EXCLUSIVE: Priyanka Chopra Jonas (The Bluff) and Orlando Bloom (The Cut) are set to star in Reset, a survival thriller directed by Matt Smukler (Wildflower) that will head into production in August. Written by Jordan Rawlins, Reset follows a woman (Chopra Jonas) who wakes up in the middle of the wilderness days from civilization with […]
Source: Deadline.
It was an answer Democrats had long sought — but not one they believed.
Last week, more than two months after the U.S. first launched its attack on Iran, a top Pentagon official finally offered Congress an estimate for the cost of the war so far, pinning it at $25 billion.
That estimate was quickly dismissed by Democrats as not realistic.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said $25 billion is “lowballing it.” Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., dismissed the figure as an “undercounting.” And Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, said the Pentagon’s number was in all likelihood “way too low.”
Now, as the war stretches into its third month, Democrats are still trying to find out exactly what the price tag is for what President Donald Trump has dubbed a “little excursion” in the Middle East.
Many are frustrated with what they see as an administration eager to obfuscate. And some Democrats admit they may not get a straight answer anytime soon.
Blumenthal, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told MS NOW that the Trump administration has withheld more information from Congress regarding defense spending than any administration he has worked with since taking office in 2011.
“This administration is uniquely unresponsive,” Blumenthal said. “This administration has stonewalled unlike any other I have seen, which has frustrated not only Democrats but our Republican colleagues.”
Blumenthal said he asked for a cost estimate in each of the three classified Pentagon briefings about the war but — prior to last week’s public hearings — had not received an update since the early days of conflict, when the Pentagon pegged the cost up to that point at more than $11 billion.
“It’s truly maddening that they have been so unresponsive,” Blumenthal said.
Rep. Pat Ryan of New York, an Iraq War vet who serves on the House Armed Services Committee, shared Blumenthal’s frustration, saying it is “pathetic” but “not surprising” that the Trump administration is “not being straightforward.”
Ryan argued Americans are facing, courtesy of the White House, an “unprecedented level of lies and deception around this war, even compared to Iraq and Afghanistan.”
Ryan told MS NOW it will likely take Democrats winning back control of the U.S. House and — with it — subpoena power to “get a full 100% reckoning” of what has happened in Iran, including the cost. But, he says, “we can’t wait that long.”
In the interim, sources told MS NOW that congressional Democrats are instead relying on open source data, public reporting and satellite imagery to get a better sense of the war’s potential price tag.
A congressional official with knowledge of the effort to track Iran war spending said far more damage has been done to U.S. bases, for example, than the Pentagon has publicly revealed.
“That is a lowball estimate that does not account for battle damage and other costs,” the official told MS NOW of the $25 billion figure. “But until DOD submits its costs, we just have to guess from public reporting.”
Ryan told MS NOW that Democrats on the Armed Services Committee estimate that the cost so far is likely double what the administration is saying — “probably $40 [billion] to $50 billion, and counting.”
Democrats on both the House and Senate Armed Services Committees have sent formal requests to the Pentagon asking for cost estimate breakdowns.
MS NOW reached out to the Republican chairs of the Senate and House Armed Services Committees to ask if they believed the $25 billion figure. Neither responded.
In addition to collating open source data, Democrats are looking at different legislative tools to get their arms around the price tag — but that could take time.
For instance, just days after the first U.S. strikes, the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee sent a request to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, asking that they put together an official estimate of the financial and economic impacts of the war.
In his letter, the top Democrat on the Budget Committee, Rep. Brendan Boyle, D-Pa., asked the CBO to examine not just the direct costs of military action, but also the potential indirect costs, including the foreign aid the U.S. may need to distribute in the region and the rise in consumer prices domestically.
It’s not clear when, or if, the CBO may offer an assessment.
Democrats argue it should not be this difficult for Congress to get answers out of the administration about Pentagon spending — and say past administrations have been more forthcoming.
Records show that over the past decade, the House Budget Committee has regularly hosted top Defense Department officials — under both Democratic administrations and during the first Trump White House — to testify about the Pentagon’s budget. That has not happened during the current Trump term.
The reluctance to come before Congress is all the more notable as the White House is in the process of asking lawmakers to approve $1.5 trillion in Pentagon spending for the upcoming year — a more than 40% increase year over year. And it remains unclear if the Trump administration may ask for additional funding on top of that to cover costs associated with the war.
Boyle, who called the administration’s $25 billion figure “almost certainly a lowball,” said he “will not support another blank check for an endless war of choice in the Middle East without a clear strategy, a real justification, and full transparency.”
“Americans want their tax dollars used to lower costs here at home — not poured into another reckless war with no end in sight,” Boyle wrote in a statement to MS NOW.
The vague war price tag — coupled with the massive 2027 Pentagon funding request — has given Democrats a new plank in their midterm “affordability” line of attack against the White House and Republicans.
Democrats are expected to continue to pound the drum about the cost of the conflict, especially the trickle-down effects back home, such as higher gas and grocery prices.
