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Pentagon estimates Iran war cost $11.3B in the first six days in closed-door congressional hearing: report
Same show, different day.

Pentagon officials on Tuesday told legislators during a closed-door briefing that they estimated that the cost of the Iran war was more than $11.3 billion during the initial six days of the conflict, the New York Times reported, citing three unnamed individuals familiar with the briefing.
That estimate did not encompass many expenses tied to the effort, such as buildup of military assets and personnel prior to the first strikes, the outlet added.
Other reports indicate that the briefing involved senators.
A Senate Armed Services Committee staffer, who noted that he could only speak for the minority staff and Ranking Member Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., referred Fox News Digital to a March 10 letter that the senator sent to War Secretary Pete Hegseth, pressing for information about the costs of the war.
US DESTROYS AGING IRANIAN WARPLANES, VIDEO SHOWS
"Since the initial strikes on February 28, 2026, how much has the Department spent on these operations? How much are the daily costs of these operations? What are the costs to readiness? How much funding does the Department need to replenish munitions and aircraft combat losses?" Reed asked in part of the letter.
No comment was provided by the GOP side of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Fox News Digital also reached out to the Department of War and the House Armed Services Committee Republican communications office on Thursday.
The war-related outlays come as the ever-expanding U.S. national debt nears the $39 trillion mark.
And while President Donald Trump has been waging the costly war in conjunction with Israel, a key U.S. ally in the Middle East, Americans have been seeing a significant surge in gas prices at home.
"The United States is the largest Oil Producer in the World, by far, so when oil prices go up, we make a lot of money. BUT, of far greater interest and importance to me, as President, is stoping [sic] an evil Empire, Iran, from having Nuclear Weapons, and destroying the Middle East and, indeed, the World. I won’t ever let that happen!" Trump said in a Thursday Truth Social post.

Why Oil Prices Surged Even After the Release of Strategic Reserves
This affects the entire country.

The article talks about how oil prices have surged past $100 a barrel, and an announcement by the International Energy Agency that 30+ countries would release a record 400 million barrels from emergency reserves hasn't done a damn thing to calm markets. Traders have recognized that figure covers only about 20 days of oil that normally goes through the strait, and the war is already two weeks old with no resolution in sight. They also realized the release of the reserves means the energy crisis caused by the war isn't imaginary or likely to end anytime soon, and that global leaders recognize the risk of a serious energy shock.
Analysts point out several compounding problems: drawing down reserves is slow and logistically complex, the U.S. can release at most 4.4 million barrels per day from its strategic stockpile, and even if shipping through the strait of hormuz resumed tomorrow, refineries that shut down would need at least two months to return to normal.
“No amount of storage can replace 20 million barrels per day of continuous flow,” said Edward C. Chow, a senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank, and a former executive at Chevron.

Trump told Reuters he wasn't concerned about the price increases. Well, if he isn't concerned about oil prices, why is he desperately tapping into the reserves?

Silicon Valley legend Vinod Khosla has 'no plans to leave California' amid billionaire tax uproar—but he has another idea to fix the wealth loophole
We're watching the same failure loop.

I definitely agree that it makes no sense to make people earning less than $50,000 annually file income taxes. All it does is prevent many people from taking jobs in high rent situations because they know they risk running out of money for taxes. The government at least gets some revenue from people earning between $50,000-$100,000 annually, but they still don’t get much.

FBI responds to attack on Temple Israel Synagogue in Michigan
This looks less like justice and more like strategy.

Police are responding to an active shooting incident at a synagogue in West Bloomfield, Michigan.

“FBI personnel are on the scene with partners in Michigan and responding to the apparent vehicle ramming and active shooter situation out of Temple Israel Synagogue in West Bloomfield Township, Michigan,” FBI Director Kash Patel said in a statement.

State Police have urged residents to avoid the area near Temple Israel Synagogue.

This is a breaking news story and will be updated.

Kenyan McDuffie emphasizes centrist proposals compared to Lewis George’s ‘New York City playbook’
Confidence requires clarity.

Former Washington, D.C., councilman and current mayoral candidate Kenyan McDuffie slammed his mayoral primary opponent, Councilwoman Janeese Lewis George, on Thursday, saying her campaign is built on “empty promises.”

McDuffie, a centrist ally of Mayor Muriel Bowser, spoke about his plans to make the district what he called the “most affordable city” in the United States and set his more centrist policies apart from Lewis George’s in an appearance on the Dream City Podcast on Thursday.

“She wants to run D.C. using a New York City playbook. And what I found out, knocking on thousands of doors across the District of Columbia, our voters are really smart, and they’re not falling for it,” McDuffie said, referring to Lewis George.

