What a dull tool....

Hegseth says fight over Strait of Hormuz is "much more" Europe's "than ours"

By Haley Britzky

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth railed against European allies on Friday morning for not helping the US enough in its war against Iran, saying the US “barely” uses the Strait of Hormuz and that the situation “is much more their fight than ours.”

“We are not counting on Europe, but they need the Strait of Hormuz much more than we do, and might want to start doing less talking and having less fancy conferences in Europe and get in a boat,” Hegseth said during a Pentagon press briefing. “This is much more their fight than ours.”

Hegseth and President Donald Trump have repeatedly bashed US allies, particularly those in NATO, for not coming to the US’ aid after it began combat operations against Iran on February 28.

Trump lashed out against European allies last month, saying the US doesn’t “need any help actually” after insisting other countries should send naval assets to help escort oil tankers transiting the Strait of Hormuz.

Falklands

Sovereignty of Falklands “rests with the UK,” Britain tells US after leaked Pentagon email

By Christian Edwards and Vasco Cotovio

The sovereignty of the Falkland Islands rests with Britain, Downing Street said today, following a report that the United States could review its position as punishment for Britain’s stance on the war in Iran.

“We could not be clearer about the UK’s position on the Falkland Islands,” a spokesperson for Prime Minister Keir Starmer said. “It is long standing. It is unchanged.”

The spokesperson was responding to an internal Pentagon email reported by Reuters which outlined options for the US to punish NATO allies it believes failed to support the US militarily in its war with Iran.

Those options included reviewing the US position on Britain’s claim to the Falkland Islands, as well as suspending Spain from NATO. Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has been a vocal critic of the US war with Iran.

Responding to the report, Sánchez said Friday: “We do not work off emails. We work off official documents and government positions, in this case of the United States. Spain’s position is clear: absolute cooperation with the allies, but always within the framework of international law.”

President Donald Trump has repeatedly criticized NATO allies – who were not consulted ahead of the US-Israeli strikes on Iran on February 28 – for not sending their navies to help open the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran effectively closed after it was attacked.

The Falklands are a British overseas territory in the south-west Atlantic. Britain and Argentina fought a 10-week war over the islands in 1982 after Argentina’s military dictator, Leopoldo Galtieri, ordered an invasion.

Argentina’s President Javier Milei, an ally of Trump’s, said in 2024 that his government would set out a “roadmap” toward Argentine sovereignty over the islands. The Downing Street spokesperson stressed that the Falklands had voted “overwhelmingly” in favor of remaining a British overseas territory.

Recreates neutron star reaction

Physicist recreates neutron star reaction, reveals how explosive stars forge elements

by Sarah Nicholas, Mississippi State University

A Mississippi State physicist has produced a direct laboratory measurement of a key nuclear reaction believed to occur during explosive bursts on neutron stars. These bursts forge heavier elements—the building blocks of planets and life on Earth. The findings appear in The Astrophysical Journal.

"The universe began almost entirely with hydrogen and helium," said principal investigator Jaspreet Randhawa, assistant professor in MSU's Department of Physics and Astronomy. "Every heavier element—from the oxygen we breathe to the iron in Earth's core—was forged later in stars and stellar explosions. By identifying how stellar explosions build heavier elements, scientists gain a clearer picture of how the elements that form planets and support life are distributed throughout the cosmos."

"We wanted to know whether nature had a built-in roadblock that stopped heavier elements from forming during X-ray bursts on neutron star surfaces," added Randhawa, whose graduate student, Muhammad Asif Zubair, joined the study. "Our measurements show this roadblock is much weaker than expected, meaning the process that builds heavier elements can continue."

Neutron stars are the dense remnants left behind when massive stars explode, Randhawa said. Though only about the size of a city, they can pack more mass than the sun. In some binary systems, they pull in material from a companion star, creating extreme temperatures and pressures that trigger bursts of X-rays.

Scientists have long suspected that the process of forming heavier elements in these bursts could stall at copper-59, a short-lived isotope that decays in less than two minutes. That brief window has made it difficult for researchers to study the reaction in a laboratory, posing a major challenge for direct measurement, Randhawa said.

In this new study, he and his colleagues on the international team produced a beam of copper-59, accelerated it, and directed it onto a frozen hydrogen target before it decayed. The experiment took place at TRIUMF, Canada's national laboratory for nuclear and particle physics, one of the few facilities in the world capable of producing beams of copper-59 in sufficient quantities for study. This was the first direct laboratory measurement of this key reaction.

