Not Even Republicans Buy Pete Hegseth’s Claim on Legality of Iran War

Some Republican lawmakers aren’t buying Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s excuse to skirt congressional authorization for Donald Trump’s war in Iran.

The War Powers Act Resolution of 1973 states that the president can deploy armed forces in a hostile environment for up to 60 days, but must withdraw if he does not then receive congressional approval for an extension.

As that deadline arrived Friday, Hegseth claimed that the clock on Trump’s 60 days had actually paused when a ceasefire was announced halfway through April. But Republican lawmakers aren’t convinced, The Wall Street Journal reported.

“It stopped from the ceasefire? Which ceasefire? Does the ceasefire still count if they don’t cease firing?” Indiana Senator Todd Young told the Journal Thursday. “I don’t know. Is there any legal precedent to this? I mean, these are the sorts of questions members would ask.”

The U.S. tested the boundaries of the ceasefire by installing a military blockade on Iranian ports, and even seizing an Iranian cargo ship. Meanwhile, Israel, America’s ally in its joint military operation, did not stop its intense strikes in Lebanon.

North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis questioned whether Hegseth understood the legal guardrails placed on his military campaign.

“I’ll let my legal experts tell me if they agree.… I felt like the War Powers Resolution says in 60 days you have to take some action,” Tillis told the Journal.

Missouri Senator Josh Hawley also pushed back on Hegseth’s casual delivery of the claim that congressional approval would apparently not be needed. “The right way to make that argument to Congress would be to put that in writing and send that up here to us,” he said.

Hawley said that if the White House did not officially request an extension, it would be up to Congress to debate legislation to authorize the war. “I don’t really want to do that, because I don’t want to open up further conflict. I want to wind it down,” he said.

Jeffrey Epstein’s 2019 death—ruled a suicide by a New York City coroner—has been pored over by conspiracy theorists. The financier was arrested for running a child sex-trafficking ring, and was friendly with many politicians and celebrities. His trial could have led to the arrest of an entire network of elites. And he was supposed to be in a high-security cell with guards nearby to prevent him from harming himself. How could this even happen?

Answers since then have been hard to come by, but on Thursday, another sliver of information was revealed: Epstein may have written a suicide note the previous month. The New York Times interviewed a cellmate of Epstein, Nicholas Tartaglione, who claimed he found a note after an incident in which Epstein was found unresponsive a few weeks before his actual death.

The note said it was “time to say goodbye,” Tartaglione said, and contained a line similar to, “What do you want me to do, bust out crying?” Tartaglione said it was written on a legal pad and found in the pages of a graphic novel.

Epstein survived this first incident, and in fact told jailers afterward he was not suicidal and the marks on his neck came from Tartaglione. Then he walked that accusation back, telling Bureau of Prisons investigators on July 31 he did “not have any issues” with his cellmate.

Epstein’s purported suicide note has not been reviewed by the public. The Times found that it was sealed by a federal judge during Tartaglione’s own criminal case. (Tartaglione has been charged with a life sentence for a quadruple homicide, and is appealing his conviction.)

On Thursday, the paper asked the judge to unseal the note. “Investigators scrutinizing Mr. Epstein’s high-profile death lacked what could have been a key piece of evidence,” the Times concluded.

A Department of Justice spokeswoman told the paper that the agency had not seen the note. It was also not mentioned in the DOJ’s investigations into Epstein’s death.

Information surrounding Epstein’s death continues to fuel a conspiratorial fire. Back in 2019, a 4chan user posted about his death before any media outlets had gotten word of it. In Donald Trump’s second term, the administration released an 11-hour surveillance video, which they claimed proved no one entered Epstein’s cell on the night he died. Reporters quickly found discrepancies in the footage.

The way the White House is operating, it seems that the United States doesn’t want allies.

Donald Trump told reporters in the Oval Office Thursday that he’s open to the idea of pulling troops from other allies Italy and Spain due to the European continent’s lacking support for his invasion of Iran and the subsequent blockade in the Strait of Hormuz. Trump already threatened Wednesday night to withdraw from Germany, and verbally attacked German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.

