Trump's War is Dangerously Depleting US Military Weapons and Ordinance

Since the Iran war began in late February, the United States has burned through around 1,100 of its long-range stealth cruise missiles built for a war with China, close to the total number remaining in the U.S. stockpile. The military has fired off more than 1,000 Tomahawk cruise missiles, roughly 10 times the number it currently buys each year.

The Pentagon used more than 1,200 Patriot interceptor missiles in the war, at more than $4 million a pop, and more than 1,000 Precision Strike and ATACMS ground-based missiles, leaving inventories worrisomely low, according to internal Defense Department estimates and congressional officials.

The Iran war has significantly drained much of the U.S. military’s global supply of munitions, and forced the Pentagon to rush bombs, missiles and other hardware to the Middle East from commands in Asia and Europe. The drawdowns have left these regional commands less ready to confront potential adversaries like Russia and China, and it has forced the United States to find ways to scale up production to address the depletions, Trump administration and congressional officials say.

The conflict has also underscored the Pentagon’s overreliance on excessively expensive missiles and munitions, especially air-defense interceptors, as well as concerns about whether the defense industry can develop cheaper arms, especially attack drones, far more quickly.

Read the rest here.

For Frustrated G.O.P., Redistricting Fight Turns to Florida and the Courtroom

Frustrated Republicans looked Wednesday to rebound from another setback in a nationwide redistricting chess match, as the high-stakes contest turned to Florida and the courtroom.

A Democratic victory on Tuesday in Virginia, where voters approved a change to the state’s House map that could give the party up to four more seats in the midterms, left Republicans with little to show for a tit-for-tat they started last year in Texas at the urging of President Trump.

Republicans are holding out hope that Virginia’s top court might reverse Tuesday’s result. And they are eying a chance to gain ground by redrawing the House map in Florida, where they control the governor’s office and hold supermajorities in the Legislature. But there is growing doubt in the party about its broader strategy.

“The two sides spent hundreds of millions dollars to get back to where they started, and in general, it’s turned out to be a net loser for Republicans,” said C. Stewart Verdery Jr., a Republican consultant.

Read the rest here.

Pew Research: Trends in religious conversions

Christianity has experienced some of the largest losses from religious switching of any faith group around the world, according to our 2024 surveys. Religious switching refers to when people identify with a different religion in adulthood than they were raised in as a child.

Within Christianity, however, religious switching has affected the two largest subgroups – Catholicism and Protestantism – differently:

*Catholicism has lost more people than it’s gained in nearly all countries that we surveyed.

*Protestantism has seen a net gain from switching in nearly as many places as it has seen a net loss.

Here we take a closer look at religious switching into, out of, and between Catholicism and Protestantism, based on Pew Research Center surveys in 24 countries...

Read the rest here.

Are you ready for universal Trump pardons?

President Trump has reportedly told his staff “I’ll pardon everyone who has come within 200 feet of the Oval [Office].” Should we believe his boast, that he will issue pre-emptive presidential pardons to hundreds, if not thousands, of administration staff and officials who may or may not have committed or even been charged with a federal crime?

Although Trump often claims he can or will take certain questionable actions he may have no intention of taking, there are reasons to take this boast seriously.

Could a president issue what amounts to universal administration pardons? Perhaps.

Article II, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution says the president “shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.”

The Supreme Court has generally held that this power is unlimited with respect to federal crimes, but it does not apply to impeachment or crimes charged by state and local law enforcement. And there are other limitations — for example, a president cannot pardon someone for a future crime.

Read the rest here.

Being a Mets fan...

...is just God's way of preparing me for eventual martyrdom.

The Bizarre and Corrupt World of Prediction Markets

This is an excellent overview of the latest fad in online gambling.

ICE Is Determined To Unmask a Reddit User Whose Only Crime Seems To Be Criticizing ICE

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is trying to unmask an anonymous Reddit user whose only crime seems to be criticizing the Trump administration's immigration crackdown. Last month, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which is part of DHS, withdrew an administrative subpoena demanding information about the Reddit account "Tired_Thumb" after facing a legal challenge in the Northern District of California, where Reddit is headquartered. But as The Intercept reported last week, federal prosecutors in Washington, D.C., now seem intent on obtaining information about the ICE critic from Reddit via a grand jury subpoena.

