Happy Monday, everybody. I hope you all had a restful weekend, because we have several key stories to cover today as the war in Iran takes a new turn and Trump threatens to take over another country. We also learned more about ICE’s treatment of inmates in detention centers and Senator Mike Lee shocks the political world with a murder joke. And finally, a look at Trump’s judicial nominees who refuse to say that Joe Biden won the 2020 elections – and what that means for our democracy in 2026.
I apologize for the background. I am on the road, but wanted to get the show in, even without the cool studio background.
Ok, let’s get to it.
1. The Iran War Takes A New Turn As Trump Launches “Project Freedom” in the Strait of Hormuz
President Trump announced that the U.S. military will begin escorting foreign cargo ships out of the Strait of Hormuz starting Monday morning Middle East time, in an operation he is calling “Project Freedom.”
The announcement came hours after Trump rejected Iran’s 14-point peace proposal, calling it “not acceptable” because Iran had not “paid a big enough price.” Iran has blockaded the strait against non-Iranian shipping for more than two months. The U.S. has been blockading Iranian ports in return.
In an interview with Fox News’ Trey Yingst earlier today, Trump warned that any Iranian attack on a U.S. vessel carrying out Project Freedom would result in Iran being “blown off the face of the Earth.”
The International Maritime Organization estimates up to 20,000 seafarers are stranded aboard roughly 2,000 vessels near the Strait, including oil tankers, cargo ships, and cruise liners running critically low on food, fuel, and water — with at least 19 attacks on vessels recorded since the conflict began, killing 10 sailors.
The operation will involve guided-missile destroyers, more than 100 aircraft, unmanned platforms, and 15,000 service members.
The math here is concerning. Before the war, more than 100 ships transited the strait daily, and analysts point out there are only about a dozen U.S. Navy vessels capable of defending shipping — meaning the numbers simply do not add up. Twenty percent of the world’s oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz and we simply cannot guarantee passage of every ship.
Whether this stays a peaceful escort mission or becomes the start of round two depends on what happens in the next few days in the strait. The White House has set the policy, but it does not control the outcome. That now rests with Iranian commanders, U.S. Navy captains, and a handful of split-second decisions in contested water.
NOTE: There are lots of unconfirmed reports from the last hour or two in the region. We will keep you updated as we can confirm the truth of events.
2. The Government Has Been Secretly Documenting ICE Abuse of Immigration Detainees — and the Numbers Are Damning
A new Washington Post investigation shows that ICE detention officers used physical force or chemical agents at least 780 times against immigrant detainees during the first year of Trump’s second term — a 37% increase over the year prior.
The Post based its findings on internal ICE emails known as the “Daily Detainee Assault Report,” which detail incidents involving force at 98 detention facilities from January 2024 to February 2026. The reports were obtained from a government employee who shared them anonymously and documented officers using punches, kicks, takedowns, restraint chairs, Tasers, pepper spray, and other less-lethal weapons.
The number of detainees subjected to force rose 54% to 1,330 people, while the detained population grew 45%. In one Alaska incident, guards fired pepper balls into a communal room after detainees complained about access to their belongings.
2025 was already the deadliest year for ICE detention on record, and 2026 is on pace to be worse. Arrests of people with no criminal record surged by 2,450 percent during Trump’s first year, and the share of detainees with no criminal history rose from 6 percent to 41 percent. When you flood a detention system beyond capacity with people who have no criminal record and then gut internal oversight at the same time, this is not a surprise outcome. It is a predictable one. The government was documenting it internally the entire time.
Watch whether the GOP Congress responds with oversight hearings. Congress has the authority to rein ICE in, but has so far declined to act, and with $45 billion in new detention funding already authorized, the system is poised to expand further.
3. Trump Threatens Imminent Takeover of Cuba
Speaking at a Forum Club of the Palm Beaches event in West Palm Beach this weekend, President Trump said the United States will be “taking over” Cuba “almost immediately” after the Iran war ends, and described sending a U.S. aircraft carrier to compel the island’s surrender.
He signed an executive order Friday tightening sanctions on Cuba and threatening foreign banks that do business with Havana. Cuba has been in an energy crisis since January, when U.S. forces seized Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and halted Venezuelan oil exports to the island.
Nine weeks into the war with Iran and a new operation launching in the Strait of Hormuz this morning, the President’s response is to casually announce, at a public dinner, that he intends to open a second front of conflict. Trump is the first U.S. president since the Cold War to openly pursue regime change in Havana.
The last time the United States parked an aircraft carrier off the Cuban coast, it was October 1962. The world came within hours of nuclear war. The lesson out of the Cuban Missile Crisis was that public ultimatums from a U.S. president to a Caribbean island, delivered with naval power offshore, are how superpowers stumble into wars they didn’t plan to fight.