Precisely date

Astronomers precisely date rare brown dwarf companion, offering new test for how these objects cool

by University of Hawaii at Manoa

Astronomers at the University of Hawaiʻi have precisely measured the age of a nearby sun-like star and its unusual companion, known as a brown dwarf, an object that falls between a planet and a star. The discovery offers new clues into how brown dwarfs grow and change over time.

Using the W. M. Keck Observatory on Maunakea, the team from the UH Institute for Astronomy (IfA) studied the HR 7672 system, composed of a sun-like star and a faint brown dwarf companion. With an instrument called the Keck Planet Finder, they tracked tiny five-minute pulsations in the star's light and used them to estimate its age to be about 2.3 billion years. The study is published in The Astrophysical Journal.

Because the brown dwarf formed at the same time as the star, the star's age also reveals the companion's age, giving researchers a rare chance to check on whether their models of how brown dwarfs cool throughout time are correct.

"This is like finally having a reliable clock for an object we've been trying to understand for years," said IfA Parrent Fellow Yaguang Li, who led the study. "It really helps us place evolutionary models under stringent tests and determine which physical ingredients are correct."

Shaping discovery

For more than two decades, the HR 7672 system has helped shape how astronomers study brown dwarfs. Its companion, HR 7672B, was discovered in 2002 and was one of the first brown dwarfs ever directly imaged around a sun-like star using adaptive optics (AO), a technology that sharpens images blurred by Earth's atmosphere. Those early observations helped reveal how rare brown dwarfs are around sun-like stars at close orbital distances.

Brown dwarfs do not sustain the same energy-producing reactions as stars. Instead, they slowly cool and fade over time. But testing how that happens has been difficult, in part because scientists rarely know their exact ages.

With this new measurement, paired with what is already known about the object's energy output and mass, HR 7672B now stands out as a key reference point. The team compared their findings with several models and found the closest match with newer theories that better describe what's happening inside these objects.

More than 20 years ago, Michael Liu discovered HR 7672B using Keck AO. Today, Li is building on that work with this new high-precision age-dating of the same system.

Trump’s Biggest Scandals

Meet Paolo Zampolli, the Man at the Center of Trump’s Biggest Scandals

From the World Cup to Jeffrey Epstein and ICE deportations, the man who says he introduced Donald and Melania stays busy.

Alex Nguyen

Paolo Zampolli epitomizes why so many people hate the Trump administration.

Zampolli serves as Donald Trump’s US special envoy for “Global Partnership” and is mired in controversies over this year’s World Cup, Jeffrey Epstein, and, according to the New York Times, ICE.

He’s a shining example of people alleged to be scammer and abusers have weaseled their way into using Trump’s global platform for their own nefarious purposes. Let’s take a look.

The World Cup

On Wednesday, Zampolli told the Financial Times he made a suggestion to Trump and FIFA President Gianni Infantino that Iran be replaced by Italy at this summer’s World Cup. The soccer tournament will be played in the US, Canada, and Mexico, and both the US and Iran have expressed concerns that it would not be possible for Iran, which is currently at war with Israel and the United States.

“I’m an Italian native and it would be a dream to see the Azzurri at a US-hosted tournament. With four titles, they have the pedigree to justify inclusion,” Zampolli said to the Financial Times (“Azzuri” is a nickname for the Italian national sports team, which has won the competition four times, but has failed to qualify for three successive tournaments). Zampolli is an Italian-American but has no apparent association with Italian soccer or the World Cup.

The Financial Times suggested that Zampolli’s idea was designed to improve US and Italy relations after Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni condemned Trump’s bizarre remarks about Pope Leo XIV over the war in Iran.

You may be wondering: Why is an American envoy attempting to lobby on behalf of Italy instead of the US?

Zampolli reposted the Financial Times‘ Tuesday story on X and, late Wednesday night, posted two screenshots of the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera reporting his World Cup proposal. 

“Firstly, it is not possible, secondly it is not appropriate,” Italy’s sports minister, Andrea Abodi, told LaPresse. “You qualify on the pitch.”