"Government critics are not suspects and free speech is not a crime," says Will Creeley, legal director of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). "The First Amendment protects our right to criticize the government anonymously—an American tradition that dates back to the founding. So far, the government hasn't been able to point to a single Reddit post [by Tired_Thumb] that's not protected by the First Amendment. Not one. By putting the administration's feelings above the First Amendment, government agents are sending a deliberate message to each of us: Don't criticize us—or else."

Read the rest here.

Hungary Is a Laboratory for Illiberal Nationalism. The Results Are In.

Last month, Donald Trump offered Viktor Orban his “complete and total endorsement” in a video message ahead of Hungary’s April 12 election. The statement continued the president’s habit of boldly weighing in on the internal politics of other nations. But in this case, he would have been wise to first check the sell-by date of the prime minister and his creaking project of illiberalism.

After repeatedly winning reelection since 2010, Orban and his ruling party, Fidesz, now face a genuine electoral challenge from Peter Magyar and his center-right Tisza Party, which has led in the polls for more than a year while running on an anti-corruption platform. The result will allow the world to gauge Hungarians’ discontent with Orban’s brand of politics. It will also provide an answer to whether it’s possible for an opposition with broad support to win after 16 years under a government that rewrote election laws to its benefit while bringing much of the media under its influence.

The president’s interest in Orban’s political survival is certainly due in part to their rapport, but there’s a deeper nexus, too. Many of Trump’s supporters and allies — including Vice President JD Vance — see Hungary as a bastion of conservative and Christian values in a liberal and secular European Union.

For them, the election carries added significance. Hungary has served as a laboratory for policies promoted by many self-described national conservatives in the United States who want government to positively promote conservative values.

But regardless of the outcome, Orban has already shown that his vision of illiberal nationalism is a dead end that made Hungary poorer and less free.

Read the rest here.

It's time to talk about the 25th amendment.

Donald Trump attacks the pope online. He claims that it was he (Trump) who got the pope elected. And then he posts an image of himself as Jesus Christ.

Mr. Trump is a pathological liar. He is the most corrupt and incompetent president in US history. He appears to be functionally illiterate. His behavior is becoming more erratic by the day. And yes, he has the nuclear launch codes. 

It's time for the country to have an adult conversation about a man who is, on top of all of his other "issues," very probably mentally ill. 

Hungarian Strongman Victor Orban Concedes Election

After sixteen years in power, the pro-Kremlin ruler was ousted in parliamentary elections. 

Christ is Risen!

 

Reports: Pentagon officials menaced Vatican envoy over papal criticism

Briefly interrupting a blog break for Holy Week to report a potentially significant development in relations between the Catholic Church and the Trump Administration.

I'm not sure what to make of this. On the one hand, as of this post the big boys in the press/media world are not reporting on the alleged incident. However, it is getting widespread coverage in what might be called the second tier of the press. Clearly there was a meeting. Why would the Vatican's envoy be summoned to the Pentagon? The Pentagon says the meeting was respectful but have offered no other details. Some reports have gone so far as to claim that the Pope has indefinitely postponed a planned trip to the US. Conspicuously, the Holy See is thus far keeping quiet. 

Hmm...

Meanwhile, the Democrats...

In California Democrats could lock themselves out of the ballot for the governor's race.

And in New York, they are playing dirty in the governor's race. 

Ten Years Ago Donald Trump Promised to Eliminate the National Debt. It Has Doubled.

Ten years ago today, Donald Trump said he would pay off the national debt in the span of just eight years.

That did not happen. Instead, the gross national debt has doubled since that day—from about $19 trillion to over $39 trillion. Much of that additional borrowing has taken place during Trump's five-plus years in the White House.

The gap between Trump's outlandish promise and the brutal fiscal reality of the past decade is not just a political gotcha. It's also an apt illustration of how far and how fast the debt has spiraled. And it's a painful reminder of a missed opportunity that Americans will be facing for a long, long time. The bill for these 10 years of fiscal profligacy will be coming due long after Trump has finally departed from the political scene.

But it's a story that starts, as everything in politics seems to these days, with Trump.

Read the rest here.

Trump is trying to play dictator with the elections

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed an executive order to create a nationwide list of verified eligible voters and to restrict mail-in voting, a move that swiftly drew legal threats from state Democratic officials as the president demands further limitations on voting ahead of this year’s midterm elections.

