✪ THE BIG FRIDAY SOOPER THREAD

▶️ CHEVRON WARNS CALIFORNIA IS FACING HISTORIC FUEL CRISIS

CHEVRON WARNS CALIFORNIA IS FACING HISTORIC FUEL CRISIS

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he world’s biggest energy execs are currently at the annual CERAWeek conclave in Houston where, understandably, they are dropping bulletin bombs reeking of fire and brimstone; and warning the already critical oil/gas situation will only get worse if the pre-war status quo isn’t restored (which incidentally will be great for their bottom lines… until the world is tipped into a recession).

Take US oil giant Chevron, which warned that California is careening toward an energy crisis because of the Iran war (which will likely be resolved soon), and the company may quit refining oil in the state unless officials roll back taxes and regulations (which is unlikely to ever be resolved as long as Democrats are in charge of the Golden State).

California is highly exposed to the disruption rippling across commodity markets because it imports about 20% of its refined fuels from Asia. But as extensively discussed here, oil product shipments from China, South Korea, Singapore and elsewhere are at risk of slowing significantly as Iran blocks the Strait of Hormuz, leaving Asian nations struggling to meet their own demand at home let alone export to California.

Chevron’s oil refining head Andy Walz said the potential for fuel shortages in California is his worst fear: “We have refineries in Asia that are having to cut crude, and so they’re going to make less products,” Walz said in an interview Tuesday. “What if San Francisco doesn’t have the jet fuel it needs? Or Los Angeles? Or maybe gasoline?”

And as if to confirm his warning, just hours later the price of California Diesel hit a record high just above $7 per gallon, or $7.072 to be precise. That topped the previous record of $7.012 in June 2022, in the first months of Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Since California is disconnected from the US fuel-making centers of Texas and Louisiana, it is essentially an isolated energy island. That’s compounded by multiple refinery closures in recent years due to increased costs driven by regulations designed to fight climate change and cap oil industry profits, not to mention the state’s toxic and oppressive regulatory regime.

As a result, California consumers are more exposed than most other Americans to surging energy prices because of the Iran war. They already pay nearly $6 for a gallon of gasoline, compared with a national average of close to $4, due to the state’s ruinous legacy “green” regime. It’s a growing political problem for Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat who is expected to run for president in 2028.

“California has decided that they’re going to rely on imports,” Walz said at the CERAWeek by S&P Global conference in Houston. “It’s a dangerous game,” Walz added tongue-in-cheek.

California officials should declare an “energy emergency,” reform its climate and tax rules and promote in-state oil production, Walz said. Without such action, Chevron could quit refining in California within a decade, he said.

A spokesman for California Governor Newsom’s office said oil companies are “cashing in” on the war in Iran and running a “coordinated campaign” to attack California. In other words nothing will change until prices get to be so high, the state’s residents demand change.

“If they’re serious about protecting consumers, they should direct that concern where it belongs: at Donald Trump. There’s no end in sight to Trump’s war taxing American families at the pump,” the spokesman, Anthony Martinez, said in an email, confirming Newsom’s plan is… to pretend there is no problem.

Meanwhile, anyone with a brain can see what’s coming: “the problem in California is one of the state’s own making,” Walz said.

The Trump Administration has already used emergency wartime powers to authorize Sable Offshore, a Houston-based driller, to restart oil production off the California coast. The president has also temporarily waived a century-old maritime law called the Jones Act to help make it cheaper and easier to ship gasoline, diesel and other commodities between US ports.

Meanwhile, California already has the nation’s toughest fuel standards as well as a carbon cap-and-trade program that critics say forces consumers to pay the highest prices in the nation. Its goal to reduce carbon emissions 85% by 2045 relies heavily on a near-complete phaseout of gasoline-powered cars and a large reduction in heavy industry — including refining.

Nonetheless, California remains the country’s second-largest consumer of gasoline and the largest market for jet fuel, for which there’s currently no practical low-carbon alternative. The Democrat state’s recent revulsion toward Elon Musk, and Tesla, has also not helped the looming fuel crisis.

“The California intent to offshore carbon to other nations has offshored their security of supply,” Walz said. “They’ve offshored jobs and they haven’t had any impact on carbon.”

Chevron, which has tankers sitting idle on each side of the Strait of Hormuz, is taking the unusual step of shipping Gulf Coast oil to California through the Panama Canal as the war disrupts shipments from the region that West Coast refiners typically use, Walz said.

China has already imposed a fuel export ban as shipments from the Gulf dwindle. If the Strait of Hormuz remains blocked long enough, other Asian countries could follow suit. Chevron’s scenario planning initially looked at the Strait being closed until the end of March.

“Now our scenario plans are worse,” Walz said. “It’s going to be longer and we’re trying to look around the corner.”

California is home to more than 30 military bases. That includes one of the largest in the US, Travis Air Force Base, which Chevron supplies from its Richmond refinery. “I think the US government should be concerned,” Walz said.

But wait, there’s more because the state’s green lunatics threaten to make an already dire crisis something truly historic: new emissions rules proposed by the California Air Resources Board, if implemented, threaten to drive costs for the state’s remaining refineries even higher. Chevron estimates the additional expenses could hit $500 million within five years.

“They need to abandon the tax on refineries or they won’t have any refineries in 10 years,” Walz said. “If it stays that way — Chevron will be gone in 10 years for sure. We won’t be able to make it.”

* * *

However, it’s not just California that faces a historic crisis: Europe is about to get crushed as well.

According to Shell CEO Wael Sawan, Europe will soon begin to experience the same kind of disruption to fuel supplies that Asia has faced due to the war in Iran in recent weeks. Sawan said the effects of the conflict continue to ripple out across global fuel markets, first in South Asia, then Southeast Asia and Northeast Asia, and increasingly in Europe as April approaches.

“We are trying to work with governments to just alert them to the various levers they will need to pull, including on the demand side, including what they need to do around storage,” he said Tuesday at the same CERAWeek conference.

