03/19/26
Good morning! It’s Thursday, March 19th.
National Poultry Day.
Celebrate… if you’re not chicken.
And now, the news.
Congressional Qs
Starting with – are you a possible co-conspirator in a war crime cause girl, you’ve been running through Congress’s mind all day!
On Wednesday, Tulsi Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence, as well as CIA Director John Ratcliffe, and FBI Director Kash Patel, joined other national security officials at a congressional hearing where Senators were finally able to ask some questions about, for example, where there was actually an imminent threat from Iran which Trump has said was the reason to start this complete mess in the Middle East.
That question came from Georgia’s Senator Jon Ossoff. To which Tuls responded: "Senator, the only person who can determine what is and is not an imminent threat is the president."
That’s such a wild thing for her to say, considering it is also… her job! Now, yes, technically, Trump gives the final say, but she is the one who coordinates the national intelligence community to analyze threats and then runs them up the food chain. It starts with her! She decides! At that point, you might as well say no because the non-answer is the same thing.
The CIA’s Ratcliff did, however, say Iran posed an immediate threat. But Tuls outranks him.
Tuls also refused to say whether the president was briefed on the possibility of Iran holding the Strait of Hormuz hostage and leverage.
Man, for someone with the last name Gabbard, she sure didn’t gab… bard.
The Senate also did a little confirmation hearing for Markwayne Mullins, Trump’s pick for Secretary of Homeland Security. He’ll likely get confirmed but just so you know what a gem this guy is – Sen. Rand Paul, who is the chair of the Committee on Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs, so he opened the hearing, told Markwayne (again, that’s one name. Two first names mashed into one) Mullin to say to his face why he believes Paul should have been assaulted and left with five broken ribs.
He was referring to comments that Mullin made last month, "Rand Paul's a freaking snake. And I understand completely why his neighbor did what he did. And I told him to his face.”
Mullin was referring to Paul’s neighbor attacking him over a yardwork dispute (stars – they’re just like us) and Mullin, who would be in charge of things like making sure ICE officials stop murdering people in the streets, was like “it was cool that it happened.”
Also, it sounds like Mullin didn’t say it to Paul’s face, because he dared him to say it at the confirmation hearing.
By the way, this isn’t the first time he’s had a heated back and forth in a congressional hearing. In 2023, he challenged the head of the Teamsters Union to a fight in a hearing about how unions make families’ lives better.
The head of the union tweeted something about Mullin that ended basically in a “meet me after school” moment and then this happened:
Mullin: “So this is a time, this is a place. You want to run your mouth, we can be two consenting adults. We can finish it here.”
O’Brien: “OK, that’s fine. Perfect.”
Mullin: “You want to do it now?”
O’Brien: “I’d love to do it right now.”
Mullin: “Well, stand your butt up, then.”
O’Brien: “You stand your butt up.”
How about no one stand their butts up, you dorks?
Iran
-via CBS News and Washington Post
Moving to Iran, where Israeli officials say they have killed another top Iranian official, the country's intelligence minister, following the killing of the country’s security chief, which happened in overnight strikes.
Israel also struck a gas reservoir that Iran shares with Qatar. In return, Iran announced they will start attacking other countries’ energy infrastructure because of the US and Israel’s "grave error in attacking the energy infrastructure of the Islamic Republic.” Adding, "If it is repeated, the subsequent attacks on your energy infrastructure and that of your allies will not cease until their complete destruction, and our response will be far more severe than tonight's attacks."
Gulp.
Okie doke.
The attack referenced in that super chill and relaxed statement was on the world’s largest liquid natural gas export terminal.
Also on Wednesday, Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters that things in Iran are “virtually accomplished now” and when asked about the price of this little war, he said: "I don't think it could be calculated yet."
Perhaps not, but whatever that number is, the Pentagon would like it to include an extra $200 billion. If possible.
That’s the number that they asked the White House to approve asking Congress for (remember, Congress holds the money baybee – so they have to sign off on this. But, they are all supposed to sign off on whether we’re doing war and they haven’t signed off on it yet, and yet here we are so… what are ya gonna do, ya know?)
So I don’t know Mikey – if they’re asking for $200 billion it sure seems like 1: at least some calculations can be done and 2: things probably aren’t quite virtually accomplished.
Dolores Huerta
-via NY Times and The Guardian
In a bombshell piece of reporting by the NY Times, multiple women have come forward to allege that Cesar Chavez, the co-founder of the United Farm Workers, a civil rights icon, and one of the most well-known allies for workers’ rights, sexually abused, harassed, or raped multiple women and two underage girls, one starting when she was 12 and one starting when she was 13.
One of those women was Dolores Huerta. Huerta, who is still alive and was one of his most prominent allies in the movement, told the Times Chavez pressured her into having sex with him in 1960 and raped her in 1966.
Both of those encounters led to pregnancies that she hid from everyone, including Chavez. In both instances, she placed the infants with families that she believed would be able to provide a more stable life than she could.
Two other women, a volunteer and the sister of a volunteer, gave birth to babies of Chavez’s, though the Times doesn’t note if those encounters were consensual. He never acknowledged those children.
To be clear, he was married with eight kids at the time this was happening.
The Times found at least a dozen other women with stories of being pursued or harassed by Chavez.
Immediately after this news broke, there was talk of renaming schools and streets currently named after Chavez. March 31st is Cesar Chavez Day – probably not anymore! Most celebrations will likely be canceled, or at least renamed, if they haven’t already been.
But I want to go back to Dolores Huerta. Dolores Huerta, who hid those assaults out of fear of what it would do to the labor movement, in addition to knowing that the police were already hostile to the movement.
And so for decades after, she worked with, and history paired her with, her abuser. They tied them together.
She did that, she put up with that, she lived through that, because she was fighting for her own power as well as the power of workers and their rights.
The labor movement was about more than one man. It always was.
Dolores Huerta founded the Dolores Huerta Foundation to train low-income individuals to activists; founded the Agricultural Workers Association, which lobbies for better services for migrant workers; co-founded the Stockton chapter of the Community Service Organization, to organize things like voter registration drives make sure driver’s license tests and voting ballots were offered in Spanish; she helped establish the Feminist Majority Foundation to promote Latina activism and visibility; she championed the DREAM Act, helping 100s of 1000s of kids stay in the only country they’ve ever known and find a pathway to citizenship; and President Obama’s Yes We Can presidential slogan Yes We Can came from her slogan, which is also still used to this day… sí, se puede.
She stood next to that man for decades, but she did not stand in his shadow, and her light and legacy don’t burn any less bright because of what he did.
Of course, as expected, Republicans are already trying to call democrats out for previously supporting a man that no one knew was horrific. Um… got em? This news dropped Wednesday morning and by Wednesday night whole states were canceling their Cesar Chavez Day parades.
Meanwhile, a whole political party is like “we actually think the fact that he was friends with a pedophile who ran the most prolific sex trafficking ring in history is all the proof we need that he didn’t do anything wrong ever and therefore we should never investigate him and in fact instead let him do everything the Constitution says he can’t because that’s called loving America.”
The labor movement is bigger than one person. Even if that person was a giant in the movement, he wasn’t bigger than the movement. And it turns out, part of the reason for that is because he was a really dangerous dude.
The work continues.
Because, as Dolores Huerta says:
“Every moment is an organizing opportunity, every person a potential activist, every minute a chance to change the world.”
And that’s it. That’s the news.
I’m proud of Dolores Huerta.
For her strength. Which we knew about from her decades in the labor movement but didn’t know the extent of until Wednesday.
And because I don’t really know how to segue from that into a joke and then the end… I’m proud of you.