“You talked about possibly pulling some troops out of Germany. Would you be considering the same thing for Spain and Italy?” asked a reporter.

“Yeah, probably,” Trump said. “I probably will. I mean, look, why shouldn’t I?

“Italy has not been of any help to us, and Spain has been horrible,” he continued. “Absolutely horrible. As has NATO.

“It’s not even the fact that they’re better, it’s one thing if they said it nicely, or if they said, ‘OK, we’ll help but the help’s a little slow,’ but the level. And we helped them with Ukraine. You know they made a mess out of Ukraine, a total mess. Ukraine is nothing to do—we’re an ocean apart, it has to do with them,” Trump said, calling it “insane” that former President Joe Biden provided aid to the war-torn, Russian-invaded country.

“But uh, when we needed them they were not there. We have to remember that,” Trump continued. “And so if we ever have a big one, because we didn’t need any help with Iran. We had Iran right from the first day, it was over. It was over.”

That’s not true. The war with Iran is currently in its eighth week with no end in sight. The ramifications of the war, including the total blockade to Iran’s oil trade, have thrust the world into a global energy crisis that has raised the cost of living practically everywhere.

Furthermore, Trump has repeatedly asked for assistance from America’s European allies to help reopen the strait. Just yesterday, the Trump administration floated the possibility of building an international coalition in order to restore freedom of navigation along the critical waterway.

Within the same answer, Trump then claimed that he only asked for foreign participation in the effort to “see if they’d do it.”

“In all cases, they said, ‘We don’t want to get involved,’” he said.

Trump’s Wednesday announcement that he was considering pulling U.S. troops out of Germany stunned the Pentagon as much as it did U.S. allies.

The Defense Department “was not expecting it and has not been planning any kind of drawdown,” a congressional aide familiar with the situation told Politico. “But we have to take him seriously because he was serious about it during his first administration.”

In July 2020, Trump proposed pulling 12,000 troops out of Germany in order to punish Berlin for its low defense spending. That order was never implemented.

Republicans in Congress voted to fund the Department of Homeland Security Thursday, effectively ending the 76-day shutdown of the department.

The bill, passed by a voice vote in the House, is a win for Democrats, as it still includes no money for ICE or Border Patrol, and is now headed to President Trump’s desk to be signed into law. House Speaker Mike Johnson reportedly decided to finally support the bill after a private meeting with his fellow Republican leaders earlier in the day, where they agreed that the situation couldn’t continue.

The GOP will still try to fund ICE through the reconciliation process, which takes much longer but only requires a simple majority in both chambers of Congress. Previously, House Republicans had criticized their counterparts in the Senate for passing the measure with a voice vote, which doesn’t record individual members’ votes, only to adopt the same method on Thursday.

Conservatives were not happy with the decision, but didn’t see any good options. Representative Chip Roy said, “I think it’s asinine that we’re funding the government this way,” but Representative Clay Higgins said, “The speaker, I think, handled, under the circumstances, very well.”

DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin complained last week that the department was almost out of money and soon wouldn’t be able to pay its employees. Now, assuming Trump doesn’t veto the bill, employees will still be paid. But the question of ICE’s future is still unanswered, as Democrats want the agency reformed at a minimum, with some calling for its abolition, and Republicans seem to be fine with the violence it visits on American cities. For now, at least, ICE won’t get any more money.

Now that he’s no longer eligible for the office, Donald Trump—a 79-year-old who routinely falls asleep in critical meetings—believes it’s pertinent for all future presidential candidates to undergo a cognitive examination.

“Anybody running for President or Vice President should be forced to take a Cognitive Examination prior to entering the Race!” Trump posted on Truth Social Thursday afternoon. “By doing so, we wouldn’t be surprised at people like Barack ‘Hussein’ Obama, or Sleepy Joe Biden, getting ‘ELECTED.’ Our Country would be a much better place!”

Trump had demanded former Vice President Kamala Harris take a cognitive test while on the campaign trail in October 2024, and he has previously suggested Biden should have taken such a test before being allowed to take office.

“I took the Exam three times during my (‘THREE!’) Terms as President, and ACED IT ALL THREE TIMES—An Achievement that, even on a single Exam, according to the Doctors, has rarely been done before!” he added.

