☕️ CLARITY ☙ Thursday, March 26, 2026 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

Europe's leaders mounted by $10 gas paralysis; Flynn's final vindication vs. the NYT's Strzok double standard; ICE at airports baffles NYT; Missouri v. Biden's consent decree: baby steps; and more.

Good morning, C&C, it’s Thursday! Your roundup includes: the NYT finally gives its readers a tiny peek at how badly Europe is getting squeezed between Trump, Iran, and its own lefty paralysis ($10 gas, anyone?); General Flynn’s long-overdue $1.25M settlement — and the delicious hypocrisy of how the Times covered it versus the $2M it cheered for the Strzok lovebirds; ICE agents checking IDs at airports, which somehow baffled the nation’s leading newspaper; and the bittersweet Missouri v. Biden consent decree — a first step, but Congress needs to finish the job.

🚀⛑️ C&C ARMY BRIEFING — IRAN WAR UPDATE ⛑️🚀

🚀 Every once in a while, the New York Times dishes some straight talk for its readers. For example, there was that astonishing, long-form piece about the CIA’s involvement in Ukraine (which plopped into the deep end without a splash; the paper never followed it up). This morning brings us a new entrant in the Grey Lady’s reality show, headlined, “Trump’s Threats to Europe Put Its Leaders in a Double Bind Over Iran.”

Times readers are catching up with C&C readers. Times readers are finally getting a tentative peek into a larger Iran plan— even if just the teeniest part. “Mr. Trump,” the article sagely began, “has put Europe’s leaders into a kind of double bind.” Now you tell us.

“Iran’s de facto closure of the Strait of Hormuz has set off a full-blown energy crisis across the Continent,” it explained. “With skyrocketing oil and gas prices angering voters throughout Europe, the pressure is mounting on its leaders.” (“Mounting on its leaders”— nice one, Times! In other words, they’re screwed.)

Their recalcitrance is costing them dearly. “In Germany,” the article continued, “gasoline has topped $9.48 per gallon.” That’s not good. Try to imagine $10-a-gallon gas— $250 to fill a tank. It would be economically devastating. Even Joe Biden didn’t fubar things that badly, and he was really trying.

Given that pressure, then what’s their ‘bind’? Why not just work with President Trump? The bind is —wait for it— the European Left. “The military campaign is faulted by many Europeans, especially on the left, who say it is gratuitous, illegal, and now is threatening Europe’s fragile growth,” it reported. They are also upset that Trump is treating Europe like it’s some misbegotten country in Africa that nobody ever heard of, or possibly Tahiti. “The United States did not consult allies on the joint U.S.-Israeli operation or, in most cases, even give them a heads-up,” the Times complained.

It’s almost like he doesn’t care anymore. 😪

Thanks to Europe’s resentful lefties, the continent’s cowardly leaders have become paralyzed. They are struggling to accept second-rate status, and their pride is flaring up like an angry hemorrhoid. “Even when he appealed to the Europeans to step up, Mr. Trump managed to disparage them,” the article complained. He’s not kissing their butts enough.

It has created political gridlock in Europe. “We are divided as usual,” explained Gérard Araud, a former French ambassador to Israel and the United States. “Europeans are showing their weakness on several levels. We are in a state of total shock about what is happening.”

Hilariously, the Times reported that Trump’s team has been negotiating with Iran since Monday, and a 15-point peace plan was presented to the mullahs. But the Europeans aren’t included. Again. They aren’t at the table. They aren’t even at the kiddie table. Nor is the President sharing any of his secret plans with them.

“Mr. Trump has yet to clarify his strategic objectives or lay out an exit ramp for the war,” the Times said, in what was possibly the most hilarious self-own in the story.

Clarify his strategic objectives? Lay out an exit ramp for the war? Hey morons, have you ever heard of Ukraine? Um— what exactly are Europe’s “strategic objectives” for that endless conflict, now going on five years with no sign of stopping? Point to where they laid out an exit ramp from Kiev? Alas, the Times reporter was unable to grasp the irony, even though it was dripping in bucketfuls.

“Europe is hamstrung by three interlocking factors,” the story concluded. “Mr. Trump’s distrust of Europe, especially after its refusal to support the war; Europe’s fears that antagonizing the president could lead him to punish Ukraine; and Iran’s suspicion of Europe, given its reluctance to confront him more openly.”

In short, neither Trump nor Iran trusts Europe. And Trump is leveraging both Ukraine and now a crippling energy crisis against the Eurolefties. What’s their leverage? If they do have any, the Times article did not say. It only hand-waved over the possible political advantages —the optics— of having French and German ships helping patrol the Strait.

But even some immeasurable optics benefit assumes that President Trump wants to reopen the Strait anytime soon. I think it’s a fair question whether or not that is true. America doesn’t need oil from there, as the President has pointed out several times now. Europe needs that oil. What are they going to do about it? How can they escape their “double bind?”

They need to make a deal.

