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‘Detonate’ DHS — or Face a Police State: Former Trump Official

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Former Trump Department of Homeland Security chief of staff Miles Taylor said that despite his many years at DHS, President Donald Trump has corrupted the organization and is calling for it to be detonated, reconfigured, reimagined, and remade — or else Americans will have to face a police state.

“The Department of Homeland Security has been weaponized against the people, the damage has been done, and it’s time to go back to the drawing board,” Taylor wrote at Defiance News, his home on Substack.

He said he believed that DHS “was the future of our defense against foreign threats and terrorists,” but now, “it’s being used to terrorize Americans.”

Taylor noted that even during Trump’s first term, the president was “magnetically attracted” to DHS’s power and wanted to use it “against the people, not to protect them.”

“DHS had two things he really liked — badges and guns — and it had lots of them,” Taylor wrote. “Indeed, it is America’s largest federal law-enforcement agency, and Donald Trump soon saw those gun-toting agents as his agents, not just the nation’s. They were a means to an end. As Trump told us face-to-face on several occasions, if there’s one thing he learned in business, it’s that you need leverage over people to get what you want from them.”

“Nothing gives you leverage like a gun.”

READ MORE: GOP Exodus Continues as Another Prominent Congressman Retires

Now that Trump is back in office, “we are watching the darkest nightmares of a weaponized DHS come to fruition, as the Department is transformed end-to-end into Donald Trump’s ‘pocket police.'”

Taylor lamented how “DHS social-media accounts mused on New Year’s Eve about mass deportations in the breezy iconography of a vacation advertisement. Then DHS agents were dispatched for their largest deployments in history to Minnesota, under the thin veneer of investigating alleged accounting discrepancies at Somali-American kindergartens.”

And he pointed to the “breathtaking and aggressive crackdown, in which two innocent U.S. citizens were killed at the hands of DHS agents and branded ‘domestic terrorists’ before facts were established, before investigations had even begun, and before the public could get its hands on contrary evidence.”

Taylor warned that “when the president himself tells agents to use ‘whatever means necessary’ against protesters — or the Vice President says officers have ‘absolute immunity’ after killing civilians — ordinary people everywhere rightfully worry that they’re under siege.”

He wrote that “what’s happened in Minnesota is by design. It’s the deliberate implementation of top-down presidential guidance. And it’s working. Officials are turning DHS into a juggernaut for ridding America of so-called ‘domestic terrorists,’ whose crimes appear to be that they hold viewpoints contrary to the president.”

“But it doesn’t stop there,” he observed.

Taylor said that DHS “must be taken apart and put back together with the clear goal of making it harder — much, much harder — to weaponize.”

Here is how.

“First, split immigration off from the DHS mothership,” Taylor wrote, then, “give more DHS agency heads an apolitical tenure,” “supercharge the Inspector General,” and finally, “revoke the president’s domestic terrorism order.”

READ MORE: Trump: ‘We’re Bringing Back God’

 

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‘He Was the Only One’: Trump Mocked for Declaring Iran’s Moves ‘Shocked’ Him

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4 hours ago

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March 16, 2026

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President Donald Trump is facing criticism and mockery after admitting he was “shocked” that Iran fought back against Operation Epic Fury.

“Trump just admitted publicly that his administration underestimated the Iranian response to his attack,” The Washington Post’s Josh Rogin reported.

During a meeting of the board governing the Kennedy Center, Trump said, “look what happened. In the last two weeks, they weren’t supposed to go after all these other countries in the Middle East. Those missiles were set to go after them. So they hit Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait. Nobody expected that. We were shocked.”

Focusing on Trump’s “shocked” remark, some critics blasted the president, once again, for what many have previously said is a Commander-in-Chief who was unprepared to go to war against Iran.

The New Yorker’s Susan Glasser called Trump’s comments a “Remarkable admission.”

READ MORE: ‘Lazy and Unstrategic’: GOP Senator Slams ‘Republican on Republican Violence’

Former Republican U.S. Rep. Justin Amash declared, “We are governed by complete morons.”

