War Rations

Plus: Pete Hegseth spends millions on lobster tail and rib-eye steak, oil prices go for another roller-coaster ride, no inflation increase, and more...

Warrior EAThos. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth spent tens of millions of dollars on lobster and steak dinners, among other frivolous and questionable purchases, during his first year in the Trump administration.

Hegseth approved $6.9 million of lobster tail purchases in September 2025, according to a report released Tuesday by Open The Books, a nonprofit that tracks government spending. He also approved over $7 million in lobster tail purchases in four other months during 2025.

The September spending spree included over $15 million on rib-eye steaks, $5.3 million for new Apple devices, and a $98,000 piano for the Air Force chief of staff's home. The Pentagon also spent $1,800 on a single chair from luxury furniture maker Herman Miller and $12,540 on new fruit basket stands.

A "surf and turf" meal is something of a joke in the military, where being served steak and lobster is seen as a morale-boosting effort often saved for the evening before bad news is delivered: A deployment, the assignment of a dangerous mission, and so on. But I've never heard of any military tradition that requires the purchase of fancy furniture and new pianos.

$5 billion in five days. A lot of questionable spending tends to happen in September, the last month of the federal government's fiscal year.

"However, there has never been anything quite like September 2025, when $93.4 billion was spent [by the Pentagon] on grants and contracts," Open The Books reports. That's the largest amount spent in a single month by a single federal department since at least 2008, when the group launched. "In the last five working days of September alone, the DoD spent $50.1 billion on grants and contracts. That's more than the annual defense budget of countries like Israel and Italy. In fact, there are only nine foreign countries that spend that much on their military in an entire year!"

That would be a shocking amount of spending under any circumstances, but it seems particularly noteworthy now that the Trump administration has launched a new war that's costing taxpayers billions of dollars every day.

Remember when they told you the war was costing $1 billion a day? Turns out it was $3 billion a day just for the munitions. Oops. https://t.co/Q9SYmS4QwA

— Jennifer Kavanagh (@jekavanagh) March 10, 2026

The cost of the war won't be coming out of other parts of the Pentagon's budget, however. On Tuesday, House Appropriations Committee Chairman Tom Cole (R–Okla.) told Politico that Congress does not need to find spending cuts to offset the cost of the Iran war.

"I think war is never paid for when you fight it, it's paid for over time," Cole said. "We didn't pay for World War II or Korea or World War I for that matter. I mean, so I don't think it should be offset."

Sure, you'll pay more at the Shell station so you can drive to work to earn money that will be taxed to pay for the war. You'll also feel the pinch from the inflation that results from putting another Middle East war on the national credit card. But asking Hegseth to cut back on his lobster budget? Well, that's just unfair.

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"Fog machine of war." Energy Secretary Chris Wright announced Tuesday afternoon that the U.S. Navy had "successfully escorted an oil tanker through the Strait of Hormuz to ensure oil remains flowing to global markets."

That would have been, as the meme goes, big if true. Oil prices fell sharply after Wright's announcement. Stocks rose. Hope had a moment. "During a roughly 10-minute span when Wright's post appeared, an exchange-traded fund linked to oil futures saw $84 million of its market capitalization evaporate," The Wall Street Journal reported.

It was not to last. Wright's post was quickly deleted, and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt clarified to reporters that no such escort had occurred.

JFC.

There's the fog of war, and then there's, like, the fog machine of war—the govt just throwing out nonsense, immediately contradicting it, making big claims, deleting them within minutes … pic.twitter.com/CoTgeMif6X

— Derek Thompson (@DKThomp) March 10, 2026

 

As Reason's Elizabeth Nolan Brown put it in this newsletter on Tuesday, the White House seems more interested in projecting "macho insouciance" than actually providing accurate information about the war's goals, tradeoffs, consequences, or developments.

Another example from Tuesday: Press secretary Leavitt was confronted with Trump's bizarre claim that Iran might have somehow used a Tomahawk missile to strike an Iranian school. Leavitt dismissed Trump's view as an "opinion" and accused the reporter—who was, you will note, asking this question at a press conference—of harassing the White House.

Reporter on school bombing: "Why did Trump say yesterday that Iran may have tomahawks when there are only three US allies, plus the US, that have those missiles?"

Leavitt: "The president has a right to share his opinions… we're not going to be harassed by the New York Times." pic.twitter.com/f6sYF9Wtpu

— The American Conservative (@amconmag) March 10, 2026

The recurring and inescapable conclusion here is that the Trump administration is misleading the American people about the war with Iran. Sometimes it is doing so deliberately. Other times, it is doing so because officials—up to and including the literal commander-in-chief—are seemingly making things up as they go along.

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No inflation increase. Prices increased by 2.4 percent during the 12 months ending in February, the Labor Department reported on Wednesday morning. That's the same rate that was recorded through the end of January.

On a monthly basis, prices increased by 0.3 percent during February, though food and energy prices both increased faster than the overall rate.

JUST IN: A cool February inflation reading. Inflation remained at 2.4% (y/y) in February, the same as January. This reading was before the war in Iran began, so gas prices were still below $3 average.

-->Note that some items had larger than normal increases in February including… pic.twitter.com/Z24NaBb96Y

— Heather Long (@byHeatherLong) March 11, 2026

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Scenes from the legislative branch (yes, it exists): Democratic senators exiting a classified intelligence briefing on Tuesday warned that the Trump administration is getting closer to putting boots on the ground in Iran—and worried about the possibility of direct conflict between the U.S. and Russia as the war escalates.

BREAKING — ???????????????? U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal after leaving an intelligence briefing:

"In my 15 years in the Senate, I have never left a briefing this angry. We are heading down a path toward sending U.S. troops to Iran as ground forces." pic.twitter.com/llSvOHCKMB

— UK Report (@UK_REPT) March 10, 2026

Gosh, if only there were an assembly of elected representatives who had constitutional power over sending American troops into war.

Instead, Democrats are "piling pressure" on Trump to release oil from America's strategic national reserve to ease prices at the pump. You know what might be a better way to solve that problem? Putting pressure on Trump to end the war!

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QUICK HITS

• Hospices in L.A. overbilled Medicare by an estimated $105 million in a single year, and a new CBS News investigation found that over 700 hospices in Los Angeles County have "multiple red flags for fraud." Yikes.
• A new Federal Reserve report finds that "consumers are in fact paying higher retail prices because of tariffs." This is my shocked face. Add it to the pile.
• The Department of Homeland Security reportedly removed career Customs and Border Protection officials who objected to efforts to hide surveillance programs from Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.
• It's a day that ends in y, so farmers are asking Congress for another bailout.
• Can you tell the difference between human-written text and AI creations?
• On the same day that lawmakers in Washington state approved a "millionaire tax," Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz announced that he's moving to Miami from Seattle. Someday politicians will learn that capital is mobile, but it is not this day.