“Tillis supports Hegseth impeachment resolution: 'He needs to go'”, 18 September 2026 (Photo via The Hill — the original report)
As it ran on the front
The off-ramp died this week. It is survived by a lawsuit, a plaintiff, and a president who did not attend the funeral.
It was born, if you can call it that, on the day the strikes began, when the war was still being sold as short — penny-ante optimism next to a bill that has since run past $40 billion. A United Nations inquiry found that the strikes already conducted likely met the legal definition of war crimes. This month a senator who voted to confirm the defense secretary has called for his firing twice, and a congressman has filed paperwork to impeach him. On September 15th, a Congressional Budget Office count put the price of the strikes already flown at near that same $40 billion, and called the figure conservative — the CBO's own word.…
…(cont) On September 1st, Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesperson offered the closest thing to a review either side has put on the record, saying the United States is "stuck in the massive error they've made" and that negotiation, not force, remains the only way out.
In June, while the war continued, paused for a ceasefire, and restarted, President Trump's own disclosure to the Office of Government Ethics recorded more than a thousand stock transactions, including positions in energy companies that were, in the same quarter, reporting record profits from the war he'd started. Whatever the ledger eventually says the public owes, the portfolio appears to have already been paid.
This week, an Iranian American organization filed suit against Trump directly, and the case does something none of the earlier filings did: it puts a plaintiff, and a running total, in the same sentence as the war. "Billions have been taken out of our pockets to wage an illegal war that has no end in sight," one advocate said — a person, not a press office, describing a bill they did not order and cannot itemize. The suit does what its own headline says: it asks a court to end the war outright.
The off-ramp is survived by the war it was supposed to close, and preceded in death by the six-month mark, logged back in August. In lieu of flowers, the family asks that the next accounting of this war — congressional, judicial, or otherwise — arrive with a number attached, and an end date beside it.
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“He told you plain the war wouldn't be over before the midterms, and a week later the tab was near forty billion and rising, but you'll notice his own portfolio was stocked with the oil that pays out when the bombing runs long. That's not a coincidence, that's the business model — a senator can call for a firing twice and it still don't touch the money. Now it's a lawsuit, because Congress won't send the bill and somebody's got to.”
“Look, an active theater has costs, that's just — that's how theaters work, did I say theater? I meant the operation, and calling it "record profits" for the energy sector is frankly a good thing, we should be celebrating a strong energy sector. The lawsuit's frivolous, obviously, filed by a group with an agenda — an agenda, did I just call an ethnic organization an agenda? Scratch that, no further comment.”
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who voted to confirm Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, is renewing his call for President Trump to fire the Pentagon chief after Army Secretary Dan Driscoll resigned. “He needs to go, whether it’s impeachment or the most expedient route — just the president to replace him — would be great,”
A recently published economic analysis estimates that President Donald Trump’s illegal war with Iran has cost US consumers an average of $1,760 per household—including a total of $121 billion in extra spending on energy alone—since the conflict began less than 8 months ago. The war, which Trump launched without congressional…
President Donald Trump on Thursday said he is weighing whether or not to "annihilate" Iran in a renewed effort to end the illegal 201-day US-Israeli war of choice, musings that came on the heels of a report by United Nations experts who said the United States likely committed war crimes during earlier attacks on the Middle East nation.…
All of the Democrats in the Senate — excluding Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman — signed an open letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, pressing him to give Congress a cost breakdown of the war in Iran. The letter, although largely symbolic, reflects the frustration of many Democrats in Congress over what they perceive as a...
A UN fact-finding mission has reported that two US airstrikes which killed at least 178 civilians in Iran constitute war crimes. Plus: Andy Burnham says he is “determined” to hit net zero by 2050, Sweden’s left-of-centre coalition wins the general election, Netanyahu is pushing to strip IDF critics of their citizenship, and the…
Matt Bell said he initially supported Trump's policies but now feels he and other farmers were "sold a bill of goods" that there was a plan to "put America's farmers and ranchers first."
The fossil fuel industry is raking in big profits thanks to President Donald Trump's illegal war with Iran, and a new analysis finds that it's plugging a sizable chunk of these gains into propaganda. A report published by Clean Creatives on Wednesday reveals that fossil fuel firms across the world have "engaged 802 advertising and PR…
Matt Bell has been farming in North Carolina for more than half his life. He voted for President Trump but said farmers are "fighting for survival" as they combat rising prices.
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) announced Thursday that four Republicans, including him, have signed the Epstein Files II discharge petition and expressed confidence it will pass the House. The news comes after House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) sent lawmakers home for a seven-week recess ahead of the midterm elections.
U.N.-commissioned rights experts say there are "reasonable grounds" to believe the U.S. committed war crimes with strikes that killed scores of Iranian civilians.
US House Speaker Mike Johnson said Wednesday that with seven weeks to go until Election Day, it was time for lawmakers to "go home to their districts and make the case to the American people"—a day earlier than scheduled. But with the US public overwhelmingly disapproving of President Donald Trump's war in Iran and demanding…
The Pentagon has failed its audit eight years running - the only major federal agency never to pass one Military Times, 19 December 2025
Democratic and Republican lawmakers alike emerged Thursday from a closed-door briefing frustrated by what they said was a lack of clear answers from Pentagon policy chief Elbridge Colby on the Trump administration’s National Defense Strategy and the ongoing Iran war. The briefing with the Senate Armed Services Committee started off…
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.
