by Steve Benen | Apr 9, 2026 | Congress, Iran Tensions, Maddowblog, News, Politics
Roughly 40 days after the U.S. war in Iran began, the Republican-led Congress still hasn’t held a single hearing about the deadly and costly military offensive. Common sense might suggest that lawmakers might at least want to ask some questions — about the war, its merits, its cost, its objectives, the way in which it’s been executed, etc. — but to date, the grand total of public hearings remains at zero, despite Democratic appeals for Congress to do its job.
It’s emblematic of a larger problem: Against a backdrop of war, GOP lawmakers are embracing their own irrelevance.
On Wednesday, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries sent a letter to colleagues, which read in part, “A two-week ceasefire is woefully insufficient. Accordingly, we have demanded that the House come back into session immediately in order to vote on our resolution to permanently end the war in the Middle East.” Those demands have gone ignored.
The New York Democrat also made related plans to attempt passage of a War Powers Resolution during a pro forma session on Thursday, as part of an effort to limit the president’s authority to continue military operations in Iran without explicit congressional approval.
Those efforts are all but certain to fail, but they are born of desperation: Democratic leaders and the vast majority of their members want to do something — to exert congressional authority, to limit Trump’s powers, or preferably both — even as Republicans agree to leave questions over war and peace in the hands of a scandal-plagued and unpopular president who doesn’t appear to have any idea what he’s doing.
The New York Times highlighted GOP leaders’ scandalous indifference:
The
by Steve Benen | Apr 9, 2026 | Iran Tensions, Maddowblog, News, Politics
During the Cold War, it was common to hear American political figures condemn “Godless communists” in the then-Soviet Union. In fact, the conflict led the United States to go out of its way to create a contrast with our foes: If Russia was going to be atheistic, many American politicians said, it was incumbent on us to become less secular.
As a result, in 1954, Congress officially changed the Pledge of Allegiance to include the phrase “under God.” Three years later, federal lawmakers kept going, adding “In God We Trust” to all paper currency.
Seven decades later, the United States is at war with a literal theocracy run by radical religious clerics — but instead of moving in the opposite direction, key American officials are using faith-based war messaging that sounds awfully similar to the kind of language Iranians use all the time.
On Monday, the day before the tenuous ceasefire was announced, Donald Trump not only insisted that God supports U.S. actions in Iran, the president also claimed he was in a position to convey God’s wishes to the public. Around the same time, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth explicitly likened the rescue of a missing American airman shot down over Iran to the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
The day after the ceasefire was announced, we heard more of the same. MS NOW reported as part of the network’s liveblog coverage:
Hegseth invoked God throughout [his Pentagon press conference], again tying his Christian faith to U.S. military endeavors.
Referring to the war with Iran, Hegseth said, ‘Our troops, our American warriors, deserve the credit for this day, but God deserves all the glory.’
The beleaguered Pentagon chief
by Nora Loreto | Apr 8, 2026 | Avi Lewis, Canada, elections, Gaza, New Democracy Party, News Analysis, Politics
Canada’s left-leaning New Democratic Party (NDP) has elected a new leader, someone whose campaign drew comparisons to the politics and style of U.S. figures like Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Zohran Mamdani. On March 29, the NDP elected Avi Lewis on the first round of balloting with 55 percent of the vote in his first successful political campaign. The NDP was decimated in the…
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by Steve Benen | Apr 8, 2026 | Maddowblog, News, Politics
Last summer, as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth struggled to respond to the Signal group chat scandal, several news reports cited various sources in the Pentagon who helped expose the seriousness of the former Fox News host’s carelessness. The underlying controversy was obviously important, but so, too, was the story behind the story: It was clear that there were officials within the Defense Department who were not fans of Hegseth.
In the weeks and months that followed, similar evidence emerged. In October, for example, a conservative newspaper called The Washington Times reported that military officers and Defense Department officials agreed the secretary had “lost the trust and respect of some top military commanders,” with moves “widely seen as unprofessional.”
