Republicans Plot Gutting Health Care to Pay for Trump’s Iran War

Republicans are eyeing massive cuts to health care spending in order to scrounge up $200 billion for Donald Trump’s reckless war in Iran.

Top Republicans are looking for ways to offset the massive price tag the Pentagon has requested in order to pass the additional funding for U.S. military operations in Iran through a budget reconciliation bill, Axios reported Monday.

House Budget Committee Chairman Jodey Arrington is looking to revive cost-sharing reductions, programs that can assist low-income Americans in paying high deductibles, that were passed as part of Trump’s behemoth budget bill in July.

The Congressional Budget Office previously estimated that funding these reductions would save the federal government $30 billion but would increase out-of-pocket premium costs and drive up the number of people without health insurance by 300,000 through 2034. Arrington is selling the move as “fraud prevention.”

The discussions over cuts are in the early stages, but are likely to face opposition from moderate Republicans, who won’t support health care spending cuts in an election year.

Arrington suggested that the budget reconciliation bill would target fraud across a range of means-tested programs that assist low-income families, Roll Call reported. He pointed to the earned income tax credit, a refundable tax credit that boosts the income of low-income, working parents who claim a child. Arrington claimed that one of the most popular tax credits “loses 30 cents on the dollar.”

“You’ve got low-income housing tax credits, for example, another sort of welfare program within the tax code that doesn’t prohibit illegals from siphoning money off that and jeopardizing the sustainability of that program,” he said.

The reconciliation effort should target “widespread fraud, there is a boatload of waste and fraud,” Arrington said in the House.

Republicans seemed content to make struggling Americans suffer in the service of Trump’s increasingly expensive vanity war that has no clear objectives.

The Trump administration used untested weapons in a strike in Iran that hit a school and sports hall on February 28.

The New York Times reports that the United States launched a newly designed ballistic missile at a school in the city of Lamerd on the first day of the war—the same day that the U.S. bombed a girls’ school in Minab, hundreds of miles away. The strike and others nearby in Lamerd killed 21 people, according to the Times, which cited Iranian media.

Times analysts concluded the strike involved a Precision Strike Missile, or PrSM, a short-range ballistic missile that detonates just above its target and blasts tungsten pellets outward. A local video from Lamerd showed one strike about 900 feet away from the sports hall with the weapon exploding in a midair fireball.

Another video captured from a security camera across from the school and sports hall shows the structure being hit, with an explosion directly above it. Photos from both sites after the strikes show dozens of tiny holes apparently made by the tungsten pellets. At the school and sports hall, footage shows scorch marks, a partially collapsed roof, blown-out windows, fire damage, and blood spatters.

The PrSM only completed prototype testing last year, an Army press release from July states, but had been untested in combat until the strikes. U.S. Central Command posted a video on March 1 capturing a PrSM strike from the first day of the war. The leader of CENTCOM, Admiral Brad Cooper, said days later that the PrSM was used in combat for the first time during the war, and another post from CENTCOM on March 4 touted the system.

It’s not clear whether the strike was deliberate. The school and sports hall are close to an IRGC military compound but have been walled off from the compound for at least 15 years. The sports hall is identified as a facility for civilians on public map platforms including Apple Maps, Wikimapia, and Google Maps. An Instagram account linked to the school shows children regularly using the site, and Iran’s representative to the United Nations Amir Saeid Iravani said the sports hall was being used by a women’s volleyball team at the time of the strike.

The strike occurred on the same day as a U.S. attack on a girls’ school in Minab, which killed 175 people, an apparent war crime. Using an untested weapon on an elementary school and sports hall, without clear knowledge of its effects, would seem to fit the bill of a war crime, as well. Does that matter to the Trump administration?

Donald Trump has finally come clean about his objective for Iran—and threatened to launch a series of war crimes if he doesn’t get what he wants.

“The United States of America is in serious discussions with A NEW, AND MORE REASONABLE, REGIME to end our Military Operations in Iran,” he wrote in a post on Truth Social Monday.

Perhaps the Trump administration has finally given up pushing its original war rationale, based on unsubstantiated claims that Iran had obtained the materials to make nuclear weapons. There’s just one problem: Last week, Trump claimed that regime change had already been achieved in Iran, and the White House doubled down in a similarly nonsensical fashion.

It wasn’t true. After Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed earlier this month, his son Mojtaba Khamenei, a hard-line cleric, was tapped to replace him. At the same time, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps has only further consolidated power.