“The attempt to exclude Iran from the World Cup only reveals the moral bankruptcy of the United States, which is afraid even of the presence of eleven young Iranians on the field of play,” the Iranian embassy said. A spokesperson for Iran’s government said Wednesday that Iran is prepared to play at the World Cup, according to the Associated Press. 

According to the BBC, FIFA is not planning to replace Iran with Italy. 

In other words, everyone hates the Trump administration. 

Jeffrey Epstein

Zampolli, a former head of a modeling agency in the ’90s, claims that he introduced Donald and Melania Trump and helped the first lady obtain a work visa in the mid-’90s. He even told the Daily Mail he was prepared to testify before Congress following Melania’s public denial earlier this month of close connections to Jeffrey Epstein, including that it was the convicted sex offender introduced her to Donald Trump. Melania Trump called for a congressional hearing to allow survivors of Epstein’s abuse to testify. 

Zampolli has his own ties to Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. He and Epstein discussed and later failed in their bid to purchase the agency Elite Model Management in 2004, and according to the Daily Beast, became a partner of Maxwell’s environmental charity and nonprofit organization, the TerraMar Project, that described itself as focused on protecting oceans. Maxwell launched the project in 2012 but the organization was dissolved in December 2019, following Epstein’s arrest in July of that same year.

ICE

Last month, the New York Times reported that Zampolli sent a request to David Venturella, an ICE official, to put his ex-girlfriend Amanda Ungaro, who is Brazilian and was arrested on charges of workplace fraud, in ICE detention. Zampolli had been in a custody battle with Ungaro over their son.

The Times obtained communication records demonstrating that Venturella contacted ICE’s Miami office to make sure agents would take Ungaro from a Miami jail where she was being held, an order that Venturella said was important to an individual closely connected to the White House. Ungaro was placed in ICE custody and deported, but, according to the Times, it remains unclear whether Zampolli’s request led to Ungaro’s deportation.

Mr. Zampolli denied asking ICE to detain Ungaro, saying he only asked Venturella about the status of her case.

The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement to the Times that Ungaro was detained and deported due to an expired visa and her fraud charges. “Any suggestion that she was arrested and removed for political reasons or favors is FALSE.”

Neither the US State Department nor the Kennedy Center immediately responded to a request from Mother Jones for Zampolli’s comment on the Financial Times and New York Times stories. (The Office for Global Partnerships is an office within the US State Department and Zampolli is on the board of trustees of the Kennedy Center, as appointed by President Trump.

Sensing a pattern? If Zampolli does get a role in organizing the World Cup, fans, players, journalists, and other travelers may be subjected to the Trump administration’s brutal immigration policies. 

School phone ban movement

California tests limits of school phone ban movement

Smartphone ban tensions boiling over in California reflect a broader, national debate that crosses party lines.

By Tyler Katzenberger

Nearly two years after passing a law to restrict students’ use of smartphones at school, California’s fight over the issue is getting messier — and it’s part of a heated national debate.

At the local level in the Golden State, parents, educators and school boards are clashing over how strict tech bans should be ahead of a mid-summer deadline to clamp down on phones in the classroom. In some places, those spats are triggering scrutiny over technology’s wider role in education, marking a drastic shift from when districts raced to stick iPads and Chromebooks in students’ hands during the Covid pandemic.

And in the California Legislature, an effort to outright ban phones during the entire school day is pitting tech-skeptical Democrats against colleagues who argue that stringent rules imposed from the Capitol undermine local control.

The conflict bubbled up Wednesday during a state Assembly Education Committee hearing, where Assemblymember Al Muratsuchi was forced to pare back his bill that called for a strict school smartphone ban, AB 1644, after it received pushback from school administrators, school boards and committee chair Darshana Patel.

While Muratsuchi wanted a bell-to-bell ban for students from kindergarten through high school, arguing that kids’ focus will slip if they’re allowed to whip out phones between classes or during lunch, he “reluctantly” agreed during the hearing to exempt high schools from the ban. Committee members voted to advance the scaled-back measure.

“I feel passionately that the evidence is overwhelming, that bell-to-bell smartphone bans across the country have proven to be effective,” the Los Angeles Democrat told POLITICO in an interview after the hearing.

The California debate reflects a national split on phone bans that crosses party lines. While 41 states have enacted laws seeking to restrict phones in classrooms, according to a Ballotpedia analysis, they offer school districts drastically different amounts of flexibility, ranging from “encouraging” local restrictions to outright bans on phone use during the school day.