The same report added, “Inside the Pentagon, Mr. Hegseth’s tenure has been tumultuous. The level of turnover among high-ranking officers and civilian officials has not been seen in recent history. Sources described an atmosphere of uncertainty and fear, with hirings and firings sometimes seeming to come out of nowhere.”
The earlier reporting came to mind when The Washington Post reported on the enormous gap between Hegseth’s claims about Iran’s wartime military capabilities and reality. The defense secretary, for example, boasted about “complete control of Iranian skies” and “uncontested airspace,” shortly before Iran shot down an American F-15E fighter jet. From the Post’s report:
The chaotic but successful rescue mission has become the clearest indication yet that Hegseth’s repeated claims of air dominance come with serious caveats, and has reinforced concerns inside the Trump administration that his messaging about the war is overly optimistic and risks misinforming both the public and the president.
‘Pete is not speaking truth
by Steve Benen | Apr 8, 2026 | Iran Tensions, Maddowblog, News, Politics
As a tenuous two-week ceasefire in Iran begins, it’s easy to breathe a sigh of relief. Whether or not the pause endures, the suspension of combat operations means less death and bloodshed, less destruction and reduced odds of Donald Trump committing deliberate war crimes.
But as the dust settles on the agreement and highly relevant details start to come into focus, the American president would have the public believe the unnecessary war he launched is a triumph. “Total and complete victory, 100%,” the Republican told AFP. “No question about it.”
In reality, there are plenty of questions about it.
To begin with, did this war actually achieve anything?
On Feb. 28, when Trump announced the start of the U.S. offensive in a prerecorded video filmed at his glorified country club in Florida, the president didn’t explain why he’d decided to launch the war, but he did present the public with five objectives:
1. Destroy Iran’s missiles and missile industry.
2. Annihilate the Iranian navy.
3. Sever the ties between Tehran and its proxies in the Middle East.
4. Prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.
5. Create the conditions necessary for regime change.
The White House’s stated objectives in Iran then evolved as the war continued — a problem that was itself emblematic of the administration’s incompetence and misguided policymaking — but roughly 39 days after Trump’s remarks, if the U.S. mission were in fact a “total and complete victory,” we’d expect to see check marks alongside each of those five goals.
But that’s simply not the case. Iran’s navy has certainly been decimated, but the other four objectives have plainly not been met.
What’s more, just a few days into the
by Kevin B. Blackistone | Apr 7, 2026 | Opinion, Politics, Sports
Because he’s apparently not fully occupied with the war he started that’s shaken up the world, President Donald Trump signed an executive order concerning college sports Friday that reveals yet another megalomaniacal fantasy. Just as the Final Four, the culmination of college basketball’s billion-dollar tournament, was about to tip off, Trump demanded a return to yesteryear: When players didn’t get paid. When, unlike every other college student, they couldn’t move from one school to another without penalty. When disproportionately Black basketball and football teams had to do whatever the white men ruling the roost decreed.
Trump signed an executive order concerning college sports Friday that reveals yet another megalomaniacal fantasy.
The president’s executive order says it’s intended “to bolster the effectiveness of key college-sports rules on transferring, eligibility, and pay-for-play by evaluating whether violations of such rules render a university unfit for Federal grants and contracts … establishing clear, consistent, and fair eligibility limits, including a five-year participation window … banning improper financial arrangements including pay-for-play …”
But it’s more properly seen as an attempt to put Black athletes in their place.
The University of Michigan Wolverines, who won the national college basketball championship Monday night, and the University of Connecticut Huskies they defeated will, for the first time ever, share in the millions of dollars they reaped for the NCAA’s Final Four. But if Trump’s retrograde executive order were the rule, they couldn’t.
Trump’s college sports Executive Order is theater, not a fix. Reform requires Congressional legislation–I have put commonsense bills & proposals on the table for safeguards & rules for competition. www.whitehouse.gov/presidential…— Richard Blumenthal (@blumenthal.senate.gov) 2026-04-04T02:43:25.005Z
The Wolverines would have just gotten a commemorative ring, a grab bag, a ball cap, a T-shirt and an
