“We all moved here at a time when there was no queer representation,” Adam Mac explains. “And so we all moved here with a dream that we could not see a reality for.” Continue reading…Country Music News – Taste of Country
Day: March 20, 2026
Florida Georgia Line could not have seemed happier to be sharing the stage once again. Continue reading…The Boot – Country Music News, Music Videos and Songs
Florida Georgia Line could not have seemed happier to be sharing the stage once again. Continue reading…Country Music News – Taste of Country
Education Commissioner Deena Bishop and David Langford, superintendent of Mt. Edgecumbe High School give an update to the State Board of Education, which administers the state boarding school at their annual in-person meeting in Juneau on Mar. 10, 2026. (Photo by Corinne Smith/Alaska Beacon)
The Alaska State Board of Education moved to establish a special committee to review ongoing issues and make recommendations to improve operations at the state-run boarding school, Mt. Edgecumbe High School.
After a turbulent year of budget cuts, staff and administrative changes and more than 100 students disenrolling this year, a delegation of lawmakers made an impromptu visit to the school in February to investigate. Legislators have pressed school officials and the Alaska Department of Education and Early Development, which operates the school, for explanations and improvements. Their interest has spotlighted the school’s ongoing maintenance needs and sparked a conversation about ways to increase support for remaining students.
The state Board of Education is charged with administering the school, along with DEED. The school normally serves roughly 400 students, the majority of whom are Alaska Native and from rural communities across the state.
After hearing a presentation about the issues at Mt. Edgecumbe at their annual meeting in Juneau on Mar. 10, board members voted unanimously to establish an ad-hoc committee. The committee will be tasked with reviewing concerns related to student disenrollment, student services, academic performance and school climate before it presents recommendations to the full board in October.
After the vote, board chair Sally Stockhausen said the new committee will interface with the board and the current local Mt Edgecumbe High School Advisory Board — a local board that advises the superintendent. The specifics will be negotiated in the coming weeks and months.
“This is brand new. We’re going to figure it out,” Stockhausen said. “My basic understanding is they will come to us with recommendations, and then we’ll decide how that’s going to work, and if and what type of action we’ll take based on that.”
Within the next 30 days, officials with DEED will be tasked with assembling the new committee. It may include representatives from the local advisory board, parents, students, staff members, alumni, an education expert and tribal representatives.
On Monday, Stockhausen appeared before members of the House Education Committee as part of the confirmation process for her reappointment for another five year term on the state board. She answered some questions about the board’s oversight of Mt. Edgecumbe High School, and said board members are working to improve communication with the school.
“We used to always have the superintendent come and give a verbal report. And at some point it kind of just shifted, and it became, we would get written reports. So we did ask for that to come back,” she said.
Stockhausen said she’s also requested updates from the local advisory board to the full state board of education.
“The advisory board’s role is to advise the superintendent, but it would be good, I think, to add a component where that could come back to us,” Stockhausen said. “We just need some communication improvements.”
Board hears update on conditions at Mt. Edgecumbe
Mt. Edgecumbe High School Superintendent David Langford and Deena Bishop, state education commissioner, have given a series of presentations to lawmakers in recent weeks following legislator’s visit to the school on the conditions and improvements being made at the high school.
On Mar. 10, they gave a similar presentation to the state board, which is charged with managing the school.
Langford and Bishop described the state’s recent efforts to address the school’s budget deficit and maintenance needs at the school this year, after budget cuts, reductions to staff and a change in administration last year.
Langford said those efforts include significant upgrades to the kitchen, dorms and common areas, and more facilities upgrades are planned for this summer, including replacing dorm roofs and ventilation systems. DEED also hired a new contractor to run the residential dorms, and have created more opportunities for student input and leadership in school operations.
“This is a problem decades in the making of funding not coming through, projects not being managed, maintenance not being kept up, and funding being cut. I think six, seven years ago, we had seven maintenance people, and today we have one-and-a-half,” Langford told the board on Mar. 10. “And keeping up with a campus that size, with one and a half people, they do an amazing job, but they just can’t do everything that needs to be done. So it is a funding issue for Mt. Edgecumbe.”
