by Vice Admiral Robert S. Harward USN (Ret) | Apr 18, 2026 | Opinion, Politics
As a former deputy commander of U.S. Central Command, a Navy SEAL and a member of the National Security Council under former President George W. Bush, I spent decades helping oversee U.S. military operations across the Middle East under leaders including Jim Mattis and Lloyd Austin, both of whom later served this nation as Defense secretary. If I were advising President Donald Trump now, my message would be simple: Do not confuse a pause in hostilities with Iran — or even a limited, chaotic “opening” of the Strait of Hormuz — with a durable solution to the hostility between our nations.
The president’s position on Iran has, at times, appeared inconsistent.
The president’s position on Iran has, at times, appeared inconsistent. At times, he has suggested regime change in Iran as an objective. At others, his focus has shifted toward more limited goals, such as preventing a nuclear weapon, reopening the Strait of Hormuz or securing concessions through negotiation. Those are important objectives but they are not, by themselves, a strategy for ending the threat posed by the regime in Tehran. A lasting resolution requires a clearly defined end state.
That kind of clarity has been missing in how the United States has communicated its objectives. Statements suggesting overwhelming or immediate destruction may project strength, but they can also create ambiguity about U.S. intent. Deterrence works best when it’s consistent and tied to clear strategic objectives.
That starts with being clear about the threat. Iran’s leadership has consistently pursued nuclear capability, advanced its missile program, expanded proxy networks across the region and actively supported U.S. adversaries. Those are still their goals, and those
by Steve Benen | Apr 17, 2026 | Congress, Maddowblog, News, Politics
The story hasn’t dominated front pages, but a rather dramatic fight has unfolded in recent weeks on Capitol Hill over extending the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, which was set to expire. Many members, including some of the more libertarian-minded members of the House Republican conference, have demanded new privacy safeguards to the surveillance law, while GOP leaders insist on maintaining the status quo.
Donald Trump and his White House team have weighed in, publicly and privately, to pressure Republican lawmakers to reauthorize the law without changes. So far, the presidential lobbying hasn’t worked. After many GOP lawmakers balked, the House, shortly after 2 a.m. ET, scrambled to approve a short-term extension to allow time for further negotiations. The new deadline is April 30.
The developments are notable in their own right, but stepping back, it’s hard not to notice that the president issued a directive to House Republicans — and his demands went unmet.
Hours earlier, something similar happened on an entirely different issue. The Wall Street Journal reported:
The House passed a bipartisan measure Thursday that would reinstate temporary legal protections for Haitian immigrants living in the U.S. …
The 224-204 vote marks a rare GOP rebuke of President Trump’s agenda. Trump maligned Haitian immigrants on the campaign trail and moved to strip their legal protections, known as Temporary Protected Status, soon after taking office. The bill will next head to the Senate, where the prospects for a vote are unclear.
At issue are TPS protections for roughly 350,000 Haitians, who were eligible for work permits. The Republican administration, despite Trump’s earlier campaign promises, decided to revoke those protections, which were set to
by Steve Benen | Apr 16, 2026 | Justice Department, Maddowblog, News, Politics
The list of missteps at Donald Trump’s Justice Department during the president’s second term is not short, but among the most unsettling developments is the frequency with which Main Justice has fired federal prosecutors as part of a brazenly partisan purge. Indeed, the full list of prosecutors caught up in the campaign against federal law enforcement because they worked on cases the White House didn’t like has been difficult to keep up with.
The partisan cleansing is ongoing. MS NOW reported this week:
At least four Justice Department prosecutors have recently been fired as part of the Trump Administration’s plan to publicly accuse the Biden administration of unfairly targeting anti-abortion protesters for their religious beliefs, according to two people familiar with the firings and a Justice Department spokesperson.
The firings are an extension of the DOJ’s so-called “weaponization” panel, which accused Biden-era prosecutors of targeting those protesting outside abortion clinics in ways that crossed legal lines.
The findings of the “weaponization” panel, however, were a bit of a joke. The cases cited as evidence of abuse actually led to jury-approved convictions; and there’s little to suggest the ousted prosecutors did anything other than enforce the law against activists politically aligned with the Trump administration.
The firings of the four assistant U.S. Attorneys, in other words, weren’t the response to an abuse, they were themselves the abuse.
A few weeks ago, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche appeared at a Conservative Political Action Conference event and bragged about “all these people are leaving or getting fired” at the Justice Department, concluding that Trump “has green lit all of this.”
