---
title: "The Morning Brief — March 25, 2026"
date: 2026-03-25T01:00:02-05:00
draft: false
description: "Wednesday's Morning Brief covers Jack Smith's constitutional wreckage, the Florida Mar-a-Lago upset, Iran troop deployments, a Democrat governor's questionable mosque visit, and more."
tags: ["Morning Brief", "conservative", "news", "America First"]
---

## [Jack Smith's Lawfare Carnival Gets Its Formal Autopsy](https://thefederalist.com/2026/03/24/watch-margot-cleveland-breaks-down-5-ways-jack-smiths-witch-hunt-ripped-up-the-constitution/)

Margot Cleveland laid it out before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee Tuesday: unconstitutional appointment, subpoenas that violated the Speech or Debate Clause, phone records vacuumed up on private citizens like Kash Patel — the whole rotten bouquet. The good news is that the Constitution survived Jack Smith. The bad news is that nobody seems to be in any particular hurry to make sure this never happens again. Victor Davis Hanson says a reckoning awaits — I'll believe it when I see a perp walk, not a podcast.

---

## [Democrat Flips Florida District That Includes Mar-a-Lago](https://nypost.com/2026/03/25/us-news/democrat-emily-gregory-flips-long-held-florida-gop-house-seat-that-includes-trumps-mar-a-lago/)

Emily Gregory just won a state House seat in a district Trump carried by ten points in 2024 — a district that literally contains Mar-a-Lago. CNN's Harry Enten is already doing his best "this is a five-alarm fire" face, and honestly, Republicans should at least put on a smoke detector. Special elections in odd years with low turnout are a terrible way to forecast a midterm, but losing your own backyard to a first-time candidate is not a flex. Someone in the Florida GOP should probably check whether their candidate actually knocked on a door.

---

## [Trump Deploys 82nd Airborne to Middle East as Iran Talks Proceed](https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/defense/4502491/trump-deploy-airborne-middle-east-iran/)

Roughly 3,000 troops from the Army's elite 82nd Airborne are heading to the Middle East even as Trump says peace negotiations with Iran are ongoing — which is precisely the correct way to negotiate with the Iranian regime. You talk softly and you show up with paratroopers. Howard Dean, reliably, announced this will "end the GOP's grip on power," which is the kind of prediction that ages about as well as Howard Dean's grip on power. Senate Republicans also swatted down Democrats' third attempt at a war powers resolution — Tim Kaine remains 0-for-3.

---

## [NJ Governor Sherrill Visits Mosque Led by Imam With Alleged Hamas Ties](https://nypost.com/2026/03/25/us-news/new-jersey-governor-mikie-sherrill-attends-mosque-led-by-imam-accused-of-hamas-ties/)

New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill posted selfies of her hijab-clad visit to the Islamic Center of Passaic County, led by an imam who has faced accusations of ties to Hamas. To be clear: politicians visit houses of worship all the time, and that's fine. But most politicians have a staffer who spends fifteen minutes googling the venue before the governor poses for Instagram content there. The optics here are either catastrophically sloppy or something worse — and neither option is reassuring.

---

## [USC Cancels Gubernatorial Debate Hours Before Showtime Over 'Lack of Diversity'](https://www.dailywire.com/news/peak-california-usc-backs-out-of-gov-debate-over-lack-of-diversity)

The University of Southern California pulled the plug on a major California gubernatorial debate — hours before it was scheduled — because the invited candidates weren't racially diverse enough. Let that marinate: a prestigious university, at the last minute, decided that democracy itself needed a DEI audit before it could proceed. California's political future will apparently be decided not by voters, but by a faculty committee checking demographic boxes. Peak California, indeed.

---

## [Vince Vaughn Says Late-Night TV 'Stopped Being Funny'](https://www.theblaze.com/news/vince-vaughn-late-night-politics)

Vince Vaughn told Theo Von's podcast what everyone with functional eyeballs already knows: late-night shows "became the same," felt like "a class I didn't want to take," and drove their own audience off a cliff chasing political agendas. Hollywood insiders admitting this publicly remains rarer than a laugh track on Stephen Colbert, so credit Vaughn for saying it out loud. The ratings have been screaming this for years — it's nice when someone in the industry finally decides to translate.

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## [Left-Wing Group Mails Virginians Fake 'Newspaper' Pushing Democrat Gerrymander](https://thefederalist.com/2026/03/24/left-wing-propagandists-send-virginians-fake-newspaper-promoting-democrat-gerrymander/)

David Brock's operation is blanketing Virginia with a fake newspaper — "The Virginia Independent" — designed to look like legitimate local journalism while pushing a Democrat-friendly redistricting agenda. If a conservative group pulled this stunt, it would be the subject of a six-part New York Times investigation titled "The Death of Democracy." Instead, it'll get a quiet paragraph buried somewhere near the crossword. The left's concern for "disinformation" begins and ends with whether they're the ones spreading it.

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## [Karen Bass's Re-Election Campaign Hits a 'Downright Devastating' Poll](https://www.theblaze.com/news/karen-bass-poll-devastating-mayor)

The mayor who vacationed in Africa while Los Angeles burned is discovering that LA residents have a long memory — or at least a working one. A Berkeley IGS/LA Times poll shows a majority of Angelenos disapprove of Bass just two months out from the Democratic primary. The fires, the scandals, the general sense that nobody was minding the store: apparently voters noticed. Who could have seen this coming, besides everyone.

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## Bottom Line

When Democrats flip Trump's literal neighborhood, a governor takes selfies at a Hamas-adjacent mosque, and USC cancels democracy for insufficient diversity, you start to wonder if the left is running a strategy or just a comedy writers' room with no adult supervision.