Just like California, expect Europe to do nothing besides pointing fingers, until it is too late. ✪

▶️ CHINA IS ABOUT TO LOSE ITS CUBAN MILITARY BASES

CHINA IS ABOUT TO LOSE ITS CUBAN MILITARY BASES

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uban society, due to a U.S. naval embargo, is close to collapse. Friends of Havana blame the U.S., but the Trump Administration had to act before China turned the island into a military bastion.

America took control of Venezuela’s national oil company, PDVSA, after the January 3 raid that resulted in the capture of Nicolás Maduro and his wife. Then the U.S. stopped the flow of Venezuelan oil to the Cuban regime.

At the same time, the Trump Administration, by threatening tariffs on oil suppliers, imposed a de facto oil embargo on Havana. The U.S. Navy has since deterred vessels from unloading cargo in Cuba.

To get through the American picket line, tankers have been employing deceptive tactics. For instance, the Hong Kong-flagged Sea Horse, carrying gasoil, was falsely broadcasting that it was “not under command” and drifting in the Sargasso Sea for almost three weeks. In reality, the ship spoofed its location and probably unloaded 190,000 barrels in Cuba in the early part of this month.

A delivery from the Sea Horse, according to the Windward site, would be “the first confirmed arrival of a refined products cargo at the island since early January.”

As a result of the American actions, Cuba has almost run out of energy. The Cuban grid has collapsed three times so far this month, throwing the island into darkness.

One of the most atrocious international crimes being committed right now is the US blockade on Cuba.

The US government is doing everything it can to strangle Cuba’s economy, especially by ramping up the oil blockade. No electricity, no oil, no fuel. Barely any food. A severe…
— Jostein Hauge (@haugejostein) March 17, 2026

“Why is the U.S. doing this?” asks Cambridge University’s Jostein Hauge on X, referring to the blockade on Cuba. “For no reason other than its dislike of the Cuban regime. Cuba poses no threat to the U.S.” Really?

“China uses Cuba as a platform for many of its regional intelligence and security operations,” Joseph Humire, then executive director of the Center for a Secure Free Society, told this author in 2021.

There is, most prominently, the Lourdes facility just west of Havana near Bejucal, once the Soviet Union’s largest listening station outside its borders. The Chinese are thought to have taken over the facility shortly after the fall of the USSR.

China now has more than just Lourdes. A December 2024 Center for Strategic & International Studies report identifies three more likely Chinese listening posts in Cuba. There is the Soviet-era Calabazar, and a second, Wajay, appears to have been built after the fall of the Soviet Union. There is also a new station, El Salao.

The CSIS report notes that unconfirmed accounts of China’s intelligence presence on the island began with the visit of China’s Defense Minister General Chi Haotian in 1999.

The Chinese may have been operating listening posts in Cuba since 1993, R. Evan Ellis of the U.S. Army War College told Gatestone at the beginning of last year.

China and Cuba, the Wall Street Journal reported in June 2023, agreed in principle to establish a new listening site on Cuban soil. The Biden Administration denied the report, but two days later declassified intelligence showing that Chinese signals-intelligence collection facilities had been operating in Cuba since at least 2019.

Cuba is an ideal location to surveil America. “Sitting less than 100 miles south of Florida, Cuba is well-positioned to keep watch on sensitive communications and activities, including those of the U.S. military,” the CSIS report states. “The southeastern seaboard of the United States brims with military bases, combatant command headquarters, space launch centers, and military testing sites.”

Moreover, Cuba is an ideal location for a Chinese military base. The Wall Street Journal reported in 2023:

“China and Cuba are negotiating to establish a new joint military training facility on the island, sparking alarm in Washington that it could lead to the stationing of Chinese troops and other security and intelligence operations just 100 miles off Florida’s coast.”

China stated the Wall Street Journal report was “totally mendacious and unfounded,” but it is nonetheless evident that China wants an enhanced facility on Cuba, just as it has established de facto military sites throughout Latin America.

Moreover, President Donald Trump acted before the Chinese could base missiles in Cuba.

So, whatever one thinks of the harsh consequences of the U.S. naval embargo — there is a worsening humanitarian crisis in Cuba now — the Havana regime, by allowing the Chinese to have the run of the island, does pose a threat to the United States. ✪

▶️ MIKE PENCE THINKS HE’S THE ‘LIFEGUARD’ OF THE RIGHT

MIKE PENCE THINKS HE’S THE ‘LIFEGUARD’ OF THE RIGHT

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he former vice president seemingly lacks any self-awareness as he haughtily anoints himself the policing decider on what views and discussions are “allowed” among conservatives. Such arrogance smacks as offensive coming from any single individual, but it ascends into total cognitive dissonance when that pretend potentate is none other than “Surrender Mike” Pence.

In this regard, Pence acts like the annoying lifeguard we all encountered at the pool growing up. He was too big for his britches, some cocky teenage punk all too ready to enforce “the rules” upon well-meaning kids just trying to swim and enjoy themselves. Convinced of their own power and merit, such scolds refuse to accept the limits of their actual influence.

So, from his imaginary political lifeguard chair, Mike Pence blows his whistle and yells down to the populist Right to “stop and get out of the pool for an immediate timeout.” Lately, the target of his establishment ire is the Heritage Foundation as an institution and its leader, Kevin Roberts, as an individual.

The grievance session from Pence was delivered via CNN. Yep, CNN. You know, that paragon of intellectual honesty that produces so much valuable content for American conservatives. Wait. Scratch that. Actually, Pence went running to his new besties at CNN because he sounds a lot more like Jake Tapper these days than Ronald Reagan.

In his therapy couch interview with CNN, Pence brags openly about trying to recruit Heritage staffers to his new think tank. Notably, Pence never left D.C. after he left office in 2021, and he started that think tank as a decidedly old-school establishment GOP throwback to the era of GOP weaklings who simply managed the decline of America alongside their pals on the Democrat side of the aisle.

About these recruiting efforts, Heritage’s Andy Olivastro responded that “Mike Pence is waiting for a train back to relevance that ain’t comin’.”