🌍🇺🇸 ESSENTIAL NEWS AND COMMENTARY 🇺🇸🌍

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At long last, one of the earliest RussiaGate lawfare victims, General Michael Flynn, who was persecuted from almost day one of Trump’s first term, has finally ended his lengthy lawsuit. The Times wasn’t happy about it; they flatly reported, “Justice Dept. Settles Flynn’s Wrongful Prosecution Suit for $1.25 Million.”

I won’t dive into the case’s complicated background, except to say that Democrats targeted Flynn from the moment Trump named him as a potential national security advisor. FBI agents trapped him with a “making false statements” charge, he lost his position, fought criminal charges (and nearly lost), got a pardon, and has been out of government ever since. After Trump himself, Flynn might be the most egregious example of Democrats’ bare-knuckle lawfare.

Instead, let’s focus on how the Times covered Flynn’s settlement. “Time and again,” the Grey Lady crowed, “the Justice Department under Mr. Trump has sought to use the legal system to punish the president’s enemies and reward his allies and supporters — including those who have filed wrongful prosecution suits.”

Time and again. But the only two examples cited in the story were Flynn’s new deal and a $5M settlement to Ashli Babbitt’s family. I guess, technically, it is Time (Flynn), and Again (Babbitt), but that’s not what the Times meant its confused readers to believe. The paper implied it was happening a lot. And I guess the Times has trouble distinguishing between wrongful prosecution and wrongful death.

But wait. What about the Times’ dumb narrative that these types of settlements are happening “under Mr. Trump?” How quickly the Times forgets. New York Times headline, July, 2024:

Remember the adulterous FBI lovebirds, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page? The Peter Strzok of don’t worry, if Trump gets elected, we have an insurance plan fame? For the outrage of having his treasonous text message —on an FBI work phone!— “leaked,” President Cabbage’s DOJ paid him the same as Flynn— $1.2 million. His paramour, Lisa, got $800,000. Two million total.

“The Strzok agreement is likely to anger Mr. Trump,” the Times sneered in rapturous joy. The 2024 article highlighted Strzok’s lawyer, who crowed, “As important as it is for him, it also vindicates the privacy interests of all government employees.” All treasonous deep-state government employees, that is.

So, in one single story, the Times had a recent example of the just-prior administration doing the exact same thing, with two people, but couldn’t bring itself to mention that fact in yesterday’s article about the Flynn settlement. It might also have mentioned that last September, Strzok lost his First Amendment case over his firing (he wanted full reinstatement so he could get his full retirement benefits).

In other words, Strzok’s case was a dead loser. But the DOJ still paid him $1.2 million. And it paid his homewrecking girlfriend $800K.

Yesterday’s Times article reported that the Flynn settlement “was an extraordinary example of how the Trump administration has offered legal relief to those aligned with the president.” But no similar quip about “extraordinary examples” can be found in the Times’s smug 2024 article about the Strzok settlement.

Peter Strzok got paid $1.2M for having his own seditious texts leaked from his work phone on company time while plotting against a president. General Flynn got $1.25M for having his life destroyed by that same plot. That’s only a $50K premium for being the victim over being the perpetrator. The Grey Lady completely missed the wonderfully chiastic Strzok-Flynn bookend.

I would give up reporting from the New York Times completely, except that it is so much fun exposing its hypocrisy to the fresh air. Anyway, good for General Flynn. He’s finally vindicated. Although his settlement sounds far too low given what he went through. I would bet his legal expenses alone were higher than that.

Still, it’s a helpful bit of clarity: General Flynn was right.

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The mission is expanding on all fronts. Yesterday, the New York Times grudgingly reported, “ICE Agents at Some Airports Begin Checking IDs in Security Lines.” This shouldn’t even be news, except the Times was carrying more water for Democrats’ dumb ICE narratives.

“It was unclear whether having agents helping with screening passengers would improve wait times,” the subheadline fretted. “Some travelers expressed worries.”

Starting Monday, ICE agents who’ve been trained in TSA procedures started helping check travelers through security, including ID processing, which greatly confused the New York Times. The article repeatedly stated, without evidence or even quotes, that it was unclear whether the additional manpower would “reduce wait times.”

What was clear to a below-average middle-schooler mystified the Times. How could adding more officers relieve congestion through security, it wondered, getting stuck on the word problem. If two TSA agents can process 12 travelers in ten minutes, how many travelers can two TSA agents plus two ICE agents process in the same time?

The calculation was, apparently, too complicated for the nation’s leading newspaper, so it just threw up its inkstained hands and went with “it’s unclear.”

The Times quoted only two travelers who “expressed worries.” It was a joke. The first was Jennifer Carlin, “a nonprofit worker from San Francisco,” who complained, “I think this is eroding some of the confidence in the American travel system.” She didn’t explain how. The second was a fretful, unidentified “traveler in Phoenix” who “wondered if agents were going to ask for a birth certificate and was afraid of being pulled out of line.”

The Times didn’t say whether she was actually pulled out of line or ever asked for her birth certificate. Presumably not. Probably she’s been watching too much CNN, which keeps telling everyone that married women won’t be able to vote if the SAVE America Act passes. Hilariously, the ICE-ID story reinforced the obvious fact that you need ID to get through security. But to vote, not so much.