Asked two weeks later about his response to allegations that
by Steve Benen | Apr 16, 2026 | Maddowblog, News, Politics
When Donald Trump and his team were assembling their second-term Cabinet, former Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer appeared to be one of their least controversial choices. The Oregon Republican, tapped to lead the Department of Labor, was ultimately confirmed with 67 votes, including more than a dozen Senate Democrats, which in this Congress reflected fairly broad support.
A year later, however, the secretary’s troubles are serious — and multiplying.
The New York Times reported on the latest allegations, including a series of reported incidents in which the secretary, her relatives and her top aides “routinely” sent personal messages and requests to young staff members. The whole mess has attracted the scrutiny of the Labor Department’s inspector general. From the article:
In text messages that have been reviewed by The New York Times, Ms. Chavez-DeRemer and her former deputy chief of staff asked employees to bring wine to them during trips for the department. Sometimes the requests came in the middle of the workday.
Ms. Chavez-DeRemer’s husband exchanged text messages with young female staff members, as did her father. Some of the young women were instructed by Ms. Chavez-DeRemer and the former deputy chief of staff to ‘pay attention’ to the men, according to people familiar with the investigation.
The Times’ report, which has not been independently verified by MS NOW, highlighted one especially unsettling example from a year ago in which the Cabinet secretary’s father wrote to a young female staff member, “Hearing u/r in town. Wishing you would let me know. I could have made some excuses to get out and show u around. Please keep this private.”
The report comes just a week after MS NOW
by Steve Benen | Apr 16, 2026 | Intelligencer, Maddowblog, News, Politics
Last summer, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard unveiled a report with a title that read, “Declassified Evidence of Obama Administration Conspiracy to Subvert President Trump’s 2016 Victory and Presidency.” In an accompanying press release, the hapless DNI added, “The information we are releasing today clearly shows there was a treasonous conspiracy in 2016 committed by officials at the highest level of our government.”
In reality, the report showed no such thing, and independent analyses characterized Gabbard’s report as “ludicrous.” An analysis from The Bulwark explained, “[E]ven a cursory look at the actual substance of Gabbard’s dramatic claims shows … a nothingburger. There is no actual substance.” Officials from Democratic and Republican administrations urged the public to recognize Gabbard’s conspiracy theories for what they were: obvious nonsense.
The DNI sent her findings to Donald Trump’s Justice Department nevertheless, and wouldn’t you know it, the hyper-politicized DOJ took Gabbard’s vacuous findings quite seriously.
Eight months later, a suspiciously similar process is unfolding. MS NOW reported:
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has sent criminal referrals to the Justice Department related to a former intelligence community inspector general and a whistleblower whose complaint helped trigger the first impeachment of President Donald Trump.
The whistleblower complaint, deemed credible at the time by then-Inspector General Michael Atkinson, set off a chain of events that culminated in Trump’s impeachment in 2019 for pressuring Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to investigate his then-political rival Joe Biden. The Senate later acquitted Trump in a largely party-line vote.
The criminal referral was first reported by Fox News. A spokesperson for Gabbard’s office confirmed to MS NOW that she had sent a criminal referral to the Justice Department but
by Kevin B. Blackistone | Apr 15, 2026 | Opinion, Politics, Sports
One of the first things President Donald Trump did after his second inauguration was invalidate an executive order from former President Joe Biden that prohibited discrimination against transgender people, especially those playing sports.
How did the major sports institutions react? They lined up behind Trump’s transphobia. In February 2025, the NCAA banned transgender athletes from women’s sports. Late last month, the Olympics followed suit.
Sports are not on the vanguard of social change, as we’re asked to believe every April 15 on Jackie Robison Day.
The disappointing responses from the NCAA and International Olympics Committee serve as yet more evidence that sports are not on the vanguard of social change, as we’re asked to believe every April 15 on Jackie Robison Day.
Historically, and much to our detriment, those who lead sports leagues and associations have been followers at best. The leaders of the NCAA and the IOC have showed us that.
But we in the media created a mythology that the games we love are the tip of the spear in social progress, and we’ve done that in large part by distorting Robinson’s arrival in Major League Baseball in 1947 after the league spent 80 years or so segregating itself for white men only. The MLB doesn’t deserve its reputation as a revolutionary social change agent in this country. To the contrary, much like leaders of the NCAA and the IOC have bended their knee this Trump era, it had a long, regrettable history of reactionary politics. Indeed, its embrace of segregation served as a model for other leagues that conformed to, and didn’t confront, a racially partitioned America.
Not long after the MLB’s first