But Pence insists he’s still important and somehow relevant to the broader Republican base. He told CNN, “I’m convinced that while in those respects, the president has changed aspects of the Republican agenda, I don’t believe he’s changed the Republican Party.”

Pretty bold statement from Surrender Mike, as any political observer with an ounce of honesty and/or intelligence recognizes that the GOP has changed in profound ways, becoming far more populist and nationalist at the voter level. But nonetheless, let’s test Mike’s grand pronouncement with actual data.

I just polled the key battleground state of Wisconsin. This poll was overall not a kind one for President Trump, who registers another -15 percent approval rating in the Badger State, 38/53 percent. Voters remain deeply unhappy with the economy, and they increasingly blame the GOP for this predicament.

In spite of that sour macro mood, when Trump voters were asked if they regretted their 2024 ballot choice, only 9 percent said that they did. That’s it—just 9 percent, a year and a half later. Among self-identified “conservatives,” only 5 percent regretted voting for Trump. That kind of unanimity within a large population—Trump earned 81 million votes total, nationally—is difficult to find in today’s fractured political scene.

So, those pesky facts keep getting in the way of Mike’s fantasies. Trump remains overwhelmingly popular among Republicans. The party has, indeed, been completely reshaped into a populist Right party that is now geared to workers rather than to bluebloods or CEOs, even though those small groups of elites still send money to Mike Pence to fund his Beltway boondoggles.

When you’re running to CNN to complain, it’s a good rule of thumb that you are not speaking for the masses of patriotic conservatives in America. Believe me, I know. I worked on-air at CNN for two years at the request of President Trump. That entire platform is poisoned and biased from the jump. They hate not just Trump in a visceral way, but also the masses of hard-working Americans who demand national sovereignty, diffused prosperity, and a return to cultural conservatism.

Mike Pence lectures conservatives from a CNN perch, but the populist GOP he scolds has already moved on—without him. Enjoy your new besties there, Surrender Mike. But you won’t order us “out of the pool.” We are moving upward and onward . . . because we have a country to save. ✪

▶️ PROMOTE CRITICAL THINKING INSTEAD OF CENSORSHIP

PROMOTE CRITICAL THINKING INSTEAD OF CENSORSHIP

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ree speech invites falsehoods—but censorship invites tyranny; the answer is not to silence voices, but to sharpen minds. I was recently asked by an acquaintance if I had noticed any changes on the social media platform X (née Twitter) since its purchase by Elon Musk. I had not much mused on the matter; however, I figured the exercise could not hurt and might even prove beneficial.

Long ago, I minimized my use of the platform under the old Twitter regime, largely limited to the posting of articles written for American Greatness, among other sundry sites. Even at that, I was on the cusp of ending my use of Twitter due to its increasing level of censorship. Only the inconvenience of deleting my account prevented mye from taking a final bow and exiting the platform.

Then, Mr. Musk appeared. His announced intention was to purchase the platform to protect and promote free speech. To date, he has succeeded, despite the elitists and their leftist, bureaucratic minions’ siren song of censorship. After a moment of reflection, I replied to my acquaintance (on an X “chat,” in fact):

True, but a free speech platform historically attracts propagandists and dissemblers. The biggest difference between Twitter and X is the willingness of the former’s owners to abet the elitists’ war on free speech and Mr. Musk’s adamant promotion and protection of free speech and the inherent freedom of conscience. (This is not to say he does so in all regards, communist China being a notable example.) The answer to the demands to limit free speech due to “disinformation” and other sundry rationalizations is not censorship. It is to promote critical thinking so people can make up their own minds.

As noted, it is a lie as old as time, with a bogus justification proffered by heinous, murderous regimes from communists to fascists: “We will keep you safe from those radicalized by disfavored speech.”

Insidiously, the temptation flatters the listener by claiming that, while they can handle free speech, there are faceless, dangerous “others” who cannot. Consequently, everyone is asked to curtail their right to free speech for a greater level of purported safety.

Today, from the EU to the American Left, demands abound to succumb to this deceitful ploy. Bemoaning “hate speech, disinformation,” and “misinformation,” they have often rebranded speech they dislike with this fraught connotation, and all to enforce the tenets of their ideology.

The loss of free speech and the concomitant freedom of conscience of others are welcomed by these elitists, for it advances their ideological agenda. And, of course, there is the practical imperative: free speech is the greatest guard against authoritarianism and tyranny. It is why free speech is a God-given, constitutionally enumerated, protected right, as are the rights of a free press and the freedom of religion—the bedrocks of the inherent right to the freedom of conscience.

Now it should become obvious why elites and radicals both seek to curb free speech. As history proves, those calling for censorship are the dangerous ones, and they are already radicalized. If people fail to reject their temptation to erode the sanctity of free speech, it will not merely be those whose speech is disfavored that will be endangered. Eventually, the bell of repression will toll for all; and no one will be safe from these lethal elitists, radicals, and their censorious regimes. Bluntly, censorship is the ultimate step to authoritarianism, and those who engage and/or promote this execrable exercise in thought control must be stopped.

However, they must not be silenced. The proponents of free speech must never engage in that which they oppose, lest they become rightfully branded as hypocrites; and in fact, do as much, if not more, to damage the support for free speech than its opponents.

How, then, to promote free speech in the teeth of the censorious? Promote and protect critical thinking.

The marketplace of ideas is crowded, increasingly so every day, and the motives and aims are as diverse as humanity itself. While sifting through the diurnal data deluge can seem a daunting task to many, it is one that must never be delegated to the government or anyone else. You must be the filter, and the only way to do that is to think critically. If you refuse to assert your rights and cede them to someone else to do it for you, you are no longer a sovereign citizen; you are a serf.

Moreover, this is not merely a call for the teaching and learning of civics and history or other essential educational endeavors. It is a call to engage in lifelong learning—not merely by simply reinforcing one’s confirmation bias, but by challenging it; by seeking out alternative points of view and ideas to test your beliefs and assumptions; and by buttressing or modifying them as the truth emerges out of the confluence of divergent streams of sources.