But Trump’s health isn’t actually that impressive—particularly as it relates to keeping his eyes open. Just last week, the president was caught falling asleep during another White House event, slumping over in his chair and fluttering his eyes for nearly a minute as his aides announced a new pharmaceutical deal.

Trump has an oddball history with reportedly “acing” cognitive exams. Since 2024, the self-styled “stable genius” has taken several such tests, but his recollections of their contents has called into question whether he actually took them at all.

While bragging about his results to the press, Trump would invariably tweak the questions he allegedly nailed, at times boasting that he had correctly recited five words and performed basic multiplication while at other times insisting that he had passed thanks to correctly identifying a whale. That is, in spite of the fact that the test’s authors reported that none of the three versions in circulation actually had a whale on them. Other test creators have said their exams are to check for dementia, not cognitive speed.

Since then, the MAGA leader’s health has become a much graver topic. Over the first year and change of his second term, Trump’s speeches have become more disjointed and incoherent, and his behavior has grown increasingly erratic. The 79-year-old has spent hours at Walter Reed Medical Center, fallen asleep during more than a dozen critical meetings, appeared lost and disoriented around foreign heads of state, frequently slurred his speech, and appeared with discolored and bruised skin on several occasions.

Just this month, Trump attacked several of his longest allies, pledged to annihilate Iranian civilization via a social media post, and started beef with Pope Leo XIV, claiming that the Catholic pontiff was “weak on crime.”

He also forgot when Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, and that one of his most fervent GOP critics—North Carolina Republican Thom Tillis—is still in the Senate.

His escalatory behavior, particularly as it relates to the Iran war, spurred new calls for the president to have his brain tested yet again, though White House physicians missed the April 25 deadline demanded by Representative Jaimie Raskin.

Elon Musk is not availing himself well in court.

The tech mogul and fascism enthusiast is suing Sam Altman and OpenAI, the organization he co-founded, for moving the nonprofit organization to a for-profit company. Musk took the stand three days this week in Oakland, and his testimony is not helping his cause.

Throughout his time on the stand, Musk didn’t answer yes or no to yes-or-no questions, claimed to forget his earlier testimony, and lost his temper at Altman’s counsel, William Savitt, accusing him of trying to trick him. Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, after the jury had left Wednesday, said that “[Musk] was at times difficult.”

On Thursday, things got so bad that the judge had to remind Musk that he isn’t a lawyer after he accused Savitt of asking “leading” questions.

“He can lead,” Rogers said, referring to the opposing counsel. “That’s not how it works. Let’s remind everyone in the courtroom that you’re not a lawyer.”

A day earlier, Musk appeared to undermine his entire case. During direct testimony, Musk’s lawyers tried to paint a positive picture of the executive. He said that “I don’t lose my temper,” and “I don’t yell at people,” adding that he may have once called someone a “jackass,” but only to say, “Don’t be a jackass.”

But Savitt easily demonstrated that this wasn’t true, as Musk openly lost his temper in the courtroom. He nitpicked simple questions and contradicted an earlier deposition. The opposing counsel was trying to make the case that Musk wasn’t suing over his desire to keep OpenAI nonprofit but because he wanted to control the company—and Musk made their case for them.

Defense presented an email Musk wrote in 2016 to a colleague at Neuralink, one of his companies, where he said, “Deepmind is moving very fast. I am concerned that OpenAI is not on a path to catch up. Setting it up as non-profit might, in hindsight, have been the wrong move. Sense of urgency is not as high.”

When asked about this on the witness stand, Musk said he was merely speculating. Savitt asked him, “Those are your words, yes or no?” Musk replied that “this is a hypothetical.”

“So you thought it might have been a wrong move? That’s what you said?” Savitt followed up. Musk finally admitted yes.

Savitt later caught Musk testifying that he didn’t read a 2017 document about OpenAI shifting to a for-profit company.

“I didn’t read the fine print. We’re going into the fine print of this document,” Musk claimed, saying he had only read the first section or paragraph.

“It’s a four-page document,” Savitt replied.

