Oil Hits $120/Barrel. Gas Hits $4.30! Hegseth Gets Lit Up.

Coast Guard Bases Losing Power Due to Shutdown. Fed’s Powell Refuses to Leave. Voting Rights Act Slammed by SCOTUS. Mills Suspends Senate Campaign in Maine. Navy FB Player Lives the Dream with Steelers. 

The rain has cleared and we can see what the Iran war actually cost. In this solo episode, Paul Rieckhoff breaks down the brutal arithmetic: $25 billion spent. 13 American soldiers killed. Hundreds wounded. Oil at $125 a barrel and gas at $4.30 a gallon — up 27 cents in a week. The Strait of Hormuz still not secured. The Iranian regime still in power. The enriched uranium still unaccounted for. After yesterday's testimony from Secretary Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Caine, the spin is gone — and the Pentagon wants $1.5 trillion more. Paul lays out why working Americans are paying the price for a war their leaders can't honestly defend.

Paul also takes apart Trump's state dinner for King Charles — 10 American billionaires, six Fox News hosts, zero Democrats — and calls out Trump, Hegseth, and Vance for siding with Putin while Zelensky and Macron call it like it is. There's hope in the mix too: a powerful breakdown of Heidenreich's path from the Naval Academy to a Marine Corps commission to the NFL draft, the kind of leadership that gives this country a future. Plus a look ahead at tomorrow's guest, comedian Eugene Mirman, after yesterday's conversation with Idaho Army veteran Todd Achilles. The show is now daily and just hit #15 on the charts. Independent is an attitude. Stay vigilant.

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