Bishop emphasized that the administration is making improvements, and the school is moving in a positive direction.
“A lot of school issues are adult issues and not children issues,” Bishop told the board, pointing to management of the school. “I would say a lot of these concerns were more about adults than they were students and what they were receiving. So I do believe that you know that we’re moving forward with sorting out the adult issues, and moving forward in the right direction for kids.”
Following the board meeting, board member and Mt. Edgecumbe alumni Pamela Dupras said she was shocked by the photos Langford presented of school facilities before some upgrades were made in August, including rusted kitchen appliances, leaks, and broken and worn dorm furniture.
“A picture is worth a thousand words, and I was shocked to see the condition of the dormitory, the kitchen, and within a short period of time that has been resolved,” Dupras said. “So I’m curious to see, I want to know what the deeper story is and why this is necessary. So I am glad that we will have an ad hoc committee that can look further into it.”
Stockhausen said in an interview at the meeting only that the maintenance needs had been “longstanding,” and that the ad-hoc committee will be reviewing them. She said she has confidence in Langford managing improvements. “I think Mr. Langford is doing an outstanding job addressing all of those, and it’s just a steady, steady improvement,” she said.
Lawmakers and the local advisory board have raised concerns about Langford being superintendent of both Mt. Edgecumbe and the Chatham School District, which serves approximately 175 students across rural schools in Southeast Alaska, particularly considering the challenges at Mt. Edgecumbe.
Langford has maintained he is able to fulfill the duties of both roles of superintendent. At the board meeting, Langford said in an interview he is looking forward to working with the new ad-hoc committee.
“I’m very, very hopeful that all the attention is going to result in really good things for the school and for the students,” he said. “One of their directives is to investigate academic performance, which I think is really important, and maybe something really good can come from that. And they’re also tasked with looking at buildings and funding and all the current issues that we’re addressing. So I don’t see any problem with it at all. So looking forward to having people come and visit and go through the school and give recommendations.”
But Langford admitted reporting to four school boards is a challenge. He currently reports to the state board of education, the local advisory board, the new ad-hoc committee, as well as the Chatham school board.
“All these boards, that’s probably the hardest part of my job,” Langford said, and added that he was attending the two-day state board meeting and also attending the Chatham school board meeting taking place online in the evening. “So yeah, that part of it is a bit much. But okay, it’s part of the job. I’m up for it. People have a right to have their voices heard and be a part of the process. So I’m happy for that.”
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As we reported on Thursday, Joseph Duggar has been arrested on child molestation charges.
The move comes after his alleged victim, now 14, told police about abuse she endured during a 2020 vacation to Florida when she was just nine years old.
Only time will tell if Joseph will receive a long prison sentence like his brother Josh Duggar, but already, fans are speculating about the future of his marriage.
The Duggars are fundamentalist evangelicals, and divorce is strictly forbidden in their world — but there’s reason to believe that Kendra might have reached her breaking point.
Joseph and Kendra’s mysterious marriage
Joseph married Kendra Caldwell in 2017, and the couple has since welcomed three children.
Very little is known about the state of their marriage, as they both stopped posting on social media several years ago — right around the time that Josh Duggar was convicted on charges of possessing and distributing child sexual abuse materials.
Joseph’s final post in 2021 was a tribute to his daughter Addison on her birthday.
“Happy Birthday sweet girl!!! We love seeing this girl’s sweet little personality blossom over the last two years! Looking forward to making many more memories,” he wrote at the time.
Joseph and Kendra’s last collective post was in celebration of their fourth wedding anniversary.
“Finally posting pics from our anniversary trip. We so enjoyed seeing [stage show] Jesus at Sight and Sound in and doing SDC [Silver Dollar City theme park]. We had a blast,” the couple wrote.
After that, Joe and Kendra went radio silent.
Will Kendra divorce Joe if he goes to prison?
Josh Duggar has been locked up for over four years now, and he’s not scheduled for release until 2032.
His wife Anna has stood by his side, visiting regularly and defending him in her few public comments since his arrest.
