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Welcome to this week’s edition of the Surge, Slate’s politics newsletter, which is about to crack this Strait of Hormuz thing any day now.

Once again, the “haters” spent all week talking about the biggest war in the Middle East in decades and how it’s destabilizing countries everywhere. As if there’s not anything more important, such as a beautiful new ballroom under construction in Washington, to discuss. Elsewhere, we look at a delightfully spicy confirmation hearing this week, Illinois primary results, and the president’s announcement of a member of Congress’ imminent death.

But first, those who bet on Polymarket that the Surge would return to a conceptual lead item on March 21 can collect their winnings.

Since when does war have destabilizing consequences?

We would describe the administration’s attitude this week toward its war on Iran as one of frustration. Oil tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz is still at a trickle due to Iranian threats, and President Donald Trump is lashing out at NATO countries for refusing to offer much help in securing the passage. Our big, beautiful barrel of oil price has exploded since the war began and touched $120 per big, beautiful barrel this week, before slightly retreating. Gas prices in the U.S. are at four-year highs. That’s not the only energy disruption: Israel struck a major Iranian gas field, and Iran responded by retaliating against energy infrastructure in Israel and the Gulf states. An Iranian attack on a Qatari liquefied natural-gas facility, which Qatar says will take years to repair, further rattled markets.

The administration’s response has been that everything is going precisely as planned—ahead of schedule, even!—while furiously brainstorming behind the scenes to reassure crude markets not to panic. Some of these efforts are contradictory. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, for example, said the department will combat rising energy prices during its war on Iran by … removing sanctions on Iranian oil. Another drawdown of the already diminished Strategic Petroleum Reserve could be on tap. Then there’s the possibility that Trump will send troops to take over Kharg Island, where most of Iran’s oil exports are processed, to apply more pressure to the regime. That would mark a rather serious escalation, and it’s not clear that it would have the intended effect of choking off Iran’s oil revenue anyway, or allowing the U.S. to safely reopen the strait. We don’t yet want to say that the situation has spiraled out of control, but the spiral could be only a couple of headstrong choices away.

The administration, which is waging a Middle East war that it did not consult Congress about, and did not spend a second selling to the American people before launching, is reportedly preparing to ask Congress for a fresh $200 billion to replenish its arsenal. This would be supplemental funding on top of the ever-increasing annual defense budget and the bonus $150 billion Republicans gave the Pentagon in last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act. It’s also in spite of recent estimates that pin the cost of the war, which is supposed to end soon, at “only” about $1 billion to $2 billion a day. “It takes money to kill bad guys,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who hasn’t yet finalized the figure, explained on Thursday. Here’s one possible response for Congress to consider as it mulls this request over: no.

And yet, outrageous defense spending asks after actions the public didn’t call for have a tendency of finding their way into law. So how is the administration going to get it? There’s talk among Republicans about pursuing the funding via a reconciliation bill, which would allow them to skirt the 60-vote Senate filibuster. That might be the administration’s best chance, because Democrats would likely request, in exchange for the money and their votes, Full Communism as a condition. Though it’s not hard to imagine a final deal in which Democrats supply the votes in exchange for, say, language requiring the new bombs to undergo conflict resolution training and wear body cams.

Cabinet confirmation by duel.

Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin’s Homeland Security confirmation process was setting up to be a sleepy affair. There was bipartisan interest in getting Secretary Kristi Noem out of DHS immediately. Senatorial courtesy seemed as though it would glide Mullin along expeditiously. It remains true that when all is said and done, Mullin won’t have a hard time being confirmed. But sheesh, what a show in the Senate Homeland Security Committee on Wednesday! It became evident at the outset of the hearing that the committee chair, Sen. Rand Paul, had not forgiven Mullin for recently joking that Paul had it coming in a 2017 assault that resulted in serious injuries—and that Mullin had no interest in apologizing. That battle of wills set the tone for a surprisingly combative hearing, which also featured some wry probing of a mysterious secret mission Mullin supposedly went on a decade ago.

Mullin was at liberty to withhold his apology to the Republican chairman, on an 8R/7D committee, because he already had the vote of a Democratic committee member. Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman had voiced his support for Mullin shortly after Mullin’s nomination was announced. And though he played coy during the hearing about whether Mullin still had his vote, he delivered the clinching “aye” to advance the nomination on Thursday. Mullin is expected to be confirmed by the full Senate next week.

