Saturday Report 3/28/26 — Trump brown-noser Brendan Carr bragged about his role in censoring "left-wing" American media

The Best of the Rest of the News and Opinion

— Is the Supreme Court preparing to take a knife to mail-in voting just in time for the midterms?. In Watson v. Republican National Committee, a case pushed all the way up to SCOTUS by billionaire Trump buddies, the litigants want the Court’s corrupt Republicans to block states from counting mail ballots arriving after Election Day, even if they’re postmarked on or before the deadline. The ruling could toss out millions of mail-in ballots in the 18 states that currently offer a grace period. If you’re standing in line to vote in person when the polls close, you’re generally allowed to continue forward and vote; counting ballots that were cast/mailed on or before election day but arrived and were counted after is essentially the same thing. But this is just another of the many ways Republicans and Trump are trying to make it harder to vote, and the corrupt, on-the-take rightwingers on the Court appear inclined to go along with the regime’s argument. Why? Heritage Foundation co-founder Paul Weyrich laid it out during Reagan’s 1980 election when he told a Dallas church basement full of Republican activists: “I don’t want everybody to vote... As a matter of fact, our leverage in the election quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.” The GOP took it to heart, and as a result America is now the only developed, functioning democracy in the world where the “right to vote” is so narrowly circumscribed that millions lose out on their opportunity to select their leaders.

— Trump’s war against Iran to help Putin, MBS, Kushner, and Netanyahu rolls on, and the risks to America and world peace get worse every day. When Netanyahu, MBS, and Putin advised billionaires Kushner, Witknoff, and Trump that it’d be a walk in the park to take out the Iranian government, they were able to convince the stupidest president in American history that it’d be quick and would help him recover his poll ratings. Just like Reagan’s “little war” against Grenada helped his 1984 reelection and Bush’s wars against Iraq and Afghanistan got him reelected in 2004. Predictably — at least for every rational diplomat and political/military observer in the world — it’s not working out that way. Trump’s repeatedly said that “nobody could have known” Iran would shoot back, hit nearby US-aligned countries, or shut what he calls the “Straight” of Hormuz, although the record shows that everybody in his senior chain of command and his briefers all told him to expect those results. So now, like LBJ in Vietnam in 1966 and Bush in Iraq in 2005, it appears he’s going to double down. The Wall Street Journal just reported: “The Pentagon is looking at sending up to 10,000 additional ground troops to the Middle East to give President Trump more military options even as he weighs peace talks with Tehran, Defense Department officials with knowledge of the planning said.” This idiocy is exactly why the Framers of the Constitution gave Congress the exclusive power to declare war. And why attacking Iran when they represented absolutely no threat to the US or direct US interests is a war crime under both US and international law. I can hardly wait to see Trump in the cell next to Milosovich and Duterte in the Hague.

— Trump’s war on Iran is the best gift he’s given Putin in years, even better than when he hung Putin’s picture in the White House with the former American presidents. Bloomberg is reporting that “Ukraine risks running out of money by June” because Putin/Trump ally Viktor Orbán is doing his best to repay Putin for help in the upcoming Hungarian election: “Ukraine needs US$52 billion in foreign assistance for 2026 defense spending but could run out of money by April as a €90 billion EU loan remains blocked by Hungary's veto. The shortfall threatens troop salaries, drone production, and air defense purchases critical to the war effort.” Meanwhile, the US is burning through so much high-tech missile and other anti-aircraft and offensive ordinance in the Persian Gulf that observers in south Asia are worried that we’re also on the verge of no longer being able to protect Taiwan from an attack by China. And the spike in oil prices has rescued billionaire Putin’s failing economy, as Politico reports: “Trump administration officials have begun warning countries that U.S. weapons supplies to Ukraine may be interrupted in the coming months as the Pentagon prioritizes their use for the war in Iran.” This morbidly rich idiot man-child in the White House and the lickspittles surrounding him appear to be on the verge of destroying a world order that took millions of deaths in WWII and 80 years of diplomacy to create and sustain. All so he could boost his poll numbers with a “little war,” get the charge of him raping a 13-year-old off the front pages, and give his sons an opportunity to make billions selling drones to the Pentagon. Trump family first, billionaires second, America and democracy last…

— Donald Trump, according to his alcoholic, woman-abusing “Secretary of War,” doesn’t “want to stand next to a Black female officer at military events.” So Hegseth is blocking the promotion of four Black and female officers, while moving up about three dozen white men, according to The New York Times. Their article opens with: “Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is blocking the promotion of four Army officers to be one-star generals, a highly unusual move that has prompted some senior military officials to question whether the officers are being singled out because of their race or gender.” This follows Hegseth and his apparatchiks previously removing from command or blocking promotions of dozens of other female flag officers, including Cmdr. Sarah M. Quemada, Vice Admiral Shoshana Chatfield, Adm. Lisa Franchetti, and Cmdr. Angela Gonzales, as well as numerous Black male officers. The blatant misogyny and racism of this regime is astonishing and, frankly, disgusting. Most recently, Trump and Senate Republicans put a former plumber (Markwayne Mullin) without even a college education and no major institution management experience whatsoever (although he was once an MMA fighter) in charge of the Department of Homeland Security. This “white men only” and “big muscles preferred” policy is apparently Trump’s version of DEI…

— In his best imitation of one of Stalin’s or Putin’s toadies, FCC Chairman and Trump brown-noser Brendan Carr bragged about his role, and rightwing billionaire’s help, in censoring major American media. At the CPAC conference in Texas this week, he told the assembled cult members:
“When he ran for office, he ran directly at the fake news media,. He said, ‘You don’t get to decide what we say, what we think, how we’re gonna vote inside the voting booth.’ President Trump took on the fake news media, and President Trump is winning. Look at the results so far. PBS — defunded. NPR — defunded. Joy Reid — gone from MSNBC. Sleepy-eyed Chuck Todd — gone. Jim Acosta — gone. JohnDickerson — gone. [Stephen] Colbert is leaving, CBS is under new ownership, and soon enough, CNN is gonna have new ownership as well. So, we’re not at the point yet where we’re raising the ‘mission accomplished’ flag, but President Trump is taking on the fake news media, and President Trump is winning.”
So, when do Democrats start yelling about “conservative bias” in the “rightwing media”? When will progressive billionaires start buying media outlets? And what are the Democrats’ plans to enforce the nation’s anti-trust laws the next time they’re in power? Inquiring minds want to know.

— Our grifter billionaire president offered “anything you want” to morbidly rich fossil fuel executives if they’d just give him piles of campaign money and backdoor dark funds for his own use, and is now following through by blocking the Endangered Species Act. Ground News reports: “The administration argues that none of the Endangered Species Act’s requirements apply due to national security concerns, as stated by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.” At risk is the entire Gulf of Mexico, as Trump opens it up for deepwater drilling that’s even more dangerous and precarious than what led to the Deepwater Horizon blowout. At the same time, he’s killing off wind and solar projects that could help insure America’s energy independence for the rest of the century. Then, as William Shakespeare warned centuries ago, “the fool doth think he is wise,” and nothing proves it more starkly than reopening the depths of the Gulf to the very same reckless drilling that once set it ablaze.