Trump’s supposedly “serious discussion” for a new regime may be marred by his administration’s childish tactics: Just last week, they tried to start a rumor that the new ayatollah was a closeted gay man.

Trump claimed Monday that “great progress” had already been made, but if a deal did not materialize soon to open the Strait of Hormuz, the U.S. military would attack “all of their Electric Generating Plants, Oil Wells and Kharg Island (and possibly all desalinization plants!), which we have purposefully not yet ‘touched.’”

“This will be in retribution for our many soldiers, and others, that Iran has butchered and killed over the old Regime’s 47 year ‘Reign of Terror,’” the president added. Of course, extensive destruction not justified by a military necessity is a war crime. It wouldn’t be the first the U.S. military has committed in Trump’s reckless war.

Last week, the Pentagon ordered some 2,000 troops from the 82nd Airborne division to be dispatched to aid the war effort in the Middle East. The move has driven speculation that the U.S. military intends to seize Kharg Island, which handles 90 percent of Iran’s oil exports.

President Donald Trump and Indian Prime Minister Nahendra Modi had a phone call on Tuesday to discuss the war in Iran. For no apparent reason, they were joined by billionaire Elon Musk.

Musk—who is a private citizen with no present involvement in government—sat in on the discussion between the two heads of states, though it is unclear if he spoke, The New York Times reported Friday. The call was primarily to discuss Trump’s increasingly out-of-reach goal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

There is literally no rational justification for including the world’s richest man on a call between two national leaders during a global crisis.

Neither the White House nor the Indian government disclosed Musk’s presence on the call.

Several of the billionaire’s companies have been funded by state-owned investment entities in the Middle East, and global financial instability stemming from the war could possibly put those investments at risk. In February, Saudi Arabia’s intelligence company invested $3 million in Musk’s xAI. The company also received funding from Qatar and Abu Dhabi. Musk’s StarLink has signed deals with two of India’s biggest telecom companies, and he’s long sought to get a foothold for Tesla in the Indian markets.

Musk’s presence on Tuesday’s call likely indicates that he and the president are finally getting over their dramatic fallout this summer, sparked by a fight over Trump’s signature “big, beautiful bill.” During his stint as head of the Department of Government Efficiency before that, Musk fired thousands of federal workers, hijacked and dismantled major federal agencies, and waged war on the federal safety net.

It looks like the billionaire may be making his way back into government at the worst possible time.

A growing contingent of House Republicans is voicing opposition to Donald Trump potentially deploying ground troops to the Persian Gulf, Politico reported Friday.

As the deadline for Iran to respond to Trump’s 15-point peace plan approached Friday, the president was reportedly leaning toward ordering a ground operation in Iran. Some House Republicans urged the president to hold back.

Arizona Representative Eli Crane, a former Navy Seal who served five deployments, told Politico that members of Congress and supporters had grown “very concerned.”

“I’m really, really hopeful this doesn’t turn into a boots-on-the-ground situation,” he said. “My biggest concern this whole time is that this would turn into another long Middle Eastern war.

“Though I don’t want to try and take away any of the president’s ability to carry out this operation, I know a lot of our supporters and a lot of members of Congress are very concerned” about the possibility, he added.

“We lose 60 to 70 seats,” said another House Republican, who was granted anonymity by Politico, referring to November’s midterm elections.

Wisconsin Representative Derrick Van Orden, also a retired Navy Seal, said that he’d been “very clear” that he doesn’t support a ground operation in Iran, and believes Trump has “learned” from past presidents who’d been trapped in forever wars.

South Carolina Representative Nancy Mace said that she could break with Republicans to join the Democrat-led war powers measure next month.

“If we’re in this phase where there are troops on the ground, then we’re in a different phase of the conflict, which requires Congress’s input,” Mace said.

Earlier this week, the Pentagon ordered some 2,000 troops from the 82nd Airborne division, comprised of elite, rapid-response paratroopers, to be dispatched to aid the war effort in the Middle East, driving speculation that the U.S. military intends to seize Kharg Island, which handles 90 percent of Iran’s oil exports.

Independent journalist Ken Klippenstein pushed back on the panic that a ground invasion of Iran is imminent in a report Thursday, arguing that the 82nd Airborne wasn’t an ideal group to lead a ground invasion and that U.S. military forces weren’t aligned for a major operation.

Todd Lyons, the acting chief of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, has been hospitalized twice in the last seven months due to stress, Politico reported Friday.

