JustPolicy

No politics, No passion, Just policy

[Caitlin Flanagan @CaitlinPacific]

This is appalling. Shocking, really.

Secret Vetting and Blocked Promotions: Inside Hegseth’s War on Diversity https://t.co/KP2eq7Cqed via @NYTimes

[Frank Luntz @FrankLuntz]

“In the aftermath of the outbreak, the Air Force issued an exception to the voluntary vaccine policy, requiring that all recruits at Lackland AFB get flu shots.”

[Jeff Stein @jstein_star]

🚨🚨🚨an internal memo obtained by @EricM_Katz shows the IRS has received special permission to expedite hiring 8,000 employees after getting rid of 28,000 last year

[Politics & Poll Tracker 📡 @PollTracker2024]

NYT: Trump Pardons Former Congressman Convicted of Insider Trading

Stephen Buyer, a former Republican representative from Indiana, was convicted of trading stock related to two deals before they were made public.

https://t.co/DQ85xkfrnI

[Grace Yarrow @YarrowGrace]

NEWS: Screwworm has been detected in Texas, USDA confirmed - marking a serious threat to US cattle and other animals

Larvae of the parasite were found in the umbilical cord of a 3 week old calf

Screwworm was eradicated from the US in 1966

[Demetri @AsiaLens]

SCOOP - US warns #Japan to expect severe delays in #Tomahawk missiles due to Iran war. Tokyo agreed to buy 400 in 2024 in a landmark move to counter China.

Defense Secretary Hegseth informed his Japanese counterpart Shinjiro Koizumi earlier this month

https://t.co/2d62mwN0kF

[M. Nolan Gray 🥑 @mnolangray]

For 45 years, Berkeley built virtually no new housing. By the mid-2010s, it was the most expensive college town in America. Shortly thereafter, YIMBYs took over and kicked off a building boom. Today, nominal rents are below 2018 rates—remarkable progress on affordability.

[Dominik Lett @LettDominik]

Trump has fired at least 21 inspectors general (IGs) since taking office and is proposing to cut real IG funding by 23 percent between FY2025-FY2031. Weakening the IG system is a surefire way to undermine the administration's "war on fraud."

[Isaac Saul @Ike_Saul]

John Phelan had zero Naval experience or military experience of any kind. He was a businessman and donor to the Trump campaign, who bizarrely got tapped to be Sec of Navy.

Now, 2 months into a war where the U.S. Navy enforces a high-stakes blockade of Iranian ports near the Strait of Hormuz, he is suddenly removed with zero explanation.

The appointment was bad. The timing of this was worse. This is inexcusable stuff.

[Max Granger @_maxgranger]

A group of Ecuadorian fishermen survived a US drone strike, were detained at gunpoint, phones wiped, ship blown up, disappeared to El Salvador, then released without charge.

“They knew we were fishermen. Even the Salvadorian authorities said things had been handled very badly.”

[Bobby Kogan @BBKogan]

When Trump took office, the IRS was planning on beginning 6,786 new audits of ultrarich individuals that year.

Instead, they only began 3,692, around half of their plan. This was a policy decision from Trump.

This year, Trump's IRS has set its target even lower, at just 2,264.

[Jeremiah Johnson 🌐 @JeremiahDJohns]

I know it's boring and repetitive to talk about how grossly evil Trump is, but the fact remains: Trump is grossly evil, in a way that's pretty much unprecedented in this country.

[Jeremiah Johnson 🌐 @JeremiahDJohns]

Just a reminder that DOGE failed at every possible level:

* At the micro level, they misread, misled and straight up lied about many of the 'savings'. They'd announce '500m saved!' and it would be some contract where the money was 98% already spent and already wasn't being renewed.
* At the macro level, they didn't impact spending at all. The government spent more in 2025 than 2024.
* At the institutional level, they didn't even convince the GOP that deficits are a problem worth caring about. The GOP only signature bill in 2025 exploded the deficit by trillions of dollars.
* At a personal level, Elon got run out of town with his tail between his legs. The most notable public facts about the Cracked Coders are that one of them was a mini-Hitler, one was called 'big balls', and none of them bothered to learn how the government actually works before they set it on fire.

They gutted a bunch of important institutions, fired whole departments at random, decimated medical research funding, killed millions of people dependent on USAID, and still failed at every possible level.