Thus, those who seek to curtail speech are the most radical danger to our free republic. Where promoters of censorship have risen to power, their barbarous rule has imprisoned and butchered millions upon millions of dissidents for the “crime” of speaking—and thinking—freely. Why? Because for such censorious, lethal regimes and radicals, their most ardent adversary is a critically thinking, ever-vigilant sovereign citizen.

Be it wrapped with an iron fist or with a bow, whenever the temptation to cede any and all of your rights to free speech arises, it must be rebuffed. You are the filter. Therefore, promote critical thinking, not censorship, lest one day you may find yourself canceled—and, if history is any guide, perhaps quite literally. ✪

▶️ DON SURBER: IRAN, THE HEADLESS CHICKEN

⭐️ Jorline

DON SURBER: IRAN, THE HEADLESS CHICKEN

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n 1979, who would have thought Iran would have a gay ayatollah? President Trump called off launching a huge bombardment of Iran on Monday. He said he was talking to Iran’s leadership. Meanwhile, Iran’s leadership denies this. Both statements are true because no one is really sure who is in charge.

Iran’s leadership is dead and has been since Operation Epic Fury began. Some may call the operation a textbook lesson of a successful military assault, but Operation Fury re-wrote the textbook by killing the leadership first and leaving the Islamic Regime running around like a chicken with its head cut off.

World War II in Europe ended with Hitler’s suicide. What instead if the generals had killed him when the war began on September 1, 1939?

On the surface, Khamenei passed the ayatollah turban on to his son. But no one outside of Iran’s inner circle and Mossad knows if he is dead or gay or both—let alone if he is in charge of the Islamic government. Some question if the old ayatollah was a figurehead, too. The son has become a western joke.

Imagine being an Iranian hardliner in 1979 hearing this how it ends:

“The gay ayatollah is, at best, in a coma.” pic.twitter.com/BHcT1VpHRX
— WorldGoneMad (@qu3stionevrthg) March 23, 2026

The tweet of the day on Monday was, “Imagine being an Iranian hardliner in 1979 hearing this how it ends: The gay ayatollah is, at best, in a coma.”

The tweet was a response to a column by Erick Erickson. In delivering a swipe at TV pundits: “right now, each of you is as much an expert on what the Iranian regime is thinking as every talking head on television”—Erickson revealed a harsher and larger truth:

The leadership is dead. The gay ayatollah is, at best, in a coma. The president of Iran is a figurehead, not talking to anyone else in leadership. The head of the Air Force is dead. The head of the Army is dead. The head of the Navy is dead. The head of the secret police is dead. The head of the Basij militia is dead. The Iranian IRGC spokesman is dead. In some cases, we are on the replacements of the replacements of the dead.

We’re on the C team now across the board—people without ties to the television analysts who have long pontificated on what the Iranian leadership is thinking. So much of what you are hearing about what the leadership might do or is thinking is based on pro-Iran analysts who are not talking to the present leadership, but only know the thinking of the dead leadership.

In other words, you know as much as them. For Iran, the chickens have come to roost—and they are all chickens with their heads cut off. Having no one clearly in charge is a dangerous situation but it is safer than the one that had Iran with enough uranium to make a bomb and an ICBM to deliver it.

However, Iran’s military struggles because it is without its top commanders. That leaves military units on their own to wage the war. This led to Iran answering Khamenei’s elimination (as Mossad put it) by sending missiles to every Gulf state. This led to all of Arabia (Iran is not an Arab nation) to side with Israel, however covertly.

President Trump laid the groundwork for this possibility in his first term—which now seems so long ago. The Abraham Accords were designed to take on Iran someday.

The Gulf states own 350 to 400 American-made military jets, mainly F-15s, F-16s, and any F-35s. This is about the same number of fighter jets the USAF has in theater.

So the first move by the B Team was to double the size of the enemy; an enemy who just upgraded from air superiority over Iran to air supremacy.

The recent launch by Iran of a long-range missile at Diego Garcia was a similar strategic mistake in that it pushed Britain, France and Germany to stop blindly blocking America. Why, they may even send a boat or two to help.

“NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte appeared on Face the Nation to talk about the Strait of Hormuz and the threats from Iran. Rutte explained that the good news was that 22 countries were coming together to make sure that the Strait of Hormuz was free.”

Besides many (but not all) of the NATO nations, Rutte said Japan, Korea, Australia, New Zealand, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain are in. The best scenario is Saudi Arabia eventually takes over and ensures the strait will remain open.

So it looks like the missile launched at Diego Garcia turned and hit Iran right between the cheeks. The launch was a rookie error that weakened Iran.

But a weak and chaotic Iran is still a dangerous Iran. The Islamic regime is not about to roll over and play dead. Iran has 92 million people living in an area nearly twice the size of France and Germany. This is why we do not want to put boots on the ground: we do not have that many boots.

The struggle to control the Iranian military is a struggle to control the nation’s post-Operation Epic Fury. Bush won Iraq and had purple-fingered voters decide their fate.

Unfortunately, Iranian-funded terrorists engaged in a post-liberation war, and soured Americans on both the war and Bush’s presidency. The opposite will occur this time. None of our adversaries dare challenge Trump.

Everyone keeps pretending these are cute, isolated little plot twists:

– Europe’s “not our war” tough talk collapsing into a 72-hour Hormuz surrender
– The Palestinian Authority suddenly shanking Iran in public and cozying up to Saudi Arabia
– Hamas quietly “considering” Trump’s…
— Flopping Aces (@FloppingAces) March 23, 2026

Flopping Aces tweeted: Everyone keeps pretending these are cute, isolated little plot twists:

Europe’s “not our war” tough talk collapsing into a 72-hour Hormuz surrender
The Palestinian Authority suddenly shanking Iran in public and cozying up to Saudi Arabia
Hamas quietly “considering” Trump’s disarmament offer like it’s not career suicide
Zelensky panic-dialing Washington negotiators after months of “never concede an inch.”
These aren’t separate stories. They’re symptoms of the exact same brutal reality: Iran’s leverage is evaporating in real time, right in front of the world.