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, likely a 2028 Democratic presidential candidate, has called on lawmakers in his state to pass a bell-to-bell phone ban, and Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed a full-day ban in 2025.

But other state leaders have been hesitant to include high schoolers in a blanket ban, arguing that it would impede online classwork, prevent students from coordinating after-school activities and pose safety risks during emergencies like a fire or school shooting.

In Florida, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a law last year that gave high schools greater discretion in setting student phone use policies. Gov. JB Pritzker, a Democrat and likely 2028 presidential contender, is supporting similar legislation in Illinois this year.

Back in California, gubernatorial candidate and San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan said during a FOX 40 candidate debate Wednesday night that he would “ban cell phone use during the academic day in public schools all the way through high school” if elected. Nonprofit groups such as Common Sense Media and Mothers Against Media Addiction also support a statewide full-day ban, as does tech industry trade group TechNet.

“Other states are keeping cell phones out of school for all students — California should too,” Common Sense founder and CEO Jim Steyer said in a statement. “Limiting these protections to K-8 leaves high schoolers behind at exactly the age when the risks are greatest.”

But California groups representing school administrators and board members take issue with a blanket ban — as does Patel, a San Diego Democrat and former school board president.

“There are many legitimate uses of the smartphone,” Patel said during Wednesday’s hearing. “It has now become a handheld computer that has very powerful purposes to help us organize our very busy lives.”

A spokesperson for Gov. Gavin Newsom, who in 2024 signed a school smartphone law that stopped short of mandating bell-to-bell restrictions, declined to comment on the issue.

Local control by design

California’s prolonged battle over phone bans is a predictable byproduct of how the state’s “Phone-Free Schools Act” was designed.

The 2024 law, authored by Muratsuchi and Republican Assemblymember Josh Hoover with backing from Newsom, was left open-ended to balance tech restrictions with safety and local control concerns. It ordered schools to pass “a policy to limit or prohibit” phone use by July 2026 but included few details about what those policies should look like. Instead, it told districts to conduct vigorous public outreach and craft rules that incorporated community feedback — an approach that placated school boards and administrators.

“In as diverse a state as California is,” California School Boards Association spokesperson Troy Flint told POLITICO, “a one-size-fits-all, blanket policy is not the right solution.”

That compromise left California’s more than 1,000 districts to their own devices on what to do about devices, teeing up a series of local fights as school officials scrambled to comply with the law. In some communities, parents and school board members have clashed over which smartphone restrictions to implement ahead of the July deadline.

Some rules, like those adopted for the Tamalpais Unified School District in Marin County, strictly order students to lock phones in sealed pouches during the entire school day, but other policies in places like Santa Barbara allow older students to use their phones between classes and during lunch periods.

A few school districts are going even further to restrict tech: Los Angeles Unified School District, the state’s largest, just this week approved a resolution to limit students’ screen time. It calls for keeping kids entirely off screens until second grade, tracking and limiting screen time for older students, and prioritizing “paper-and-pen” assignments. (Muratsuchi called LAUSD’s move “a step in the right direction.”)

With the policies still being finalized at the local level, grassroots organizations have joined forces in hopes of swaying the debate. Parent-led groups like MAMA, Distraction-Free Schools and Schools Beyond Screens are campaigning district-by-district, calling on school boards to approve K-12 bell-to-bell bans.

Julie Frumin, a mom and family therapist from Westlake Village who co-leads Distraction-Free Schools, said that advocates have biweekly calls to draft letters to school board members, coordinate talking points for board meetings and share updates on phone policies pending in different districts.

“We are really doing this as a coalition across the whole state,” Frumin said. “Phone-free schools will happen. We will continue pushing until it does.”

California parents also appear split on the issue: A Public Policy Institute of California poll released last week found that a majority of those with school aged-children — 52 percent — support school phone policies that permit students to use their devices between classes and during lunch, while 40 percent back an all-day ban.

For now, state lawmakers are widening their scope beyond the Muratsuchi legislation. Hoover is authoring a bill this year that would require districts to adopt “digital wellness” instructional plans, and Democratic state Sen. Henry Stern has proposed a separate measure that would direct California’s Department of Education to publish model guidelines dictating “age-appropriate use” of electronic devices issued to students.