Note to self: Money is useful …

Illinois held its primaries on Tuesday, with all eyes on the Democratic Senate primary to replace Dick Durbin and a few open House races. Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton won the Senate primary over Reps. Raja Krishnamoorthi and Robin Kelly, while Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss defeated former Media Matters employee Kat Abughazaleh for an open seat in the suburbs. We will come clean with our own views on these races: Whatever, man. Hopefully the Democrats of Illinois are pleased with their choices. From a national perspective, though, covering these Democratic primaries was largely a matter of tracking spending by artificial intelligence, cryptocurrency, and AIPAC-supported super PACs against progressives. The net results in Illinois were a wash.

One clear winner, though: Gov. J.B. Pritzker. The billionaire funded Stratton’s super PAC and made himself the face of many of her ads, allowing her to catch up against Krishnamoorthi after he’d had the airwaves to himself for months. We’re not going to say that this showing will give Pritzker some kind of boost in preliminary 2028 Democratic presidential polling (although it certainly solidifies his kingmaker status in Illinois). It’s a reminder, though, to get used to seeing his mug on television. We should expect him to spend more than any other candidate in the next presidential contest should he jump in.

A very complicated exit.

Joe Kent, a conspiratorial former congressional candidate who twice scared away the voters of his red-leaning district, was, of course, given a high-profile intelligence community job in the Trump administration and was, of course, confirmed by the rubber-stamp Senate. But this week he quit! Kent announced his resignation as director of the National Counterterrorism Center in opposition to the Iran war. While we, too, are not keen on the Iran war, we probably wouldn’t put our objection exactly as Kent did in describing this war, and all other recent wars, as a grand plot by Israel, the Israel lobby, and “influential members of the American media.” Trump is a big boy who is perfectly capable of telling Israel to buzz off when he wants to; he’s just really into military conquest this term.

Further fuzzing up the situation are reports that Kent was under FBI investigation for leaks at the time of his resignation. We can certainly believe that he was a leaker—leaking is fun, everyone who does it loves it, and everyone should leak to the Surge—but forgive us for being skeptical of this FBI, which has spent much of Trump’s second term targeting his supposed enemies. Here’s the situation, then: We have an odd duck doing something good but foregrounding his explanation with antisemitism vs. an FBI that’s lost any semblance of independence possibly going after him for his message of protest. Pick your fighter. Our choice is neither.

Apparently, the director of national intelligence has no say in determining what’s an imminent threat?

The Kent exit put Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, his former boss and fellow traveler, in a most uncomfortable spot. It’s not great office politics for the guy that you brought on board to quit in protest of the administration’s policies. And among the anti-deep-state crowd that felt that Gabbard was their savior, Kent’s having the courage to resign only makes Gabbard look like a wuss for not doing so herself.

This vise—wanting to keep her job, but also any remaining shred of her anti-war credibility—has been reflected in her statements since Kent’s departure. In both congressional testimony and public statements this week, Gabbard dodged questions about whether Iran presented an “imminent threat” to the United States, arguing that such determinations aren’t part of her job. As Gabbard told Sen. Jon Ossoff during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing into worldwide threats, “The only person who can determine what is and is not an imminent threat is the president.” Ossoff rebutted that the name of the hearing with Gabbard was the “Worldwide Threats Hearing” and maybe she should have a view on that question. The DNI, according to Gabbard, though, merely staples together some intel for the president to look at. Everyone got it? The person who oversees American intelligence can’t weigh in on whether any of that intel shows an imminent threat at the hearing on worldwide threats.

TFW the president announces you’re supposed to be dead.

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For some time, there have been Capitol whispers that Florida Rep. Neal Dunn might leave Congress before his term wraps up, but the reason remained unclear. Fortunately, our gossipy president was able to tell the nation exactly why at a White House event with the House speaker earlier in the week. While discussing the GOP’s narrow majority, Trump mentioned that there was one member who was “very ill” and “looked like he wasn’t going to make it.” He then nudged Mike Johnson into telling Dunn’s story, about how he had received a bad diagnosis only to have the president then connect Dunn with his doctors at Walter Reed medical center. Trump couldn’t resist mentioning the prognosis: that Dunn “would be dead by June.” To which the speaker merely said, “OK, that wasn’t public.”

Dunn is not dead—though it’s not apparent whether he “has a new lease on life” and “acts like he’s 30 years younger,” as Trump put it, since the president’s intervention. Dunn has reportedly been joking with other members that he’s “back from the dead” and posted a lighthearted proof-of-life video on St. Patrick’s Day. As for Trump’s further thoughts on the politician’s diagnosis (which the president also took the liberty of announcing was heart-related): “Number one, it was bad because I liked him,” Trump said. “Number two, it was bad because I needed his vote.” Was he ranking that in ascending order of importance?

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