Ryan introduced a bill on Tuesday— co-signed by the top Democrats on the House Armed Services, Foreign Affairs and Intelligence Committees — barring the use of additional taxpayer dollars for military action against Iran absent congressional authorization for the war or an official declaration of war.
Ryan told MS NOW that his constituents were already concerned about the cost of living, and the war has only compounded that.
“There’s a very clear date and event around which this changed, which was February 28 and the initiation of this war,” Ryan said.
“So,” he added, “reminding people where the accountability lies is the goal.”
The post Inside the Democratic quest to learn the actual cost of the Iran war appeared first on MS NOW.
From MS Now.
It was an answer Democrats had long sought — but not one they believed.
Last week, more than two months after the U.S. first launched its attack on Iran, a top Pentagon official finally offered Congress an estimate for the cost of the war so far, pinning it at $25 billion.
That estimate was quickly dismissed by Democrats as not realistic.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said $25 billion is “lowballing it.” Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., dismissed the figure as an “undercounting.” And Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, said the Pentagon’s number was in all likelihood “way too low.”
Now, as the war stretches into its third month, Democrats are still trying to find out exactly what the price tag is for what President Donald Trump has dubbed a “little excursion” in the Middle East.
Many are frustrated with what they see as an administration eager to obfuscate. And some Democrats admit they may not get a straight answer anytime soon.
Blumenthal, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told MS NOW that the Trump administration has withheld more information from Congress regarding defense spending than any administration he has worked with since taking office in 2011.
“This administration is uniquely unresponsive,” Blumenthal said. “This administration has stonewalled unlike any other I have seen, which has frustrated not only Democrats but our Republican colleagues.”
Blumenthal said he asked for a cost estimate in each of the three classified Pentagon briefings about the war but — prior to last week’s public hearings — had not received an update since the early days of conflict, when the Pentagon pegged the cost up to that point at more than $11 billion.
“It’s truly maddening that they have been so unresponsive,” Blumenthal said.
Rep. Pat Ryan of New York, an Iraq War vet who serves on the House Armed Services Committee, shared Blumenthal’s frustration, saying it is “pathetic” but “not surprising” that the Trump administration is “not being straightforward.”
Ryan argued Americans are facing, courtesy of the White House, an “unprecedented level of lies and deception around this war, even compared to Iraq and Afghanistan.”
Ryan told MS NOW it will likely take Democrats winning back control of the U.S. House and — with it — subpoena power to “get a full 100% reckoning” of what has happened in Iran, including the cost. But, he says, “we can’t wait that long.”
In the interim, sources told MS NOW that congressional Democrats are instead relying on open source data, public reporting and satellite imagery to get a better sense of the war’s potential price tag.
A congressional official with knowledge of the effort to track Iran war spending said far more damage has been done to U.S. bases, for example, than the Pentagon has publicly revealed.
“That is a lowball estimate that does not account for battle damage and other costs,” the official told MS NOW of the $25 billion figure. “But until DOD submits its costs, we just have to guess from public reporting.”
Ryan told MS NOW that Democrats on the Armed Services Committee estimate that the cost so far is likely double what the administration is saying — “probably $40 [billion] to $50 billion, and counting.”
Democrats on both the House and Senate Armed Services Committees have sent formal requests to the Pentagon asking for cost estimate breakdowns.
MS NOW reached out to the Republican chairs of the Senate and House Armed Services Committees to ask if they believed the $25 billion figure. Neither responded.
In addition to collating open source data, Democrats are looking at different legislative tools to get their arms around the price tag — but that could take time.
For instance, just days after the first U.S. strikes, the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee sent a request to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, asking that they put together an official estimate of the financial and economic impacts of the war.
In his letter, the top Democrat on the Budget Committee, Rep. Brendan Boyle, D-Pa., asked the CBO to examine not just the direct costs of military action, but also the potential indirect costs, including the foreign aid the U.S. may need to distribute in the region and the rise in consumer prices domestically.
It’s not clear when, or if, the CBO may offer an assessment.
Democrats argue it should not be this difficult for Congress to get answers out of the administration about Pentagon spending — and say past administrations have been more forthcoming.
Records show that over the past decade, the House Budget Committee has regularly hosted top Defense Department officials — under both Democratic administrations and during the first Trump White House — to testify about the Pentagon’s budget. That has not happened during the current Trump term.
The reluctance to come before Congress is all the more notable as the White House is in the process of asking lawmakers to approve $1.5 trillion in Pentagon spending for the upcoming year — a more than 40% increase year over year. And it remains unclear if the Trump administration may ask for additional funding on top of that to cover costs associated with the war.
Boyle, who called the administration’s $25 billion figure “almost certainly a lowball,” said he “will not support another blank check for an endless war of choice in the Middle East without a clear strategy, a real justification, and full transparency.”
“Americans want their tax dollars used to lower costs here at home — not poured into another reckless war with no end in sight,” Boyle wrote in a statement to MS NOW.
The vague war price tag — coupled with the massive 2027 Pentagon funding request — has given Democrats a new plank in their midterm “affordability” line of attack against the White House and Republicans.
Democrats are expected to continue to pound the drum about the cost of the conflict, especially the trickle-down effects back home, such as higher gas and grocery prices.
