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Going Around Chicago with Mayor Brandon Johnson and the JAAM Pod
1:00:58
Hasan Abi • yesterday

Going Around Chicago with Mayor Brandon Johnson and the JAAM Pod

Pete Hegseth Blew Billions on Fruit Basket Stands, Chairs, and Crab
New Republic • yesterday

Pete Hegseth Blew Billions on Fruit Basket Stands, Chairs, and Crab

The Pentagon spent more money in September—the end of the 2025 fiscal year—than it had in any other year since 2008. But a good chunk of the budget wasn’t used for anything that could be considered a pertinent military expense.The Defense Department burned through $93 billion that month alone, signing checks left and right in order to dry up its congressionally allocated budget, according to a recent analysis by the government watchdog Open the Books. There is pressure to spend: If federal agencies don’t use the entirety of their budgets by the end of the fiscal year, then they lose access to that cash forever, potentially putting themselves in a situation where they have to request a reduced budget the following year. But the Pentagon’s long list of luxuries is hardly defensible. Some of the frivolous September purchases made under Secretary Pete Hegseth’s stewardship include a $98,329 Steinway & Sons grand piano for the Air Force chief of staff’s home, $5.3 million for Apple devices such as the new iPad, and an astronomical amount of shellfish, including $2 million for Alaskan king crab and $6.9 million worth of lobster tail. (Lobster tail is apparently a favorite of Hegseth’s Pentagon—the department spent more than $7.4 million total on the luxury item in March, May, June, and October.)In other pricey food purchases, the government decided to drop $15.1 million for ribeye steak (again, just in September), $124,000 for ice cream machines, and $139,224 on 272 orders of doughnuts.Weeks later, millions of Americans would lose their SNAP benefits amid the longest government shutdown in U.S. history. More still stand to lose eligibility to the food assistance program thanks to a Republican crusade that added stricter work requirements to the program, piling on paperwork and documentation mandates.One of the largest bulk expenditures was just for furniture, for which the Pentagon decided to shell out $225 million. That included $12,000 for fruit basket stands, and checks totaling more than $60,000 for Herman Miller recliners. All in all, the agency spent more on furniture in 2025 than it had in over a decade.In the last five days of September alone, the department blew through $50.1 billion on just grants and contracts. For context, only nine other countries spend that much on the entirety of their defense budget per year. It’s also more than the total military budgets of Canada and Mexico combined.The federal government had a $1.8 trillion deficit in 2025. Ultimately, the military’s massive expenditures offered up more evidence that the Trump administration has not put any meaningful effort into cracking down on needless government spending, a pledge that Donald Trump has wielded on the campaign trail since 2015.“Under Secretary Hegseth, the Pentagon has consistently said its mission is to refocus on warfighting and lethality,” Open the Books CEO John Hart said. “Last year, we highlighted the problem of wasteful use-it-or-lose-it year-end spending. We noted that this reform is fully within the secretary’s control and is a historic opportunity to make good on that promise.”

Punching Them While They’re Down”: US & Israel Bomb Iran’s Schools and Hospitals With “No Stupid Rules of Engagement
Scheer Post • yesterday

Punching Them While They’re Down”: US & Israel Bomb Iran’s Schools and Hospitals With “No Stupid Rules of Engagement

Ben Norton for Geopolitical Economy Report The United States and Israel are intentionally devastating civilian areas in Iran, brutally bombing schools, hospitals, and residential neighborhoods, in an attempt not only to destroy the state but also to collapse Iranian society itself. US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth described the scorched-earth strategy in a Pentagon press briefing on March 4. […]

Trump Went to War With Iran Because Jared Kushner Is a Fool
New Republic • yesterday

