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Category: Politics

America’s real leaders are not vain, self-aggrandizing, arrogant, deceitful fools

America’s real leaders are not vain, self-aggrandizing, arrogant, deceitful fools

Tom Friedman writes: The last year has been one of the most depressing of my nearly 50 years as a journalist. It’s not just that I’ve had to watch the Trump administration destroy cherished alliances, like ours with Western Europe and Canada, that have upheld freedom, democracy and global trade since World War II. It’s also been the stunning cowardice and boundless greed with which leaders of big law firms and Big Tech have bent their knees to King Donald…

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How war with Iran might cost Washington the Gulf

How war with Iran might cost Washington the Gulf

Yara Bataineh writes: Just before the [Israeli-U.S.] strikes, Omani Foreign Minister Badr Albusaidi, who had been mediating talks between Washington and Tehran, said negotiations were close to a breakthrough. Iran had accepted key U.S. conditions, including commitments not to accumulate nuclear material capable of producing a weapon and to stop stockpiling enriched uranium. That agreement would have surpassed former U.S. President Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with the Islamic Republic, long a goal of current U.S. President Donald Trump. What appeared…

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How Trump is making China great again

How Trump is making China great again

Politico reports: The 21st century is more likely to belong to Beijing than to Washington — at least that’s the view from four key U.S. allies. Swaths of the public in Canada, Germany, France and the U.K. have soured on the U.S., driven by President Donald Trump’s foreign policy decisions, according to recent results from The POLITICO Poll. Respondents in these countries increasingly see China as a more dependable partner than the U.S. and believe the Asian economic colossus is…

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Deportees sent by Trump to infamous Salvadoran megaprison are still stuck a year later

Deportees sent by Trump to infamous Salvadoran megaprison are still stuck a year later

The Washington Post reports: Brandon Sigaran Cruz was only 9 when his parents brought him and his brother to the United States, far away from the gangs recruiting young boys in the elementary schools of El Salvador. The next time he set foot in his native country was more than a decade later, on March 15 of last year, when the Trump administration deported the 21-year-old alongside more than 260 migrants to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, an…

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Wearing all black at protests makes you guilty of terrorism, prosecutors tell jury

Wearing all black at protests makes you guilty of terrorism, prosecutors tell jury

The Intercept reports: Federal agents raiding the home of two alleged antifa “operatives” seized a telling piece of evidence, a defense attorney said during closing arguments in a landmark trial Wednesday. A printing press. That printing press was never presented to jurors. Still, the government has kept it locked away because it hated the pamphlets and zines it published, lawyer Blake Burns said. Burns represents Elizabeth Soto, one of nine defendants whose fates were in the hands of jurors as…

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Trump foolishly miscalculated the risk of Iran blocking the Strait of Hormuz

Trump foolishly miscalculated the risk of Iran blocking the Strait of Hormuz

The Wall Street Journal reports: Before the U.S. went to war, Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told President Trump that an American attack could prompt Iran to close the Strait of Hormuz. Caine said in several briefings that U.S. officials had long believed Iran would deploy mines, drones and missiles to close the world’s most vital shipping lane, according to people with knowledge of the discussions. Trump acknowledged the risk, these people said, but…

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The Gulf states’ security turned out to be a mirage

The Gulf states’ security turned out to be a mirage

Jadaliyya reports: On Sunday night, the sky above Sitra turned orange. A suspected Iranian drone had struck BAPCO, Bahrain’s main oil processing facility, on an island southeast of Manama. The projectile set the refinery ablaze and sent fires into residential neighborhoods near the plant. Thirty-two Bahrainis were wounded, some critically. By morning, BAPCO had declared force majeure, forcing Bahrain to join Qatar and Kuwait in suspending oil shipments, and further pushing the price of crude oil toward record highs. At…

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War has already displaced nearly a million Lebanese, and aid groups warn of a humanitarian crisis

War has already displaced nearly a million Lebanese, and aid groups warn of a humanitarian crisis

The Associated Press reports: Fatima Nazha slept on the street for two days after she and her family fled their home in Beirut’s southern suburbs following an Israeli mass evacuation order. All of the schools the government turned into shelters were full, and the family couldn’t afford a hotel or an apartment, so she and her husband eventually moved into a tent in the country’s biggest stadium while their kids and grandchildren found shelter near the southern coastal city of…

