Really American | Monday Morning, March 9, 2026
Day ten. Seven Americans dead. Over 1,200 Iranians killed. Oil above $100 a barrel for the first time since Russia invaded Ukraine. Gas up 17 percent in ten days. A new supreme leader in Tehran — and the president’s sons announcing a drone company positioned to profit from the war their father started.
That’s where we are this Monday morning.
We’re publishing because these threads are moving fast and the mainstream coverage keeps treating each one in isolation. They aren’t. Pull back and the picture is unmistakable: a president who started an unauthorized war is now watching his family line up to profit from the Pentagon spending that war is generating. Read it together.
MAGA is about to own CNN. Fox News is already covering for Trump. When that happens, independent media is all that’s left. Subscribe to Really American today and help us stay standing.
Iran Has a New Supreme Leader. The War Isn’t Slowing Down.
Iran’s authorities have named Mojtaba Khamenei — son of the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was assassinated in the opening U.S.-Israeli strikes on February 28 — as the country’s new supreme leader. He inherits both an active war and a country in turmoil.
Iran’s announcement of a new supreme leader came after the country’s remaining leadership appeared to show a rift. President Masoud Pezeshkian apologized for attacks on neighboring countries, but hard-liners criticized that and said the war strategy would continue. The new supreme leader had not been seen or heard from publicly since the war began and has not made a statement in his new role.
The naming of a successor has not produced any pause in the fighting. According to Al Jazeera, Iranian attacks on U.S. military assets and other infrastructure continued Monday in Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. According to NPR, Iran launched a new round of missiles and drone attacks overnight into Monday, targeting Israel and several Gulf states, hours after Iran named its new supreme leader.
According to CNN, Israel’s attacks on Iran’s energy resources and fuel storage sites have pushed the war into a “new phase,” a senior Iranian official warned, threatening retaliatory strikes on energy infrastructure across the region.
According to PBS, the war has killed more than 1,200 people in Iran, nearly 400 in Lebanon, and 11 people in Israel. The Pentagon confirmed seven U.S. service members have been killed since the war began. The seventh was Army Sgt. Benjamin N. Pennington, 26, of Glendale, Kentucky, who died of his wounds on Sunday after sustaining injuries during an Iranian strike on Prince Sultan Air Base, Saudi Arabia on March 1.
Meanwhile, according to CNN, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the U.S. was still investigating the strike on an Iranian elementary school that killed at least 168 children. His comments came after new video appeared to confirm a U.S. airstrike targeted a naval base next to the school — adding to a body of evidence contradicting Trump’s recent claims casting blame on Iran. The school has still not been officially acknowledged by the White House. The children have still not been named.
Your Gas Bill Is Going Up. Trump Says It’s Fine.
This is the story that hits every American family in the wallet, and the administration’s response has been a shrug.
According to the New York Times, the price of crude oil briefly neared $120 a barrel Monday — a surge of more than 40 percent since U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran began on February 28. According to AAA data cited by the Times, the average price of U.S. gasoline reached $3.48 a gallon on Monday — a nearly 17 percent increase since the first attacks on Iran. Gas hasn’t been at these levels since 2024.
According to the New York Times, the huge jump in oil prices suggests traders are increasingly worried about being able to access oil and natural gas from the Persian Gulf. The Strait of Hormuz has been all but closed for more than a week, preventing fuel produced in the region from reaching overseas markets. One-fifth of the world’s oil and substantial amounts of natural gas normally move through the strait each day.
Trump’s response? According to the New York Times, the president described the higher oil prices as “short term” and said they were “a very small price to pay for U.S.A., and World, Safety and Peace.” The White House press secretary called it, according to CNN, “a short-term disruption.” The administration still has no plans to tap the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Senate Minority Leader Schumer has called on Trump to do exactly that.
The man who ran on lowering the cost of energy is watching gas prices climb by the day — in a war he started without a congressional vote, without an exit strategy, and without a consistent explanation for why it began.
The Trump Sons Are Lining Up to Profit from Dad’s War
Here’s the story that should be on every front page this morning and mostly isn’t.