“We’re going to look at all the ways that we need to address this,” Democratic state Assemblymember Josh Lowenthal, another proponent of stricter tech rules for kids, told POLITICO. He said he thinks the group of lawmakers seeking more restrictions “is growing because more and more parents and communities are speaking out.”

Frumin said advocates are encouraged by the recent developments and plan to step up their involvement in Sacramento, with goals to place a temporary moratorium on AI use in elementary and middle schools, mandate paper testing for young learners and pivot back to computer labs and Chromebook carts.

Still, she said it’s a knotty issue.

“It is incredibly difficult for families to navigate,” she said. “You’ve got your 11-year-old flipping back and forth between YouTube or Roblox or whatever, on the same screen in which they’re supposed to be doing their homework.”

Not Funny

 

Redistricting revenge tour

Trump’s redistricting revenge tour in Indiana isn’t going so well

His campaign to oust state Republicans who blocked his redistricting push is running into messaging challenges.

By Adam Wren

President Donald Trump’s retribution campaign here is not going as well as he’d like.

The push to oust eight Indiana Republican state senators after they refused to bow to him on redistricting was supposed to be a major show of force. But after millions of dollars spent and weeks of intense campaigning, his allies are still struggling to deliver a clear, consistent message to voters for why they should unseat the lawmakers.

Just a few dozen people showed up to a rally hosted by Turning Point USA with conservative activist Scott Pressler this past weekend, featuring a cardboard cutout of Trump holding his hand triumphantly in the air. And when POLITICO asked one of the president’s handpicked candidates what the defining issue of her campaign was, state Rep. Michelle Davis paused.

“Good question, um. Gosh, okay, defining issue. What’s it about?” she said, searching for an answer. “Well, what I say, what it’s about is, that we need real, true conservatives out there. We need someone who’s going to stand with the GOP party and the conservative people, the primary voters on stuff like common sense, stuff like making sure that boys aren’t in girls locker rooms, boys don’t play in girls sports, making sure that we stand up for parental rights, yeah, those are the kind of the defining things I think are out there.”

What’s telling is Davis did not mention state Sen. Greg Walker, the incumbent she’s challenging, was a vocal opponent of Trump’s prescribed map. “When I’m knocking on doors, not one person was talking to me about redistricting,” she confessed.

That’s no surprise.

Indiana’s May 5 primary is being fueled almost solely by Trump’s need for revenge, a fury that has unleashed nearly $8 million and counting in ads alone — not to mention copious amounts of mail — in combined spending on what are normally sleepy and often uncontested races, according to AdImpact. But the contests represent the challenge of turning out MAGA’s low-propensity voting coalition in the midterm elections when Trump is not on the ballot — let alone attempting to galvanize his voters around an arcane issue like redrawing political maps.

“My guess is it’s gonna be a mixed bag,” said a national GOP operative who has been working on the races. “Everybody is going to have their spin.”

Trump’s MAGA base is proven to turn out in droves to back him because they think he’ll help them — but they might not be as keen to turn out just to punish his foes.

Scott Pressler speaks during a rally inside a fairgrounds.

Pressler speaks during the Turning Point USA rally in Franklin on April 18, 2026. Only a few dozen people showed up to attend. | Adam Wren/POLITICO

“I’ve been reminded of a lesson I learned in business a long time ago: Revenge is not a strategy,” said former Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, a major GOP figure who opposed the gerrymandering and has worked to reelect the senators Trump is targeting.

MAGA forces are struggling to find a coherent theory of the case, and their messaging has largely avoided talking about redistricting. In one Senate district, Hoosier Leadership for America, Sen. Jim Banks’ political nonprofit run by longtime Team Trump operative Andrew Surabian, is hitting one target for being too old — even though he’s less than a year older than Trump.

“State Sen. Jim Buck. 80 years old. Decades in politics has changed him,” the narrator begins in the ad, which also hits him for allegedly voting “to let China own our farmland” and voting to “raise our gas tax.”

At least two of the White House-backed candidates are contending with reports about their complicated personal backgrounds, muddying their messages. “There are probably a couple candidates they wish they could have back,” said one Indiana Republican strategist, granted anonymity to assess White House strategy. “The question for the White House is, what do you consider a win? They’re sticking to what the data tells them in each of these races. We’ll see.”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

Some of the incumbents have fretted to allies in recent days that their internal polls have them losing, according to people familiar with their thinking.

