A US diplomatic facility near Baghdad was hit with Katyusha rockets early Thursday local time, the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reports in all caps so apparently this is a serious new development.

Probably because the families of the six Airmen killed pointlessly in convicted felon President Trump’s directionless war don’t want the images of the dignified transfer being used for fundraising emails, Fox News announced on Wednesday that the cameras will be off when their remains are offloaded. The propaganda network did air footage of a hatless Trump descending the stairs.

Corrupt Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome “Too Late” Powell on Wednesday celebrated his escape from justice with the help of corrupt DC District Judge James Boasberg, who very evilly and corruptly voided the investigation into Powell’s stunning atrocities against the people of the United States with his Federal Reserve headquarters building renovation crime that is so bad, so horrible, no one has ever even heard of such a thing and now he’s just saying “Gee, I just got off the hook from that Obama judge – a Trump hater – so I’m going to not lower interest rates.”

Sad. To think that Crooked Powell will get away with all the horrible things he’s done. Just a sick person. We don’t even have a country anymore because of his too late interest rate funny business.

National Zero will resume our regular coverage after this in-depth analysis behind Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell’s decision to hold interest rates steady that you won’t get at CNBC.

This is where the so-called master of sophistries and weasel words is at right now, that gas prices suck so much worse for people in other countries. “Fallacy of relative privation” is a concept he might want to look into to see how well this is going to land with non-cultists.

Vice President JD Vance will be hitting the campaign trail to provide backup for a top Trump Administration ally facing a tough reelection bid next month, with Air Force Two heading to Budapest soon to help shore up support for Hungarian President Viktor Orban, Reuters reports.

Yeah. Just gonna leave that there as if this was Vance doing a rally in Wisconsin to help put his and Trump’s preferred candidate over the line in a tight gubernatorial primary. MSM-ifying it is really the only way to spell out how fucking insane this is, as if there isn’t anything else Jaydee could be doing.

“With basketball taking over screens nationwide, Pizza Hut – the Official Pizza Partner of March Madness® – is kicking off the tournament with limited edition menu items featuring new recipes and a pop-culture partnership built for game-day gatherings. In honor of the 30th anniversary of Space Jam, Pizza Hut is teaming up with Warner Bros. Discovery Global Consumer Products (WBDGCP) for a limited-time collaboration that brings basketball, nostalgia and fan-favorite food together,” says a Wednesday Pizza Hut press release that solves the vexing mystery of why Domino’s had to use the gratingly obvious and forced workaround of “Big Tournament” in theirs earlier this month.

What? That was a big deal! It was so stupid it just had to be pasted in here after no fewer than three “articles” about the prevalence of “Big Game” in pre-Super Bowl marketing press releases. Some people were wondering if it was Little Caesars or Papa John’s or Pizza Hut that landed the marketing deal with the NCAA to be allowed to use “March Madness” in their marketing bullshit so it was important to follow up. It was almost kind of a “cliffhanger” situation, like a season finale on TV.

I just sent a letter to Leader Thune with 24 of my Republican colleagues letting him know that until they pass the SAVE America Act, we will be voting NO on any Senate bills that come to the House floor. 

Republicans made a promise to the American people to secure our elections.… pic.twitter.com/hyBf1dzF1Z

— Congressman Randy Fine (@RepFine) March 18, 2026

Senate Majority John Thune on Wednesday was able to see a copy of the letter sent to him by Florida Congressman Randy Fine by looking at the fellow Republican’s Twitter account, a convenience of the internet age that gave Thune the option to avoid having to handle the physical copy that Fine had in all likelihood smeared with Pillsbury brand “Funfetti” frosting and his own saliva from licking the sugary, multicolored substance off of his fingers whilst reviewing the final draft.

Important preface to this reporting from 404 Media: Normal consumers cannot go on GoDaddy or any other registrar and buy up a .gov domain for $6.99 a year and slap up some generic dogshit “site builder” page with “OFFICIAL GOVERNMENT TAXXES COLLECTION DEPOSIT BOX, U PAY UR TAXES HERE THRU VENMO @USAtaxPayOnlineNow1776! 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸 U GET A 10 PERCNT DISCOUNT IF U PAY THIS WAY!!!11!!” because the previous quotation would be the inevitable end result of such availability to the general public. Or the start result and the scams – and hoaxes – would get considerably more sophisticated from there. Which is why, since its inception in 1984, ICANN has restricted the .gov TLD’s access to the federal government and the federal government alone.