Lewis George, a socialist, declared her candidacy for mayor in December, following weeks of rumors that she planned to launch a Zohran Mamdani-style campaign, emulating the New York City mayor’s social media-friendly campaign focused on younger voters.

McDuffie took aim at Lewis George’s progressive policy ideas on Thursday, calling them built on “rhetoric and empty promises.”

Lewis George’s campaign rejected the premise that the councilwoman doesn’t have achievements to tout.

“Kenyan McDuffie’s statements are false. Janeese Lewis George introduced and passed legislation to fund a librarian in every DC Public School; introduced and passed legislation to raise the wages of early childhood educators, create the first-ever monthly basic income via an increased earned income tax credit, and fund new housing vouchers and housing subsidies; and she negotiated and secured the largest labor agreement ever struck with a private company in D.C.’s history via the RFK stadium deal,” a campaign spokesperson told the Washington Examiner in a statement.

The race between the two front-runners has grown more heated as the June primary election gets closer. Lewis George has hit McDuffie on his absence from recent candidate forums, telling voters, “You should note who shows up.” She also ripped McDuffie on the same podcast in February for not fighting for “Baby Bond” funding and for highlighting legislation from his record that passed over a decade ago.

“Every year, I found the funding to fight for the things that matter to people most, whether it was SNAP or earned income tax credit or child tax credit. So the things I fund, and I fight for have made a real difference in people’s lives,” Lewis George said. “I think that matters in this race …

Here are the nine Republican and one Democratic ‘no’ votes on the major housing bill
This is performative politics again.

Ten senators voted “no” Thursday on major bipartisan legislation that proponents say is the most significant effort to address housing costs in decades.

Most of its opponents were conservative Republicans who oppose the ban on large investors buying single-family homes included in the bill. But one Democrat also voted no for the same reason.

More generally, the bill would loosen some federal housing regulations and encourage states and cities to ease land-use rules. The bill is meant to increase the housing supply to improve affordability. It now faces an uncertain future in the House, thanks to opposition from conservatives and mixed signals from President Donald Trump.

Here is the list of “no” votes.

The nine Republicans

Sen. Ted Budd (R-NC)

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI)

In a brief interview with the Washington Examiner, Johnson said he opposed the bill for many reasons. 

Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT)

Last week, Lee tweeted criticism that the bill contains only a temporary ban on the Federal Reserve issuing a digital currency.

Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL)

In an interview with the Washington Examiner, Scott said he opposed the bill because it would add to the deficit. “It sets up a process to spend a whole bunch of money, we’re running deficits,” he said. He said his ‘no’ vote didn’t have to do with the institutional investor provision.

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC)

Tillis opposed the bill over the large investor provision. “My God, when did conservative Republicans start carrying Elizabeth Warren’s banner on housing strategy?” Tillis said.

Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL)

Sen. Todd Young (R-IN)

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK)

Murkowski voted ‘no’ on a procedural vote on the legislation on Wednesday night, but later voted for final passage on the housing bill. “Yesterday, I basically made a statement with my no vote there on cloture, because I wanted an amendment process,” she said. Murkowski said she had wanted to get in a few tribal housing provisions into the legislation and that the need in the tribal housing space is “extreme.”

The one Democrat

Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI)

Schatz used a Senate floor speech on Wednesday to criticize the bill’s ban on large investors buying homes, saying it would prevent firms from developing build-to-rent houses and thus hurt the supply of housing.

Election Records Handed Over to the FBI in Maricopa County, Arizona, Could Be Fatally Flawed, Experts Say
This looks less like justice and more like strategy.

This week, when 2020 voting information from Maricopa County, Arizona, was handed over to the FBI, it might have seemed like a replay of the agency’s late January raid in Fulton County, Georgia.

Both are large counties in swing states that voted for Joe Biden in 2020, and both have long been targets of President Donald Trump’s claims that that year’s presidential election was stolen from him.

But the evidence collected from Maricopa County is fundamentally different, in ways that election experts say threaten the accuracy and integrity of the federal government’s investigation.

In Fulton, the FBI took the actual ballots cast in the county’s 2020 election, which had been kept in secure court storage facilities. In Maricopa, a federal grand jury subpoenaed digital data related to a partisan audit of the county’s vote, according to Arizona Senate President Warren Petersen, the subpoena’s recipient.

This material — which may have included scans and photos of ballots — was stored by the Senate, not the county. Maricopa County destroyed the original ballots after two years, as state law requires.

The firm hired by Senate Republican leaders to run the audit, the Cyber Ninjas, was funded by and took direction from Trump allies. Its leader, Doug Logan, privately admitted in text messages obtained by journalists via public records requests that its ballot recounts were “screwy.” County leaders, both Republicans and Democrats, and nonpartisan outside observers documented several ways Logan’s team had failed to follow procedures to prevent tampering. (Logan didn’t respond to a request for comment.)