Maybe this is a good time to remind you how Biden gave illegal immigrants waiver slips to use in the airport instead of ID. That’s ended now, thank Moses. Some commenters wondered whether the near-instantaneous collapse of wait times in airports really resulted from ICE agents being so good at security screening, or whether it could instead be that a lot of people are avoiding the airport now that ICE is there.

We may never know. But ICE agents helping TSA with ID screenings —the most logical thing in the world— provoked a whole breathless story by the Times, which never even said what made it newsworthy in the first place. It was unclear.

But what seems perfectly clear is that some types of travelers might worry and decide to keep away if immigration officials are asking for IDs. I think that’s what the Times was really getting at, but was too chicken to say it.

Democrats decried ICE at airports arguing ICE agents weren’t trained enough, and it would cause chaos, as if TSA checking was like launching a NASA rocket or something. What training are Democrats worried about? Pointing toward the end of the line? Waving the little scanner wand? Putting driver’s licenses into the little slot? Telling people to take off their belts and put their laptops into a separate bin? Grabbing people by the crotch?

Except for the last one, I feel like I could handle the TSA job with about 30 minutes of briefing and only one cup of coffee. Crotch-grabbing probably requires more intensive training. They can keep that part.

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After years of hoping for courts to crack down on TwitterGate, the storied Missouri v. Biden case passed away with a whimper this week. Matt Taibbi put the best possible face on it in his extended Substack piece titled, “Finally, Good News: Free Speech Wins Big in Court.” Corporate media completely ignored it.

This revolutionary case arose in 2022 after emails, heroically reviewed and reported on by independent journalists like Matt, revealed that Biden’s weaponized Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), along with co-conspirators in the FBI, HHS, and other agencies, were pressuring social media companies to cancel and censor American speech about covid, election fraud, and Hunter Biden’s coked-up hooker habits.

On Monday, with no fanfare and no warning, the four-year-old case quietly settled. A ‘consent decree’ —which is like a voluntary injunction— ended “in victory” for the plaintiffs, Matt said.

One of the individual plaintiffs, Dr. Aaron Kheriaty, described the decree as follows: “The U.S. Surgeon General, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) are prohibited from threatening social media companies into removing or suppressing constitutionally protected speech on Facebook, Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), LinkedIn and YouTube.”

Although corporate media ignored the story, conservative media clearly coalesced around taking the “W.” The truth is a tad bit less clear.

We’d hoped for a court order firmly holding that the government can’t pressure publishers and platforms into helping enforce government-approved narratives. Instead, we got a narrow consent decree forbidding the named defendants from censoring the named platforms— and only regarding ‘constitutionally-protected speech.’

That’s not good enough. Three huge problems remain. First, the core problem was always that CISA and HHS had decided for themselves that mis-, mal-, and dis-information were not constitutionally protected— even though they are. So that’s a giant loophole. To its credit, the decree did confirm that mal-, mis-, and dis-information are constitutionally protected speech. But under this decree, the agencies can still pressure platforms to censor other types of speech that they conclude aren’t constitutionally protected. Who decides? This guy?

Second, HHS wasn’t even named. So the consent decree doesn’t apply to HHS, which, let’s be honest, is the 8,000-lb gorilla in the censorship room. Nor were hundreds of other unnamed and unnamable agencies named. What then stops the CDC, which is named, from just outsourcing its future secret censorship apparatus to a different agency that isn’t part of the decree? I have no idea. I read the short consent decree and can’t see what would stop that kind of censorship whack-a-mole.

Finally, since the decree’s relief doesn’t extend to the rest of us, some of whom are still throttled and shadow-banned, we must trust in the named platforms’ protection. But who among us, at this point, trusts the platforms to stand up for our First Amendment rights? And what about unnamed platforms not included in the decree, like Telegram or TikTok?

Sigh.

All that being said, I have no criticism of the parties. They have been heroically litigating for years. I don’t even criticize the DOJ. The case was always a stinker for any government. Any court-created remedy could pose huge risks. For instance, what does “influence” mean? If Trump mean-tweets about a terrible New York Times story, would that count as “influence” or “pressure”? Could the Times then sue him, if the decree were more broadly written?

The thing is, I want Trump to keep mean-tweeting. I kind of like it. He can mean-tweet all day and night, as far as I am concerned. (Come to think of it, that’s exactly what he is doing. So.)

So maybe this consent decree is the best we could have hoped for from this case. Oh— one more “win”: the lawsuit and all the attention, thanks very much to people like Matt Taibbi, have surfaced the issue in a way that won’t go away anytime soon. The real solution is a clear, robust “anti-censorship” law from Congress that carefully defines what agencies can and can’t do and provides recourse for censored Americans. That’s what we need.

The heroic plaintiffs and journalists who worked so long and hard on this effort deserve undying thanks for teeing the issue up for Congress to finally fix. Congress only needs to swing.

Of course, the way this Congress is going, we may have to wait a very long time for that law. But I promise you that C&C, at least, will keep mounting the pressure. Consider the consent decree to be a tentative first step in the right direction. We will build on that. We shall achieve clarity.

Have a terrific Thursday! C&C will return tomorrow, with a clear, action-packed Friday roundup of essential news and commentary.

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