Savitt then referred to Musk’s deposition, where he said he didn’t even read one paragraph. “I don’t think I read this term sheet,” Musk had admitted. “I’m not sure I actually read this term sheet.… I did not closely look at this term sheet.”

This got Musk to raise his voice and contradict his earlier claim that he never lost his temper, shouting in the courtroom, “I said I didn’t look closely! I read the headline!”

All of this is more proof of Musk’s own ego being the real reason for his biggest problems, and shows how his time in the federal government also went badly. The case is not looking good for the world’s richest man.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ignored military officials when he gutted a Pentagon oversight office designed to limit the risk of civilian deaths in war. Then the U.S. killed thousands of Iranian civilians amid its war with Tehran.

The results of the war were apparently beyond explanation during a Senate Armed Service Committee hearing Thursday, when Hegseth stumbled trying to rationalize his decision to nix the critical department during a heated exchange with Senator Kirsten Gillibrand.

“Let’s talk about how you’re prosecuting the war. What is your response to targeting that has resulted in the destruction of schools, hospitals, civilian places? Why did you cut—by 90 percent—the division that’s supposed to help you not target civilians? And do you know the impact of a strategic failure in a war when you have so many civilian casualties?” pressed Gillibrand.

“You may have tactically completed a mission well, but strategically [it] is not meeting your goals because of the casualties,” the New York lawmaker stressed. “What is the cost of that?”

But Hegseth did not have an answer for her. Instead, he ducked the line of questioning entirely, opting to repeat a vague principle rather than address the fallout of his decisions.

“No military, no country, works harder at every echelon to ensure they protect civilian lives than the United States military,” Hegseth said. “And that is an ironclad commitment that we make, no matter what systems we use.”

“Well then why did you cut the department by 90 percent?” repeated Gillibrand before Mississippi Senator Roger Wicker—the committee’s Republican chairman—cut her off.

The war has killed at least 1,701 civilians in Iran, according to an analysis by the Human Rights Activists News Agency released last week. That figure is even higher in Lebanon, where Israeli strikes have killed more than 2,496 people, according to the Lebanese health ministry. The war has also claimed the lives of 13 U.S. service members throughout the region.

Meanwhile, the ongoing blockade of the Strait of Hormuz has caused a global energy crisis, choking off a critical tradeway for the Middle Eastern oil trade. In the U.S., the lagging oil and gas deliveries have caused transportation costs to surge, affecting virtually every commodity on the market. At the time of publication, the average cost for a gallon of gas was above $4.30, according to a AAA analysis. In some areas of California, such as San Francisco, Napa, and San Jose, gas was at least $6 per gallon.

The economic consequences have sparked concerns within the Republican Party—and in the White House—that the wildly unpopular war could bode poorly for conservatives and their majority in Washington come November.

President Donald Trump announced a new surgeon general nominee Thursday, and unsurprisingly, it appears to be someone that he’s seen make frequent appearances on Fox News.

In a post on Truth Social, the president announced that he had named Dr. Nicole B. Saphier to take the new post, calling her “a STAR physician who has spent her career guiding women facing breast cancer through their diagnosis and treatment while tirelessly advocating to increase early cancer detection and prevention, while at the same time working with men and women on all other forms of cancer diagnoses and treatments.”

Trump had previously nominated wellness influencer Casey Means as his surgeon general, but announced on Thursday that he was dropping her nomination because of opposition from Republican Senator Bill Cassidy, a doctor who questioned Means’s anti-vaccination stance and her lack of an active medical license.

“Despite Senator Cassidy’s intransigence and political games, Casey will continue to fight for MAHA on the many important Health issues facing our Country,” Trump said in a Truth Social post.

While Saphier is a radiologist, she’s not much better than Means. She has weighed in culture war issues on Fox, railing against movies with “woke ideologies” like Inside Out and Elemental, and engaging in bigotry by accusing Ms. Rachel and New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani of being antisemitic.  

Aside from that, her medical expertise has been colored by right-wing panic, complaining about “social bandwagons with the whole transgender ideologies” in February after the Rhode Island shooting. Her stance on vaccination is also troubling, as she has criticized mask and vaccine mandates and and praised Trump for allowing military servicemembers expelled for refusing the Covid-19 vaccine back into the service. She has locked her account on X, where she has likely made many more concerning statements. It seems that she is being chosen as the surgeon general because her ideas are in lockstep with the administration. 

