Really American | Wednesday Evening, March 4, 2026
A lot happened today, and you need to know all of it. Senate Republicans handed Trump a blank check to keep fighting an open-ended war in Iran, with almost no questions asked. NATO shot down an Iranian missile headed toward Turkey. Iraqi Kurdish forces opened a ground offensive inside Iran. A Republican senator physically helped throw an anti-war Marine veteran out of a Senate hearing, and the veteran’s arm may be broken. The DHS secretary refused, twice, on the record, in front of her own husband, to deny she is sleeping with her top aide. And five House Republicans joined Democrats to subpoena the Attorney General in the Epstein case.
Day five. Here we go.
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Congress Had One Job. Senate Republicans Made Sure It Didn’t Do It.
The War Powers vote happened today. It failed. That’s the sentence the White House wanted buried under the war coverage, but it deserves to be front and center.
Only one Republican, Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, voted to invoke the 1973 War Powers Act and force a congressional check on Trump’s unauthorized military campaign in Iran. Every other Republican voted to hand the president an open-ended blank check for a war with no articulated exit strategy, shifting justifications, and a Defense Secretary who said this morning that we are in the “early days” and things are “accelerating, not decelerating.”
This is the same Congress that stood in the chamber last Tuesday and applauded when Trump told them he had already won the Iran conflict. That was eight days ago. The war started Saturday. They applauded, went home, and then voted today to let him keep going indefinitely without their approval.
Senator Schumer put it squarely: if the case for war was strong, the story would be consistent. Instead, the justification has changed four times in five days. The vote will not stop the war. But the record exists. Every senator who voted no today voted to let a president wage open-ended war in the Middle East without asking Congress, the Constitution, or the American people.
NATO Just Shot Down an Iranian Missile Headed for Turkey
Here is the story that should be the lead on every broadcast tonight.
Turkey’s defense ministry announced Wednesday that NATO air defenses intercepted an Iranian ballistic missile heading toward Turkish airspace. Turkey is a NATO member state. It hosts Incirlik Air Base, one of the most strategically significant American military installations in the world. Iran has not commented on the claim. No injuries were reported.
If Iran intentionally targeted Turkey, this is not a regional conflict anymore. Article 5 of the NATO charter, the collective defense provision, would be on the table. The administration has not addressed it directly. Hegseth did not mention it at his morning briefing. But China noticed: Beijing announced Wednesday it would send a special envoy to the Middle East for conflict mediation, its most significant diplomatic move since the war began.
The United Kingdom, France, and Greece all announced they were deploying military assets to the region to protect their citizens and interests. The U.S. State Department ordered more embassy staff to evacuate four additional countries. The war is no longer contained to Iran, Israel, and the Gulf states. It is now touching NATO’s eastern flank.
Iraqi Kurds Just Launched a Ground Offensive Inside Iran
This afternoon, Iraqi Kurdish forces launched a ground offensive inside Iranian territory. This is new, it is significant, and it has received almost no coverage.
The cost of this war is now running over $1 billion per day for U.S. taxpayers. That’s the price tag for an operation the president announced via Truth Social, that Congress never voted on, and that his own Defense Secretary says is still in its early days. The Kurdish offensive is a reminder that the conflict is generating its own momentum. Actors across the region are moving, with or without Washington’s direction, in ways the administration did not fully plan for and cannot fully control.
There is no exit strategy. There is no defined endpoint. There is a Defense Secretary who said this morning the only limit on scope and duration is “President Trump’s desire to achieve specific effects.” There is now a ground war opening up along Iran’s northwestern border.
A Senator Helped Throw a Marine Veteran Out of a Hearing. The Veteran’s Arm May Be Broken.
This one happened on camera, and it needs to be said plainly.
During a Senate Armed Services Committee subcommittee hearing today, an anti-war protester identified as Brian McGinnis, a Green Party Senate candidate in North Carolina wearing a Marine Corps uniform, was being removed by Capitol Police when Senator Tim Sheehy of Montana physically joined in the ejection.
McGinnis slipped his hand between a door hinge and the frame to resist being removed. There are unconfirmed reports that his hand or arm was broken in the process. CBS News reporter Alan He posted on social media that Sheehy “joined Capitol Police in lifting up and ejecting” McGinnis from the room.