4. Republican Senator Compares Spirit Airlines Collapse To OJ Simpson Murder. Really.
Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah compared the collapse of Spirit Airlines to the OJ Simpson murders on X Monday, in a post blaming Sen. Elizabeth Warren for the airline’s demise.
The comparison comes after Spirit ceased operations at 3 a.m. Saturday, the first major U.S. airline shutdown in 25 years. Republicans have spent the weekend blaming Warren and the Democrats for opposing the 2024 JetBlue-Spirit merger that they argue would have saved the airline.
Lee has now posted several memes blaming Warren and the Biden administration’s blocking of the merger, but none as shocking as the above.
I served alongside Sen. Mike Lee when he would lecture other Republicans about principle, constitutional limits, and restraint. That man is gone, and what is left is a Senator who looks at a corporate bankruptcy as an opportunity to score points on X against a colleague on the other side of the aisle.
5. Trump’s Judicial Nominees Won’t Say Who Won the 2020 Election
Sen. Richard Blumenthal asked a panel of President Trump’s federal judicial nominees during a recent Senate Judiciary Committee hearing whether they would acknowledge that Joe Biden won the 2020 election. Every single one of them refused. Video via Morning Joe.
The 2020 election was the most litigated in American history. Trump’s own attorney general said there was no evidence of widespread fraud. Trump’s own Department of Homeland Security called it the most secure election ever conducted.
Refusing to acknowledge Biden won is the ultimate loyalty test to Trump and the people taking it are about to become lifetime federal judges. Once confirmed, every future election challenge runs the risk of landing in front of someone who couldn’t answer a basic factual question under oath.
I sat in the Capitol on January 6, 2021. I served on the committee that investigated it. The reason these nominees can’t answer Blumenthal’s question is the same reason they’re being nominated in the first place.
Some other stories that caught my eye:
United Airlines Flight Hits a Light Pole and a Truck on the Way Into Newark. A United Airlines Boeing 767 arriving from Venice clipped a light pole over the New Jersey Turnpike on Sunday afternoon during its final approach to Newark Liberty International Airport, then struck a Schmidt Bakery tractor-trailer below. United said the plane “came into contact with a light pole,” landed safely, taxied to the gate normally, and that none of the 221 passengers or 10 crew members were injured. Dashcam video from inside the truck shows the plane’s wheel passing through the windshield. The truck driver, Warren Boardley of Baltimore, was hospitalized with glass injuries to his arm and hand. The 767 was crossing the turnpike at over 160 miles per hour according to flight tracking data, and the pilots and air traffic controllers did not initially appear to know the plane had struck the pole. The NTSB and FAA have opened investigations and the crew has been pulled from service. Here’s the video:
Rudy Giuliani Hospitalized in Critical Condition. Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani is hospitalized in critical but stable condition at a Florida hospital, his spokesman confirmed Sunday evening. Spokesman Ted Goodman said in a statement on X that “Mayor Giuliani is a fighter who has faced every challenge in his life with unwavering strength, and he’s fighting with that same level of strength as we speak.” The cause of the hospitalization has not been disclosed. Giuliani, 81, hosted his streamed show “America’s Mayor Live” from Palm Beach on Friday night, telling viewers his “voice is a little under the weather” and coughing several times during the broadcast. He spent four days hospitalized with COVID in 2020, was injured in a high-speed New Hampshire car accident last August, and has faced state criminal charges in Arizona related to the 2020 election subversion scheme. President Trump posted on Truth Social that Giuliani is “a True Warrior and the Best Mayor in the History of New York City” and announced he would award him the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Gas Prices Hit a Four-Year High as the Iran War Crosses 60 Days. The national average price of a gallon of gasoline rose to $4.45 on Saturday, the highest since 2022, according to AAA. That’s a 34-cent jump in one week and $1.47 higher than the day the war with Iran began on February 28. The administration’s framing remains that prices will fall the moment the war ends. In California, the state average has now passed $6 per gallon. The naval blockades, both sides of them, have effectively shut down the Strait of Hormuz, which normally handles about 20 million barrels of oil and refined products per day.
Mark Carney Just Became the First Non-European Ever to Join a European Summit. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney arrived in Yerevan, Armenia on Sunday to attend Monday’s European Political Community summit. He’s the first leader of a non-European state ever invited. The summit was conceived by Emmanuel Macron in 2022 as a forum for an independent Europe to project power, originally in response to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Forty-five regional leaders are attending. Trump was not invited. In 15 months, the president has tariffed Europe and Canada, threatened to invade Greenland, and sided with Putin over Zelensky. European and Canadian leaders are now openly building what reporters call “a third superpower” to avoid being crushed between the U.S. and China. And look, the premise of today’s summit is that America is one of the threats they need to organize against.
