U.S. strikes on such infrastructure for five days, following “very good and productive conversations” between the two countries.

“BASED ON THE TENOR AND TONE OF THESE IN DEPTH, DETAILED, AND CONSTRUCTIVE CONVERSATIONS, WHICH WILL CONTINUE THROUGHOUT THE WEEK, I HAVE INSTRUCTED THE DEPARTMENT OF WAR TO POSTPONE ANY AND ALL MILITARY STRIKES AGAINST IRANIAN POWER PLANTS AND ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURE FOR A FIVE DAY PERIOD, SUBJECT TO THE SUCCESS OF THE ONGOING MEETINGS AND DISCUSSIONS,” he wrote on Truth Social.

Tehran denied Trump’s claim, however, stating there had been “no direct contact with Trump,” since the U.S. began bombing Iran almost a month ago, raising serious concerns that the president is saying whatever he wants to prevent gas prices from going up amidst soaring costs nationwide.

Trump’s announcement came just hours before U.S. stock markets opened, and the supposed pause is due to last until the end of the energy sector trading week. The president’s decision caused skyrocketing oil prices to dip almost immediately, though they have risen since then.

The president’s seemingly fake talks with Iran and the newly revealed market chaos likely means his goal of reopening the Strait of Hormuz is—and always has been—out of reach.

An oil executive accused of being a “Never Trump” Republican will be filling Markwayne Mullin’s Senate seat in Oklahoma.

On Tuesday, Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt announced that Alan Armstrong, executive chairman of the board of natural gas pipeline firm Williams Companies, will replace Mullin as the latter assumes his position as secretary of homeland security.

Armstrong has been called a “Never Trump” Republican by those on the far right, mostly due to his large donation to the campaign of former GOP Representative Adam Kinzinger following the January 6, 2021 Capitol insurrection. Kinzinger had criticized President Trump over his lies about the 2020 election being stolen and served on the House January 6 investigative committee with fellow Trump nemesis Liz Cheney. Later, Kinzinger endorsed Joe Biden for president in 2024.

“Has anyone told President Trump that the Governor of Oklahoma is bringing a Never Trumper who donated to a rabid anti-Trump Congressman who voted to impeach him after J6 to meet with him?” right-wing talking head Laura Loomer posted Sunday on X. “Hey @SenMullin what do you think about your Never Trump replacement? Now would be a good time for you to speak up!”

Armstrong is expected to be sworn in Tuesday afternoon.

This story has been updated.

With betting apps—sorry, “prediction markets”—like Kalshi and Polymarket, it’s easier than ever to profit off of deadly conflicts.

An anonymous user made nearly $1 million on Polymarket with dozens of eerily accurate bets about the ongoing Iran war, CNN reported on Tuesday.

The user bet with 93 percent accuracy on topics such as when U.S. and Israeli airstrikes would occur in 2024, 2025, and 2026.

This is not the first time that people who appear to have inside information have used sites like Polymarket to profit from violent acts.

A few days before the U.S. kidnapped Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in a raid, a user created a Polymarket account and wagered tens of thousands of dollars that Maduro would be in U.S. custody by the end of the month. They won more than $400,000.

Gambling, once tightly regulated in the U.S., has become easier to access than ever with the rise of betting apps. It has rapidly invaded sports, politics, and culture. Even CNN, which broke the Polymarket story, has a deal with rival group Kalshi to use its data in its news coverage.

Both Kalshi and Polymarket ostensibly ban insider trading, but with anonymous accounts and plausible deniability, the apps make it easy for those in the know to profit.

Sometimes the sites will even let slip that they’re fine with the practice. In November, Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan told Axios it was “super cool” that his app “creates this financial incentive for people to go and divulge the information to the market.”

While some lawmakers and government watchdogs are looking to regulate the addictive, often unethical apps, Kalshi and Polymarket have an advocate in the president, a former casino owner. The Trump administration closed active investigations into the sites at the start of Trump’s second term, and Donald Trump Jr. has been hired as a board member of Polymarket and a “strategic adviser” of Kalshi. The war profiteering will continue until further notice.