And why Aliens.gov being detected at 6:34 AM EDT this morning – and flagged by “Federal US domain bot” on BlueSky, its name self explanatory enough – is noteworthy even more so because the bot specified that Aliens.gov, as well as the singular Alien.gov, were claimed by the “Executive Office of the President.” In contrast, the bot’s previous posts on, for example, aicenter.gov and fso.gov specify they were registered by the Departments of Commerce and State, respectively.

A search of WhoIs records says the registration is indeed real, the differing timestamp showing it as actually being on Tuesday evening UTC are the result of some lag in the bot’s search. The domain’s a go and unless the “aliens” are illegal immigrants that the Trump Regime wants to parade around in a searchable database – which is entirely plausible – the other option seems like the next move to distract from the Iran shitshow which itself was the move to distract from the Epstein files.

Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Ron Wyden on Wednesday put scumbag Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche on the spot with a sternly-worded letter, writing “It has come to my attention that you are preventing the Drug Enforcement Administration (‘DEA’) from producing an unredacted copy of a report I requested regarding drug trafficking and money laundering by Jeffrey Epstein and several associates. By withholding this unclassified document from the US Congress, you are covering up for pedophiles and obstructing my investigation into the financing of Epstein’s criminal sex trafficking organization. For years now, I have been conducting an investigation into the so-called ‘tax planning’ conducted by Epstein to finance his criminal sex trafficking organization.”

“As part of this investigation, I am following the money and examining the extent to which Epstein was able to utilize the US financial system to make thousands of suspicious wire transfers and cash withdrawals for the apparent purpose of trafficking women and girls. As you are aware, on February 25th I requested an unredacted copy of a memorandum prepared in 2015 by the Director of the DEA’s Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces (OCDETF) related to Operation ‘Chain Reaction.’ Operation ‘Chain Reaction’ was a major investigation by the DEA’s elite OCDETF task force into drug trafficking, prostitution, and money laundering by Epstein’s criminal organization.”

Dipshit Oklahoma Senator Markwayne Mullin faces the Senate Homeland Security Committee in a hearing that’ll be largely perfunctory as far as his nomination to replace dog-murderer Kristi Noem goes but that doesn’t mean it’ll definitely be easy and fun for him given some recent reporting.

“For all of the Fake News out there, it’s called THE SAVE AMERICA ACT, not the SAVE ACT. Nobody knows what the Save Act means!!!” posted convicted felon President Trump on Wednesday, angrily forgetting that the “SAVE” stands for “Safeguard American Voter Eligibility” or, more likely, he just never knew it at all because he didn’t give a shit however many times it was explained to him.

“Republicans must pass the Save Act, or go home and cry yourself to sleep. Non citizen Illegal Migrants are getting the right to vote, being pushed by crooked Democrat Politicians who are not being stopped by an equally dishonest Justice Department,” Trump posted on July 9, 2024, a few months before he returned to power in an election in which one of the very small handful of non-citizens who were prosecuted for illegally voting was a Canadian-born North Carolina MAGA hatter.

“The Producer Price Index for final demand increased 0.7 percent in February, seasonally adjusted, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Final demand prices moved up 0.5 percent in January and 0.4 percent in December 2025. On an unadjusted basis, the index for final demand rose 3.4 percent for the 12 months ended in February, the largest 12-month advance since increasing 3.4 percent in February 2025. More than half of the February rise in prices for final demand can be attributed to a 0.5-percent advance in the index for final demand services. Prices for final demand goods increased 1.1 percent,” says the BLS’s monthly Producer Price Index report on the ravages of Bidenomics on working class Americans and small businesses in the nation’s heartland.

Per CNBC, the 0.7 jump was more than twice the 0.3 percent economists had expected, spelling serious Midterms trouble for vulnerable Democrats weighed down by Biden’s inflationary policies.

In the first of several Homeland Security news items this morning, Scott MacFarlane reports the Dem ranking members of the House Homeland Security, Oversight Committee, and Transportation and Infrastructure Committees have sent the soon-to-be-Noem-less DHS a letter demanding they preserve any and every document relevant to corruption linked to Noem’s fuck buddy Corey Lewandowski, alleging he “exercised outsized influence over the Department, far beyond what a (special government employee is authorized to do).” Not including the secretary herself.

Noem’s replacement nominee, douchebag Oklahoma Senator Markwayne Mullin, who never served in the military and as such drew attention last week when he told Fox News that “war is ugly, it smells bad, and if anybody’s ever been there, and been able to smell the war that’s happened around you and taste it and feel it in your nostrils and hear it, it’s something that you’ll never forget and it’s ugly,” faces the Senate in a little over an hour and may face some questions about that particular yarn. Even more so now that Axios reported on Wednesday that, in private conversations with other members over the years, Markwayne “suggested he did extensive and dangerous security work for the US government, seemingly in a clandestine capacity.” The sources specified that it was in Afghanistan and elsewhere but damn that sure sounds like bullshit, eh?

