DOJ pushes to supress state bar ethics investigations into DOJ lawyers

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…

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The psychological drive for order predicts conspiracy thinking

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…

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How Netanyahu once again demonstrated that ‘America is a thing you can move very easily’

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….

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Kash Patel’s latest firings ousted FBI counterintelligence agents with expertise in Iran

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…

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As the CIA arms Iran’s Kurds for regime change, why is the opposition against them?

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…

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Iran’s Islamic Republic is designed for survival

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…

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The casino-fication of war through Polymarket

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…

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Trump’s former AI adviser sees the targeting of Anthropic as part of a much larger political breakdown

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…

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Leaked Interior Department database reveals revisionist plans to rewrite American history

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…

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Trita Parsi: ‘Tehran calculates that the war can only end durably if the cost for the U.S. rises dramatically’

Trita Parsi: ‘Tehran calculates that the war can only end durably if the cost for the U.S. rises dramatically’

Trita Parsi tweets: 1. Tehran is not looking for a ceasefire and has rejected outreach from Trump. The reason is that they believe they committed a mistake by agreeing to the ceasefire in June – it only enabled the US and Israel to restock and remobilize to launch war again. If they agree to a ceasefire now, they will only be attacked again in a few months. 2. For a ceasefire to be acceptable, it appears difficult for Tehran to…

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Oil prices soar amid worries of sustained war in Iran

Oil prices soar amid worries of sustained war in Iran

The Washington Post reports: The widening conflict in Iran is shaking financial and energy markets worldwide as tankers in a key shipping corridor are targeted and oil prices begin to soar, threatening to escalate the affordability crunch facing U.S. voters. Major stock indexes recovered midday after a heavy morning of losses. Around 1:30 p.m. Eastern time, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was slightly in the red and effectively flat. The S&P 500 index also was flat. The Nasdaq tipped into…

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The money behind the war against Iran

The money behind the war against Iran

Judd Legum writes: In private calls over the last several weeks, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) reportedly urged President Trump to attack Iran. Iran is a top regional rival of Saudi Arabia, and MBS had become concerned about Iran’s growing military capabilities. The lobbying campaign achieved success on Saturday, when Trump announced he had begun “major combat operations in Iran.” Trump launched a war even though U.S. intelligence assessed that Iran posed no imminent threat to the United…

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The illusion of control: miscalculation and the road to war with Iran

The illusion of control: miscalculation and the road to war with Iran

Mohammad Yaghi writes: War between the United States, Israel, and Iran has now moved from threat to reality. What had been framed as coercive diplomacy backed by calibrated force has crossed into open interstate confrontation. Yet the underlying logic that produced this outcome has not changed. The road to war was not paved by a sober calculation of costs and benefits, but by an illusion of control: the belief that Washington could coerce Iran into submission through threats, deployments, and…

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The unresolved contradictions that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei leaves behind

The unresolved contradictions that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei leaves behind

Mehrzad Boroujerdi writes: The 13th-century Persian poet Saadi once offered a prescient warning: “He who would not practice statecraft with his foe will not be able to maintain his rule.” It is a maxim Ayatollah Ali Khamenei chose not to heed. “The enemy” was among the most frequently invoked terms in the lexicon of Iran’s late supreme leader — most often directed at the United States and, at times, Israel. In the end, those very adversaries brought his 37-year rule…

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