Oh, oh, oh, it's tabbic – you know, never believe it's not so ...
An emotional Savannah Guthrie says her family is in "agony" and pleads with someone to "do the right thing" in her first interview since her mother Nancy's disappearance. pic.twitter.com/makTCjcgbG
— Fox News Flash (@FoxNews_Flash) March 25, 2026
Ed: I haven't written much about this case because there is nothing rational to add except to ask people to pray for the Guthries. This is just awful, and the pain here is excruciating. Please keep praying for Nancy Guthrie, her family and friends, and ask the Lord to touch someone's heart so that Savannah Guthrie and her family can at least know where her mother is and what happened to her. I'm glad to see Fox, CBS, ABC, and other media outlets carrying this clip today to help put the message out.
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Politico: Senate Republicans on Tuesday rebuffed a fresh attempt by Democrats to limit President Donald Trump on Iran, despite the worsening military and economic fallout from the nearly month-long war.
The vote — which failed 47-53 — was the third test of GOP support for the president’s actions, as oil prices shoot up and the American public appears increasingly disenchanted with the U.S. military campaign. And yet again, all but one Republican backed Trump, signaling the party’s continued willingness to give leeway to the commander-in-chief.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) was the lone GOP senator to support the measure, while Democratic Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania joined Republicans to vote it down. The tally was identical to two previous roll calls on Iran, including a vote just six days ago.
Ed: Hey, the Senate endorsed the war again! Do three endorsements come with a trophy? What I find most interesting about this is that Democrats keep pushing this even though nothing has changed. And also, how little attention Democrats drew to the vote, both before and afterward.
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New: Iran has been laying traps and moving additional military personnel and air defenses to Kharg Island in recent weeks in preparation for a possible US operation to take control of the island, according to multiple people familiar with US intelligence reporting on the issue.…
— Natasha Bertrand (@NatashaBertrand) March 25, 2026
... Gulf allies are warning of significant US casualties if US moves fwd with an operation there & advising against it.
Ed: How accurate is this? We may find out soon. I would expect, though, that the US will do a lot more before we actually attempt to put a boot on the ground on Kharg Island to address these potential issues. Given the earlier strikes on the island and the lack of naval assets, though, I suspect that the IRGC probably hasn't been able to substantially reinforce Kharg, and that the deployment is on the mainland with drones and missiles aimed at the island and its oil operations as a last-ditch deterrent. The US knows how to use combined arms for amphibious operations better than anyone else.
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WSJ: The White House threatened further attacks on Iran if Tehran doesn’t make a deal to end the conflict. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed the U.S. is negotiating to end the war in Iran, but declined to say whom it has held talks with. The U.S. and Israel have temporarily removed two senior Iranian officials from their list of officials to eliminate as they explore possible peace talks, U.S. officials said.
Iran is privately showing a willingness to hear out diplomatic efforts to end the war, Arab mediators and other people familiar with the matter said, after Iranian state media reported that Tehran rejected the U.S. proposal to end the war. They cautioned the odds of success remain low, as both sides have staked out maximalist positions and Iran remains highly suspicious of negotiations after two previous efforts at diplomacy ended in war.
Ed: I'd expect efforts to negotiate to accelerate tomorrow. The Iranians like to use deadlines to manipulate people into concessions, a habit that Qatar constantly rewarded in talks between Israel and Hamas in previous conflicts.
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Yeah, I doubt it.
— Bonchie (@bonchieredstate) March 25, 2026
They didn’t send equipment to the island without us knowing and blowing it up on the water.
CNN sending that “reporter” to Tehran to be a stenographer has been a propaganda boon for the regime. Which was the point. https://t.co/5WXvIi7dXe
Ed: I'm skeptical too, but it's not impossible for Iran to have used small boats to send some reinforcements. I'd be very skeptical that they could reinforce with any heavy arms, though, and whatever they may have accomplished in the last couple of weeks would not be difficult to undo via air attack. They're not digging into mountainsides, after all.
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Coleman Hughes: Simple explanation for the Iran War: Trump has been tough on Iran for decades. He believes that Iran tried to kill him and he took that personally. Iran's regime has been branding themselves as the common enemy of America and Israel since 1979. They're the #1 exporter of terror regionally and worldwide. No state is close. They've bragged about enriching kilograms of uranium to 60%––a fact verified by the IAEA. Every single country who has made it that far has gone on to develop nukes. There are, literally, zero exceptions. We know they're angling for a bomb. It's only a matter of when they choose to sprint from the ten-yard line to the endzone.
America benefits from a weaker, non-nuclear Iran. Lots of countries also benefit from a weaker Iran––Israel and Saudi Arabia primarily. That's what it means to have a common enemy. But just b/c they benefit too, doesn't mean they puppeteered us.
Moreover, Trump, being amazingly shameless, is invulnerable to blackmail, and refuses to be told what to do. That's why he fires every adviser who tries to push him around, and replaces them with yes-men. (That's not a great quality, but it does make the foreign influence theory that much more ridiculous).
In sum, the Israel Lobby is relatively small, and like many other lobbies they are able to secure modest legislative achievements––and mostly at the state level. The idea that they dictate or even significantly influence our foreign policy is total nonsense driven by ideology. Enough!
Ed: This essay is well worth reading. Hughes wrote it to summarize his debates with Glenn Greenwalk and Dave Smith over the idea that Trump is the puppet of "the Israel lobby." It's part Hanlon's Razor and part a recitation of the obvious.
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Not a great look https://t.co/NFGBgE0bMv
— Chris Cillizza (@ChrisCillizza) March 25, 2026
Ed: Pretty much an evergreen comment when it comes to Kimmel.