Several election experts, including some who watched the Arizona audit in person in 2021, said any investigation based on the Cyber Ninja data would be fatally flawed.

“Accessing invalid data will only draw inaccurate conclusions and risk further degradation of public confidence,” said Ryan Macias, a national elections technology consultant who observed the audit on behalf of the Arizona secretary of state’s office.

The Department of Justice and White House did not answer questions from ProPublica on experts’ concerns about the quality of the data and records produced under the subpoena. A spokesperson for the Arizona U.S. attorney’s office declined to respond to questions about whether it was involved in the case, saying it was against policy to comment on grand jury subpoenas or proceedings.

Petersen, a Republican who helped launch the audit in 2021 and handed over the records to the FBI, didn’t say under which court’s authority the grand jury subpoena was issued or respond to a question on its basis. Neither Petersen nor a spokesperson for the Arizona Senate gave details on what exactly the FBI collected. The Senate has not released the subpoena.

The subpoena is the latest salvo in the Trump administration’s unprecedented attempt to reinvestigate purported problems in the 2020 election.

The White House has tasked Kurt Olsen, a lawyer who tried to assist Trump in overturning his loss, with helping to lead the criminal inquiry. Olsen helped initiate the Fulton County case, which is being overseen by Thomas Albus, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern …

Bernie Sanders suggests that conservatives will soon control the media...
This framing isn't accidental.

It seems to me that it's still overwhelmingly left-leaning.
Your thoughts? Bernie Sanders
One family, the right-wing Trump-aligned Ellisons, will soon control:
TikTok CBS CNN HBO Discovery Channel BET Cartoon Network Comedy Central DC Studios Fandango Miramax MTV Nickelodeon Paramount PlutoTV Showtime TBS The CW TNT Warner Bros. And more This is oligarchy.

Gunman dead and two injured from shooting at Old Dominion University 
This isn't complicated—it's willpower.

Two people are injured, and a gunman is dead following a shooting at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, according to officials. 

A gunman opened fire at Constant Hall at around 10:49 a.m. University Police, Norfolk Police, and emergency crews responded to the scene. The shooter was neutralized, and there is no longer an active threat on the campus, according to University alerts. 

The two injured victims were in critical condition and taken to Sentara Norfolk General Hospital, spokeswoman for the hospital Jennifer Lewis told CNN. 

School officials encouraged students to avoid the area around Constant Hall, where emergency officials are working. 

ODU canceled all classes and operations on its main campus for the remainder of Thursday. 

Officials set up the family information center at Chartway Arena in the Big Blue Room. 

Three Norfolk Public Schools reportedly went into a secure hold as a result of the shooting at ODU campus, including Larchmont Elementary, James Monroe Elementary, and W.H. Taylor Elementary, according to 13NewsNow. 

Gov. Abigail Spanberger (D-VA) said she is closely monitoring the shooting at the university and mobilized state support to assist the university.

“I have spoken with university leadership,” she said on X. “My Administration remains in close contact with local emergency responders as state support is being mobilized to assist ODU and Norfolk.”

The potential unintended consequences of Galette v. NJ Transit Corp
How is this acceptable?

I started pulling on this thread almost as soon as the decision came out, and the further I dive, the more complicated and consequential this decision seems to become.
TL:DR -- Galette seems to upend a whole swath of state-created organizations that have been built up over time, capturing the benefits of Private Entities while still operating under the presumed protection of State Agencies. I want to be clear that I don't disagree at all with the decision, far from it. I think the decision is completely logical: States cannot have their cake and eat it too.
But the scope here is likely staggering. A lot of the initial analysis has (rightfully) focused on liability of State-created organizations for things like Tort law, and contractors with state-created entities. But there's other dimensions that don't seem to be recognized yet.
Let's start with: Charter Schools
Some states have set up state-created independent charter authorization bodies. Depending on their corporate structure, these are now private entities. This opens up a private non-delegation doctrine can of worms, and also opens the door to State-level Constitutional challenges due to the fact that many states impose public education obligations via their Constitutions. There's also the question of whether or not they qualify as "educational agencies or institutions" for FERPA purposes.
Another fun one: Public Banking Corporations.
Depending on their setup, these now face the full force of GLB, FACTA/FCRA, which previously, these entities may have been able to argue that they were either instrumentalities of the state or state arms period. Now, the exemptions under GLB for government entities no longer apply. That's the full force of GLB's privacy framework now applying to a state-owned private banking corporation. Privacy notices, opt-out rights (affects sharing of customer data for affordable housing, small business lending, etc), now a review of alignment with the Safeguards rule is required.
If that wasn't enough, what about REAL ID?
REAL ID compliance requires states to implement several data systems that many states built through or connected to private corporate entities, e.g. AAMVA.
The American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators is the central nervous system of REAL ID implementation. AAMVA is incorporated as a nonprofit corporation in the District of Columbia. It operates:
The State-to-State (S2S) verification system that allows states to check whether an applicant already has a license in another state
The Problem Driver Pointer System
The Commercial Driver's License Information System
The AAMVA National Driver Register interface
AAMVA is the entity through which states share driver identity information with each other for REAL ID compliance purposes. It is the data hub that makes the nationwide verification architecture function.
Applying Galette directly: AAMVA is a private nonprofit corporation. It has full corporate powers. No state is formally liable for its obligations. It was created by motor vehicle administrators — governmental officials — but as a private membership organization rather than a governmental entity. Under Galette's framework, AAMVA is a …