Will Kendra be as faithful? Many Duggar watchers don’t think so.
For one thing, there have been uncorroborated rumors that the two were living separately — Joe having allegedly moved back in with his parents — at the time of the arrest.
Additionally, Kendra is widely considered to be among the most savvy and independent of the Duggar wives.
“I feel like her parents and Kendra herself have far more sense then Anna and her parents when it comes to this kind of criminal behaviour, and I also have a feeling that Kendra’s dad would be more demanding and adamant to get Kendra and his grandkids out of the Duggars eyesight,” wrote one Reddit user, adding:
“Personally, this could be the first divorce I reckon.”
“Agree. I wonder if this was what the falling out was between Kendra‘s dad and JB,” another wrote, referring to the rumored tension between Kendra’s dad and Jim Bob Duggar.
“This is not Kendra‘s fault and good council would be to leave Joe and remove her children from the presence of any of the Duggars. Forever.”
“She has to live with the fact that her husband, and father of her children, is attracted to a 9 year old. Kendra has to be wheeling over this,” a third chimed in.
There was a time when a Duggar divorce was unimaginable — but Kendra might be the first to break the chains.
Kendra Caldwell: Will She Divorce Joseph Duggar Following Molestation Arrest? was originally published on The Hollywood Gossip.
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Wars are rarely lost first on the battlefield. They are lost in leaders’ minds − when leaders misread what they and their adversaries can do, when their confidence substitutes for comprehension, and when the last war is mistaken for the next one.
The Trump administration’s miscalculation of Iran is not an anomaly. It is the latest entry in one of the oldest and most lethal traditions in international politics: the catastrophic gap between what leaders believe going in and what war actually delivers.
I’m a scholar of international security, civil wars and U.S. foreign policy, and author of the book “Dying by the Sword,” which examines why the United States repeatedly reaches for military solutions and why such interventions rarely produce durable peace. The deeper problem with the U.S. war in Iran, as I see it, was overconfidence bred by recent success.
Dismissed concerns
Before the conflict involving Iran, Israel and the U.S. escalated, Energy Secretary Chris Wright dismissed concerns about oil market disruption, noting that prices had barely moved during the 12-day war in June 2025 between Israel and Iran. Other senior officials agreed.
What followed was significant: Iranian-aimed missile and drone barrages against U.S. bases, Arab capitals and Israeli population centers. Then Iran effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly 20% of the world’s oil supply passes daily − not with a naval blockade, not with mines or massed anti-ship missiles, but with cheap drones.
A few strikes in the vicinity of the strait were enough. Insurers and shipping companies decided the transit was unsafe. Tanker traffic dropped to zero, although the occasional ship has made it through recently. Analysts are calling it the biggest energy crisis since the 1970s oil embargo.
Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, has since vowed to keep the strait closed. U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat, reported after a closed-door briefing that the administration had no plan for the strait and did not know how to get it safely back open.
With no embassy in Tehran since 1979, the U.S. relies heavily for intelligence on CIA networks of questionable quality and Israeli assets who have their own country’s interests in mind. So the U.S. did not anticipate that Iran had rebuilt and dispersed significant military capacity since June 2025, nor that it would strike neighbors across the region, including Azerbaijan, widening the conflict well beyond the Persian Gulf.
The war has since reached the Indian Ocean, where a U.S. submarine sank an Iranian frigate 2,000 miles from the theater of war, off the coast of Sri Lanka – just days after the ship had participated in Indian navy exercises alongside 74 nations, including the U.S.
The diplomatic damage to Washington’s relationships with India and Sri Lanka, two countries whose cooperation is increasingly important as the United States seeks partners to manage and mitigate Iran’s blockade, was entirely foreseeable. Washington has put them in a difficult position, with India choosing diplomacy with Iran to secure passage for its vessels and Sri Lanka opting to retain its neutrality, underscoring its vulnerable position.
But U.S. planners didn’t foresee any of this.
The wrong lesson from Venezuela
The swift military intervention by the U.S. in Venezuela in January 2026 produced rapid results with minimal blowback − appearing to validate the administration’s faith in coercive action.