Podcaster Clint Russell noted, “Just FYI, this is the EXACT reason our generals have consistently advised against a war with Iran. Even Charlie Kirk had laid this all out on his show a couple years ago. Iran was no threat to America but they were fully capable of destroying the global economy by striking oil facilities and transit throughout the region.”

Robert Manning, a Distinguished Fellow in Global Foresight at the nonpartisan Stimson Center, wrote: “If so, he was the only one surprised. Strategic planners have war games this for 40 years. Hard to believe JCS [Joint Chiefs of Staff] didn’t advise Trump this was likely.”

“I’m pretty confident every war plan US has ever done in last 30 years gaming out this conflict was based on expectation that Iran could in fact [and] would in fact do this,” noted The Nation’s Jeet Heer.

“Every institution built to prevent exactly this outcome existed, was bypassed, and we are now watching the president express shock at conclusions that were already written in the classified assessments he didn’t read,” observed Christine Villaverde, the chairwoman of Anchoring Democracy.

READ MORE: Kristi Noem at Center of Push for DOJ Perjury Probe: Report

 

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‘Lazy and Unstrategic’: GOP Senator Slams ‘Republican on Republican Violence’

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6 hours ago

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March 16, 2026

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A prominent Republican senator is denouncing his own party while lamenting the lack of an official presidential endorsement in the highly contentious Texas Republican Senate runoff election.

Agreeing that it is a mistake for President Donald Trump to withhold his endorsement of either Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton or U.S. Senator John Cornyn, U.S. Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) warned, “I think the more time we spend millions of dollars with Republican-on-Republican violence, Democrats are in the marketing department, loving the idea of a competitive runoff.”

“I get tired of Republicans being lazy and unstrategic,” he told CNN’s Manu Raju, appearing to suggest there are other ways for one of the candidates to pull ahead.

“People on my side of the aisle, and people at the far right of the political spectrum, are trying to swing for the fences, and they’re not gonna succeed,” he warned.

READ MORE: Kristi Noem at Center of Push for DOJ Perjury Probe: Report

A runoff election between Cornyn and Paxton will take place on May 26, and the president has yet to endorse either contender.

Reports suggest a Cornyn endorsement is more likely, although Paxton has been a reliable MAGA supporter. Trump has even suggested that whichever candidate does not get his backing should quit the race entirely, clearing the way for the presumptive nominee to battle the Democratic nominee, James Talarico.

“The Republican Primary Race for the United States Senate in the Great State of Texas,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, on March 4, “cannot, for the good of the Party, and our Country, itself, be allowed to go on any longer. IT MUST STOP NOW! We have an easy to beat, Radical Left Opponent, and we have to TOTALLY FOCUS on putting him away, quickly and decisively!”

He vowed to make his endorsement “soon,” but has yet to do so.

Each passing day gives Talarico more time to campaign and build his war chest as the two GOP contenders spend their time and money battling each other.

READ MORE: Gas Prices Near $4 in These Five States

 

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Gas Prices Near $4 in These Five States

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9 hours ago

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March 16, 2026

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Gas prices are continuing to substantially increase, with five states now hovering near $4 a gallon and several others seeing sharp increases as President Donald Trump’s war in Iran enters its 17th day.

“Big gas price hikes just now starting to happen in Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Illinois, Missouri today, which will likely push the national average to $3.75-$3.80 by mid-week,” reports Patrick De Haan, the head of Petroleum Analysis at GasBuddy.

But, he also notes that Michigan and the Chicago area are already seeing $3.99 per gallon as of Monday. Indiana drivers are seeing $3.89, and Ohio and Kentucky are seeing $3.79 per gallon.

De Haan directly attributes the increases to the summer gasoline changeover and the ongoing Iran situation.

“The national average is up 80.0 cents from a month ago and is 66.1 cents per gallon higher than a year ago,” WANE reports, citing GasBuddy’s data.

Drivers should not expect to see prices come down significantly anytime soon.

“Until we see a meaningful resumption of oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz, upward pressure on fuel prices is likely to persist,” De Haan said. “At the same time, seasonal forces are beginning to intensify as several regions complete the transition to summer gasoline, creating a double headwind that could continue driving pump prices higher in the weeks ahead.”

READ MORE: Kristi Noem at Center of Push for DOJ Perjury Probe: Report

 

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