Zelensky needles US as he sends teams to Middle East to help American troops
Who benefits from this decision?

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky needled the Trump administration for not agreeing to a drone-based mutual agreement months ago, now that American troops are coming under fire in the Middle East and are seeking Kyiv’s expertise.

The Ukraine-Russia war has been at the forefront of drone proliferation and modernization efforts for war fighting, which is also an area that the United States is behind on, and the Ukrainians have sought for months to exchange their newfound knowledge and technology for more advanced U.S. air defense systems that could be used to intercept more high-powered missiles that Russia also frequently deploys against them.

“We wanted to sign a big drone production deal with the United States, but we needed the approval from the White House,” Zelensky said on social media on Thursday. “It was about different kinds of drones and air defense. They operate as one system and can defend against hundreds or thousands of Iranian ‘shaheds’ and missiles.

“We didn’t have the opportunity to sign this document yet,” he said. “I hope that maybe American friends will be closer to this decision now, especially after such challenges as we see in the Middle East.”

The Ukrainian leader has said he deployed drone teams to the Middle East to aid American forces. He has said nearly a dozen countries have requested their assistance, given their experiences over the last couple of years have provided them with greater expertise on how to defend against these attacks than any other country.

The U.S.’s interest in using Ukraine’s first-hand expertise with drone technology predates the conflict in the region, though it appears as though there’s been little movement since both leaders discussed it publicly months ago. Back in August, Zelensky reportedly offered to sell the U.S. their battle-tested counter-UAV technology but the administration did not express an interest until it had begun the war against Iran, according to Axios.

Trump has repeatedly claimed Zelensky has no “cards” to play in negotiations with Russia and urged him to make a deal to end the conflict, but those dynamics changed once U.S. service members were facing a similar threat across the Middle East.

The Trump administration, in their effort to broker a ceasefire agreement, has pushed Ukraine harder than the previous administration did to get them to agree to a proposal even if it meant making significant concessions. The president has, at times, accused Zelensky of being the …

Ilhan Omar faces primary challenge from ex-DOJ lawyer who declared ‘this job sucks’
This isn't complicated—it's willpower.

A former government attorney who drew national attention after a tense courtroom exchange over immigration enforcement last month is launching a bid for Congress against Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN).

Julie Le, who previously defended Immigration and Customs Enforcement actions in Minnesota as a temporary attorney for the Justice Department, announced Wednesday that she is running as a Democrat in Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District. She plans to launch her campaign Saturday in the Minneapolis suburb of Brooklyn Park, according to her campaign website.

Le said her campaign will focus on immigration reform, expanding education funding, and improving access to healthcare. She also said she would pursue a more centrist political approach than Omar, who has previously called for abolishing ICE.

Le first came into the spotlight during a February hearing before U.S. District Judge Jerry Blackwell in St. Paul, where she vented about the strain of handling a wave of immigration litigation tied to the Trump administration’s enforcement operations.

“What do you want me to do?” Le asked Blackwell, according to a court transcript from the hearing. “The system sucks. This job sucks.”

The exchange came as the judge pressed DOJ attorneys in early February about delays in complying with court orders that requested detained immigrants to receive bond hearings or be released.

Le said during the hearing that she had “stupidly” volunteered to help as an ICE attorney despite not receiving proper training. She also told the judge that being held in contempt might at least give her a chance to get a full night’s sleep. She was fired within hours of the outburst.

The enforcement effort in Minnesota was part of a broader immigration crackdown that included the deployment of more than 2,000 federal troops, making it one of the largest operations of its kind in U.S. history.

In an interview with the Washington Post, Le said the episode led her to conclude that attorneys have limited power to address the underlying problems in the immigration system.

“I’m an attorney,” she said. “I can’t do much at all. Legislators are the only ones that can change the law.”

HOUSE DEMOCRATS ASK ICE FOR CONTRACTS ON 2,500 MARKED VEHICLES OVERBOUGHT UNDER NOEM

Minnesota’s Democratic primary election is scheduled for Aug. 11.

The Washington Examiner contacted Le but did not receive a response.