And America’s strength multiplied by its willpower is shrinking sphincters in Beijing, Moscow and 2446 Belmont Road NW, Kalorama, Washington, DC. (One of Obama’s mansions.)

Trump’s pause was explained by Clarice Feldman:

Kharg Island is a coral outcrop about 25 kilometers off Iran’s southern coast, eight kilometers long, four to five kilometers wide. Its permanent civilian population is approximately 8,000 to 10,000 people, nearly all of them oil workers and their families. It is not a city. It is a company town built around a single industrial facility. That facility handles 90% of Iran’s total crude oil exports, processing roughly 950 million barrels annually. Senator Lindsey Graham called it correctly when he said seldom in warfare does an enemy provide you a single target that could so dramatically alter the outcome of a conflict.

Two Marine Expeditionary Units are now converging on the region. The 31st MEU, around 2,200 Marines on the USS Tripoli, has been transiting since March 13. The 11th MEU, another 2,500 Marines on the USS Boxer, departed San Diego under accelerated orders shortly after. Nearly 5,000 Marines are approaching the theater simultaneously. The critics who say taking Kharg is too dangerous are using Iran’s military as it existed on February 27. That military no longer exists in the same form.

Thus the 5-day pause in action forced Iranian leadership to negotiate—or else lose its oil industry. Just who is that Iranian leader is anyone’s guess.

Politico guessed:

“The Trump Administration is quietly weighing Iran’s parliament speaker as a potential partner—and even a future leader—as the president signals a shift from military pressure toward a negotiated endgame. Mohammad ⁠Bagher Ghalibaf, the 64-year-old who has repeatedly threatened the U.S. and its allies with retaliation, is seen by at least some in the White House as a workable partner, who could lead Iran and negotiate with the Trump administration in the war’s next phase, according to two administration officials.”

Who knows if this is true? But if I learned anything in the past decade, it is never bet against Trump. Ayatollah Donald has a nice ring to it. ✪

▶️ KEVIN O’LEARY TELLS EVERYONE TO ‘CHILLAX’ OVER IRAN

KEVIN O’LEARY TELLS EVERYONE TO ‘CHILLAX’ OVER IRAN

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evin O’Leary has a message for everyone losing their minds over Operation Epic Fury and its potential economic fallout: chillax! The Shark Tank investor and business mogul appeared on Fox News to push back against the growing chorus of voices warning that U.S. military action against Iran is about to tank the economy.

He began by framing the situation inside Iran in stark human terms, arguing that the status quo — for Iranians — is already unsustainable.

“Everybody in the region wants to get Iran on board for peace and growth, and even the people there, they want the same thing. You’ve got 250,000 people making sixty million miserable. That’s not a long-term solution either,” O’Leary said. “That’s just in Iran. That’s why you’ve got to take the long view, and the long view here could be just sixty days.”

O’Leary wasn’t buying it — and he had the numbers to back up his claim:

▶️ 8 Minutes 5 Seconds

“Remember, to affect the US economy, you need oil. I’m talking about recession talk, or hurting the economy, or damaging small business. You need oil at over $93 for three months. We’re only one-third into it,” O’Leary said. “So, everybody, chillax and let this thing play out. There’s a really big opportunity here, a huge one, and everybody gets the upside, including all our trading partners.”

That’s the core of his argument. If there’s anything that can trigger a recession, it’s high oil prices, but they haven’t hit the threshold that historically triggers real damage to the U.S. economy. Heck, prices aren’t nearly as bad as they were under Biden, so there’s not much reason to press the panic button.

In fact, the panic, in his view, is premature at best and wildly overblown at worst. One-third of the way through a potential sixty-day window, the doomsday crowd is jumping the gun.

However O’Leary didn’t stop at defending the economics of the moment. He zoomed out and argued that a successful resolution could trigger a massive wave of trade deals across the Middle East and beyond. “We work this out, we’re selling stuff to Saudi Arabia, we’re selling it to the UAE, we’re selling it to Asia, we’re selling it to Japan,” he said.

That’s a lot of markets. And O’Leary’s point is that critics are so focused on the short-term noise that they’re completely missing the long-term prize.

For O’Leary, this whole moment needs to be looked at differently. “This is a huge opportunity,” he said. “I just see it for what it is. It’s history being made.” ✪

▶️ CONVERTING TEXAS TO ISLAM

CONVERTING TEXAS TO ISLAM

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he pattern of Islam is to use schools and school boards, government, the courts, art museums, and other major institutions, including outreach to churches, to infiltrate, gradually introduce Shari’ah, and then finally takeover a nation:

Terrifying. Islamic scholars in the U.S. reveal their plan:

“There are not enough Muslims in America right now to demand full Sharia law and replace its secular system. We need to gain political power and implement it little by little.”

pic.twitter.com/4SGREz4keK
— Dr. Maalouf ‏ (@realMaalouf) March 18, 2026

▶️ 1 Minute 48 Seconds

At the February meeting of the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE), Shaimaa Zayan, Operations Manager of the Austin office of Council on Islamic Relations (CAIR) went to the microphone to make public comments about revisions to the social studies curriculum standards which are under review.

Why is a designated foreign terrorist organization allowed a platform to demand a full revision of the Texas social studies curricula to promote their Islamic agenda?

Board member Brandon Hall asked that question:

“Point of order… CAIR’s stated goal is to push Sharia in the state of Texas, and now they’re here to do it in our schools. Governor Abbott designated CAIR as a foreign terrorist organization. Can we have the leader of a foreign terrorist organization testify?”

Yes! According to the SBOE’s legal counsel, a terrorist organization is allowed under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution to speak at public hearings. The SBOE is advised to seek unbiased counsel for the interpretation of the Constitution.