While the president’s unauthorized war enters its second week, his sons announced Monday they are backing a new drone company explicitly targeting the Pentagon contracts that war is generating.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump are investors in Powerus, a West Palm Beach, Florida-based drone company formed last year that has since acquired three smaller drone firms and is targeting monthly production of more than 10,000 units. The company will go public through a reverse merger with Aureus Greenway Holdings, a Florida golf-course holding firm, allowing it to trade on the Nasdaq.
The conflicts of interest stack up fast. According to the Wall Street Journal, the Trump sons are invested through American Ventures, one of the family’s investment vehicles. Aureus shareholders already include American Ventures and Dominari Securities — the Trump-backed investment bank that has helped facilitate the family’s cryptocurrency deals. Unusual Machines, a maker of drone components where Donald Jr. holds shares and sits on the advisory board, is also an investor in Powerus — and Powerus is already one of its customers.
The policy environment making all of this possible was engineered by the same administration the Trump sons’ father runs. According to Bloomberg, the Trump administration has made domestic drone supply a national security priority, banning new models of Chinese drones and launching the Pentagon’s Drone Dominance initiative, which is earmarked to spend $1.1 billion procuring hundreds of thousands of American-made systems by 2027.
DronXL, which has been tracking the company, put it plainly: Powerus is a drone company formed in 2025, backed by the president’s sons, seeking contracts from the president’s Pentagon, financed through a shell company the president’s family already owned shares in.
The Financial Times found that at least four portfolio companies of 1789 Capital — the VC firm where Trump Jr. is a partner — won contracts from the Trump administration this year totaling more than $735 million, including a $620 million Pentagon loan to Vulcan Elements, a rare earth magnet startup with roughly 30 employees at the time of the award.
According to the Daily Beast, Forbes put Donald Jr.’s net worth at around $50 million just before January 2025’s inauguration, and by the end of the year that figure had grown sixfold, driven by crypto ventures and his role at a venture capital firm. Eric’s net worth before his father’s return to power was around $40 million; Forbes now puts it at around $400 million — a roughly tenfold increase.
Seven Americans are dead in their father’s war. The contracts are flowing.
What Else You Need to Know This Morning
According to Al Jazeera, Iran’s IRGC officially announced the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, and most tanker traffic has already stopped. According to CBC, NATO defenses intercepted a ballistic missile that entered Turkish airspace on Monday — the second reported incident in Turkey since the start of the war. Turkey is a NATO member state that borders Iran.
According to NPR, Senate Democrats condemned what they called a U.S. strike on a girls’ elementary school in southeastern Iran on February 28, saying they were “horrified” by reports that between 165 and 180 people were killed, most of them children. NPR reported on March 4 that a review of commercial satellite imagery and independent expert interviews found the strike appeared consistent with a precision airstrike on a nearby military compound — raising questions about whether outdated targeting information contributed to the school being hit.
According to PBS, Russia has reportedly given Iran information that can help Tehran hit U.S. military targets. Also according to PBS, over 32,000 Americans have left the Middle East since the war began.
According to Fox News, Trump said he will decide together with Israel when the war will end, with Washington having the final say. Netanyahu, for his part, is promising what he called “many surprises” in the next phase of the conflict.
The Bottom Line
Ten days in. Seven American soldiers dead — all of their names now public, none of them mentioned in a presidential press conference. Over 1,200 people dead in Iran, including at least 168 children at a school the U.S. government has still not officially acknowledged. Gas up 17 percent in ten days. Oil briefly above $119 a barrel. A new supreme leader in Tehran who has yet to speak. A war with no declared exit strategy, no consistent rationale, and no congressional authorization.
And today, while all of that burns, the president’s sons announced a drone company positioned to fill the Pentagon contracts their father’s war is generating.
The mainstream press will cover the new supreme leader. They won’t draw the straight line from that war to the Nasdaq listing. That’s our job.
The Ellisons are about to take over CNN. Bari Weiss is waiting in the wings. When that deal closes, there will be no major cable news network that isn’t controlled by a MAGA billionaire. What we have is accountability, and the readers who make it possible. Subscribe today and help us stay in the fight.
— The Really American Team