Politico’s reporting is based on two current and two former sources within the Trump administration. The sources described one incident in which “Lyons became so distressed when ICE agents couldn’t locate a migrant on their target list after a ride along with top administration officials that one of his bodyguards took a portable defibrillator from a nearby government office to Lyons in case he needed medical intervention.” Lyons’s face became scarlet, and he began aggressively sweating, the sources said.

It’s hard to feel bad for Lyons when he continues to lead a department that terrorizes minorities on a daily basis, but the report does make it seem as if the White House heaps inordinate pressure onto him. Multiple sources told Politico that Stephen Miller frequently yells at Lyons during a daily 10 a.m. phone call for failing to meet the administration’s insanely high immigration quotas.

Other sources provided to Politico by the White House “disputed that Miller yells at Lyons directly, with one saying the deputy chief of staff is ‘passionate’ and another saying he asks ‘very pointed questions in a very assertive tone.’”

Lyons also responded to Politico in a statement declaring that his stress does not have to do with other Trump officials, while not addressing the two alleged hospitalizations. A NewsNation reporter later said Lyons had told her he had been hospitalized for “military deployment VA issues.”

White House deputy press secretary Abigail Jackson flipped out after the story was published. “Shame on Politico for publishing such inaccurate trash,” she wrote on X. “Todd Lyons is an American patriot who has worked tirelessly to undo Biden’s disastrous immigration policies.… Despite multiple on record denials and sources refuting their pathetic ‘reporting’ and [sic] *still* ran with this absurd article.”

But Jackson didn’t say which, if any, on-record denials failed to make it into the finished article. It’s possible Lyons is working too tirelessly, Abigail.

Senate Republicans appear to be fleeing Washington, D.C., for a two-week vacation without passing Donald Trump’s disastrous SAVE America Act.

In the early hours of Friday, Senate Republicans and Democrats finally approved legislation to fund the Department of Homeland Security—in part. The agreement did not include funding for ICE and Border Patrol, and omitted the SAVE America Act, Republicans’ legislation for a sweeping election overhaul.

The fight for the Senate’s funding bill is far from over, as the legislation heads to the House, but Senate Majority Leader John Thune was spotted speed-walking through the Ronald Reagan National Airport, ready for his two-week Easter vacation.

When asked by Fox News whether he thought that everything was “resolved,” Thune replied, “Well, we’ll see. We’ve made some temporary headway, but we’ve got a lot of work to do, still.”

Senator Marsha Blackburn was also seen walking through the airport, using an escort to shield herself from the cameras, TMZ reported.

Senator Ted Cruz, who is known for leaving town instead of doing his job, was also spotted flying away from his responsibilities.

House Speaker Mike Johnson wouldn’t say whether he’d keep the House in session over the weekend in order to pass the DHS funding agreement, Politico reported. It wasn’t clear that the Louisiana Republican intended to pass it at all, but he agreed to put forward a short-term stopgap bill to fund all of DHS instead, Axios reported. That would require the Senate to vote on the measure again.

When asked by Missouri Representative Anne Wagner whether the Senate had confirmed it would come back, Johnson said, “The Senate has gone dark and did not communicate with us.”

House Republicans slammed their colleagues in the Senate for not finishing the job.

“A bunch of cowards—they didn’t even take a recorded vote,” Representative Austin Scott said of the senators, who approved the funding through a voice vote in a nearly empty chamber at 2:30 a.m. “This is not a done deal.”

Some hard-line House Republicans are pushing to add the language for the SAVE America Act back into the bill before sending it back to the Senate—but by then, all they’ll receive are “Out of Office” notes.

President Donald Trump is supporting House Republicans’ uprising against a bill passed by the Senate Thursday night that would reopen the Department of Homeland Security, but exclude funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and part of Customs and Border Protection.

House Republicans were apparently blindsided by the Senate’s decision, and immediately rejected the legislation. They instead put forward a 60-day stopgap measure that includes money for ICE and CBP, which will have to be approved by the Senate.

House Speaker Mike Johnson said he spoke with Trump Friday afternoon, and the president “understands exactly” why they struck down the Senate-backed bill.

“This gambit that was done last night is a joke,” Johnson told reporters Friday. “I’m quite convinced that it can’t be that every Senate Republican read the language of this bill.”

“It is absolutely offensive to the people that we represent that the Senate would send over a bill that doesn’t fund Border Patrol and the core components of ICE,” added Representative Chip Roy.