Trump Went to War With Iran Because Jared Kushner Is a Fool

Do Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner actually understand nuclear energy enough to describe Iran’s capabilities to Donald Trump, let alone negotiate a nonproliferation agreement with Tehran?Several nuclear experts have raised questions about the disastrous duo’s technical understanding of uranium enrichment after they presented an assessment of Iran’s Research Reactor that made no sense, MS NOW reported Monday.For the uninitiated, here’s a crash course in nuclear energy: Most nuclear reactors that produce electricity only require uranium that is enriched to between 3 percent and 5 percent. Highly enriched uranium is anything above 20 percent, and weapons-grade uranium is enriched above 90 percent, according to the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. Tehran’s Research Reactor is a 60-year old facility designed to use less than 20 percent enriched uranium, not intended for use outside of research and producing medicine. The Trump administration has claimed, without providing any evidence, that the facility was being used to covertly stockpile uranium that would become weapons-grade. Nuclear experts aren’t buying it. “An [active] operating reactor cannot be used as storage. I am not aware of this ever having happened,” Claus Montonen, a retired nuclear physicist and board member of the International Network of Engineers and Scientists for Global Responsibility, told MS NOW.Elena Sokova, the executive director of the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation, told MS NOW that the administration’s “confusing and misleading” assessment of the reactor was laden with “technical errors.”“It mixes up different elements of the nuclear program and their potential proliferation capabilities,” Sokova said. “Research reactors are not capable of doing enrichment of uranium, whether for civil or military purposes.”Witkoff and Kushner chose not to have nuclear technical experts present during negotiations in Geneva, a senior Middle East diplomat with knowledge of the talks told MS NOW. The United States then chose to skip out on technical talks scheduled for last Monday in Vienna. Last week, Witkoff offered this defense of his credentials: “I wouldn’t tell you I’m an expert in nuclear, but I’ve learned quite a bit, and I’ve studied it and have read quite a bit about it, and I’m competent to sit at the table and discuss it, and Jared [Kushner] is as well.”Ahead of Trump’s military campaign in the Middle East, Witkoff claimed that Iran had amassed 460 kilograms of uranium at 60 percent enrichment, enough to potentially make 11 bombs within a few weeks. The Wall Street Journal reported Iran had enough uranium to make 12. However, during negotiations, Iranians offered to turn over that uranium, the Middle East diplomat told MS NOW. The Iranians told Witkoff and Kushner that they’d only started enriching uranium after Trump withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal in 2018. A senior Trump official had confirmed that Iranians “talked about turning over material to us.” But talks ended abruptly when the United States launched a joint attack with Israel.

Federal Judge Threatens to Throw Out Alina Habba’s Successors Too
New Republic • yesterday

Federal Judge Threatens to Throw Out Alina Habba’s Successors Too

A federal judge has rejected President Trump’s new appointees to the New Jersey U.S. Attorney’s Office, ruling that the president is illegally trying to get around Senate confirmation.Chief U.S. District Judge Matthew Brann ruled Monday that the three-prosecutor team running the office is leading “unlawfully,” as the Trump administration tries to cite “enormous grants of executive power hidden in the vagaries and silences of the code.”“Why does the fate of thousands of criminal prosecutions in this district potentially rest on the legitimacy of an unprecedented and byzantine leadership structure?” Brann wrote in his ruling. “The government tells us: The president doesn’t like that he cannot simply appoint whomever he wants.”Several criminal cases in the district could be thrown out, with “scores of dangerous criminals” possibly able to escape punishment, Brann wrote, because the Trump administration doesn’t want to appoint U.S. attorneys legally—not just in New Jersey, but all around the country.“The Office of the United States Attorney for at least five other Districts is currently vacant and in each case it appears that the Government is running the office through a delegation of authority to an individual of the Attorney General and President’s unilateral choice,” Brann wrote, noting that in two cases, judges used their legal power to appoint an attorney to fill the vacancy, and Trump fired their picks too.“In both cases the President fired their selection within hours and [Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche] made combative (and legally incomplete) posts clearly indicating that the Department of Justice would not permit anyone to hold any United States Attorney’s office if that person was not handpicked by the President,” Brann continued.The whole reason that the New Jersey office was being run by three attorneys was because Trump’s appointment of his personal lawyer, Alina Habba, as U.S. attorney was found to be illegal. Habba, who was set to lose her nomination vote in the Senate, unlawfully stayed past her interim term. She now works for the Justice Department in Washington, D.C., and called Monday’s ruling “ridiculous” on X.“Judges may continue to try and stop President Trump from carrying out what the American people voted for, but we will not be deterred,” Habba wrote. “The unconstitutionality of this complete overreach into the Executive Branch, time and time again, will not succeed. They would rather have no U.S. Attorney than safety for the people of NJ.”Ridiculous or not, absent the Senate, Trump’s handpicked prosecutors are going to keep getting rejected by federal judges. Unless the president starts appointing them legally, every federal prosecution is going to be in jeopardy.

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