Sheehy posted on X afterward: “Capitol Police were attempting to remove an unhinged protestor from the Armed Services hearing. He was fighting back. I decided to help out and deescalate the situation. This gentleman came to the Capitol looking for a confrontation, and he got one. I hope he gets the help he needs without causing further violence.”
Let’s be precise about what happened. A United States senator, during a hearing about an unauthorized war, physically assisted in the removal of a veteran protesting that war, and called it deescalation. The man being removed was wearing the uniform of the Marine Corps. His arm may be broken. The senator is satisfied with how it went.
Republicans Joined Democrats to Subpoena Pam Bondi in the Epstein Case
Five House Republicans, including Representatives Nancy Mace, Lauren Boebert, Tim Burchett, Michael Cloud, and Scott Perry, voted with Democrats on the House Oversight Committee today to subpoena Attorney General Pam Bondi to testify about the Justice Department’s handling of the Epstein investigation.
Mace, who introduced the motion, called the DOJ’s conduct “one of the greatest cover-ups in American history.” She said videos, audio recordings, and logs are missing from the released files, and that millions of documents have still not been made public.
The top Democrat on the committee, Rep. Robert Garcia, has separately accused the Justice Department of withholding documents containing sexual abuse allegations against President Trump himself. Garcia says he personally reviewed those documents. The DOJ has denied deleting anything, saying withheld materials are either duplicates, privileged, or part of ongoing investigations.
This is a Republican-led committee, with Republican members, voting to haul the Trump administration’s own attorney general before Congress. Bipartisan accountability on Epstein, in this Congress, in this political environment, is not nothing. Watch whether Bondi complies, stonewalls, or finds a way to make the subpoena disappear.
Kristi Noem Refuses to Say No
The DHS Secretary appeared before the House Judiciary Committee today. Her husband was in the room for the first part of the hearing. Before it ended, he had left to catch a flight.
Representative Sydney Kamlager-Dove of California asked Noem directly whether she had ever had sexual relations with Corey Lewandowski, her top aide and a “special government employee” at DHS with no prior national security or law enforcement experience. The question, as Kamlager-Dove framed it, was not about Noem’s personal life. It was about whether the person reviewing FEMA contracts and DHS documents holds that position because of competence or because of his relationship with the secretary.
Noem did not say no. She called it “tabloid garbage.” She said it had been “refuted for years.” She accused Democrats of attacking conservative women, said the left’s playbook was to call them “stupid or sl-ts,” and declared she was neither.
Representative Jared Moskowitz then asked the same question more directly, offering to move on if she simply said no into the record. She did not say no. She attacked the question again.
Her husband had already left by then.
The DHS secretary, who oversees immigration enforcement, border security, and disaster response for the entire country, refused to deny a relationship with the man her own department’s FEMA employees say has been making personnel decisions without her authorization. That is the actual story. The language around it is theater. The refusal to say no is the news.
Your Gas Bill: A War Update
Gas prices are now 20 cents higher than they were last week. The national average sits just over $3.11, the highest since mid-October. Brent crude closed above $82 a barrel. Markets stabilized slightly Wednesday after days of selling off, but energy analysts are clear: if the Strait of Hormuz remains closed, prices will keep climbing. Every $10 increase in a barrel of oil translates to roughly 25 cents more per gallon at the pump.
Iran’s IRGC has officially announced the Strait closed. Most tanker traffic has already stopped. The Trump administration has no plans to tap the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. The Navy is attempting to escort tankers through the Gulf, but the situation remains volatile.
The war costs over $1 billion a day. Gas is up 20 cents. The war powers vote failed. Hegseth says we are “just getting started.”
The Bottom Line Tonight
Congress had the chance to assert its constitutional authority today and chose not to. One Republican broke ranks. The rest handed an open-ended war to a president who still cannot explain, consistently, why it started. NATO intercepted a missile headed for Turkey. Iraqi Kurds opened a ground front inside Iran. The war is spreading in every direction, and the administration’s answer is that the hardest hits are still coming.
A senator helped physically remove a Marine veteran from a hearing about that war. The DHS secretary wouldn’t say no to the question her own husband sat in the room to watch her answer. Five Republicans joined Democrats to subpoena the Attorney General over Epstein.
It is day five. The president said four weeks or less. His own Defense Secretary won’t give a timeline anymore. The only stated limit on this war’s scope is Trump’s personal desire. And 20 cents more per gallon is what that costs you at the pump this week.
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— The Really American Team
