☕️ WHIPSAWED ☙ Tuesday, March 24, 2026 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

EU drags itself to $750B energy bar after sandbagging. ICE agents rescue airports after Democrats broke them. Pentagon shutters pressroom after judge cancels security rules. 3 stories, 1 lesson.

Good morning, C&C, it’s Tuesday! Your roundup includes: Trump’s Iran war dashboard just dragged the EU back to the energy signing table — $750 billion and a Thursday deadline; ICE agents turned Democrats’ airport nightmare into a PR disaster for the ‘abolish ICE’ crowd (from six-hour lines to thirty minutes in one day); and the Pentagon closed its press corridor after a judge said they couldn’t screen reporters — a legal chess match involving affirmative injunctions, malicious compliance, and the branch of government that enforces court orders quietly refusing to enforce one against itself.

🌍🇺🇸 ESSENTIAL NEWS AND COMMENTARY 🇺🇸🌍

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Remember how I told you that Trump was using the Iran War to achieve other major geopolitical objectives? Yesterday, the Financial Times ran a story headlined, “US warns EU to pass trade deal or risk losing ‘favourable’ access to LNG.” Last July, EU leaders made a trade deal with President Trump, and promised to buy $750 billion in natural gas and oil. The deal required ratification by EU member states, which was to happen ‘promptly.’ But they slow-walked it. Till now.

“EU ratification of last year’s agreement between the US president and European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen has been delayed by several issues,” the article explained, “including Trump’s threats to invade Greenland.” In other words, they’ve been using Greenland as an excuse to drag their feet.

But now, all of a sudden, the EU Parliament has teed the trade deal up for a quick vote on Thursday. President Trump’s Ambassador to the EU, Andrew Puzder, hoped for their sake the Europeans would ratify the deal. “I don’t know what will happen with respect to energy if they don’t go forward with the agreement,” Ambassador Puzder mused. “If they’re going to survive economically, they need energy,” he warned, “and we can supply it, but there are other buyers out there.”

Yesterday’s Coffee & Covid argued that, unlike the US, the EU is experiencing a war-fueled energy crisis. The Financial Times confirmed, “The EU continent is vulnerable to global competition for LNG supplies because of its dependence on gas imports. Some EU member states, such as Italy, sourced as much as a third of their LNG from Qatar,” which ships through the Strait. (No longer.)

If only the EU could pipe its gas directly from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s rear aperture. But since Chuck is piping all his gas into the well of the Senate during SAVE Act debates right now, the EU can only get critical LNG supplies from one place: Uncle Sam’s Discount Warehouse.

Last year, I called President Trump’s global economic tool his “tariff dashboard.” In a sense, Venezuela and Iran have provided the President with a new, more kinetic kind of economic dashboard. An Oil Dashboard. Whenever Trump posts a few all-caps sentences on Truth Social, global energy (gas and oil) markets surge or retreat.

Which is a very convenient tool when you need to draw a muley trading partner —a partner who is dependent on gas imports— back to the signing table.

This will blow your mind. What if —like Venezuela— at war’s end, the Iranians agree to let the US “help” control its oil and gas exports? President Trump could have Europe and China over an oil barrel. Recall that Iranian strikes against neighboring countries have degraded the entire Middle East’s oil production capacity. Some analysts think it could be years before it can be fully restored.

If the oil and gas don’t come from Iran, and don’t come from Russia, and don’t come from Venezuela— where will the greenwashed EU get its energy from? Never mind bringing gas back under $9 a gallon— what will power its AI data centers?

There is a non-zero possibility that, at the end of the war, the United States could become the dominant global volume dealer in oil and natural gas, wielding enormous leverage over geopolitical competitors. And today’s article suggests it’s already working; on Thursday the Europeans could order up $750 billion in energy from the US’s friendly service counter.

Europe’s leaders don’t care about free speech, uncontrolled migration, or Western traditions. But they do care about two things: money and money. Trump’s Tariff and Oil Dashboards will help them do the right thing. The honey-dipped irony is delicious; they laughed like maniacs when Trump told them they were too dependent on Russian oil.

Now Russia’s gas pipeline is filled with seawater, and Europe is dependent on the US. TAW.

