Doug Stambaugh

Trump: I’m gonna wipe out an entire civilization. Pope: That’s wrong. Vance: The pope should stick to questions of morality.

You get paid by CNN every night to support a man who was found liable for sexual abuse by a jury of his peers, and who has been accused of sexual misconduct by two dozen different women over the decades.

Inflation was coming down in the United States—and then Trump’s tariffs happened.

Host: Donald Trump is now asking taxpayers to be on the hook for renovations to the executive residence to the tune of $377 million. That is according to the new White House budget request for next year. It marks a more than 800% increase from last year.

Trump's senseless attack on Iran is an old white man's war. There is overwhelming hostility among the younger generation, blacks, and women. d3nkl3psvxxpe9.cloudfront.net/documents/econ…

My intel is that Trump administration used Orban to help sabotage the EU’s Russian-assets-to-Ukraine deal. More Trump/Russia. politico.eu/article/operat…

Give credit where it’s due, this is a proper headline.

Fucking outrageous. And highly illegal. "Trump has grifted his entire life. Now he’s just taking it. The State Department transferred $1.25 billion in foreign aid to Trump’s Board of Peace, pulling $1 billion from international disaster assistance, $200 million from peacekeeping operations, and $50 million from international organizations. Money that Congress authorized for hurricanes and refugees, moved without a congressional vote, into a fund that Trump created by executive order and controls personally. When reporters asked the State Department about it, a spokesperson said they had nothing to announce at this time. The Board of Peace has one defining characteristic. Trump controls it forever. He named himself chairman for life. No audits. No transparency requirements. No conflict of interest rules. Countries pay $1 billion into a fund he runs to get a seat at the table. It has transferred nothing to Gaza, disclosed nothing about its spending, and received $1.25 billion of your disaster relief money without a word of explanation. When he leaves the White House he keeps the fund. That is not a loophole. That is the design." He’s Not Grifting Anymore. He’s Just Taking It. open.substack.com/pub/meidastouc…

This isn't legal analysis. It's idiocy: "A White House official added that electric plants are legitimate military targets because destroying them could foment civil unrest, complicating Tehran’s path to a nuclear device" That would be an F on the bar exam 1/

For first time ever, Army chief of chaplains fired — by Hegseth baptistnews.com/article/for-fi… via @baptist_news

Judas Iscariot was paid 30 pieces of silver for turning Jesus Christ in to the Roman authorities. But he made nearly 10 times that amount by placing a Polymarket bet accurately predicting the day of Christ’s death.

JUST IN: You do not fire your Army Chief of Staff in the middle of a war for no reason. You fire him because of what comes next. Pete Hegseth called General Randy George on April 2 and told him to retire immediately. The Pentagon confirmed it within hours. No reason was given. Not publicly. Not privately. A senior Army official told Fox News that Hegseth offered George nothing: no misconduct, no operational failure, no policy disagreement on the record. Just a phone call and a career ending in the middle of the most significant American combat operation in two decades. George is the 24th general or admiral Hegseth has removed. But he is not the 24th. He is the one that matters. The Army Chief of Staff. The man whose signature sits between a president’s intent and the order that sends soldiers across a beach or into a tunnel complex. The 82nd Airborne is deploying right now. Marines from the 31st MEU are staged on the USS Tripoli. JSOC operators are at forward bases in Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. Kharg Island, 90 percent of Iranian oil exports, sits 16 kilometres off a coast that someone will have to decide whether to approach. And the four-star general whose job it was to advise whether that approach should happen was removed 48 hours after Trump told the nation the war would continue for two to three more weeks. The replacement is Vice Chief General Christopher LaNeve. He was Hegseth’s senior military aide before this appointment. The man who carried the Secretary’s briefcase now commands the Army the Secretary is reshaping. The chain of command did not break. It shortened. The distance between a television studio and a combat order just collapsed to zero intermediaries who were not personally selected by the man giving the order. No reason was given. That is the tell. When someone is removed without explanation during a crisis, the explanation is the crisis itself. George either objected to something or was about to. The ground option. The power plant strikes. The Kharg raid. The escalation that turned a highway bridge in Karaj into rubble on the same day he was told to leave. Something in the next two weeks requires a chief who will not push back, and the Pentagon solved that problem by installing one trained as Hegseth’s aide. A former Fox News weekend host just fired a four-star general with combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, replaced him with his own former assistant, and did it during a live war in which the next decision could put American soldiers on Iranian soil for the first time in history. No hearing was held. No misconduct cited. The Army woke up on April 3 with a new chief it did not choose, in a war it did not start, preparing for a phase the previous chief apparently could not be trusted to execute. The question is not why George was fired. Every general in the building knows why. The question is what order is coming in the next fourteen days that required removing the one man in the chain of command who might have said no. The war has no perimeter. The chain of command has no objectors. And the next phase has no one left to stop it. open.substack.com/pub/shanakaans…