But clean victories are dangerous teachers.
They inflate what I call in my teaching the “hubris/humility index” − the more a leadership overestimates its own abilities, underestimates the adversary’s and dismisses uncertainty, the higher the score and the more likely disaster will ensue. Clean victories inflate the index precisely when skepticism is most needed, because they suggest the next adversary will be as manageable as the last.
Political scientist Robert Jervis demonstrated decades ago that misperceptions in international relations are not random but follow patterns. Leaders tend to project their own cost-benefit logic onto opponents who do not share it. They also fall into “availability bias,” allowing the most recent operation to stand in for the next.
The higher the hubris/humility index, the less likely there is to be the kind of strategic empathy that might ask: How does Tehran see this? What does a regime that believes its survival is at stake actually do? History shows that such a regime escalates, improvises and takes risks that appear irrational from an outside perspective but are entirely rational from within.
Recent cases reveal this unmistakable pattern.
The United States in Vietnam, 1965–1968
American war planners believed material superiority would force the communists in Hanoi to surrender.
It didn’t.
American firepower alone didn’t lead to military defeat, much less political control. The Tet Offensive in 1968 – when North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces launched coordinated attacks across South Vietnam – shattered the official U.S. narrative that the war was nearly won and that there was “light at the end of the tunnel.”
Athough the U.S. and South Vietnamese forces ultimately repelled the attacks, their scale and surprise caused the public not to trust official statements, accelerating the erosion of public trust and decisively turning American opinion against the war.
The U.S. loss in Vietnam didn’t occur on a single battlefield, but through strategic and political unraveling. Despite overwhelming superiority, Washington was incapable of building a stable, legitimate South Vietnamese government or recognizing the grit and resilience of the North Vietnamese forces. Eventually, with mounting casualties and large-scale protests at home, U.S. forces withdrew, ceding control of Saigon to North Vietnamese forces in 1975.
AP Photo.
The U.S. failure was conceptual and cultural, not informational. American analysts simply couldn’t picture the war from their opponent’s perspective.
Afghanistan: Deadly assumptions
The Soviet Union in Afghanistan in 1979 and the United States in Afghanistan after 2001 conducted two different wars but held the same deadly assumption: that external military force can quickly impose political order in a fractured society strongly resistant to foreign control.
In both cases, great powers believed their abilities would outweigh local complexities. In both cases, the war evolved faster − and lasted far longer − than their strategies could adapt.
Russia, Ukraine and the Strait of Hormuz
This is the case that should most haunt Washington.
Ukraine demonstrated that a materially weaker defender can impose huge costs on a stronger attacker through battlefield innovation: cheap drones, decentralized adaptation, real-time intelligence, and the creative use of terrain and chokepoints to find asymmetrical advantages. The U.S. watched it all unfold in real time for four years and helped pay for it.
Iran was also watching − and the Strait of Hormuz is the proof.
Iran didn’t need a navy to close the world’s most important energy chokepoint. It needed drones, the same cheap, asymmetric technology Ukraine has used to blunt Russia’s onslaught, deployed not on a land front but against the insurance calculus of the global shipping industry.
Washington, which had underwritten much of that playbook in Ukraine, apparently never asked the obvious question: What happens when the other side has been taking notes? That is not a failure of U.S. intelligence. It is a failure of strategic imagination − exactly what the hubris/humility index is designed to highlight.
Iran does not need to defeat the U.S. conventionally. It needs only to raise costs, exploit chokepoints and wait for a fracture among U.S. allies and domestic political opposition to force a fake U.S. declaration of victory or a genuine U.S. withdrawal.
Notably, Iran has kept the strait selectively open to Turkish, Indian and Saudi vessels, rewarding neutral countries and punishing U.S. allies, driving wedges through the coalition.
Historian Geoffrey Blainey famously argued that wars start when both sides hold incompatible beliefs about power and only end when reality forces those beliefs to align.
That alignment is now happening, at great cost, in the Persian Gulf and beyond. The Trump administration scored high on the hubris index at exactly the moment when it most needed humility.
Monica Duffy Toft does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
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