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Free Beacon: Columbia University has placed its Young Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA) chapter on interim suspension in the wake of a Washington Free Beacon report highlighting the group's plans to "liaise with Columbia University Apartheid Divest" (CUAD), the banned student organization that wished "death to America" amid the U.S. military operations in Iran. Those plans appeared to violate Columbia's "zero tolerance" policy barring recognized student groups from affiliating with CUAD.
"The University has placed the Columbia-Barnard Young Democratic Socialists of America group on interim status as we investigate these allegations," a Columbia spokesman told the Free Beacon on Wednesday. "During this change in status, the group will not be eligible for benefits afforded to recognized student groups and will not be entitled to use University space or funds."
Ed: Incentives ... how do they work again? I made that point about incentives in Academia in an earlier post.
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He also said the Afghanistan withdrawal was an extraordinary success.
— John Ondrasik (@johnondrasik) March 25, 2026
Ed: Just in case anyone wonders about how idiotic US foreign policy leadership was during the Biden Regency ...
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Newsmax: "Blame the Democrats for the Airport's mess, Trump wrote, arguing that political obstruction has led to staffing shortages and major delays at security checkpoints nationwide. "They want our Country to do badly. They want our Country to fail."
The president praised ICE agents who have already been deployed to assist at airports, calling them "great ICE Patriots" and crediting their efforts with helping ease disruptions.
Still, he indicated more action could be necessary if conditions continue to deteriorate.
"I may call up the National Guard for more help," Trump said.
Ed: The National Guard gets paid from the Department of Defense (or War) rather than DHS. That makes funding easier in such a deployment, not to mention would distract less from immigration enforcement activities outside of airports. That aspect may make Democrats more uncomfortable. Plus, there are plenty of precedents for deploying the National Guard into airports, especially after 9/11. This war with Iran certainly provides plenty of incentive, too.
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This is quite a story about the enormous losses Russian forces are suffering. I have read the full Russian-language report linked below (I am a native speaker), and can confirm it amply documents these conclusions (based on original Russian military docs provided by an officer… https://t.co/eOipTL7oWZ
— Ilya Somin (@IlyaSomin) March 25, 2026
Ed: Interesting thread here. It's worth considering, but of course, we have to consider this in the context of four years of Russian obstinacy in prosecuting this war. It may not be existential to the Russian state, but Vladimir Putin has acted as though it were existential to his regime.
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Noah Rothman at NRO: It turns out that Ukraine isn’t bereft of any “cards” to play in this war. In fact, it’s got a full deck at its disposal.
“The biggest thing coming out of Ukraine is the rapid pace of innovation,” said Space Force Lieutenant General Steven Whitney in a recent congressional testimony. Kyiv has developed the capacity to adapt, iterating and fielding both new high-tech weapons and low-cost defensive munitions at a rapid pace. “Their level of innovation is out of this world,” he marveled.
That ingenuity has transformed Ukraine, in the minds of its detractors inside the Trump administration, from a charity case and a drag on U.S. resources into a sought-after partner in the battle against Iranian forces and the creator of weapons systems that the U.S. and its Middle East partners only wish they had at their disposal.
Ukraine isn’t just positioning itself as a desirable collaborator in procurement. Ukraine’s stock is rising among those who only recently dismissed its battlefield prospects, too.
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So Jennings humiliated you on air, huh? And this is how you respond?
— Mark Hemingway (@Heminator) March 25, 2026
This is really low character stuff, perfectly in keeping with Taylor's ridiculous "anonymous" ruse where he misrepresented his role and influence to advance his career. https://t.co/2TpKGr9SJ8
Ed: Exactly.
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Kenneth Timmerman at American Thinker: I can now report, based on former Iranian intelligence sources with personal knowledge of the inner workings of the Supreme Leader's office, that February 28 was the final meeting of a core group of Iranian decision-makers to determine the fate of Iran's clandestine nuclear weapons program.
Since the June 2025 strikes on Iran's nuclear weapons enrichment and production facilities had failed to eliminate the 460 kg of uranium enriched to 60%, top Iranian security officials were debating whether to weaponize that stockpile into nuclear warheads.
The group had been meeting regularly under the auspices of the Supreme Leader's Office to weigh their options and had scheduled the February 28 meeting so the Supreme Leader could personally approve their plan to proceed with the weaponization plan.
Had the February 28 meeting taken place as planned, Brig. General Hossein Jabal Amelian, who headed the organization in charge of weaponization, would have given his men the order to activate a containerized mobile centrifuge enrichment lab to enrich Iran's 460 kg of 60% uranium to 93%, and to transform the enriched uranium hexafluoride gas to uranium metal bomb cores.
Ed: Even if one dismisses this as unsubstantiated intel, the fact remains that Iran could do this with its stockpile of HEU at 60%. There is no other use for HEU enriched to that level. None. No country that had that level of enrichment has failed to proceed to making nuclear weapons, at least not until now.
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Nick Shirley “Would you guys vote for Gavin Newsom in 2028?”
— Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) March 25, 2026
California resident “I’d vote for him because he got me released, coming home from a life sentence — He signed off saying I’m fit for society”
“What were you locked up for?
“Murder, carjacking and robbery”
Holy sh*t pic.twitter.com/GLWh7tfQH9
Ed: That would be a feature in the Democrat primary, even if it's a bug for a general election. Newsom has other problems in a primary now, though.
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Brooklyn, New York ladies and gentlemen
— Nicky The Good (@nickythegood) March 25, 2026
This is the most beautiful accent in the world and I’ll hear no different pic.twitter.com/ExLuIGBbnS
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