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‘Our coverage is not truthful’: How Israel is censoring reporting on the war

‘Our coverage is not truthful’: How Israel is censoring reporting on the war

+972 Magazine reports: Since the start of the war with Iran, the Israeli military has imposed strict censorship regulations on local and international media outlets operating inside the country, severely impeding journalists’ ability to cover the situation on the ground. Reporters and networks are prohibited from publishing the precise location of Iranian missile impacts, or even filming or photographing the extent of the damage in a way that could give away the location — restrictions designed, in the words of…

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This DHS official oversees the security of federal elections. He wants to ban voting machines

This DHS official oversees the security of federal elections. He wants to ban voting machines

By Doug Bock Clark This story was originally published by ProPublica In his top post at the Department of Homeland Security, David Harvilicz sets policy on protecting the nation’s elections infrastructure, including voting machines. He’s also the co-founder of a company with James Penrose, who helped hatch debunked conspiracy theories blaming hacked voting machines for Donald Trump’s loss in the 2020 presidential election. Penrose assisted in a push to seize voting machines to overturn Trump’s defeat. On social media, Harvilicz…

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Putin’s GRU-linked election fixers are already in Budapest to help Orbán

Putin’s GRU-linked election fixers are already in Budapest to help Orbán

VSquare reports: Moscow has dispatched a team to Budapest to interfere in Hungary’s April 2026 parliamentary elections, VSquare has learned from multiple European national security sources. The operation, overseen by Putin confidant Sergei Kiriyenko, is designed to keep Viktor Orbán in power — and follows the same blueprint Russia used in Moldova. The Kremlin has tasked a team of political technologists with interfering in Hungary’s April 2026 parliamentary elections, VSquare has learned from multiple European national security sources . The…

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China’s clean energy push has made it less vulnerable to energy shocks, including the Iran war

China’s clean energy push has made it less vulnerable to energy shocks, including the Iran war

Inside Climate News reports: When Gary Dirks arrived in China in 1995, the country’s government was looking to source more of its energy at home. Dirks was the incoming country head for BP, but efforts to find more oil and gas in the country had largely fizzled. So government leaders pivoted, Dirks said. China invested heavily in its domestic coal and, later, in building wind and solar energy. Now, those investments and other steps are shielding China from more severe…

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Nothing to lose: Iran’s bankruptcy is its best weapon against the wealthy Gulf states

Nothing to lose: Iran’s bankruptcy is its best weapon against the wealthy Gulf states

A commentator at bne IntelliNews writes: There is an old saying, attributed to the British Foreign Office in colonial days: “Keep the Persians hungry, and the Arabs fat.” Washington appears to have taken that advice to heart. The trouble is, when the hungry finally have nothing left to lose, it is the fat who pay the price. There is something darkly rational about Iran’s approach to this war. The Islamic Republic entered the conflict already ruined. Inflation was running above…

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Iran’s conventional navy is largely gone. The threat to the Strait of Hormuz is not

Iran’s conventional navy is largely gone. The threat to the Strait of Hormuz is not

RFE/RL reports: The United States and Israel have largely destroyed Iran’s conventional naval fleet in a massive bombing campaign since February 28. But Tehran’s threat to the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most important shipping routes, has not diminished. Iran has effectively closed the narrow waterway, through which 20 percent of the world’s oil supplies flow, by using asymmetric warfare tactics. Besides Iran’s conventional navy, the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), the elite branch of the country’s…

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Hegseth: Strait of Hormuz ‘open for transit’ (by dolphins) but not by shipping

Hegseth: Strait of Hormuz ‘open for transit’ (by dolphins) but not by shipping

Hegseth: They are exercising sheer desperation in the straits of hormuz, something we're dealing with. We have been dealing with it and don't need to worry about it. pic.twitter.com/xJS8gIMRWZ — Acyn (@Acyn) March 13, 2026 The Guardian reports: Pete Hegseth on Friday again claimed the US military campaign against Iran has been an unprecedented success, using a Pentagon press conference to accuse journalists of downplaying Washington’s supposed gains on the battlefield. Speaking alongside the chair of the joint chiefs of…

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