I had a moment of insight or perhaps revelation early in this war when the blockage of the Strait of Hormuz first became central in the news and President Trump was publicly debating whether he would use the U.S. Navy to escort ships through it. Would he, won’t he? Will it happen tomorrow? What will he decide. Then I was watching a YouTube show about maritime shipping. In passing the host, Sal Mercogliano, noted that, at that time at least, there weren’t any U.S. naval vessels in the Persian Gulf at all. And the kind of ships you need, in the numbers you’d need, were hundreds of even thousands of miles away. That made perfect sense since for the kind of war the U.S. is currently fighting we don’t need naval vessels anywhere near that close to the combat zone, and when they are that close they become much more vulnerable to attack. But the point is that the whole debate about whether Trump was about to do that any time in the near future was entirely contained within Trump’s Truth Social world. It wasn’t connected to any of the hard realities of whether any of that was even possible.
Due to popular demand, we’ve increased our ticket allotment for the Austin event on April 8.
Remember: If you are a member, you get discounted tickets. If you missed the discount code, just shoot me an email at joe@talkingpointsmemo.com and I’ll get you the goods.
If we sell out, please add yourself to the waitlist. Sometimes people drop out.
Kate and Josh talk airports in crisis, Trump’s bewildering political calculus and, believe it or not, an optimistic vision of what a post-Trump world could look like.
President Donald Trump is planning to bring the UFC into the White House later this year. But the brawl on the South Lawn is not the only way mixed martial arts has become a part of his administration.
Trump, like many other right-wing leaders before him, has a long history with combat sports.
In a 3 p.m. Substack Live, we’ll take a look at how martial arts has become right coded. It’s a cultural phenomenon with troubling effects that stretch from D.C., to Saudi Arabia, and the white supremacist fringe. Join here.
One of Layla A. Jones’ insights when she joined our team last year was that you could measure the destruction that DOGE wreaked on the federal workforce by looking at the D.C.-area economy, and, specifically, the housing market. Her first piece for us examined those indicators. Now, a year after Elon Musk and his youths began their slash-and-burn rampage through the executive branch, Layla finds the damage lingering — and, in some ways, worsening — with the middle class, once propped up by government workers and contractors, falling behind a growing wealthy elite. That story is here.
We’re starting to see House Republicans complain that, even as the administration prepares to ask for huge sums to keep the war in Iran funded, it’s leaving lawmakers in the dark about what, exactly, the money is for. “We want to know more about what’s going on, what the options are, and why they’re being considered,” House Armed Services Chair Mike Rogers (R-AL) told reporters yesterday. “And we’re just not getting enough answers on those questions.”
Rep. Joe Morelle (D-NY), the vice ranking member on House Appropriations and a member of its Defense subcommittee, goes into great detail this morning with Hunter Walker and Josh Kovensky about how bad it really is. “I don’t think the American public appreciates it, and it’s certainly not a way to conduct your conversations with Congress,” he says. “Even in classified briefings where we don’t talk about what we learn, there’s literally no actionable intelligence that you get from him.”
Kate and Josh talk airports in crisis, Trump’s bewildering political calculus and, believe it or not, an optimistic vision of what a post-Trump world could look like.