[Ilan Goldenberg @ilangoldenberg]

This article is compelling and smart. I’ve seen it forwarded around a lot. Let’s walk through why it’s wrong. 

1. The author argues that Iran’s military infrastructure especially its drones and missiles are being systematically taken apart.  True. But in the aftermath who is going to keep it that way? After the 12 day war Israel and Trump declared Iran’s capacity to make war “obliterated” and set back for a generation. Less than a year later they went back to war because of how quickly Iran was rebuilding. This campaign is much more comprehensive, but the same problem still applies. How to avoid being stuck in the aftermath in a “mow the lawn” scenario where the US has to expend tremendous assets that could be directed elsewhere in the world - especially towards the Indopacific. And where the region operates at a new unstable normal where all previous taboos on military action are off.

2.  He argues that the nuclear infrastructure had to be disassembled because one president after another had just let Iran’s nuclear program grow. Not true. Obama had managed to dramatically and verifiably reduce Iran’s nuclear capacity through the JCPOA. Trump killed that.

3. He argues Iran is self harming by stopping its own oil from going through the Strait of Hormuz. This was always an assumption before the war, but they’ve managed to shut down the Strait for everyone else while still exporting 1 million bbls per day of their own stuff.  That makes this much more sustainable. 

4. He Argues that Iran’s proxy networks are dramatically weakened. True, but also as we’ve learned from previous conflicts they will regenerate and it’s impossible to root them out with a military strategy alone if there is no political follow up to create a better alternative. That is why Israel is on the verge of a major campaign in Lebanon only a year and a half after supposedly setting back Hezbollah for a generation. These fights are costly Pyrrhic victories that will just need to be fought again and again and again unless there is a political strategy to consolidate victory which both Israel and the US have failed at since October 7th. 

5. Finally, the author argues that we need to ignore the President’s own words about regime change and the Iranian people rising up and focus on what the military is doing.  But that’s not how war works. War is fought to achieve a political objective. If there is no clear objective set out by the political leadership it’s impossible to translate battlefield victories into a consolidated win.  By setting the bar at regime change Trump has made it extraordinarily hard for the US to be perceived as winning even if the military executes the plans. Perception is a big part of the battle in war. And again the costs are incredibly high. And as the author argues, the only way this works is if there is a plan to contain and keep Iran down in the aftermath. Do we have any faith in Trump to do that? Again that is going to be incredibly expensive and require a presence like what the US left in the Middle East after the first Gulf War to contain Saddam.  That’s something we could afford in 1991 when the US was a unipolar power. But not in 2026 when we have a real competitor in China that we need to manage. 

https://t.co/C5UAdJWwSr

[David J. Bier @David_J_Bier]

Exactly the opposite. An absurd claim.

[Jonathan Chait @jonathanchait]

"It isn’t Canada’s first choice to ally with China on EVs. The country used to maintain strict 100 percent tariffs on Chinese EVs, in lockstep with the U.S.... But Trump’s tariffs scrambled the assumptions upon which Canada’s auto industry rests." https://t.co/ZeMMbOC2JF

[Jason Willick @jawillick]

First a THAAD system pulled from South Korea, now Marines pulled from Japan — both to Middle East.

I have seen arguments that Trump is going to war in Iran to deter China. Concretely, the East Asia power balance is shifting in China's favor every day.
https://t.co/2mDyuVVZ25

[max seddon @maxseddon]

NEW: Russia is earning up to $150mn a day in extra budget revenues from oil sales amid price rises thanks to the US-Iran war.

Moscow has so far earned $1.3bn-$1.9bn from taxes on oil exports and could receive $3.3bn-$4.9bn in total by the end of March.

https://t.co/EImkD9rkj3

[Connor O’Brien @cojobrien]

85 people have paid the $100,000 H-1B fee so far, totaling $8.5 million in revenue. But fee revenue from H-1B apps abroad is down $28 million.

So the fee — justified by a paper claiming the revenue-maximizing fee was >$100,000! — appears to have lost the government $20 million.

[Kenneth P. Vogel @kenvogel]

Pete Hegseth gutted the Pentagon offices that would have investigated the strike on an Iranian girls’ school.

The Civilian Protection Center of Excellence went from 200 employees to 20, with only 1 left investigating civilian casualties in the Middle East https://t.co/WFjT08qY2u