IT’S GOLD (not pictured)! – House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) handed President Trump the inaugural America First award at the annual National Republican Congressional Committee fundraiser at Washington’s Union Station Wednesday evening. Photos of the "beautiful golden statue" itself appear impossible to find (hat tip to Jimmy Kimmel Live).
Dollars for TSA – By unanimous consent the Senate passed early Friday a proposal that funds the Transportation Security Administration and other critical Department of Homeland Security agencies, but not Immigration and Customs Enforcement, The Hill reports.
The vote effectively ends the partial shutdown of DHS and comes just as senators were to head out of Washington, many of them on commercial flights (though with their own special security access), on a two-week recess ending April 13. Several key airport hubs across the country have reported TSA security checkpoints taking up to five hours.
Negotiations to fund ICE and Border Patrol failed after Democrats and Republicans failed to agree on reforms proposed in light of the fatal shootings of Reneé Nicole Good and Alex Pretti by agents in Minneapolis last January.
“This was all about reforms, and they were on the table, basically, that was kind of closed and they started to take the [ICE] funding off the table,” said Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD). “I just think their base was demanding they not fund ICE.”
However, ICE is getting by on $75 billion of fiscal 2026 funding from President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Budget Act. Paid ICE agents this past week had been deployed at several of the nation’s airports to assist the unpaid TSA agents.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said he is proud of his caucus for holding firm on ICE reforms, including no administrative warrants and masks off agents, before funding.
“Democrats held firm in our opposition that Donald Trump’s rogue and deadly militia should not get more funding without serious reforms, and we will continue to fight for those reforms,” Schumer said.
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Deal Up – President Trump’s original extension of his Monday, March 23 deadline for Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz or face US Military bombing of Iranian power plants was to be up by Friday evening. You may have noticed that Iran has not opened the Strait but did “give” Trump the heretofore “mystery” present of allowing “eight big boats of oil” to pass through.
“And so I gave them a 10-day extension,” Trump told Fox News’ The Five Thursday evening. “They asked for seven. You’re gonna say, ‘Oh, Trump’s a terrible negotiator.” (Though probably not at least four of The Five.) “They asked for seven. I said, ‘I’m gonna give you 10.’”
Mark your calendars for Monday, April 6.
Tehran’s resolve … Meanwhile, as the US and Israel continue to hit Iran’s missile-launching sites over and over, Iran has kept its missiles flying by shifting to longer-range missiles from deeper inside its territory, analysts and former US officers tell The Wall Street Journal.
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AAA National Average Unleaded Regular, Friday: $3.978 per gallon, 0.02 cents lower than Thursday’s price and up 98.898-cents over February 27. Diesel: $5.38 per gallon, up 9.5 cents over Thursday and $2.204 costlier than on February 27. –TL
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THURSDAY 3/26/26
Deal, No Deal Redux – As Iranian leadership continues to deny it is in talks with the US to negotiate an end to the war there, President Trump faces a self-imposed, far-from-official deadline to end that war within a few weeks. Thursday morning, Trump Truth Socialed his, er, disappointment that European North Atlantic Treaty Organization nations – the ones he said last year are on their own for handling conflicts on their own side of the world.
Courtesy Mediaite:
“NATO NATIONS HAVE DONE ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO HELP WITH THE LUNATIC NATION, NOW MILITARILY DECIMATED, OF IRAN. THE U.S.A. NEEDS NOTHING FROM NATO, BUT ‘NEVER FORGET’ THIS VERY IMPORTANT POINT IN TIME! President DONALD J. TRUMP.”
His second of eight Truth Social posts Thursday read thusly:
“The Iranian negotiators are very different and ‘strange.’ They are ‘begging’ us to make a deal, which they should be doing since they have been militarily obliterated, with zero chance of a comeback, and yet they publicly state that they are only ‘looking at our proposal.’ WRONG!!! They better get serious soon, before it’s too late, because once that happens, there is NO TURNING BACK, and it won’t be pretty. President DJT.”
Meanwhile … The Pentagon has deployed the 82nd Airborne Division’s command element to the Middle East, Global Defense News reports, for possible rapid ground operations against Iran on such strategic targets as Kharg Island, home to much of Iran’s oil reserves and infrastructure.
Quickly! … Trump has told White House aides he wants a speedy end to the war, urging a four- to six-week timeline, in Iran, people familiar with the matter told The Wall Street Journal.
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AAA National Average Unleaded Regular, Thursday: $3.98 per gallon, 0.2 cents lower than Wednesday’s price and up 98.9-cents over February 27. Diesel: $5.375 per gallon, up 9 cents over Wednesday and $2.199 costlier than on February 27.
Note that while the regular unleaded you fill into your car or SUV has stabilized in price this week and is less expensive over the last couple of days, the diesel used to deliver food to your grocery store (and fuel the lifted pickup dominating your neighbor’s driveway) keeps getting more expensive.
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Holding Social Media Responsible – After nine days deliberation, at one point coming out of sequester to tell the judge they were having a hard time reaching a decision, a jury in Los Angeles found Meta and Google liable for creating addictive products that caused mental health problems when a young woman identified in the suit as KGM was a minor, The Atlantic Daily reports. The jury awarded KGM, now identified as “Kaley,” age 20, $3 million in compensatory damages.
Kaley’s complaint said social media designed to promote constant scrolling caused her anxiety, depression, self-harm and body dysmorphia when she was a child. Her separate suit against TikTok and Snap was settled out of court.
Meta will pay 70%, or $2.1 million in damages while Google, which owns YouTube, will pay 30%, or $900,000.
Meta reported $60 billion in gross revenues in the third quarter of 2025, so the compensatory damages are not the problem for the social media companies. Rather, it is expected to affect the future designs of social media apps and opens the way for additional lawsuits that affect social media outlets’ images far more than their bottom lines.
In a statement to reporters, according to The Atlantic, one of Kaley’s attorneys, Matthew Bergman said the verdict “establishes a framework for how similar cases across the country will be evaluated and demonstrates that juries are willing to hold technology companies accountable when evidence shows foreseeable harm.”
Meta released a statement that “We respectfully disagree with the verdict and are evaluating our legal options.”
Google spokesman José Casteñeda said in an email to The Atlantic, “This case misunderstands YouTube, which is a responsibly built streaming platform, not a social media site.”
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Tech Oligarchs Unite – Meanwhile, President Trump Wednesday named Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg (Instagram, Facebook, etc.), Oracle Executive Chairman Larry Ellison (father of David Ellison, whose Paramount Skydance has secured a deal to purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery for $111 billion) and NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang to a technology council to “weigh in” on artificial intelligence policy and other such issues, The Wall Street Journal reports.
The three join 13 other tech leaders, including Google co-founder Sergey Brin and Dell Technology’s Michael Dell, in a tech brotherhood that Trump indicated in his executive order organizing the panel said could total 24. – Compiled and edited by Todd Lassa