Trump Goes to War
Plus: Donald Trump vs. Thomas Massie, Republicans preparing to kill the filibuster for a very dumb reason, explosions in the Strait of Hormuz, and more...
Priorities. Amid a war of choice in the Middle East that has killed seven Americans and hundreds of Iranian civilians (including dozens of schoolchildren), induced chaos in the global oil market, and cost taxpayers more than $11 billion already, President Donald Trump on Wednesday night turned his attention to the most critical threat facing America: Rep. Thomas Massie (R–Ky.).
Trump flew all the way to Kentucky to stump for Ed Gallrein, the presidentially approved primary challenger seeking to unseat Massie in the May 19 election.
"We gotta get rid of this loser," Trump told the crowd. "He's disloyal to the Republican Party. He's disloyal to the people of Kentucky, and most importantly, he's disloyal to the United States of America."
That's a lot of nonsense. In reality, Massie's great crime against MAGA-dom is his commitment to constitutional principles and his expectation that Trump should follow through on his own campaign promises.
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For example, Massie pushed for a congressional vote on the war with Iran (his effort was defeated), and has led the effort to release files related to the Jeffrey Epstein investigation. You wouldn't think that would cause a rift between him and the man who ran for president by promising "no new wars" and vowing to get to the bottom of the Epstein mess.
The price of gas has gone up $0.47 and the price of diesel has gone up $0.83 in 10 days due to War with Iran.
and waging war costs American taxpayers about $1 billion per day,
which comes out to $10 per family per day, or $100 since the war began.
This isn't America First.
— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) March 8, 2026
Massie also angered Trump for voting against the package of tax cuts that Congress passed last year. Massie objected to the fact that the bill would add trillions to the national debt, contradicting another of Trump's campaign trail promises.
When Trump talks about "loyalty," he exclusively means the personal variety. Trump likes elected officials who are flatterers—even if they are literal socialists, because ideology and principle matter little. Massie's unwillingness to kiss the ring clearly irks the president, and it also makes him one of the few interesting characters in Congress these days.
Ultimately, Wednesday's rally said a lot more about Trump's shortcomings as a person and a politician than Massie's.
And as for Gallrein…maybe Trump can teach him a thing or two about lobbing insults? Yikes.
Ed Gallrein, the man President Trump has endorsed to unseat Thomas Massie:
"I hope the fake news gets this. Tom Massie stands with the ladies of The View. Mr. President we stand with you. Fight! Fight! Fight!" pic.twitter.com/bciZJlSFJu
— The American Conservative (@amconmag) March 12, 2026
SAVE the filibuster. Speaking of Republicans who do whatever Trump says…Sen. John Cornyn (R–Texas) now supports killing the legislative filibuster after years of defending it.
In an op-ed published in the New York Post on Wednesday, Cornyn argued that passing the "SAVE America Act," which would require providing proof of citizenship and photo ID to vote, is more important than the filibuster. Cornyn is facing a primary challenge from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who also supports killing the filibuster to pass the bill.
The whole effort is the culmination of a long-running conservative political panic over illegal immigrant voting—and further stoked by Trump's repeated claims about stolen elections. But noncitizens are already forbidden from voting, illegal voting is very rare, as is voter fraud of any kind. This would be a very silly and bad reason to demolish the most effective congressional bulwark against the passage of bad legislation.
And Cornyn knows it! Here's what he said about the filibuster in 2022, when Democrats and President Joe Biden were trying to pass their own elections bill:
"Power is fleeting, and at some point the shoe will always be on the other foot," Cornyn said in January 2022. "Liberal activists may like the idea of nuking the filibuster today, but they'll soon find themselves ruing the day their party broke the Senate."
Meanwhile, in Iran…There were two major developments in the Iran War over the past 24 hours.
First, the U.S. military completed a preliminary investigation and blamed "outdated data" for a February 28 strike on an Iranian school that the Iranian government says killed 175 civilians, mostly children.
Asked about the strike earlier this week, Trump claimed that Iran may have hit the school…with a Tomahawk missile…which Iran does not possess. Asked again about the incident on Wednesday after the investigation was reported, Trump said, "I don't know about that."
Trump lied to your face after he killed a bunch of little girls. https://t.co/hHYrT3i0xG
— Dave Smith (@ComicDaveSmith) March 11, 2026
Second, several ships trying to cross the Strait of Hormuz were attacked, apparently by Iranian drones. The closure of the strait is probably the most significant geopolitical aspect of the war so far. The Wall Street Journal reports that it might drag on for a while:
Military and shipping-industry analysts said only a halt to the fighting would allow the full resumption of traffic in the strait, through which more than 100 ships passed each day prior to the war. Even if the U.S. were to launch military escorts, some shipping firms and oil companies are likely to hesitate to send their vessels through the strait because of the continued risk of Iranian attack.
And here's where things might be heading:
WSJ: "Reopening the strait, military analysts say, may require a ground operation to seize the Iranian coastline."https://t.co/CMw7lgrSbf pic.twitter.com/yrtJZTNKTZ
— Steve Lookner (@lookner) March 12, 2026
Scenes from Washington, D.C.: They say that Washington is Hollywood for ugly people—but I admit that I'd never thought of the federal government as a deadbeat boyfriend from a cheesy romance movie before:
Yale Budget Lab Exec. Dir. @marthagimbel on the shrinking appeal of U.S. debt: "We are currently the boyfriend at the beginning of the Hallmark movie in the big city, where the girlfriend is still going out with him even though she knows that it's wrong." pic.twitter.com/JDwxzW5aa8
— CSPAN (@cspan) March 11, 2026
The Senate hearing, which was focused on how a debt crisis might unravel in the near future, is bleak but worth checking out.
QUICK HITS
- Sen. Ron Wyden (D–Ore.) warned that "the American people are going to be stunned" by secret information about government surveillance that he's pressing the Trump administration to declassify in advance of a coming deadline to reauthorize warrantless spying powers.
- The Trump administration announced new investigations into 16 of America's largest trading partners, the first step towards imposing more tariffs under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974. That sounds like a lot of bureaucratic paper-shuffling to justify higher taxes on American businesses. Remember when Republicans were against that sort of thing?
- The federal government spent $3.1 trillion while collecting just $2.1 trillion in taxes during the first five months of the fiscal year. Not great.
- Imagine walking into a grocery store in America in the year 2026 and thinking, "this is proof that capitalism has failed." And yet, here's Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson trying that approach.
- When "bull market" and "bear market" don't really describe reality:
Time to break out the forbidden third animal https://t.co/faaTF1zHfx pic.twitter.com/ca3lBmbQMz
— Tanning Salon Don (@TheSalonDon) March 10, 2026