The House Republicans’ meltdown comes as a partial government shutdown reaches its sixth week and chaos rages at airports across the country. More than 500 Transportation and Security Administration agents have quit, and a record 11.7 percent of the agency did not show up for work on Sunday.

The Senate-passed bill would have finally funded the TSA and put an end to the hours-long wait times at airports, which are now also filled with ICE agents arresting whomever they please.

Shortly after Trump backed the GOP rebellion, he ordered DHS to pay TSA agents immediately, though it’s unclear where exactly that money is being diverted from. “As President of the United States, I have determined that these circumstances constitute an emergency situation compromising the Nation’s security,” Trump wrote in his memo.

Invoking a national emergency to pay federal staff would be entirely unnecessary if House and Senate Republicans could just cooperate with each other.

President Donald Trump took nearly five minutes out of a Thursday Cabinet meeting to tell the country a rambling, completely made-up story about his beloved Sharpie pens.

In the middle of a discussion of the Trump administration’s plans to remodel the Kennedy Center, a possibly half-asleep Trump launched into a tangent about the Sharpie he was holding in his hand.

“This pen is an interesting example,” Trump declared. “This pen is very inexpensive, but it writes well. I like it.”

Trump then said that, after deciding he wanted a more official-looking Sharpie, he convinced the company to sell him personalized markers at $5 a pop. In his own words:

“I called the guy—I said, ‘I’d like to use your pen, but I can’t have a gray thing with a big S on it saying “Sharpie” as I’m signing a $1 trillion airplane contract to buy brand new fighter jets.’

“He said, ‘I’ll paint it black.… And I can even paint the White House on it, sir, if you like, in gold.’ Almost real gold. Not bad. ‘And I can even do your signature, sir.… You don’t have to pay me, sir. I’ll give them to you for nothing.’

“I said, ‘No, I don’t want that. Let me pay you. I want to pay you.’

“‘No, sir. You don’t have to. You’re the president of the United States.’ He was shocked. The head of Sharpie. He gets a call. I don’t even know who the hell he is.

“He said, ‘He’s really the president? … No, you don’t have to pay me, sir. This is such an honor.’ I said, ‘No, I want to pay you.’ And he said, ‘What would you like to pay?’ I said, ‘How about five bucks a pen?’ He said, ‘That’s all right.’”

In addition to this not actually being that much of a good deal—you can buy your own Sharpie with your name and custom art for less than $2 on the official retailer’s website—Sharpie company officials promptly told The Washington Post that Trump’s story was false.

“We don’t have any information about the conversation described,” a spokesperson for the marker company said.

It remains to be seen whether a reporter will confront Trump or White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt about this fib. In any case, we can mark it as one of the more harmless lies on top of the tens of thousands of insidious ones the president has told since taking office for the first time in 2016.

Attendees at the 2026 Conservative Political Action Conference seem to be dazed and confused after a disastrously chaotic month for President Donald Trump. In the last 30 days, he has started a war in the Middle East, deployed federal agents to airports, and refused to end the partial government shutdown.

While speaking from the CPAC stage Friday in Grapevine, Texas, American Conservative Union chairman Matt Schlapp asked a question he apparently thought would hype up the crowd.

“How many of you would like to see impeachment hearings?”

The crowd erupted in cheers.

“No,” Schlapp responded, shaking his head. “That was the wrong answer. Let me try it again. How many of you would like to see impeachment hearings?” he asked the crowd for a second time.

Again, he was met with cheers.

“NOOO!” Schlapp responded with a chuckle. He dropped the question and hastily moved on, seemingly accepting that Trump’s base apparently doesn’t know what impeachment means—despite the fact that the president has now been impeached twice.

Though they’re united by red MAGA caps and American flag attire, the crowd at CPAC appears to be uncharacteristically disengaged after Trump’s tumultuous first year back in office. Younger and older members are divided over the war in Iran, affordability is plummeting, and the Epstein files have raised suspicions across MAGA. One young attendee told CNN many of his fellow Trump supporters now “can’t stand the guy.” It’s a starkly different mood from last year’s conference, where many declared Trump’s election was the start of the golden years.

In a separate instance Thursday, the crowd again did not know when or how to cheer. In a conversation with White House border czar Tom Homan, CPAC host Melody Schlapp asked how Trump immigration policies compared to the “Biden years.”

Waiting for a reaction, Schlapp paused and turned her head to the crowd. She was met with silence.

“I’m not hearing a boo when I say Joe Biden, people! Come on! We do audience participation here!”