An Indiana Trump ally estimated that five of the challengers were in races that were lean, likely or safe Trump wins. Three of the races were tossups or safe.

Still, some of Trump’s closest allies in the state argue that the races aren’t really about the president.

“I think some people think it’s just about loyalty to Trump,” Indiana Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith told POLITICO. “I don’t think that’s it at all. I really think what it’s more about is, hey, the future direction in the Republican Party,” referring to whether the party ultimately becomes more Trumpian even as Trump is not on the ballot.

Republicans’ narrow loss in Virginia on Tuesday, when voters approved Democrats’ plans to gerrymander that state, sparked a fresh round of venting at Hoosier holdouts. Trump’s GOP critics, however, point out that the party was vastly outspent in Virginia’s close contest — and that they could have used some of the millions of dollars MAGA is instead spending on retribution in Indiana.

Acting Navy secretary, once a political lightning rod, finds surprising support“MAGA groups are spending millions to primary Indiana state senators over a single seat but hardly spent a $ in VA with 4 house seats on the line,” Marc Short, former Vice President Mike Pence’s former chief of staff, posted to X. “Makes sense right?” (Pence himself has waded in, endorsing Buck.)

Even if Trump runs the table here, it could be a pyrrhic victory — every dollar MAGA spends here is one it doesn’t spend in a more competitive midterm state.

When asked whether the White House was too focused on seeking retribution in a safe red seat at the expense of playing defense in battlegrounds, a Republican close to the White House and granted anonymity by POLITICO to speak candidly replied: “We can do both.”

The eight state Senate primaries in which Trump has endorsed provide an easy scorecard with which to measure his influence in a crucial midterm year. But as the retribution campaign appears to sputter, Beckwith downplayed MAGA’s need to sweep the races.

“We win three, it’ll be good,” Beckwith said. “If we win five, that’s a great night. And anything after five is just crazy.”

David McIntosh, president of the conservative Club for Growth, which has dumped $2 million across eight primaries, said his ambitions are grander: “At this stage, we want all of them.”

About 90 miles north from Franklin, MAGA forces are targeting first-term state Sen. Spencer Deery, one of their earliest and most vocal redistricting opponents. A Turning Point Action flier accuses Deery of a hodgepodge of unwelcome positions: It says he “BETRAYED” Trump on redistricting, but also accuses him of voting against “SAFETY ON OUR ROADS,” claimed he “SUPPORTS CORPORATE WELFARE,” and “WANTS TO SELL OFF HOOSIER FARMLAND.”

The mailer befuddled Deery.

“I looked at these votes, and I can’t tell you what any of those are, honestly,” Deery told POLITICO amid an afternoon door-knocking session on Monday. “I think it says that they’re clearly not thinking particularly or putting a lot of scrutiny into their analysis of the issues or the race.”

Last month, Deery realized he could potentially knock on a third more doors if he could zip around on an electric scooter instead of walking, so he purchased a $250 knock-off on Amazon. More than $2 million has already been spent on the race, most of it against him, for a contest he estimates will take 5,500 votes to win — more than $300 in spending per vote.

“That’s an insane amount of money for a state Senate race,” he said.

But there are some signs MAGA’s muddled messaging may be backfiring

On Monday afternoon, Deery approached the home of Rosa Uhrin, 74, a longtime Republican who held an American flag she planned to hang on her porch.

“Hey, I recognize you,” she said, citing commercials against Deery.

He braced.

But instead of upbraiding him for his vote against redistricting, Uhrin told Deery she planned to vote for him.

“I’m a Republican, but I am just beside myself with him,” Uhrin said of Trump. “You can’t back him anymore. You … can’t back him anymore. He’s an idiot.”

Deery shrugged. “Sometimes I agree with him, sometimes I don’t. But what I tell people all the time: I don’t work for him.”

Uhrin gave Deery some encouragement. “I hope they see around those ads for you,” she said. “I hope they see that it’s not all true.”

Deery’s shoulders loosened. He turned back toward the street for hours of more knocking, stopping at his car to grab his scooter.

Stupid....

Golden Dome dreams face harsh budget reality

Congressional Republicans are increasingly reluctant to move ahead with a partisan budget bill that was supposed to cover the program’s costs.

By Audrey Decker and Paul McLeary

Top Pentagon officials gathered Thursday in a hangar at a Navy base here surrounded by air defense hardware to declare that President Donald Trump’s hugely ambitious Golden Dome homeland air defense effort was moving forward.

