02b U.S. Politics – Progressive

Blurb:

Seven American service members are dead, dozens of Iranian children were murdered by a U.S. missile strike, oil is raining from the skies to poison the air for thousands of people living in Iran following an Israeli missile strike, and oil and gas prices worldwide are surging as the war has led to the blockade of a critical waterway used to transport oil.

But hey, at least we have a new Iranian leader who is in some ways worse than the murderous oppressor whom the United States killed a little over a week ago!

Indeed, Iran announced on Sunday that it replaced Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei with his son Mojtaba Khamenei. The 56-year-old religious cleric lost his mother, wife, and a son, as well as his father, to U.S. strikes.

Given his relative youth, Iran’s new supreme leader could have many years left to rein over the nation with an iron fist. That means we spent billions, lost American lives, and potentially decimated the global economy only to put in someone who may in fact be more extreme than the previous guy who brutally oppressed both dissenters and women.

Blurb:

Zohran Mamdani maintained the right to peaceful protest on Monday, two days after two counterprotesters allegedly deployed two explosive devices during an anti-Muslim demonstration targeting the New York City mayor.

“Anti-Muslim bigotry is nothing new to me, nor is it anything new for the one million or so Muslim New Yorkers who know this city as our home,” Mamdani said in a Monday press conference. “While I found this protest appalling, I will not waver in my belief that it should be allowed to happen.”

Mamdani called the demonstration a “vile protest rooted in white supremacy,” but stressed that “violence at a protest is never acceptable.”

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani confirms that he and his wife, Rama Duwaji, were at a museum in Brooklyn when an improvised explosive device was thrown near their home during a weekend protest.

NBC News (@nbcnews.com) 2026-03-09T16:51:09Z

Blurb:

 

Republicans on Capitol Hill are preparing to confront a staggering price tag for the war in the Middle East after closed-door briefings this week detailed the rapid consumption of expensive munitions and the lack of any firm deadline for the end of the military campaign.

Asked how much the Iran offensive would cost, House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) didn’t sugarcoat it.

“A lot,” he replied.

Blurb:

Sen. Tim Sheehy (R-MT) was accused of breaking the hand of Marine veteran and anti-war activist Brian McGinnis.

During a break in a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Wednesday, McGinnis put his hand through a hole in the wall to prevent Capitol Police from removing him from the room.

A video recorded by another anti-war activist showed Sheehy getting in on the melee by grabbing McGinnis and attempting to force him through the doorway.

“His hand! His hand! Oh!” one onlooker shouted.

Blurb:

The Washington Post and New York Times are facing a furious backlash after publishing glowing eulogies for the Iranian regime’s slain dictator, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The Post, opening its obituary of Khamenei with language that softened the image of a brutal regime figure responsible for decades of repression and bloodshed.

Khamenei, who was killed Saturday during “Operation Epic Fury,” a coordinated U.S.–Israeli strike on Tehran, was described by the Post as having a “bushy white beard and an easy smile.”

Blurb:

In a moment few would have predicted in one of America’s most reliably Democratic strongholds, ABC7 Los Angeles reported that support for President Donald Trump is growing among some Iranian Americans following the U.S. and Israeli strikes that killed Iran’s Supreme Leader.

During a weekend broadcast, ABC7 Eyewitness News showed hundreds gathered outside the federal building in Westwood, waving American, Israeli, and pre-1979 Iranian flags. The rally came after coordinated U.S.–Israeli strikes targeted senior Iranian leadership and military infrastructure in Tehran and other key cities.

Blurb:

EXCLUSIVE: Did you know that a historic and symbolic landmark of the nation’s capital was recently vandalized by an individual currently sought after by the FBI? If the story escaped your attention, thank the Big Four News Apps — Apple News, Google News, Microsoft’s MSN and Yahoo News — which largely ignored the attack, only featuring one article on the story over four days.

On Feb. 20, Fox News exclusively reported that the Trump-Kennedy Center had been subjected to an alleged act of vandalism after a suspect poured a “toxic,” dark substance onto an outdoor ice rink earlier that morning. The attack marked a major escalation of violence on a federal property, particularly one that holds national significance.

Blurb:

On Monday’s Morning Joe in the aftermath of the Strikes on Iran and Pentagon Press Conference, co-host Jonathan Lemire was fixated and seemingly rooting for a scenario where President Trump’s approval would go down if there was a prolonged war or deaths of more American Troops. Then, guest Elise Jordan, co-host of The Weekend: Primetime, naively wondered why the military and Secretary Pete Hegseth have not shared all their classified war plans with the public.

The Morning Joe hosts and panelists also had a special focus on how the actions in Iran were supposedly not “America First,” even though the President has talked about Iran not being allowed to have a nuclear weapon since the 2016 election.

Blurb:

 

This poisonous ideology is on college campuses across the country.

Blurb:

President Trump ordered a new offensive in Iran over the weekend, taking out top Iranian tyrants like Ayatollah Khamenei. Bizarrely, our media composed puffy obituaries for the Ayatollah and gave Iran’s foreign minister a softball platform when they all pressure each other to be ever more hostile in questioning our elected president.

