DL Open Thread: Friday, March 6, 2026
Kristi Noem’s Chosen Successor Is…:
Quite the shock. Yet another Cosplay Cowboy takes over DHS:
“Markwayne will work tirelessly to Keep our Border Secure, Stop Migrant Crime, Murderers, and other Criminals from illegally entering our Country, End the Scourge of Illegal Drugs and, MAKE AMERICA SAFE AGAIN. Markwayne will make a spectacular Secretary of Homeland Security,” Trump wrote.
Psychiatrists should and have had a field day with Trump’s pompous verbosity. Who writes like that?
Does Mullin get the jet? Who will do voice-over on all those ICE ads featuring Noem? Will Lewandowski remain there to provide oral sex on demand? Will Noem take the jet with her to her new (and newly-created) job?:
President Trump said Thursday that Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem would leave her role and be appointed as a special envoy for “The Shield of the Americas,” bringing her tumultuous tenure atop DHS to an end.
The regional coalition of countries in Latin America will work together on ideology and policy initiatives that help secure the Western Hemisphere, according to the White House.
At least the canine population of South Dakota can rest easy. For now.
Oh, Mullin? He’s also, um, weird:
Markwayne Mullin, the Oklahoma senator chosen by Donald Trump to lead the Department of Homeland Security, has never served in the US military, but he routinely speaks as if he did in cable news interviews.
On Monday, for instance, Mullin told Fox News: “War is ugly. It smells bad. And if anybody has ever been there and been able to smell the war that’s happening around you and taste it, and feel it in your nostrils, and hear it, it’s something you’ll never forget. And it’s ugly.”
While Mullin’s words might have lead many viewers to assume that he was speaking from personal experience, he went on to suggest, in a somewhat confusing manner, that he was actually talking about of what he imagined the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, had been through.
“Fortunately you have President Hegseth, or I say President Hegseth, Secretary Hegseth, that has got a great relationship with President Trump, and President Hegseth’s been there, he’s done that,” Mullin said, with something less than clarity.
This was, however, just the latest time that Mullin has spoken as if he has been through combat when, in fact, he has not.
In an interview with Fox News on 7 January 2021, the day after he had tried to help Capitol Police officers defend the House chamber from pro-Trump rioters, Mullin said: “Some people there got nervous, there’s a lot of members that was in that chamber that never dealt with a situation like that, and I’ll tell you, I’ve never dealt with a situation like that on US soil”.
Later that year, Mullin offered an extensive critique of the tactics used by the police to defend the House chamber during the January 6 Capitol riot, in an interview with C-SPAN in which he said: “I’ve been in these situations before, similar, not exactly the same.”
When the interviewer responded to that statement by asking Mullin, “Can you explain, for those who don’t know, your background?” he replied: “I would prefer not to.”
Yep. Looks Like US Killed Schoolkids. Hey, education in the wrong hands is a dangerous thing:
U.S. military investigators believe it is likely that U.S. forces were responsible for an apparent strike on an Iranian girls’ school that killed scores of children on Saturday but have not yet reached a final conclusion or completed their investigation, two U.S. officials told Reuters.
Reuters was unable to determine more details about the investigation, including what evidence contributed to the tentative assessment, what type of munition was used, who was responsible or why the U.S. might have struck the school.
In a separate analysis, The New York Times found the strike was likely part of a U.S. attack on an Iranian naval base located nearby the school.
U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Wednesday acknowledged the U.S. military was investigating the incident.
It’s getting so that we’re no better than Israel when it comes to wanton killing. Which reminds me…
Israel Turning Lebanon Into Gaza. Gee, who could have seen THAT coming?:
The Israeli military pounded Beirut with airstrikes on Friday morning and issued more evacuation warnings in southern Lebanon as it intensified its campaign against Iran-backed Hezbollah militants.
Lebanon was fast becoming the most heated front in the metastasizing regional conflict that began with U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran a week ago. With smoke plumes rising from new strikes in and around Beirut, the capital, the Israeli military warned more villagers in the Bekaa Valley, a Hezbollah bastion in the south, to move north, indicating airstrikes were imminent.
The Israeli strikes in Dahiya, a densely populated commercial and residential area of Beirut that is a stronghold of Hezbollah, were the most intense since a cease-fire in late 2024. At least three buildings collapsed, and thousands of people who live in the area were displaced to other parts of the capital.
As Friday dawned after a night of ferocious airstrikes, some displaced residents of Dahiya huddled under roundabouts or in empty parking lots of downtown Beirut, or slept inside cars parked along a seaside promenade. Some said they had left home with only thin mattresses or a few utensils, fleeing while the television was still on or as they prepared meals to break their Ramadan fast.