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Yesterday, President Trump dispatched ICE agents to fourteen major airports —including the world’s busiest, Hartsfield-Jackson in Atlanta— where the Democrat-created DHS shutdown had transformed air travel into a dystopian endurance sport. Yesterday, NBC reported, “ICE agents sent to airports to assist TSA as partial shutdown drags on.”

Over the weekend, TSA lines snaked through Atlanta’s baggage claim and out the airport doors. On Sunday, some travelers waited six hours to get through security. Six hours! People were missing their flights while standing in line. Over 40% of TSA workers at Atlanta have called in sick, and over 400 have quit, since Democrats won’t fund the agency unless Republicans agree to defund ICE. Democrats are holding TSA workers’ paychecks hostage in order to destroy immigration enforcement.

So Trump sent help, in the form of the same agency Democrats are trying to defund. ICE to the rescue! Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) went full meltdown, claiming ICE would be “brutalizing people and shooting them” at airports. Outrage!

But … it worked.

Within hours, CNN’s own correspondent was forced to grudgingly report the good news. “Finally, we can take a deep breath here,” a surprised CNN reporter, Ryan Young, said. “The average wait time now is under 40 minutes... under 30 minutes, which is fantastic. That’s after Sunday, when it was more than five hours.”

CLIP: CNN reporter gushes about ICE helping folks get through security (0:41).

From five hours down to thirty minutes. In one day.

And the media’s predicted wave of terrified travelers, brutal thugs, and shooting incidents? Not so much. “I am completely in support of it. I think it’s a wonderful thing. I pray for them all the time,” traveler Ron told CBS Atlanta. His wife Janine added that everything just … moved. “You just have to ask questions, and everybody answers things. So we’re good,” she agreed.

The ICE agents weren’t doing immigration sweeps. They were managing crowds, checking IDs, and handling perimeter security, freeing up TSA screeners to do the actual screening. The deployment is currently indefinite. If you think about it, airports are a pretty good place to do ICE screenings.

The irony is so thick you could spread it on avocado toast. Democrats spent years chanting “abolish ICE.” Now, because Democrats shut down DHS funding to defund ICE, it’s ICE that shows up to rescue millions of stranded spring break families. The “abolish ICE” party just accidentally ran the best ICE public relations campaign in history.

Democrats have spent months trying to paint ICE as ruthless killers who ship hapless American citizens to Nicaraguan super-max prisons before they can eat breakfast. Now ICE is performing heroically before grateful American families who are just trying to reach their cruise port. Who wants to abolish ICE when that means going back to six-hour security lines?

“Abolish ICE” is the new “we don’t need Russian gas”— a smug certainty that aged like gas station milk.

Trump ordered ICE agents not to wear masks so travelers could see their friendly faces. Because nothing says “scary jackbooted thug” like a smiling federal agent helping grandma find her gate.

The Democrats tried to defund ICE and created the greatest public relations opportunity imaginable. They thought Americans would be outraged at ICE by long TSA lines for Spring Break. President Trump turned it right around on them. TAW again.

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I hope they enjoy reporting on the military from the parking lot. Be careful what you ask for. Yesterday, the Associated Press reported, “Pentagon will remove media offices after judge reinstates New York Times press credentials.” Buh-bye.

The part of the Pentagon called ‘Correspondents’ Corridor,’ which reporters have used for decades to cover the U.S. military, was closed immediately, department spokesperson Sean Parnell announced. Journalists will eventually be allowed to work from a new “annex” constructed somewhere outside the building, which Parnell said “will be available when ready.”

He did not say how long that will take.

The squabble started last summer, after Secretary of War Hegseth created a new press policy requiring reporters to sign “NDAs” (legally toothless ‘acknowledgments’) agreeing not to use their access to report illegal leaks from Pentagon personnel. Almost the entire corporate media —including the New York Times and Fox News— walked out in protest. The Pentagon responded by certifying an all-new gaggle of independent reporters who, unsurprisingly, were mostly conservative.

In December, the Grey Lady sued.

Late last week, DC District Judge Paul Friedman (Clinton appointee) ruled in favor of the Times. (He’s also ‘senior status,’ which means he’s retired but still helping out.) Friedman ordered the Times’ press credentials to be immediately reinstated without an NDA, and struck down most of the Pentagon’s new rules governing journalists with Pentagon access. Judge Friedman explained the new policy was “designed to weed out disfavored journalists” and replace them with new ones “on board and willing to serve” the government, which he called “viewpoint discrimination.”

