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More US Troops Headed to Middle East – The Monday AM Quickie 3/16/26

By Corey Pein —

It's a good thing I'm not a member of the Academy, because I honestly don't know which Best Picture nominee I'd have voted for. As an author, I guess I'm glad "One Battle After Another" won, for a purely selfish reason. Being based on a book, it keeps hope alive for that Hollywood payday. - Corey

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THE BIG NEWS

War on Iran: Trump Again Rejects Negotiations 

  • Entering Third Week of War, Trump Has No Idea What to Do; 2,500 More Marines Deployed to Middle East "'Starting wars is an easy matter,' Ali Larijani, secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, wrote on social media. "Ending them does not happen with a few tweets.'" via the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, the Associated Press, and the Wall Street Journal.
  • Big Oil CEOs Warn Regime Leaders That Historic Oil Shock Will Get Even Worse Energy Secretary Chris Wright, who was in the meetings with oil executives, claims the war will "likely" end after "a few more weeks." via the Wall Street Journal and NBC News.
  • Desperate Trump Begs Other Countries Send Warships to Help Reopen the Straight of Hormuz "I don’t think China's going to send warships to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, but it doesn’t need to, because Iranian oil is flowing to China quite nicely," the Stimson Center's Barbara Slavin says. "Iran is only blocking the oil shipments from countries that are affiliated with the United States and Israel." via the AP, Al Jazeera, the Wall Street Journal, and the Financial Times.
  • Iran Says Russia and China Are Providing Close 'Military Cooperation' Trump shrugged off Aspiring Tsar Vladimir Putin's support for Iran's defense, saying, "I guess, and he probably thinks we're helping Ukraine, right?" via Politico, NBC News, and the AP.
  • Regime Censor Brendan Carr Threatens Broadcast Networks Over War Coverage "The is the federal government telling news stations to provide favorable coverage of the war or their licenses will be pulled," Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy responds to the FCC chair's threat. "We aren't on the verge of a totalitarian takeover. WE ARE IN THE MIDDLE OF IT. Act like it." via the Washington Post and the Guardian.
  • Trump's Lead Middle East Negotiator, His Son-in-Law Jared Kushner, Hopes to Raise $5 Billion from Regional Governments Kushner, a supposed "peace envoy," was running US talks with Iran in Geneva while persuading his father-in-law to make war. via the New York Times, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, and Reuters.
  • Pakistan's War with Afghanistan Enters Deadliest Phase Yet Since Feb. 26, Pakistani airstrikes have "hit residential areas, civilian infrastructure and over 20 health care facilities, killing at least 75 civilians and displacing 115,000 others, according to the United Nations." via the New York Times, the AP, and the Guardian.
  • Democratic Sen. Cory Booker Says Both Parties 'Have Been Feckless' for Letting Trump Wage Illegal Wars "At this magnitude, at this cost, why is Congress just laying down and doing nothing?" the New Jersey senator told CNN yesterday. "Because, if we allow this to happen, then we give Trump the permission to say, 'OK, finished with Venezuela, I went to Iran, now I'm going to go to Cuba, now I'm going to go to North Korea.'" via the Guardian, NBC News, Politico, and HuffPost.

AIPAC and Big Tech Money Flood Illinois Democratic Primary

Tomorrow is voting day in Illinois' Ninth Congressional District, possibly the hottest Democratic primary race in the country. There's a crowded field of 15 candidates to replacing retiring progressive Rep. Jan Schakowsky of Evanston, and tens of millions of dollars of outside money is pouring in, per the Chicago Tribune, much of it from "pro-Israel, pro-artificial intelligence development, pro-cryptocurrency and pro-cloud data center interests."

A top target of attack ads is 26-year-old Palestinian American leftist candidate Kat Abughazaleh, who tells the New York Times that the pro-Israel group AIPAC is attempting to split the progressive vote to keep her from winning. Case in point: a 30-second ad by an AIPAC-linked super PAC boosting a long-shot candidate, Bushra Amiwala, as the "real deal"; Amiwala says she was "disgusted" to be exploited by the ad, which she wants pulled off the air. Stay tuned.