But that is an increasingly hard sell.

Gen. Mike Guetlein, the man leading the effort for the Pentagon, touted the progress made over the past 10 months and pledged to get the first key piece of sensor technology up and running by 2028 — a timeline that needs an alarmingly large number of things to go right in short order.

Trump’s signature missile defense shield faces technical hurdles, funding questions and — perhaps most problematically — a Republican Congress that seems increasingly unlikely to provide the program with the tens of billions it needs to fully get off the ground.

The Trump administration envisions funding the program next year almost entirely through a party-line reconciliation bill. But top Republicans are already sounding skeptical, given GOP reluctance to embrace a bruising congressional budget battle ahead of this year’s high-stakes midterm elections.

“Is [reconciliation] the most efficient, effective way to spend money?” House Appropriations defense subcommittee chair Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Calif), said in an interview. “In my mind, no.”

Trump intends the initiative to protect the entire country from a variety of threats, including ballistic missiles fired thousands of miles away to small drones flying toward the U.S. It would use a mix of old and new systems tied together by an artificial intelligence-powered network pushing information back and forth in real time, a challenging engineering feat. And parts of it need to be fully functional by 2028 to meet Trump’s timelines.

The Pentagon wants $17 billion in budget reconciliation funds for Golden Dome, and they’re only asking for $400 million through the regular appropriations process. The system could cost anywhere between $185 billion to $3 trillion.

But it’s risky to expect the reconciliation measure will go anywhere, said a former defense official. That means Golden Dome money will have to compete with the rest of the Pentagon’s wish list in regular congressional spending bills.

Aiming for a potential reconciliation bill, is “not great signaling by this White House about the supposedly drastic need for Golden Dome,” said the former official, who, like some others in this story, was granted anonymity to discuss sensitive budget issues.

The Pentagon remains confident.

“To the skeptics, let me say this,” Guetlein said Thursday. “Golden Dome is achievable. It is not a single point failure.” Its intent is to “strengthen global stability by creating profound doubt in the adversary’s mind. They will not win.”

Guetlein, when asked Thursday to explain how the administration plans to spend those billions, said much of the program will incorporate currently classified technologies. He declined to say what that entailed.

“I cannot tell you exactly where the money’s going,” he said, adding that it will be layered between systems on land, air and space. “We’re actually buying hardware. We are not doing prototypes.”

The first new piece of that technological puzzle is already being tested.

An unremarkable triangle of wires and poles sits in the middle of a field on the base where Guetlein spoke. Despite its humdrum appearance, the Army’s Long-Range Persistent Surveillance system is up and running, with a 360-degree sensor system designed to detect cruise missiles, drones, and aircraft.

The equipment is collecting data in the airspace surrounding the base. This marks the first time it’s been used domestically.

But some lawmakers have been frustrated by the lack of interaction with the administration, which could prove problematic if the Pentagon needs to work with Congress to shift Golden Dome money around.

While there has been some communication, it hasn’t “reached the level of detailed spending plans,” said Rep. George Whitesides (D-Calif.), who sits on the House Armed Services subcommittee that oversees Golden Dome.

“I’m okay with not pouring a ton of money out the door without having a pretty cohesive view of what it should do,” he said.

To top it off, Guetlein recently said that a centerpiece of Trump’s plan may be too costly. He warned lawmakers on April 15 that space-based interceptors, which are intended to destroy missiles just a few minutes after launch, could end up on the cutting room floor.

“We are so focused on affordability.” Guetlein told the House Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee. “If we cannot do it affordably, we will not go into production.”

Golden Dome received about $23 billion last year through a reconciliation package passed in the summer. But that funding faced delays, frustrating defense companies eyeing lucrative contracts.

The reconciliation process was a “new animal,” and both the Pentagon and Congress had to figure out how that money would actually flow, said Jeff Hanke, president of space systems at L3Harris, a defense contractor.

Industry “would have loved to [have] gone faster,” Hanke said. “We just have to continue to work with them, share with them, help them go as fast as they can go.”

If Congress chooses the reconciliation route a second time — which is still very uncertain — Hanke said he expects it will be a smoother ride.

The White House plans to move Golden Dome funding into the base budget after 2027 and not rely on the reconciliation process. The effort, according to OMB budget documents, would be funded in the “Golden Dome for America Fund” program line, allocating $14.7 billion in 2028, $15 billion in 2029, $16 billion in 2030, and $15.8 billion in 2031.

