Music: Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan & Michael Brook — ‘Crest’
War set to cost Israel $3 billion a week if current limits on economy persist, ministry warns
The Times of Israel reports: The cost to Israel’s economy from the war with Iran is estimated to reach NIS 9.4 billion ($3 billion) a week, if nationwide restrictions on economic activity remain in place, the Finance Ministry warned on Wednesday. In a letter sent to Home Front Command chief Maj. Gen. Shai Klapper on Wednesday, Finance Ministry Director General Ilan Rom asked to ease restrictions to allow for a gradual, partial reopening of businesses and workplaces as early as…
Gavin Newsom likens Israel to ‘an apartheid state’ while decrying war on Iran
The Guardian reports: Gavin Newsom, the Democratic California governor, likened Israel to “an apartheid state” on Tuesday in comments sharply critical of the country’s joint war with the US against Iran. Newsom, seen as a frontrunner for his party’s presidential nomination in 2028, made the comment during an appearance in Los Angeles to promote his book, Young Man in a Hurry: A Memoir of Discovery. He was asked if the US should rethink its military partnership with Israel. “It breaks…
‘No to war’: Prime Minister Sánchez doubles down after Trump threat to cut off trade with Spain
The Guardian reports: The Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has responded to Donald Trump’s extraordinary threat to cut off all trade with Spain over his government’s refusal to facilitate the US’s attacks against Iran, comparing the growing conflict in the Middle East to playing “Russian roulette with the destiny of millions”. Sánchez, who has been one of the most vociferous European critics of Israel’s conduct in Gaza, said his government’s position on the widening instability could be summed up in…
Texas Latinos turned out in massive numbers for Democrats
Politico reports: Latino voters flocked to Tuesday’s Democratic primary in Texas in droves, reversing a long-running erosion for the party ahead of this year’s pivotal midterms. The numbers were dramatic: In five different rural majority-Latino counties, more votes were cast in Tuesday’s Democratic primary than for Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election. “These very Hispanic counties are amongst the swingiest in the country, and they’re really telling us something,” said Mike Madrid, an anti-Trump GOP strategist who wrote a…
Kristi Noem misled Congress about Corey Lewandowski’s role in DHS contracts
By Joshua Kaplan and Justin Elliott This story was originally published by ProPublica Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem misled Congress on Tuesday about the powers of her controversial top aide Corey Lewandowski, according to records reviewed by ProPublica and four current and former DHS officials. Lewandowski has an unusual role at DHS, where he is not a paid government employee but is nonetheless acting as a top official, helping Noem run the sprawling agency. For months, members of Congress have…
DOJ pushes to supress state bar ethics investigations into DOJ lawyers
Bloomberg reports: The Justice Department is seeking to empower Attorney General Pam Bondi to suspend state bar ethics investigations into current and former DOJ lawyers—a step outside attorneys quickly criticized as an illegal intervention into state-run processes. The proposed regulation, posted in the Federal Register Wednesday, would aim to halt state-level ethics proceedings against DOJ lawyers while the department conducts its own review, which would diminish local bar associations’ power. It comes as Bondi, members of her leadership team, and…
The psychological drive for order predicts conspiracy thinking
PsyPost reports: People who have a strong psychological need to find patterns and strict rules in their everyday lives are more likely to believe in conspiracy theories. A recent study published in the journal Cognitive Processing revealed that this preference for rigid structure can lead people to accept conspiratorial ideas, even when they possess strong scientific reasoning skills. These results suggest that fact-checking alone might not be enough to change minds, as conspiracy theories offer a comforting sense of order…
Music: Varijashree Venugopal — ‘Chasing the Horizon’ ft. Hamilton de Holanda & Victor Wooten
How Netanyahu once again demonstrated that ‘America is a thing you can move very easily’
Axios reports: MAGA’s ascendant “America First” wing erupted after Secretary of State Marco Rubio effectively blamed Israel for drawing the U.S. into war with Iran. Why it matters: Rubio’s remarks were the first time a Trump official had so explicitly acknowledged Israel as a driving force behind the war — landing at a moment when Americans’ public support for Israel has hit historic lows. “We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action” against Iran, Rubio told reporters on Capitol Hill on Monday….
Kash Patel’s latest firings ousted FBI counterintelligence agents with expertise in Iran
MS Now reports: When FBI Director Kash Patel fired a dozen FBI agents and staff last week for their role in the classified documents investigation of Donald Trump, he targeted an elite counter espionage unit that investigates threats from foreign adversaries and specializes in Iran, according to more than a half dozen sources with knowledge of the firings. The firings came as Patel claimed — without evidence — that the team of FBI agents who investigated Trump’s hoarding of top-secret…
As the CIA arms Iran’s Kurds for regime change, why is the opposition against them?
Güney Yıldız writes: The CIA is working to arm Kurdish forces inside Iran. President Trump called Kurdish leaders personally over the weekend — and on Tuesday spoke directly with Mustafa Hijri, president of the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan, whose camps the IRGC had just struck with drones. Benjamin Netanyahu arrived at the White House with Kurdish uprising numbers already mapped. Weapons have reportedly been smuggled into western Iran since last year’s twelve-day war. Israeli strikes are targeting Iranian military…
Iran’s Islamic Republic is designed for survival
Ali Hashem writes: The latest Israeli and U.S. war on Iran began with airstrikes on the home and offices of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. The premise seemed to be that Khamenei’s sudden elimination would pose a dire threat to the current ruling system. The goal would be to achieve what happened in Libya after Muammar al-Qaddafi or in Syria after Bashar al-Assad, where regimes collapsed as soon as their leaders were no longer in power. In those systems, the state’s…
The casino-fication of war through Polymarket
Judd Legum, Rebecca Crosby, and Noel Sims report: On February 28, the United States and Israel began major combat operations in Iran. For some, the consequences of this action were fatal. By Monday, the war had claimed the lives of at least six U.S. soldiers, hundreds of people in Iran, and dozens more in neighboring Gulf states. The bombardment of Iran reportedly destroyed a girls’ primary school, killing about 150 people, the vast majority of them students. A spokesman for…
Trump’s former AI adviser sees the targeting of Anthropic as part of a much larger political breakdown
Matteo Wong writes: Dean Ball helped devise much of the Trump administration’s AI policy. Now he cannot believe what the Department of Defense has done to one of its major technology partners, the AI firm Anthropic. After weeks of negotiations, the Pentagon was unable to force Anthropic to accede to terms that, in Anthropic’s telling, could involve using AI for autonomous weapons and the mass surveillance of Americans, as my colleague Ross Andersen reported over the weekend. So the government…
Leaked Interior Department database reveals revisionist plans to rewrite American history
Reuters reports: The U.S. Interior Department said a database revealing how President Donald Trump’s administration planned to revise information on key phases of American history at national park sites was deliberative and the employees who released it “will be held accountable.” An internal government database first reported by the Washington Post and posted on two public websites on Monday revealed the scope of the Trump administration’s effort to revise or remove information on African-American history, LGBT rights, climate change and…