When our Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution, did they intend for our enemies to have equal rights under our rule of law? Did they intend for foreign enemies to have a voice in what American children are taught? Why is CAIR allowed any presence in Texas? In the United States? In our institutions? Why are their members not arrested?

This front organization for the Muslim Brotherhood has been linked to terror and to subversion of American education. They are working within the system to change the textbooks and curriculum “to attack the children who are the heart of America.”

CAIR is crying foul over the recently SBOE-approved social studies teaching plan because all grades are heavily focused on Texas and U.S. history with only a small amount of time allocated for world history and cultures. The terrorist organization is screaming Islamaphobia over the rightward shift in the curriculum to Western Civilization with Biblical history and the lack of requirements for “Islam, global civilizations and non-Western societies.”

The revisions of the proposed Texas social studies curriculum that CAIR is demanding will cancel our Christian heritage, our founding, and our Texas legends and replace them with Islamist propaganda.

A CAIR representative testified before the Texas SBOE on February 25 asking the board to teach children:

→ 1/3 of all enslaved Africans were Muslim

→ The Alamo was built as an Islamic architectural tribute

→ Columbus, the Mayflower & Washington’s Thanksgiving prayer — out… pic.twitter.com/IBOTlEmkrr
— Jake (@JakeCan72) March 3, 2026

▶️ 3 Minutes 28 Seconds

If CAIR succeeds, students will be taught one-third of all slaves in America were Muslims who were enslaved and murdered because of their Muslim faith. The Mayflower Compact, Christopher Columbus, Christopher Columbus Day, and President George Washington’s 1789 Thanksgiving Proclamation and prayer will be wiped out of our history. Students will be taught that the Alamo was influenced by Islamic architecture and built as a tribute to Islam. The history of the founding of the United States and Texas will be revised with Muslims included as contributors.

With the second largest K-12 student population in the country, Texas has been a target of Islam for decades. Political Islam is taught in public schools under the guise of studies in world history and religions. English classes promote Islam through vocabulary worksheets.

In Texas and across the country, Muslims are allowed to proselytize while Christians cannot.

Outside a North Texas school, students prayed in front of the American flag before classes began. They were told to cease their prayers on school grounds. However, a student at that school told this writer privately that Muslim students were allowed to go to the school library for their daily prayers. Muslim students would go to classrooms to get their friends out for their numerous daily prayers. Yet the principal did not shut down their prayers and did not allow equal time for Christians who might have wanted to pray during class time inside the school.

At Honey Grove Independent School District students were forced to hide behind a cafeteria curtain, move to an empty gym, or relocate outside to pray.

For years at Liberty High School in Frisco, Muslim students were given preferential treatment with the transformation of a classroom into a campus mosque for 30 minutes each weekday.

In an effort to normalize Sharlia-lite with religious symbols in the heart of Texas pride on Go Texan Day, a Ramadan display was sneaked into Bunker Hill Elementary in Houston. It was only through the vigilance of parents that the Islamic display was removed.

▶️ 7 Minutes 33 Seconds

Students memorize verses from the Qur’an, learn the Five Pillars of Islam, recite the American Pledge of Allegiance (“One nation under Allah”) and chant, “There is no god but Allah.” However, classes do not include the memorization of Bible verses.

During class activities, students kneel on rugs and pray to Allah while facing in the direction of Mecca. Students wear burqas and necklaces with the emblem of the Muslim star and moon crescents. Deeper immersion occurs during school field trips to a mosque where female students are required to cover themselves from head to toe.

In 2008 the American Textbook Council released a report, “Islam in the Classroom: What the Textbooks Tell Us.” None of this is accidental. Islamic organizations, willing to sow misinformation, are active in curriculum politics. These activists are eager to expunge any critical thought about Islam from textbooks and all public discourse.

Educators provide students with only positive stories about the multiculturalism and broad-mindedness of Muslims. Textbooks whitewash the beheadings and slaughter of Christians and Jews, crucifixions, enslavement, stonings, hangings, throwing gays over balconies to their death, honor killings, female genital mutilation, dismembering of body parts, disemboweling, rape, terror, kidnapping, destroying synagogues and churches, detonating bombs strapped to babies’ heads, and locking people in cages for days and then drowning them. Totally ignored is the plight of women living under Shari’ah.

The pattern of Islam is to use schools and school boards, government, the courts, art museums, and other major institutions, including outreach to churches, to infiltrate, gradually introduce Shari’ah, and then finally takeover a nation.

▶️ 1 Minute 14 Seconds

The goal is the conversion of America to an Islamic nation living under Shari’ah. In a 1989 video clip about the goal of Islam for America, Islamic activist Sharifa Alkhateeb makes this quite clear to her audience at the “Muslim Americans Political Awareness Conference:”

“We do not want to melt into American society and disappear. We want to go into American society with Islamic ideals and revamp their thinking. We want to revamp them. We want to turn them into Muslim individuals.”

Alkhateeb emphasizes that, since “education is political,” public education will be used to convert students to Islam.

Islamic encroachment is moving swiftly across Texas, not only in education, but with the building of dozens of new mosques, the development of a large Muslim community, and infiltration of Christian churches, it is clear these are barbaric conquerors who will stop at nothing to totally destroy America. It is up to Texans to bring full stop to the assault on our schools, our history, and our way of life. ✪

▶️ THE QUIET COLLAPSE OF THE AMERICAN RESTAURANT

THE QUIET COLLAPSE OF THE AMERICAN RESTAURANT

lll

s an owner, I have lost multiple restaurants over the past few years. The final two closed last year in California. At first, it was easy to explain. COVID-19 hit, and everything changed overnight. Then came the actor strikes, the writer strikes, and the fires that swept through Los Angeles. One by one, these events reshaped the economic and cultural landscape. The city felt different. People moved differently. They spent differently.

Restaurants, especially the kind I built, started to struggle in a way that felt deeper than a temporary downturn. I operated in what I would call the middle, casual, sit-down, mid-priced restaurants. Not fast food, not fine dining. The place where families gather, where people linger, where community happens over a meal.