But for now, the fate of the project rests on a GOP Congress wary of reconciliation. And top Pentagon officials are already thinking of other options.

“We’ll go back to the White House and we’ll work with Congress to come up with a new strategy if the White House and Congress decide reconciliation is not the right [path],” Jules Hurst,the acting Pentagon comptroller, told reporters this week.

US notion of suspending Spain from NATO

Sánchez dismisses US notion of suspending Spain from NATO

A leaked Pentagon email floats retaliatory measures against “difficult” alliance members who have failed to support the American-Israeli war in Iran.

By Aitor Hernández-Morales, Gordon Repinski, Sonja Rijnen and Victor Jack

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez on Friday downplayed a leaked Pentagon email suggesting Spain could be penalized for not supporting the war in Iran by having its NATO membership suspended.

"No worries," Sánchez told POLITICO at his arrival at a summit of EU leaders in Cyprus. "We are fulfilling our obligations toward NATO."

"The Spanish government's position is clear: absolute cooperation with our allies, but always within the framework of international law," Sánchez added, while addressing a larger group of journalists.

The prime minister declined to discuss the specific content of the leaked Pentagon document, which was first reported by Reuters, insisting his government "does not comment on emails, but rather on official documents and positions taken, in this case, by the United States."

The email, which was described to Reuters by a U.S. official, consists of a series of policy measures U.S. President Donald Trump's administration could adopt to punish NATO allies whom Washington considers "difficult" or insufficiently supportive of the war in Iran.

Spain — one of the conflict's most vocal opponents and a NATO defense spending laggard — is singled out for outright suspension from the defense alliance, reflecting Trump's ire at Madrid. The president was infuriated by Sánchez's decision to ban U.S. warplanes from using jointly operated military bases or Spanish airspace to attack Iran, and last month threatened to cut off all trade relations with the country.

NATO's founding treaty does not include any mechanism that would allow for the suspension or removal of one of its members. The document only contemplates voluntary withdrawals from the alliance, which require a one-year notice period.

“It’s hard to know how seriously we should take such emails beyond ideological trolling,” said Oana Lungescu, a former NATO spokesperson and senior fellow at the Royal United Services Institute.

Meanwhile, restricting countries from winning top military command posts would be hard to achieve since NATO allies have just renegotiated new changeovers that are due to last until 2029, she said, and reopening negotiations would require unanimity.

Falklands review

The leaked Pentagon email also suggests Washington could review its position on Britain's claim to the Falkland Islands in retaliation for the U.K.'s refusal to participate in the war in Iran.

Trump was incensed by U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer's decision to stay out of the conflict, and last week suggested he might punish London by shredding a key trade agreement. But altering Washington's stance on the Falklands would mark a major escalation in the eroding "special relationship."

The U.K. and Argentina have spent centuries locked in a sovereignty dispute over the South Atlantic islands, which are a British Overseas Territory. Buenos Aires launched an invasion of the Falklands in 1982, triggering a 74-day war that was handily won by Britain, with material and logistical support provided by the U.S.

Argentine President Javier Milei — a Trump ally — has expressed tolerance for British rule over the islands, but at a memorial service for the war's fallen in Buenos Aires earlier this month he reaffirmed his country's claim on the Falklands.

Asked about the report, a Downing Street spokesperson said the islands had "hugely voted overwhelmingly in favor of remaining a UK overseas territory, and we've always stood behind the islanders' right to self-determination and the fact that sovereignty rests with the U.K."

"We've expressed this position previously clearly and consistently to successive U.S. administrations and nothing is going to change that," the spokesperson added.

Trump has repeatedly threated to withdrawal the U.S. from NATO. He initially floated the idea during his first term in the White House, and has raised that scenario since his reelection. After allies declined to join the attack on Iran, the president and his team vowed to reassess its membership.

It's unclear if the Pentagon email is related to the “naughty and nice” list of NATO countries the White House prepared ahead of NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte’s visit to Washington in early April. European diplomats and a U.S. defense official familiar with the document told POLITICO that it included an overview of members’ contributions to the alliance and placed them into tiers.

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in December suggested "model" U.S. allies should receive special favor, while those who "fail to do their part for collective defense" should face "consequences."