DHS Nominee Markwayne Mullin Cashed in on Venezuela Attack

Last week I told you about how Markwayne Mullin likely violated federal law by supplying firearms to an employee who was a convicted felon. Now the New York Times has another damning story about the Oklahoma Republican senator, who is Donald Trump's nominee to replace Kristi Noem as Secretary of Homeland Security. Five days before the US military attacked Venezuela on Trump's orders, Mullin bought shares in Chevron, the only major US oil company producing in the country. Following the US abduction of President Nicolás Maduro, the Venezuelan government offered more favorable terms to American fossil fuels companies.

Such inside-track investments have "ballooned" Mullin's wealth by tens of millions of dollars since he joined Congress in 2012. So he's a great fit for the corrupt Trump regime.

QUICKEST QUICKIES

  • Eight Armed Anti-ICE Protesters Convicted of Terrorism Charges in Texas "'A case like this helps the government see how far they can go in criminalizing constitutionally protected protests and also helps them intimidate, increase the fear, hoping that folks in other cities then will think twice over protesting,' said Suzanne Adely, interim president of the National Lawyers Guild, a progressive legal group." via The Intercept and Politico.
  • 'Burn It All Down!': Cuba Protesters Attack Communist Party Office Amid US Energy Blockade Donald Trump's tightened US fuel embargo has triggered "ever-longer blackouts [that] have paralyzed neighborhoods nationwide, bringing services like food distribution and garbage collection to a halt." via Reuters, the New York Times, and the Associated Press.
  • Trump Wants to Remodel the Main Entrance to the White House to Look More Like His Properties Rodney Mims Cook Jr., appointed by Trump as chair of the Commission of Fine Arts, wants to replace the North Portico's understated Ionic columns with decorative Corinthian columns, "which graced one of his childhood homes and stretched floor-to-ceiling in his Trump Tower apartment in New York." via the Washington Post.
  • Fearing GOP Wipeout in Midterms, Regime Stops Boasting About Mass Deportations Meanwhile in El Salvador, many migrants deported to the CECOT torture prison marked one year in captivity. via Politico, the Washington Post, and the AP.      

SOME NUMBER

$450

That's the cost of renouncing United States citizenship effective April 13, the New York Times reports. The price was reduced from $2,350 following legal challenges by the Association of Accidental Americans, a Paris-based group of people who were born in the US but raised abroad, and subject to US taxation despite never residing there.

ON THE SHOW TODAY

3/16: Sam and Emma will be in studio; the guest will David Dayen, executive editor of The American Prospect and co-host of the Organized Money podcast, discussing his piece on a Hawaii senator who attacked a bipartisan housing bill solely to support private equity.

DON'T MISS MR CLIPS‌

DOGE Bro's Humiliating Deposition Is MUST SEE

The judge ordered the original videos taken down from YouTube to protect the boys' fee-fees.

Trump Buys His Cabinet Shoes, And It Goes Horrendously Awry

The suspiciously shod Ron DeSantis must be like "who's laughing now?!"

PARTING WORDS

"He's really emboldened. He's got this pardon, you know, and it's like, he's feeling great."

-- Freelance journalist Amanda Moore, speaking to the Washington Post about Bryan Betancur, a "self-professed white supremacist" and convicted Jan. 6 insurrectionist who was pardoned by Donald Trump. On Friday, a judge banned him from the Washington, DC Metro for filming himself touching women's hair. Moore says she felt threatened by Betancur, whom the FBI says aspires to be a "lone wolf" mass shooter, ever since a run-in at a protest two years ago in Texas. After he was fitted with an ankle monitor on Friday, Betancur raised his fist and proclaimed "I am innocent" and "feminism is a cancer."

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