Pentagon Alarmed by Tomahawk Burn Rate in Iran War

The White House and top Pentagon officials have very different pictures of what’s happening in Iran.

U.S. forces have blown through more than 850 Tomahawk missiles in the ongoing war in Iran, according to a new report by The Washington Post. The usage rate has led some Pentagon officials to raise concerns about America’s capabilities in the Middle East and future conflicts.

Trump’s Iran war has dragged on for four weeks, and the military is firing an average of 16 Tomahawks a day. One official told the Post the number of the missiles left in the region is “alarmingly low.” It’s not like all the strikes have been precise takedowns of Iranian officials, either. In February, the U.S. hit a girls’ school with a Tomahawk, killing over 175 innocents, mostly young children.

Tomahawks aren’t your run-of-the-mill ballistic missile. Built by Raytheon, the weapons can cost as much as $3.6 million and take two years to construct, according to military documents reviewed by the Post. Being 20 feet long and roughly 3,500 pounds, they must be carried and launched from naval destroyers.

Just 57 Tomahawks were included in last year’s defense budget, meaning Trump’s war is blowing through years of stockpiling.

The fire rate “has alarmed some officials and prompted internal discussions about how to make more available,” according to the Post. The concerns come at an inauspicious time, as Trump flirts with the idea of sending 10,000 additional ground troops to Iran.

White House officials would have you believe our Great Nation possesses infinite ammunition. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on March 4 that the military “has more than enough munitions, ammo, and weapons stockpiles to achieve the goals of Operation Epic Fury laid out by President Trump—and beyond.”

But it’s best to take this administration’s statements about the war with a grain of salt. Trump has also gloated that defense manufacturers are quadrupling production of their “‘Exquisite Class’ Weaponry,” signaling that his administration knows it’s going through missiles at an unsustainable rate.

Hegseth Broke Protocol to Block Women’s and Black Officers’ Promotion

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth personally intervened to stop four officers from rising in the ranks.

Pete Hegseth blocked the promotions of two women and two Black Army officers, showing yet again that he will stop at nothing in his war on diversity in the U.S. military.

The officers were originally on a one-star promotion list of about three dozen officers consisting mostly of white men, The New York Times reported Friday.

Hegseth had been pushing Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll to remove the four officers for months, but given their years of exemplary service, Driscoll refused, military officials told the Times. Hegseth finally removed their names himself, likely without the legal authority to do so.

As per military policy, the defense secretary is technically only supposed to approve or reject the entire list to prevent discrimination and prejudice—two things the former Fox News host has embraced in his catastrophic stint as defense secretary.

Since he was appointed in January 2025, Hegseth has gutted diversity, equity, and inclusion policies, pledged to remove women officers from combat, and banned trans people from serving in the military. “For too long, we’ve promoted too many uniform leaders for the wrong reasons—based on their race, based on gender quotas, based on historic so-called firsts,” he said in a speech last November.

A similar feud over race happened last summer when Maj. Gen. Antoinette R. Gant was selected to command the Military District of Washington. Hegseth’s chief of staff, Ricky Buria, was furious. He told Driscoll that Trump would not want to stand next to a Black female officer at military events, the Times reported.

Driscoll insisted the “president is not a racist or sexist,” and protested Buria’s apparently shocking declaration with a senior White House official, military officers told the Times. Gant’s promotion went through, and she began her service as district commander last summer.

It’s unclear whether Hegseth’s rogue removal of the four officers from the one-star promotion list will face similar scrutiny.

What Senate Democrats Won—and Lost—in the Shutdown Deal

Key reforms to immigration enforcement didn’t make the cut.

Senate Democrats approved a deal early Friday morning that would fund most of the Department of Homeland Security, ensuring that Transportation Security Administration workers would get their long-awaited paychecks but forfeiting proposed reforms to immigration enforcement.

Senate Democrats and Republicans approved legislation that would fund most DHS agencies except Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol. The bill would restore funding to TSA, which has been hemorrhaging employees as paycheck after paycheck has gone unpaid, causing severe disruptions at airports across the country.

However, Democrats failed to secure key reforms to immigration enforcement,........

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