The order, which voting law experts say violates the Constitution by attempting to seize the power to run elections from states, is the latest in a torrent of efforts from Trump to interfere with the way Americans vote based on his false allegations of fraud.

It calls on the Department of Homeland Security, working in conjunction with the Social Security Administration, to make the list of eligible voters in each state, according to the text of the executive order released Tuesday. It also seeks to bar the U.S. Postal Service from sending absentee ballots to those not on each state’s approved list, although the president likely lacks the power to mandate what the Postal Service does.

Read the rest here.

The People Trump Pardoned Are on a Crime Spree

The Constitution grants sweeping pardon powers to the president, which means that public opinion has historically been the only check on that power. The risk of a backlash is the reason that presidents have waited until their last days in office to issue many pardons and commutations, especially dubious ones to family members (like Hunter Biden) or political allies (like Caspar W. Weinberger, whom George H.W. Bush pardoned). The potential for a backlash also made presidents cautious about the number of pardons they issued. They understood that there could be an outcry if somebody who received a pardon later committed a new crime. The pardon system has also relied on the decency of American presidents.

President Trump has abandoned this approach. His self-serving pardons are so numerous that public attention cannot keep up with them. It is a version of the strategy that his former adviser Steve Bannon has described as “flood the zone”: Do so much so fast that people cannot follow the consequences.

He has created a veritable pardon industry, in which people with White House connections accept payments from wealthy convicts. Among those on whom he has bestowed freedom are dozens of people convicted of fraud. He has also pardoned Juan Orlando Hernández, a former president of Honduras, who helped traffic hundreds of tons of cocaine into the United States, and Ross Ulbricht, who was serving a life sentence for running Silk Road, a sprawling criminal enterprise that sold drugs. There seems to be no crime too ugly for a Trump pardon.

Read the rest here.

The Economic Implications of Trump's War

This is one of the best explanations I have seen for what is going on, and what might be coming down the road.

After a long and cold winter, hints of spring for conservative Catholics

The excellent, and often well informed Traditionalist Catholic blog Rorate Caeli has a summary of recent moves by Pope Leo XIV in the Roman Curia. Reading the tea leaves Rorate appears to be fairly optimistic, characterizing developments as "A Return to Normalcy and Competence."

Read their report here. 

Obviously, what goes on in the Catholic Church is to a certain degree not our business. On the other hand the spread of modernist nuttery within the one bastion of Western Christianity that had, ante-Francis largely resisted this malignancy, cannot be viewed as anything other than an alarming development. While I am reserving judgement on Leo, I remain hopeful that he will curb the more dangerous doctrinal and disciplinary strains of the Franciscan era. 

Alarming news from Finland

The Supreme Court of Finland on Thursday (March 26) found a former government minister guilty of “hate speech” for her biblical views on marriage following two prior acquittals by lower courts.

In a 3-2 decision, the court ruled against Päivi Räsänen for expressing her beliefs on marriage and sexual ethics in a 20-year-old church pamphlet. The court also criminally convicted Lutheran Bishop Juhana Pohjola for publishing the 2004 pamphlet, according to legal rights group Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) International.

The court levied fines of several thousand euros on both Räsänen and Pohjola and ordered the removal and destruction of the impugned statements. Räsänen has been sentenced to a fine equivalent to 20 days’ wages (in her case, 1,800 euros) and she will also have to pay her own legal costs, according to Evangelical Focus. Pohjola was also given a 20-day fine, and his publishing house, Finnish Lutheran Foundation, must pay a fine of 5,000 euros.

The convictions were based on “making and keeping available to the public a text that insults a group,” the court ruled.

Read the rest here.

cf: This

On a positive note; summer is coming

From here.

At CPAC a Generational Divide Over Iran

GRAPEVINE, Texas (AP) — A generational divide over the Iran war surfaced Thursday between older attendees and their political heirs at this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference, as the group’s leaders pleaded for unity in a challenging midterm election year for Republicans.

Younger conservatives spoke of disappointment and even “betrayal” over President Donald Trump’s launch of strikes against Iran, saying in interviews with The Associated Press that the president’s actions run counter to his many pledges to oppose foreign entanglements.

Meanwhile, older conservatives were looking past Trump’s campaign criticism of military action to topple foreign regimes, arguing the war in Iran is a pragmatic act forced by threats to the United States.