Let me walk you through what happened one hour before Trump announced the five day moratorium on Iran strikes. $1.5 billion in notional S&P E-mini futures contracts. Four to six times normal activity. One hour before the announcement. Simultaneously, $192 million in crude oil futures purchased at the same time. They made between $300 and $400 million dollars off those trades. Trump claimed he spoke to an Iranian official to negotiate the moratorium. The Iranians said that person doesn't exist and the conversation never happened. This is not the first time. It has happened multiple times. He says something. The trade goes on. He says another thing. The market moves. But whatever you call it — they are laughing at you and they are laughing at me while they do it. Hunter Biden sold a painting and Washington lost its mind. These people are making hundreds upon hundreds of millions of dollars trading on information that only exists inside the most powerful office in the world. I think we are dramatically underreporting how much money is actually being made here. This isn't politics anymore. This is a financial operation running out of the White House.

“While we were engaged in negotiations, they struck us,” #Iran’s Kamal Kharazi told CNN on Mar. 9. Today his home was struck, wife killed, he sustained serious injuries. NYT reports Kharazi was discussing w Pakistan possible US-Iran negotiations w VP Vance

Pete Hegseth's broker attempted to make defense investments before Iran war: Financial Times cnbc.com/2026/03/31/pet…

In what world is it okay for the Defense Secretary to make multi-million dollar investments in defense companies: a) Ever; b) Just before launching a war. FT has the scoop: ft.com/content/744ea8… In a functional democracy, he would offer his resignation tonight.

Four-byline alert: 🚨 “.. A broker for Pete Hegseth, the US defence secretary, attempted to make a big investment in major defence companies in the weeks leading up to the US-Israeli attack on Iran, according to three people familiar ..” @FT ft.com/content/744ea8…

This is absolutely infuriating and completely idiotic. An estimated 95,000 scientists and researchers have left federal agencies since Trump returned to the White House. These are the people tracking hurricanes, studying pediatric cancer, and modeling the climate tipping points that determine whether we can still prevent catastrophe. We lost them because this administration defunded their work, shuttered their offices, and made clear that finding out the truth is no longer a government priority. NASA’s own administrator just said studying climate change isn’t part of NASA’s mission. The agency that first warned Congress about global warming in 1988 now treats that work as a distraction. Meanwhile, China and Europe are recruiting our scientists, funding their labs, and making long-term bets on the industries of the future while we gut the research infrastructure that took generations to build. We are surrendering global scientific leadership voluntarily, deliberately, and one resignation letter at a time. nytimes.com/2026/03/25/cli…

The chart is based on FEMA’s own data. It shows the Trump administration approved 23% of disaster requests from Dem-led states (defined as gov + 2 Dem senators) vs. 89% for Rep-led states. “…one nation, under God…” Until it comes to helping Americans in a disaster.

Suspicious high-volume trades before major POTUS announcements have been a disturbing pattern during the Trump admin. Monday was no different as nearly half a billion $ in oil futures trading occurred irregularly just 15 minutes before Trump’s comments pointing to de-escalation in Iran. CC @FT