Ryan introduced a bill on Tuesday— co-signed by the top Democrats on the House Armed Services, Foreign Affairs and Intelligence Committees — barring the use of additional taxpayer dollars for military action against Iran absent congressional authorization for the war or an official declaration of war.
Ryan told MS NOW that his constituents were already concerned about the cost of living, and the war has only compounded that.
“There’s a very clear date and event around which this changed, which was February 28 and the initiation of this war,” Ryan said.
“So,” he added, “reminding people where the accountability lies is the goal.”
The post Inside the Democratic quest to learn the actual cost of the Iran war appeared first on MS NOW.
From MS Now.
Republicans in Congress are proposing $1 billion in funding for security for President Trump’s White House ballroom as part of their partisan plan to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
(Image credit: Anna Moneymaker)
Source: NPR.
Republicans in Congress are proposing $1 billion in funding for security for President Trump’s White House ballroom as part of their partisan plan to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
(Image credit: Anna Moneymaker)
Source: NPR.
From The Hill
At some point, leaders of the Democratic Party will have to confront the radicals in their midst.
From The Hill
At some point, leaders of the Democratic Party will have to confront the radicals in their midst.
Melissa Barrera just slaughtered the “Scream” franchise … because the actress went scorched earth on the series after she was fired for comments on the Gaza War. In an interview with Variety … Melissa didn’t hold back when she was asked about…
From TMZ.
WNBA star Arike Ogunbowale is in the clear … the battery charge against the hooper has been dropped, two months after she allegedly socked a security guard in his face at a famed Miami nightclub. Ogunbowale, 29, was celebrating her team’s…
From TMZ.
Pollinators have economic and health benefits, but those benefits have been difficult to quantify. A new study puts some numbers to how important pollinators are for both nutrition and income.
Source: NPR.
Pollinators have economic and health benefits, but those benefits have been difficult to quantify. A new study puts some numbers to how important pollinators are for both nutrition and income.
Source: NPR.
Virginia Senate President Pro Tempore L. Louise Lucas is generally known to national audiences as the Democratic leader who spearheaded a redistricting effort in the commonwealth, which voters endorsed and may help her party keep pace with Republicans’ gerrymandering arms race.
But two weeks after the statewide vote, Lucas is poised to be known for something very different, although possibly related. Politico reported:
The FBI searched the office of Democratic Virginia state Sen. L. Louise Lucas on Wednesday morning, according to multiple media reports and news footage in front of her Portsmouth office.
The FBI confirmed it was “executing a court-authorized federal search warrant in Portsmouth,” but did not explicitly state a target of its probe or what it was investigating.
A related report from The Associated Press added that the FBI’s search was part of a corruption investigation, though these details have not been independently verified by MS NOW and neither Lucas nor the FBI have commented.
The AP’s report added, “Though the exact nature of the investigation was unclear, the search comes as the FBI and Justice Department have opened a spate of politically charged investigations into perceived adversaries of President Donald Trump.”
It’s that second part of the sentence that stands out.
I have not seen or heard a word about any of the evidence against Lucas, if such evidence exists. It is entirely possible that investigators have worked in good faith as part of a responsible law enforcement operation, and there’s no reason to question the legitimacy of the probe or the motivations of those behind it.
But while I don’t know whether the case against Lucas has merit, I do know that the hyperpartisan leaders of the Justice Department and the FBI have made it impossible to give them the benefit of the doubt.
Not to put too fine a point on this, but this is why we don’t politicize federal law enforcement. Because even if the underlying case is legitimate, it’s impossible to avoid the larger context and the degree to which this looks like a retaliatory investigation against a Democrat, launched by a weaponized department known for its retaliatory investigations against Democrats.
In other words, the DOJ and the FBI have, over the last 16 months, set their collective credibility on fire, corrupting federal law enforcement to a degree unseen in generations. There have simply been too many abuses, launched too often, against too many Trump targets.
The result is a dynamic that makes it impossible to have confidence in the institutions’ judgment and decisions.
What’s more, the fact that Fox News, an outlet aligned with Republican politics, apparently received a heads-up about the operation in Portsmouth and was able to air live footage of the FBI search, further reinforces concerns that this case is inherently political.
Shortly after FBI officials executed the search warrant on Wednesday morning, Virginia House of Delegates Speaker Don Scott issued a written statement that read in part, “Given the politicization of this administration — an FBI led by Kash Patel and a Justice Department run by President Donald Trump’s former personal attorney — I think people should take this with a grain of salt and allow the facts to come out before jumping to conclusions.”
Scott’s statement continued, “At this point we simply do not know what this ultimately means. Right now, there is far more theatrics and speculation than actual information available to the public. It also raises important questions. How was Fox News, a national media outlet, first on the scene? Did they know about the raid beforehand? If so, who approved that? And what more information is there about what this raid was actually about? Virginians deserve answers before anyone rushes to political conclusions.”
Watch this space.
The post Trump’s FBI faces difficult questions following raid on Virginia Democrat’s office appeared first on MS NOW.
From MS Now.