That middle is disappearing.

I watched a shift in behavior, in real time. The customer who used to go to a casual sit-down restaurant is now ordering at the counter in a fast casual setting, while the person who used to go to fast casual is pulling back even further, choosing fast food because it fits their budget. Those who regularly eat at fine dining establishments can continue to do so. There was no fall down into the middle from the top. Instead, everyone stepped down a rung, leaving the middle hollowed out.

At the time, I thought this might be a California story, but it wasn’t. It was an early warning.

Now, in 2026, we are seeing major chains, fast food and fast casual alike, announce closures, bankruptcies, and restructuring. Names that once seemed untouchable are shrinking their footprints:

Wendy’s ~300 locations closing
Pizza Hut ~250 locations closing
Papa John’s ~200 locations closing (restructuring)
Jack in the Box ~50 to 100 locations closing
Red Robin up to ~70 locations closing
Outback Steakhouse ~40 locations closing
Denny’s ~150 locations closed or closing
Red Lobster dozens of locations (bankruptcy)
Noodles & Company ~30 to 35 locations closing
Popeyes franchise group dozens of locations (bankruptcy)
Bahama Breeze all remaining locations closing
TGI Fridays dozens of locations (bankruptcy or restructuring)

This is not a recovery. It is a continuation. And it’s not one dramatic collapse. There is no single moment you can point to and say, “That’s when it all fell apart.” Instead, it’s thousands of quiet closures, a lease not renewed, a location that simply doesn’t reopen, a family deciding they can’t keep going.

Those closures feel subtle. They happen without headlines, without press releases, without national attention. But the list above tells a different story. When hundreds of locations are closing across major national chains, when bankruptcies and restructurings are happening at scale, that is not quiet, not subtle, and not just background economic noise. That is something breaking in plain sight.

When you place those two realities next to each other, the quiet disappearance of family restaurants and the very public contraction of major chains, it becomes harder to dismiss this as a normal cycle. It begins to look less like churn and more like a system under strain.

The data is harder to track for small, independent restaurants, but the picture is clear. In 2025, the United States saw a net loss of roughly 9,500 restaurants. When you account for new openings, that suggests closer to 15,000 closures in a single year, the vast majority of them independent, family-run establishments.

If you ask why, you will hear the same answers, leases are not being renewed, margins are too tight, owners are burned out. All of that is true. It was true for me.

I closed my flagship restaurant, one I never wanted to close, while it was still technically profitable, but we were barely making it and the trajectory was not improving. When I went to renew my lease, the landlord demanded a significant rent increase and an additional personal guarantee. This was after 10 years of never missing a payment, 10 years of being an anchor tenant in that plaza.

I believe he thought I was bluffing, that I would blink first. But once I made the decision to close and began dismantling the restaurant, the offers started coming, concessions, flexibility, terms that would have kept us open. By then, it was too late.

Anyone who has owned a restaurant understands burnout. It is a business that never closes, long hours, thin margins, constant pressure, and almost no room for error. When something goes wrong, your customers feel it immediately, and you spend more time apologizing than celebrating.

You get into it because you want to cook, to nourish people, to serve your community. Instead, you end up buried in compliance, legal issues, taxes, and regulation. For years, my assistant in Los Angeles would tell people she worked in compliance. When they asked what that meant, she would explain that she was a personal assistant to someone running multiple businesses in California. In that environment, compliance is a full-time job.

The regulatory burden is real, and in my case, it became too heavy to carry. But this is no longer just a California problem.

When even the cheapest, most standardized, most heavily optimized food models in the country can’t make the numbers work, we are looking at something much bigger. When major pizza chains and fast food giants can’t figure out the formula, it is not a brand problem. It is a system problem.

From the farm all the way to the plate, the cost structure is breaking down. Regulation, labor, input costs, and debt are stacking in a way that makes it increasingly difficult to operate a viable food business.

So what do we make of it? I wish I could say this was happening because people are eating better, that consumers are rejecting processed food and moving toward healthier, more intentional choices. That is not what I see.

Where I live now, in central Texas, fast food drive thrus are still full. Processed food is still dominant. The demand is there, and yet both ends of the food system are under pressure.

On one end, farms are closing at alarming rates. On the other, restaurants are disappearing just as quickly. In between, we are told that food has never been more abundant or more affordable.

These two realities can both be true. Cheap, abundant food that farmers are losing money to produce on one end, and food that is contributing to metabolic dysfunction on the other, is not a win for anyone. There is an expression about burning the candle at both ends. It is clear now that the food system is doing exactly that, burning down at both ends while only the middlemen seem to be surviving.

Behind every restaurant that closes is not just a failed business. It is a family that lost its livelihood, employees who lost their jobs, and a community that lost a gathering place. Multiply that by thousands, and the ripple effects become impossible to ignore.

Economists tend to focus on the stock market, GDP, and macro indicators that suggest stability or growth. But what does it mean when tens of thousands of food businesses—farms and restaurants alike—are disappearing? What does it mean when the people who actually grow food and prepare it can’t make a living doing so?

This is not a single shock. It is a slow squeeze, and the question is not just what caused it, but where it leads.

If we continue down this path, where the middle disappears, where small operators cannot survive, and even large chains struggle to stay profitable, we are left with a food system that is more consolidated, more fragile, and more disconnected from the communities it is supposed to serve.

I have lived this from the inside. I have closed the doors, paid the final bills, and walked away from something I built over years. What I see now is not a temporary contraction. It is a restructuring.

Unless we start asking harder questions about the underlying economics of our food system, we may wake up one day to find that the places we gathered, the businesses that fed us, and the people who made it all possible are simply gone. ✪

▶️ IS POPE LEO A WOKE PACHAMAMA AGENT?

