November 9, 2026
CENTCOM just announced a new bounty, offering up to $20 million for "information about Iran's nuclear program, including its facilities, equipment, and associated personnel, such as those in the scientific community, or the movement of any of the above."
On November 3, the country bitch-slapped Trump and the US Congress hard. The collective populist beatdown of the 119 Congress and the president felt good, but any shared optimism won't last long.
Trump is laying blame elsewhere, and yearns for the safe and untouchable spaces of his architectural visions. While he reverts to a boy playing with blocks in his room, Congress remains a reliable AIPAC ( er...UDP) service provider. Congress will be comfortable only when it says yes Yes YES to the folks on top of the K shaped economy. It will take more than a ballot ritual to change this, although many in the America-first universe sensed their real power. That power comes from principle and courage, a.k.a being backed into a corner and forced to do something.
No wars have ended, no federal reformation has occurred, no tax dollars have been accounted for, and no taxpayer or citizen justice for the various ongoing national Ponzi schemes and influence peddling pedophile scams has been found. Voters may have blamed the 119 Congress for this, but the 120 will do no better. The unfortunate trend of taking no responsibility for the big challenges and accepting personal enrichment as the consolation prize - one that Trump himself embraces - will continue until the country literally goes broke. Unlike the Japanese who patiently tolerated four plus decades of stagflation as they wait for the aged to pass on, a similar situation will crack the United States in less than half that time.
That's the good news. As the federal state becomes even more ridiculous, we find that nine months after the illegal war against Iran (on behalf of Israel AND part of a larger global resource grab in service to US dominance and dollar salvage), and nine months after Trump declared Iran's "nuclear capability" destroyed for the second time in less than a year, we have this ingenious new strategy.
Trump, Rubio, Hegseth and Bessent are the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles of our day, fighting crime and injustice and coming up with improbable and entertaining strategies on the fly. Our DC mutants just came up with another one!
Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael and Michelangelo named the federal site "RewardsforJustice.net" and came up a "submit a tip" slogan of "Do Your Part. Secure a Safer World." It's eerie how "four pizza-loving, sewer-dwelling, crime-fighting mutant brothers" have literally emerged as national policymakers. Who knew this popular cartoon was a civics roadmap, a required precursor to the far more realistic Idiocracy and Terminator?
What does this $20 million reward mean ? First, we print our own money in the US, it is ephemeral, and no one at the bottom of the food chain here or anywhere else is going to see a dime's worth of value. Think of the Trump's recent offer of $5,000 to voters, or the $10 million bounty placed on the head of "our man in ISIS" Al Sharaa that silently vanished once we installed him as Syrian dictator.
Second, if Trump eliminated Iran's nuclear capability, as he has repeatedly said, then a generous US-funded nuclear tip line seems nonsensical. Paying for information regarding the nuclear activities of non-NPT signatories and US nuclear co-conspirators, or a global nuclear safety tip line would make more sense.
Third, rewardsforjustice.net functions via the well-surveilled and possibly state-compromised platforms of Tor, Signal and Telegram. If real whistleblowers or fresh human intelligence sources were the target audience, one might think that more sophisticated and effective ways of safely identifying and recruiting these sources would exist.
Fourth, isn't this the job of the 18 or 19 intelligence agencies that the US funds to the tune of well over $500 billion plus CIA side hustles every year ? Perhaps it's Trump's backhanded way of letting us know we really could eliminate these agencies - not only because he doesn't use them, but because they don't produce anything of value, and tip lines are cheaper.
This new "reward" may tell us that Trump - in the face of his midterm spanking, his loss of the war against Iran, and his impending loss of Netanyahu - has realized his debt to his Israeli backers, funders and blackmailers really is paid, and Susie Wiles the bookkeeper is no longer needed.
Our West Asian human intel function has for decades been farmed out to Mossad, Israeli-owned companies, and those connected to them. If the debt Trump owes his Zionist backers is done, and communication lines between the Zionist governments in DC and West Jerusalem increasingly tainted and untrusted, the CIA, DIA and the rest will be forced to reinvigorate actual US human intelligence in West Asia. DC may have just realized that Mossad can't be trusted, and that Israeli spies and their networks in Iran have been kneecapped. Now that most of our bases in West Asia are non-functional, inertia and general stupidity seem to be driving the Pentagon to demand more cowbell .
Does some part of the US government now realize that Zionist Israel is a separate country, with its own racist government, its own jealous and devious military industrial complex, and its own national interests ? If so, we are in luck. This recognition would pave the way for the current lame duck Congress, or the 120, to reject any assimilation of, or advantaged access by, Israelis or the IDF to any part of the US military and security ecosystem. After all, we don't have a mutual defense treaty, and Israel's extradition policy is uneven and unreliable. We operate with Israel primarily under a money and investment-intensive agreement, in ten-year increments. It is less a special relationship than an unconstitutionally-codified parasite infestation.
Congress should expeditiously eliminate Sections 219 and 1217 of the House and Senate versions of the FY 2027 Defense Authorization Act, respectively and replace them with nothing, without compromise.
Then Congress should address, with extreme prejudice, the out-of-control incompetence exhibited on a daily basis by the Pentagon in its organization, its acquisition process, its prosecution of war, and its cumulative inability to provide even a modicum of defense for the US government, or the nation itself.
I'm not holding my breath, but if nothing else, this $20 million should be red meat for the new Democratic House and Senate as it looks at executive branch slush funds and creative kickbacks.