MRC President David Bozell and NewsBusters Associate Editor Nick Fondacaro joined the show. Nick pointed out that over the weekend, The Washington Post ran an obituary titled: “Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, is dead at 86.” The paper warmly remembered the brutal Islamic dictator as a “avuncular figure” with an “easy smile” and a love for “Persian poetry.” Why must American press outlets swoon over our enemies like that?

Blurb:

CNN is known for feeding red meat — perhaps blue meat? — to their left-of-center followers by showing them “scary” content about the other side of the aisle.

From wall-to-wall Jan. 6 coverage to constant whining about President Donald Trump, CNN is one of the most notorious purveyors of leftist narrative framing.

Now the propaganda machine is churning out new content about “Christian Nationalism” — the apparently radical idea that America is a historically Christian people, and would be blessed by honoring God and His Word.

Blurb:

 

In electoral politics, it is usually the party that is out of power that promises that a victory will end the rule of an unpopular congressional majority or president.

The usual message coming from a minority party during a midterm election is that they should be elected to serve as a check on the president. The message of checks and balances has an inherent appeal to many voters, because the system of checks and balances between the three branches of government is baked into America’s national DNA.

Blurb:

 

Larry Summers used racist language in messages to pedophile Jeffrey Epstein about a woman he was pursuing romantically. “I’d be happy to have a rational affair w yellow peril,” he wrote, minutes after telling the pedophile he was “way smitten with her so woukd sacrifuce lots for being w her.” — Read the rest

The post Larry Summers used racist language in messages to Epstein appeared first on Boing Boing.

Blurb:

 

House members are eyeing a new phase in their monthslong investigation into the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein: a race to produce results that match the stunning Epstein fallout across the globe and satisfy an electorate clamoring for accountability.

This week’s interviews of Bill and Hillary Clinton — who are scheduled to testify to lawmakers under subpoena and behind closed doors about their relationships with Epstein and his convicted co-conspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell — could be a pivotal moment in this effort.

Blurb:

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) on Wednesday defended transgender rights in her State of the State address, a day after President Trump criticized gender transition in his State of the Union address. “In Michigan, everyone deserves to be who they are and love who they love. I want to take a moment and speak directly…
from thehill.com

Blurb:

 

The Supreme Court’s tariff decision left the door wide open for Democrats to hammer President Donald Trump for violating the law. This time, they’re not taking the bait.

Instead, Democratic campaigns are leaning into an argument they have been making for months: Trump’s tariffs are coming out of voters’ pockets. Some Democrats can’t help but hit the tariffs as “unlawful,” but they’re pivoting quickly back to affordability.

Blurb:

We’re not sure what the actual flex is for Courier Newsroom — a literal fake news organization heavily financed by the George Soros empire — to be co-hosting a supposed rebuttal to President Trump’s upcoming State of the Union address aimed at “bring[ing] together elected officials, cultural figures, journalists, veterans, and organizers for a live counter-address focused on defying Donald Trump’s abuses of power[.]”

Last week, the radical leftist anti-Trump group DEFIANCE.ORG put out a press release boasting of its supposedly star-studded speaker lineup for its boycott titled, “STATE OF THE SWAMP: The Rebuttal to the State of the Union.”

Blurb:

On Thursday’s CNN This Morning, the panel reacted with alarm to reports that the Department of Homeland Security is compiling data on anti-ICE activists. Host Audie Cornish played a clip in which an ICE agent, in what she described as a “tossed off” remark, told a protester she was now considered a “domestic terrorist.” Cornish claimed that such language, once written into a report, “becomes a real problem for someone.”

Republican panelist Kristen Soltis Anderson urged viewers to “think about what would have happened during the Tea Party era, when the shoe’s on the other foot, about how upset conservatives would have been at the idea of the government tracking their speech in any kind of way. And so I always just think it’s useful to imagine, like, what if the parties were flipped here? And I think a lot of conservatives would be in, would be unbelievably outraged, and rightly so, if a Democratic administration was trying to track them.”

Blurb:

If you wanted a textbook example of the Streisand Effect, look no further than the Trump administration’s meddling in the Texas Senate race.

CBS News refused to air late night host Stephen Colbert’s interview with Democratic Texas state Rep. James Talarico, who is currently locked in a competitive Senate primary with Rep. Jasmine Crockett.

Colbert said that CBS’ lawyers feared retribution from the Federal Communications Commission, claiming that the interview could be seen as a violation of the equal-time rule.

Blurb:

The Late Show with Stephen Colbert during Thursday’s September 18, 2025 show. Scott Kowalchyk/CBS/Getty

Get your news from a source that’s not owned and controlled by oligarchs. Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily.

Executives at CBS News made it clear to Late Show host Stephen Colbert: he wasn’t to interview Texas state Rep. James Talarico last night, nor was he to discuss how he wasn’t supposed to talk to the Democratic US Senate hopeful. But Colbert, who only has months left of his tenure on the show after being ousted by Paramount Global, didn’t listen.