IS POPE LEO A WOKE PACHAMAMA AGENT?

ddd

ow did an obscure, violence-ridden Latin American pagan cult infect the papacy of two modern-day Catholic popes? Answer: Both popes – Pope Francis and now Pope Leo – spent time in Latin America where they were corrupted by liberation theology and the nefarious cult of the eco-pagan goddess Pachamama. Both popes at different times were drawn into Pachamama’s orbit, which explains their similarities when it comes to reconfiguring the Catholic Church.

Pachamama is a really big deal in Latin America, on a par with Our Lady of Guadalupe. This pagan lady’s “feast” day in Bolivia is celebrated as Martes de Challa day when the goddess’s “divinity” is honored with sacrifices of guinea pigs and burning llama fetuses.

Francis’s Pachamama infection was the more severe of the two popes since he allowed wooden idols of Pachamama to be brought to Rome and for a while to be displayed in St. Peter’s. Francis crossed the line.

The year was 2019. The event occurred on the eve of the so-called Amazon Synod in the Vatican Gardens where Francis actively took part in a pagan ceremony featuring Pachamama statues depicting nude, pregnant women. The pope “blessed” one of the nude statues after which the idols were displayed in the church of Santa Maria in Traspontina, near the Vatican, and carried in procession to St. Peter’s Basilica.

The lie current then was that the idol of the pregnant earth goddess was somehow representative of the Virgin Mary, despite the heavily-sexualized version in the Vatican display where the goddess was cuddled next to a male idol that seemed to have a large wooden erection.

Missing, of course, from Vatican prayers at the time were responsorial phrases like, “All power to John Holmes and Linda Lovelace!”

Pope Francis apologized, not for the idolatry but because the statues were vandalized. In fact, they were stolen by a brave young Catholic activist named Alexander Tschugguel, who took the idols and threw them into the Tiber, the Roman river with the color of the urine of a person with liver failure, and containing the bones of martyred Christians, pagan emperors, and gladiators.

▶️ 18 Minutes 37 Seconds

As for Pope Leo, in the early 1990s when he was an Augustinian missionary priest in Peru, old photos surfaced indicating his participation in a Pachamama worship ceremony. These images show him kneeling in an occult circle with others, perhaps clergy, bowing down before a nude Pachamama idol. Popesplainers dismissed the image as photoshopped; the truth, however, was that the photo was from an official Augustinian publication showing the young Robert Prevost in the throes of adoration.

Why was a future pope of the Catholic Church keeling on the ground venerating a pagan goddess?

The Augustinians made no attempt to hide the photo but in fact seemed quite proud of it because, like the Jesuits, they have become an ultra-progressive religious order.

Indigenous belief states that Pachamama is not only the mother of humanity but also of the mountains, the Twins (Sun and Moon), domestic animals, and crops. If this sounds benign, consider the goddess’s other face, as described by Wikipedia:

She is normally a loving and generous goddess, but she can be terrible, cruel, and destructive when she is upset or feels hurt, capable of destroying men and everything above or within her. Pachamama is a primordial goddess who does not need temples or specific places of worship… simply because she is everywhere…

Kind of like God, really. The photo of Pope Leo as a young priest venerating the pagan goddess rattled the Catholic podcast world. Many condemned Leo as an apostate; some wondered if maybe he had confessed his idol worship sometime before becoming pope, while others saw it as proof that his pontificate was a heretical train wreck. LifeSiteNews took another direction and sponsored a petition demanding that Leo publicly renounce his adoration of the goddess.

As to that last question: Don’t wait for hell to freeze over. Addressing that petition in any way would just give it more attention. The corrupt legacy media that already sees Leo as a new sort of Christian hero who confronts President Trump on nearly every issue has not even reported on the photo. Pachamama, in their view, would be a hero goddess: “Imagine all the people living for today…”

Some podcasters had a field day dishing their peers with the “I told you so” blame game, insisting they were the first ones to call out Leo while the other numbskulls were too stupid to catch on. This waste of energy is a diversion from what should be a point of unity: the fact that the real enemy is the wider Pachamama cancer eating away at the Church.

That cancer is everywhere and it’s growing exponentially.

The German Synodal Church has promised to ordain women and perform sacramental same-sex weddings whether or not there is approval by the Vatican; a Belgian bishop who recently announced he would ordain married men to the priesthood by 2028 with or without Rome’s sanction; caucuses of woke angry Catholic feminists in Rome, some appointed by Leo, demanding women be ordained deaconesses, not tomorrow but “today.”

Add to this the James Martin LGBT brigade announcing it was forming new faith communities to override and implement changes in the catechism regarding gay marriage and relationships, with or without sanction from Rome.

There seems to be an accelerated fever afloat, demonic in its breathless fanaticism and determination. Ironically, one thing these groups have in common is the recognition that somehow Leo’s openness to dialogue and inclusion is really just an artful pose, and what he really wants is a radical push by the liberal bishops and woke laity to make the changes they demand.

Leo’s complicity has been proven so far by his appointment of radically progressive bishops to positions of high authority.

Let’s not forget: Pachamama “does not need temples” and if “she is everywhere and at all times,” it is almost certain she is only the latest incarnation of Pope Paul VI’s contention that the smoke of Satan has entered the Church. The “smoke of Satan” has had sixty-plus years to settle since the close of Vatican II, and it is smoldering wonderfully.

That same smoke certainly had Leo XIV in its grasp when he blessed that block of Greenlandic ice in October 2025 to highlight the “climate crisis.” This blessing was Pachamama-based, a nod to Mother Earth jurisprudence, not to the Virgin Mary but to a wooden, pregnant statue that is sometimes placed beside a male statue with a wooden erection.

What we’re witnessing now in the Catholic Church is the real springtime promised by Vatican II: A Pachamama earthbound pope and Church so thoroughly transformed that even the pope’s public role has become unrecognizable: A pope on record as playing politics and coming out against an American president on a number of issues, even turning down his offer to be a member of his Board of Peace.

Instead of a world religious leader talking about the gospel and the salvation of souls, we have a Peruvian (he is not really American) Che Guevara-wannabe who thinks he’s employed by the United Nations.✪

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