A campaign press release from March 10, 2026
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 10, 2026
Release: Costa Midwifed Iran War, Then Didn’t Vote at All, New Candidate Charges
Lance Kruse announces campaign by exposing Democratic shell game: 180 children dead, Costa co-sponsored 30-day extension, then skipped the vote to stop it. Now America faces catastrophe against a 7,000-year-old civilization of 92 million people.
FRESNO — Fresh off submitting his nominating signatures Friday, Lance Kruse is announcing his campaign for Congress in California’s 21st District with a direct charge: Jim Costa midwifed the Iran war, then didn’t even vote on whether to stop it. And now America is stumbling into the worst strategic catastrophe since Vietnam. The enemy is a nation that has been preparing for this moment for an entire generation.
On February 28, the first day of joint U.S.-Israeli strikes, 180 children were killed at an all-girls elementary school in Minab, Iran.
Five days later, on March 3, Costa joined Rep. Josh Gottheimer and four other Democrats to co-sponsor a resolution giving Trump 30 more days to continue the bombing. The resolution isn’t scheduled for a vote until March 23. That means nearly a month of bombing before Congress even pretends to act. Senate leadership has already signaled Trump can keep going indefinitely.
Then came March 5. The Khanna-Massie resolution came to the floor. It was a real vote to stop the war immediately. It failed 212-219. Four Democrats voted NO. Those four votes killed the bill and green-lit the war from all of Congress. Costa was waiting in the wings, ready to vote no himself if they hadn’t already counted the votes and secured the outcome ahead of time. He didn’t have to take the heat. His cover work was already done.
Jim Costa didn’t vote YES. He didn’t vote NO. He didn’t vote at all.
Kruse, running as an NPP independent, calls it the most perfect shell game he has ever seen. He warns that the war itself is becoming a nightmare beyond comprehension.
Iran is not Iraq. It is a nation of over 92 million people. That is more than three times Iraq’s population. Its civilization stretches back 7,000 years. It has survived Alexander the Great, the Mongols, and every empire that thought it could be crushed. Its people are circling the wagons, united as rarely before. They have spent the last 20 years preparing for exactly this moment.
“The last time America fought a nation of this size and civilizational depth, it was Vietnam,” Kruse said. “And Vietnam didn’t have missiles that could reach our bases, proxies across four countries, and the ability to choke off 20 percent of the world’s oil supply through the Strait of Hormuz and sink the ship of any navy that tries to move through that Strait. This is 1,000 times worse than Iraq. And Jim Costa midwifed it.”
Worse still, the entire premise of the war rests on a self-inflicted wound. Iran’s Supreme Leader, who was assassinated in the opening strikes, had issued a fatwa. It was a binding religious edict forbidding the development of nuclear weapons. For decades, he was the one man guaranteeing that Iran would not go nuclear. International monitors repeatedly confirmed compliance.
“We assassinated the one leader in the world who had literally made it against his religion to build a bomb,” Kruse said. “Now the restraints are gone. And Jim Costa helped make it happen.”
The assassination itself shattered a 50-year U.S. policy. That policy, established after the Church Committee revelations of the 1970s, explicitly prohibited the assassination of foreign heads of state. That policy is now in ashes.
The war’s costs are already hitting home. Oil is at $120 per barrel and climbing toward $150. Goldman Sachs projects that a prolonged closure of the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran has already threatened, could send prices to $100 immediately and destabilize global markets. In California, gas jumped 75 cents per gallon overnight. Experts warn prices could hit $5 to $7 per gallon in the state, with $4 becoming the new normal in less expensive regions.
“That’s not abstract,” Kruse said. “That’s every working family in the Central Valley paying for Jim Costa’s cowardice at the pump.”
Costa didn’t perform this service for free. According to OpenSecrets, AIPAC’s PAC gave Costa $93,531 in 103 separate payments in the 2024 cycle alone and another $347,000 in this 2025-26 cycle. The New Republic reports that all six Democrats backing the 30-day extension received between $300,000 and $3 million from AIPAC and its affiliates. Use https://www.trackaipac.com/congress if you want to see some staggering numbers.
Politically, there is a name for what Costa did. In 2004, Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry famously explained his Iraq War vote by saying he voted for the $87 billion military spending bill “before I voted against it.” The line became the symbol of political cowardice. Vote for the war now, oppose it later, and hope voters forget.
“The Democrats have perfected Kerry’s formula,” Kruse said. “They voted for the war before they vote against it. Costa co-sponsored the resolution that gave Trump the green light, then disappeared when the real vote came. That’s not a representative. That’s an accessory who doesn’t want his picture taken.”
Kruse is also drawing a distinction between his campaign and that of Lourin Hubbard, the other Democrat in the race who has positioned himself as a progressive.
Hubbard, a young SEIU organizer, has good intentions, Kruse said. “The two parties have spent decades manufacturing consent so thoroughly that most people cannot imagine the rules that would allow for actual truth-telling in politics.”
Running as a Democrat means checking into a system that works like a roach motel. You can check in, but you can never check out. No matter how progressive your heart, the party machinery, from its leadership down to its donors, demands loyalty on the votes that matter. That is how you end up with Democrats who talk about peace while co-sponsoring 30-day war resolutions. That is how you end up with a party that has spent years not only wedded to the empire but collectively covering for the Epstein-class overlords who fund both sides of the duopoly.
Hubbard may have different instincts than Costa. But he is entering the same structure. And the structure does not change. It absorbs.
“I don’t question Lourin’s sincerity,” Kruse said. “I question whether any Democrat, no matter how well-intentioned, can escape a party that has spent 50 years perfecting the art of the shell game. They have built a system where NPP candidates basically do not exist in the public’s imagination. I’m here to prove that wrong.”
Kruse is running on “The America First Production Act,” a 20-year plan to bring 400 overseas bases home and restore Congress’s constitutional war powers.
“Jim Costa is the midwife the Democrats chose for this atrocity,” Kruse said. “Lourin Hubbard is walking into the same trap. I’m the one saying the emperor has no clothes. And neither does the party that dresses him. I’m here to end the shell game.”
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ABOUT LANCE KRUSE
Lance Kruse is a candidate for Congress in California’s 21st District, running as an NPP (No Party Preference) independent. He submitted his nominating signatures on March 6, 2026, and was confirmed as a certified candidate by the Fresno County Board of Elections on March 7. His campaign is an experiment in revolutionary education. It is meant to reorganize our political economy against genocide, ecocide, and offensive wars. “No Democrats. No Republicans. Just us.” [Kr-“us”-e] He does not accept corporate, AIPAC, DMFI, or other Zionist-aligned contributions.
CONTACT:
Lance Kruse