He’s damn good at pick stocks though as the New York Times reports the Oklahoman’s disclosures show his worth between $29 million and $97 million in 2024, according to his financial disclosure forms, up from between $2.8 million to $9 million in 2012. Ilhan Omar just married a rich guy.

🚨 HOLY CRAP. President Trump is now considering PULLING OUT from the Strait of Hormuz after defeating Iran, forcing our “allies” to defend it themselves

No free rides!

“I wonder what would happen if we “finished off” what’s left of the Iranian Terror State, and let the… pic.twitter.com/s9EbxbjQ8y

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) March 18, 2026

“Michael Whatley is so Great! Running against a really bad former Governor who set murderers free to kill again, and was grossly incompetent on the big hurricane cleanup. I had to get it done when I took office on January 20th, and I did! I hope the Great people of North Carolina remember how BAD Roy Cooper was as Governor, especially on crime. Michael Whatley will be a FANTASTIC Senator. He led the Republican Party to VICTORY in 2024. Michael will be a GREAT SENATOR, one of the very best!” posted convicted felon President Trump at 7:50 AM EDT Monday, the reaffirmation of support for an utterly generic and low name-ID loyalist that seemed apropos of not much at the time.

That is until the Daily Beast reported that it came just about 20 minutes after they called the White House to ask for comment on the former North Carolina GOP and then RNC chair Whatley’s connections to convicted sex offender Harvey West, who Whatley repeatedly backed for various leadership positions within the Tar Heel State’s Republican Party. West, 54 and a former cop, did six years for statutorily raping two aged 14 and one aged 16, in 1999 when he was 28, and only last week resigned from his post as chairman of the state GOP’s 1st Congressional District Committee after reports of his record resurfaced – as did a long trail of Whatley’s public support for him.

This of course is all happening while Whatley tries to paint his presumptive November opponent, Dem former Gov Roy Cooper, as personally responsible for this or that Willie Horton-type situation, starting with last summer’s horrific murder of Ukrainian refugee Irinia Zarutska on the Charlotte streetcar system by a mentally ill maniac whose release from prison Cooper had nothing to do with.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz on Wednesday announced that Iranian Intelligence Minister Esmail Khatib had been canceled in a strike, the latest of the Islamic Republic’s top goons to be exploded following the pew-pewing of security official Ali Larijani and the head of the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard’s all-volunteer Basij force, the Associated Press reports on the easy part.

Google Gemini declares only GOP senators violate hate speech policy, zero Democrats, author claims https://t.co/MOJunXipws

— Fox News (@FoxNews) March 18, 2026

An anonymous Trump minion tells Axios that the “risk tolerance” for increased oil prices is a lot higher in Israel than it is in the US and that’s where the split will happen if the two corrupt dictators Donald and Benjamin Netanyahu begin to diverge on their respective strategic goals.

“Israel doesn’t hate the chaos. We do. We want stability. Netanyahu? Not so much, especially in Iran, they hate the Iranian government a lot more than we do,” said the White House official.

Prior to MAGA psychopath Joe Kent’s unsubtly antisemitic resignation letter on Tuesday, another senior advisor told the bullet point factory that the team “are cognizant of the appearance of doing Israel’s bidding. We’re not. But we understand the perception and it’s not helpful.”

Republican Hall County, Georgia Sheriff Gerald Couch, who’s gotta be at least in his mid-60s, was suspended this week following his 10:30 AM arrest last month for driving a county-owned vehicle after having slammed at least three canned Four Loko alcoholic energy drinks, 11 Alive reports.

Four Loko comes in 25 oz cans and is available in flavors including Blue Razz, Swedish Fish, Sour Warheads, Electric Lemonade, and Fruit Punch, among others, with ABV content ranging from 6 to 14 percent, depending on the state in which it is sold. Georgia’s probably on the higher end, as Couch blew a 0.0212 on the breathalyzer test. It was a state trooper who administered it and cuffed the sheriff, as one of Couch’s own deputies had first observed him swerving around the road and then followed him to his home, but decided to call the State Patrol to handle his/her boss.

That was very un-MAGA-like of the deputy to have a disinterested outsider enforce the law. Wonder if they’ve been getting any death threats from Couch’s voters for interfering in the next election.