Trump and Rubio are patently lying when they say that Israel didn’t suck them into this war.
This morning’s surge in the oil price means Brent crude is now on course for its biggest weekly gain since early in the Covid-19 pandemic.
Brent has now jumped to $87.66 a barrel, up over 2.5% today, meaning it has surged by over 20% this week to its highest since July 2024.
That would be the biggest weekly gain since the week to 1 May 2020.
Prices are surging after Qatar’s energy minister warned that war in the Middle East could “bring down the economies of the world”, predicting that all Gulf energy exporters would shut down production within weeks and drive oil to $150 a barrel.
Guess the days of $1.50 gas are over…
Total nonfarm payroll employment fell by 92,000 in February, new data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows, missing forecasts of an increase of around 59,000 jobs.
The BLS says:
Employment in health care decreased in February, reflecting strike activity. Employment in information and federal government continued to trend down.
In another blow, December’s jobs report was revised down to show a loss of 17,000 jobs, not an increase of 48,000 as previously reported.
The Justice Department, after calls by President Trump to investigate former President Joseph R. Biden Jr., scrutinized whether Mr. Biden and his aides broke the law in using the autopen to sign presidential documents, but was ultimately unable to move forward with making a case, according to three people briefed on the matter.
The department’s failure to build a criminal case against Mr. Biden and his aides is the latest example of its increasing inability to follow through on Mr. Trump’s demands and bring indictments against those he wants to be criminally targeted. Some of those cases were rejected by grand juries, some were rejected by judges and some, like the autopen case, were abandoned by prosecutors.
But the fact that prosecutors even pursued the matter to begin with reflects the degree to which Mr. Trump has sought to use the levers of government to undermine Mr. Biden’s presidency by seizing on an unsubstantiated theory: that the pardons Mr. Biden issued in his final months in office were invalid because he did not have the mental capacity to consent to them.
You’re smart. Don’t have to point out the irony in the bolded part of that last graf.
You’re Smart. You can see what happened here:
Speaker Mike Johnson and other House Republican leaders asked Rep. Tony Gonzales to end his reelection bid, they said Thursday, after the Texas lawmaker admitted to an affair with a staffer who later died by suicide.
The announcement comes a day after the House Ethics Committee launched an probe into Gonzales and POLITICO reported that independent House investigators found a “substantial reason to believe” that he had a sexual relationship with the subordinate.
Here’s the money graf:
Gonzales has insisted he will not resign from Congress, as some of his GOP colleages have suggested. Notably, Johnson and the other GOP leaders did not call for Gonzales to resign — which would create a vacancy lasting months as they struggle to manage a narrow Republican majority.
Oh. He’s unfit for office, but only after November.
Wilmington School District Consolidation Vote Delayed. This is what we call a ‘standing hed’:
A Delaware education task force predicted last year that lawmakers would be able to address its ambitious proposal to merge all Wilmington-area school districts by June.
But during a legislative budget hearing Tuesday, the co-chair of the task force, called the Redding Consortium, pushed back the timeline to the end of the calendar year. That means that the earliest the consolidation plan could be approved by the necessary parties is 2027.
The delay also means Wilmington families and school officials will face an extended period of uncertainty as the state attempts its most significant restructuring of public education in decades.
The co-chair — State Sen. Elizabeth Lockman (D-Wilmington) – said a consultant needs the rest of the year to put together a detailed plan for how the four school districts with more than 43,000 students could merge their operations. To do that, she also said the Delaware Department of Education will need to extend a contract with the consultancy company, the American Institutes for Research.
Lockman told Spotlight Delaware that conversations among Redding Consortium members about the need to work with a consultant started immediately after the December vote. But they quickly realized there was “no way” to get an adequate plan to the State Board of Education within the six-week timeframe. So they asked the American Institutes for Research to submit a request for proposal to extend its contract, Lockman said.
Don’t worry, kids. This same headline will be available when I next need it.
What do you want to talk about?
“End the scourge of illegal drugs”
Now there’s a fucking knee-slapper if ever I’ve heard one.
Russia providing Iran with intel. Who could have anticipated this?:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2026/03/06/russia-iran-intelligence-us-targets/
Epstein makes famous magician disappear:
https://www.threads.com/@vegasstarfish/post/DVhwhQ7FJ6C/im-not-going-to-pretend-to-like-copperfield-hes-not-a-nice-person-he-has-a-large