Blurb:

Welcome to today’s episode of Democrats Sure Got It Good, where, after Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) humiliates herself in Germany in ways unseen since Neville Chamberlain, the far-left New York Times happily acts as her stenographer to try and clean up the mess.

First, looking like a dumb little girl pretending to be a mature adult, AOC went the full-Kamala at the Munich Security Conference, attempting to answer a no-brainer question about defending Taiwan against a Chinese invasion:

A couple of days later at a public town hall at the Technical University of Berlin, AOC proved she’s geography-challenged:

And finally, here’s AOC in Berlin stepping on a rake while attempting to troll Secretary of State Marco Rubio after his triumph in Munich:

Blurb:

Trump henchmen and MAGA orchestrator Steve Bannon has been exposed as not only being in the Epstein files, but as a close friend and ally who tried to rehabilitate the dead pedophile sex trafficker’s image while plotting to oust Pope Francis, who was too progressive in his Christian nationalist views.

All this happened in 2019, before Epstein was arrested in July of that year. In fact, Bannon was texting with Epstein the day he was arrested.

CNN reports that Bannon wanted to take down the Pope so he could promote his horrific religious views: “Will take down (Pope) Francis,” Bannon wrote to Epstein in June 2019. “The Clintons, Xi, Francis, EU – come on, brother.”

Blurb:

 

ICE Director Todd Lyons has been using the House hearing that he is taking part in to argue that ICE is the real victim of ICE’s campaign of lawless violence across America.

According to CBS News, in his opening statement, Lyons said:

Lyons also condemned rhetoric from public officials against ICE, saying it has “fomented violence against dedicated American patriots defending our homeland, and this must stop.”

“We are facing the deadliest operating environment in our agency’s history,” he told lawmakers.

The real victims here aren’t the two dead Americans in Minneapolis, but the scores of people who are being beaten and abused while in detention. The real victims in this story are people in masks who are terrorizing American communities.

Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-NJ) had a reality check for Lyons.

Rep. McIver asked, “Do you consider yourself a religious man?”

Lyons answered, “Yes, ma’am.”

McIver continued, “How do you think Judgement Day will work for you with so much blood on your hands?”

Lyons said that he wasn’t, “going to entertain that question.”

McIver continued, “Do you think you’re going to hell, Mr. Lyons?”

After a warning from the chair about decorum, McIver said, “I was asking a question. You guys are always talking about religion here and the Bible, I mean, it’s okay for me to ask a question, right?”

Blurb:

Havana — Cuban aviation officials have warned airlines that there isn’t enough fuel for airplanes to refuel on the island, the latest step in its moves to ration energy as the Trump administration cuts the Caribbean nation off from its fuel resources.

The government of Cuba published the notices to airlines and pilots on Sunday night, warning that jet fuel wouldn’t be available at nine airports across the island, including José Martí International Airport in Havana, starting Tuesday and continuing until March 11.

Political pressure from President Trump on Latin America has effectively severed Cuba’s access to its primary petroleum sources in Venezuela and Mexico.  In late January, Mr. Trump signed an executive order that would impose a tariff on any goods from countries that sell or provide oil to Cuba, a move that could further cripple an island plagued by a deepening energy crisis.

Blurb:

Democrat Rep. Bennie Thompson used an AI-generated image of Alex Pretti’s death in which a federal immigration agent is missing his head during a Homeland Security Committee hearing on Tuesday. Thompson is the same man who chaired the Jan. 6 Committee, which was also caught fabricating “evidence.”

While Thompson was chiding Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem for allegedly creating a “demonstrably false story” about Pretti’s death, an apparent staffer held up an AI-generated image of Pretti with Border Patrol agents standing over him, and one of the agents is headless.

 

Blurb:

Immigration is shaping up to be the hit-button issue of this midterm election. One drawback, though, is that these types of stories require a steady flow of victims in order to keep the issue in front of the public. With the unrest in Minnesota off the news, CBS News thinks they may have struck gold.

Watch as Matt Gutman goes to Idaho to investigate an ICE raid and is tipped off about an ACLU lawsuit:

Blurb:

Chaos reigned outside a Mogadishu, Minnesota courthouse. A rapid response until of constitutional observers witnessed ICE agents arresting someone who could have easily been one of your friends and neighbors, or even YOU. At least, that is, if you were caught with fifty pounds of methamphetamine. That was the person whom agents had to chase on foot before taking him into custody, but you wouldn’t know it if you glazed legacy media headlines on the X-Twitters.

Because let’s be honest. I know that you know that they know most people will just read the headline and use that to form their opinions.

We’ll start our story with ICE agents arresting a man who was charged with possessing over FIFTY POUNDS of meth. Note: When the media or the left (but I repeat myself) report that the majority of ICE arrests are people who were not charged with violent crime, they are talking about people like this guy and his fifty pounds of meth.