In my humble opinion, the judge is wrong. The NDA that the Pentagon asked reporters to sign was viewpoint-neutral. It didn’t say “no liberals.” It even ended, right above the signature line, with a phrase stating, “Even if I do not necessarily agree with such policies and procedures,” and “my signing does not waive any rights I may have under law.”

In other words, the Times could have signed the NDA, and stayed in the press room along with reporters of every ideological stripe, but it chose not to. That’s not viewpoint discrimination; that’s self-deportation.

🔥 The Pentagon said it will appeal. In the meantime, the judge ordered the Times’s credentials restored; but he didn’t order the Pentagon to keep a physical newsroom open. The newsroom is now in Parking Tier A-27.

We can expect the New York Times will now run back to Judge Friedman to get him to order the Pentagon to reopen the press room. But the judge’s order only required restoring credentials and scrapping the unconstitutional policy provisions. The Pentagon did both. Friedman never ordered the Pentagon to keep a physical newsroom inside the building. And the entire building is subject to the Secretary of Defense’s “jurisdiction, custody, and control” under federal law.

Credentialing policy is a completely different question from managing secured space during wartime. This is a classic conundrum judges encounter when they dabble in affirmative injunctions.

🔥 A “negative injunction” is the most common type of injunction. It’s where judges order people to stop doing something. Like a restraining order— stop texting your ex-girlfriend. Or stop applying this unconstitutional law. Courts do this all day long. It’s clean, it’s enforceable, and it’s squarely within judicial power.

After all, it’s easy to tell if someone failed to stop doing something. He’s still texting me, your honor!

An affirmative injunction says: do this specific thing I’m ordering you to do. Reopen that room. Provide this workspace. Staff it this way. Text your girlfriend a love letter. Affirmative injunctions transform judges into micromanagers — and it almost always goes sideways. Yes, I did text her love letters, but you didn’t say I couldn’t bracket them with poop emojis.

If the Times runs back to Friedman crying, “make them reopen the corridor!” they’re explicitly asking for an affirmative injunction— an order requiring an Executive Branch cabinet secretary to surrender physical space inside the nation’s most secure military headquarters during two active wars. That’s a very different type of order than “stop enforcing an unconstitutional policy.”

Asking for an affirmative injunction essentially asks Judge Friedman to become the Pentagon’s building facilities manager. Every new affirmative order he issues to plug holes in the last one will be picked apart by Pentagon lawyers and maliciously complied with. He can eventually hold Hegseth in contempt, but a senior District Judge has no way to enforce a contempt order against the branch of government that enforces orders.

Andrew Jackson is often quoted dismissing a particular Supreme Court ruling he didn’t like: “John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it.” And the Cherokee stayed on the Trail of Tears. That was nearly a constitutional crisis.

We probably won’t reach any constitutional crisis over the New York Times’s sore-loser whining. They put poop emojis in the press room! When it gets the case, the appellate court will be considering one of the Executive Branch’s most sacrosanct constitutional rights: the right to act in the best interest of U.S. national security. If that requires tightening the rules on irascible reporters in a non-discriminatory way, then the Court of Appeals is likely to say courts should stay out of it.

In Department of Navy v. Egan (1988), SCOTUS held that courts should defer to the executive branch on security clearance decisions because the protection of classified information is committed to the “broad discretion” of the responsible agency, and this must also include broad discretion to determine who may have access.

Press credentialing, like security clearance, is a military judgment about physical security at a military facility during active combat operations. A senior district judge substituted his own judgment about Pentagon security for the Secretary’s. That’s not how national security deference works.

The appellate court doesn’t need to reach the press’s rights. It only needs to say the Pentagon’s new rules met the minimal reasonableness standard — which is the standard that both sides agreed applies in a nonpublic forum.

Judge Friedman wrote a lovely, 40-page opus to the First Amendment and journalistic freedom, but he missed the point. Now the reporters are working out of a trailer with no break room to get coffee. Great job, New York Times!

Have a terrific Tuesday! Roll back here tomorrow morning, to C&C’s break room, which is fully equipped and slightly over-caffeinated, for all your essential news and commentary.

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