The bright dividing line emerged in conversations with a dozen participants on either end of the age spectrum who gathered for the annual meeting of conservatives, being held outside Dallas. That split could reflect flagging enthusiasm for Trump among some younger voters, a potentially troubling sign for Republicans heading into midterm elections and for the conservative movement as it looks to build beyond Trump’s tenure.

“We did not want to see more wars. We wanted actual America-first policies, and Trump was very explicit about that,” said Benjamin Williams, a 25-year-old marketing specialist for Young Americans for Liberty. “It does feel like a betrayal, for sure.”

Read the rest here.

Illegal Immigration and Crime

What the stats actually say.

US Shipbuilding and the Jones Act

Last month, I had the chance to sit down with 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl for a piece on the moribund state of US commercial shipbuilding. That story, “Turning the Ship Around,” aired last weekend, and having now seen it, I’d like to offer a few thoughts.

The segment opens with Stahl describing the US commercial shipbuilding industry as “nearly extinct.” The numbers back her up. As she points out, US shipyards produce around three ships per year. That’s less than what South Korean shipbuilder Hanwha produces in a month. But even that may be too charitable. Three is the US average over the last 25 years. This decade, US shipyards are on track to average roughly one per year.

But that’s just oceangoing cargo ships. Widening the aperture to include other vessel types does little to improve the picture. The most recent data show that the United States, the world’s second-largest manufacturing country, accounts for just 0.04 percent of global commercial shipbuilding output—good enough for 19th place. Over the past decade, the US has averaged 0.24 percent of global output. And it’s trending down.

South Korean firm Hanwha, however, says it will reverse the matter. According to the CEO of its Philly Shipyard, which the company purchased in 2024 for $100 million, the yard is set to transform into a 21st-century enterprise...

Read the rest here.

A war of regression: How Trump bombed the US into a worse position with Iran

Four weeks into a war that was going to take four days, and that has so far cost the US about $30-40bn and Israel $300m a day, Washington is further away from a diplomatic agreement with Iran than it was in May 2025.

Not only has the war failed to persuade Iran to agree to dismantle its nuclear programme in the comprehensive and irreversible way the US demanded in a 15-point paper that it tabled on 23 May last year, Washington is now having to negotiate to reopen the strait of Hormuz, a strategic waterway that has been open ever since the invention of the dhow, with a short exception of a tanker war in the 1980s between Iran and Iraq.

This regression is proving to be perplexing for the American high command. Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defence, recently said that “the only thing prohibiting transit in the strait right now is Iran shooting at shipping”, but this was not quite right. Iran has not been shooting at shipping that much in recent weeks. Instead, it is the fear of Iran shooting at shipping that is scaring off insurers and tanker owners.

Still worse from the US perspective, Iran has set up a waterside stall whereby prime ministers and tanker owners can bargain with the Iranian navy over the toll they are willing to pay for their tankers to be given “free passage”. Iran plans to turn the strait into a money spinner, just as Egypt charges for access to the Suez canal. By some calculations, given the massive scale of the traffic that passes through the strait each year, Iran could raise $80bn a year. If a law currently being rushed through the Iranian parliament passes, tankers carrying oil from favoured non-hostile nations such as India, Japan, Pakistan, South Korea and China will be waved through or offered cheaper rates.

Little wonder Trump is thrashing around. The US along with Israel continues to bomb Iran, but he has now twice put back the date of threatened strikes on Iran’s civilian power stations – an action that would constitute a war crime. He continues to insist Iran has been defeated and yet Iran continues to behave as if it is not.

Read the rest here.

Trump 24-karat gold coin approved by hand-picked federal panel

A commemorative gold coin bearing the image of US President Donald Trump has been approved by a federal arts commission.

The 24-karat gold coin is intended to mark America's 250th birthday this 4 July and portrays Trump with his fists pressed against a desk.

After a presentation by the US Mint, the US Commission of Fine Arts voted unanimously to approve the design, despite questions over its legality.

Federal law does not allow a living president to appear on US currency. But the coin is being issued in accordance with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's authority and discretion to mint and issue proof gold coins.

Bessent is expected to order the coin to be struck once the US Mint produces final dimensions.

The commission's vice-chairman, James McCrery, said: "I motion to approve this [coin] as presented, and with the strong encouragement that you make it as large as possible, all the way to three inches in diameter."

For comparison, a US quarter dollar is less than an inch wide. Trump last year fired the Commission of Fine Arts' members, replacing them with allies.

Read the rest here.