This story has been updated.

As inflation hit 3.5 percent in March—its highest rate in three years—congressional Republicans are urging Americans to cover their eyes and ears.

The Commerce Department revealed Thursday that prices increased 3.5 percent since last year, thanks to surging gas prices amid the Iran war. Even if volatile energy and food prices are excluded, the inflation rate was still a shocking 3.2 percent.

Republican Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina suggested the public should live more in the future than the depressing present. “The fact of the matter is that all of the cylinders are kicking,” he told Fox Business. “You can even feel in our environment how good things are getting. Gas prices continue to come down, which means that your groceries will come down a little bit as well. We’ve got a lot of good signs in the economy.”

Representative Tim Burchett of Texas admitted that gas prices are rising, but claimed Republicans were innocent in the matter.

“It has to do with the greed of the oil companies,” he said. “We buy zero oil from Iran. 90 percent of their oil they sell to China. They’re just gouging us. I blame Congress.” (Burchett is a member of Congress, where Republicans hold a majority in both branches.)

He continued: “Quit telling me, ‘Oil is a commodity, Burchett, you don’t understand it.’ We don’t prop up every other commodity with billions of dollars in offsets and rebates and all this garbage.”

Does Burchett understand global markets, though? While oil companies do lobby Congress aggressively (they mostly lobby Republicans, who overwhelmingly support fossil fuels), the price of oil is up right now because the Strait of Hormuz is closed, making it harder to export. Burchett seemed to understand this point until fairly recently. In 2022, he went on Newsmax and loudly blamed the war in Ukraine and the Biden administration for high gas prices.

Steve Scalise of Louisiana chimed in during a CNBC interview, though he didn’t have his numbers quite right. Asked about inflation by host Joe Kernen, Scalise said: “You go back two years ago, we were paying almost $6 a gallon for gas. Right now it’s in the 3’s.… It’s still 50 [percent down].”

“When were we paying $6?” host Joe Kernen asked. Gas peaked at a monthly average of $4.93 a gallon under Biden in June 2022.

“Two and a half years ago,” Scalise said.

“That wasn’t the average price,” Kernen said.

“Today we are 30 percent below where we were two years ago,” Scalise retorted, reducing his estimate down 20 points from the figure he’d just used. “We are lowering inflation.”

“You must have been on vacation in California,” Kernan said. “Two years ago, in April 2024, we were at about $3.65. We are actually above where we were then.” (Correct.) Scalise subsequently generalized his claim to say gas prices “were well into the fives under Biden.”

Another Texas Republican, Brian Babin, told MeidasTouch prices have “come down dramatically” since Trump took office. “The president keeps his promises,” Babin said. Asked to grade Trump’s economic policies, he said, “He’s got a B average right now. He had an A, it went to a B, and it’s gonna go back to an A.” Most Americans would disagree with Babin’s assessment, but cut him some slack; his net worth is over $2 million, so he’s a little out of touch.

Inflation is at its highest level in three years thanks to President Trump.

Prices are up 3.5 percent compared to last year, the biggest year-to-year increase in three years, the Commerce Department said Thursday. Much of this is attributable to gas prices due to the war in Iran. But even with fuel and food subtracted, inflation is still up by 3.2 percent, above the Federal Reserve’s 2 percent target.

The rising prices outweigh the modest 0.6 percent gain in U.S. workers’ incomes, the department’s report said. Any tax refunds that Americans receive are also being blunted by higher gas and food prices.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said Wednesday that cuts to interest rates are unlikely to happen for months due to the war. In contrast, last year, the Fed cut rates three times. Usually, the central bank prefers to keep rates unchanged, or it raises them to combat inflation.

All of this doesn’t bode well for the party in power. Trump and the GOP campaigned in 2024 on lower prices and against high inflation, but thanks to a war of choice and the president’s whimsical tariffs, the economic gains created by President Biden have been wiped out. Many voters who thought otherwise are now starting to open their eyes, and Republicans’ only hope might be blatant attempts to choose their own voters.