Abortion

Axios - Sen. Josh Hawley's push for a vote in Congress to ban the abortion drug mifepristone is elevating an issue that many Republicans were hoping not to address before the midterm elections. Lawmakers and the White House face internal tensions over how far to go in limiting access to the procedure and risking blowback from women and swing voters.

Hawley (R-Mo.) introduced his bill last week alongside leaders in the anti-abortion movement.

• It was a sign of frustration with the pace of an FDA investigation into the safety of the pills that Hawley helped spur last year.
• His bill also comes as anti-abortion advocates are showing increased impatience with the Trump administration for not taking faster action against the pills and for defending mifepristone against red state lawsuits.

Any new federal limits on the availability of the widely used pills would be highly controversial and portrayed by opponents as backtracking on President Trump's leave-it-to-the-states 2024 campaign pledge. While Hawley's bill won't get Democratic votes needed to advance in the Senate, it's roiling the waters within the GOP caucus.

• Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), locked in a tough primary, quickly endorsed the legislation.
• Senate health committee Chair Bill Cassidy (R-La.), who's also facing a primary challenge, held a hearing in January on what he termed the dangers of mifepristone but hasn't said whether his panel will take up Hawley's bill. More

Tax changes

NPR - Taxpayers who purchased a new vehicle in 2025 may qualify for a new deduction this filing season. It comes from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which also removes taxes on tips and overtime for qualifying workers, but eliminates the tax credit for electric vehicle purchases. Here's what you should know:

🚘 The deduction only works on new vehicles purchased after Dec. 31, 2024. If you purchased a used car, you are out of luck.
🚘 To qualify, the vehicle's final assembly process must have occurred in the U.S. You can determine this with your vehicle identification number.
🚘 The vehicle must be for personal use and not for a business purpose.
🚘 Unlike most tax deductions, this one is available to taxpayers who take the standard deduction instead of itemizing. 

Airports

The Federal Aviation Administration announced yesterday that it is tightening safety rules in busy airspace around major airports. The agency will suspend the use of visual separation between helicopters and planes. Visual separation is a procedure where air traffic controllers warn pilots about nearby aircraft and instruct them to avoid other craft through visual observation. The agency's decision comes more than a year after the collision of a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter with an American Airlines regional jet near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, killing 67 people. The FAA also identified two recent close calls that prompted this policy change.The Federal Aviation Administration announced yesterday that it is tightening safety rules in busy airspace around major airports. The agency will suspend the use of visual separation between helicopters and planes. Visual separation is a procedure where air traffic controllers warn pilots about nearby aircraft and instruct them to avoid other craft through visual observation. The agency's decision comes more than a year after the collision of a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter with an American Airlines regional jet near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, killing 67 people. The FAA also identified two recent close calls that prompted this policy change.

Iran War

NPR - A wave of attacks from Iran today has hit the world’s largest liquefied natural gas complex in Qatar. Iran also targeted a gas field and facility in the United Arab Emirates and fired missiles and drones at Saudi Arabia. The attacks come after Israel bombed Iran’s South Pars gas field yesterday. Energy prices surged immediately, driving oil up to around $110 a barrel, which is about $40 higher than before the conflict began. President Trump said on social media late yesterday that Israel acted independently when it struck the gas field in Iran. 

NBC News -   Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard declined to say if Iran's nuclear program presented an "imminent threat," deflecting questions from lawmakers during a Senate hearing yesterday about whether U.S. intelligence backed up White House statements on the rationale for starting the war. Gabbard has stayed mostly silent on the war since it began on Feb. 28. Her reluctance to offer a full-throated endorsement of President Donald Trump's decision to wage war on Iran, unlike other Cabinet officials, renewed questions about her standing in the administration. More

The Guardian -   More than 3,000 people are believed to have been killed across Iran so far, and the Pentagon says more than 15,000 targets in the country have been hit in the first two weeks. A girls’ school in the south-eastern Iranian city of Minab lies in rubble, with about 175 children and teachers killed in a strike that the US is believed to have carried out. The strait of Hormuz, the narrow sea passage turned chokepoint for the Gulf’s oil and the world, is effectively closed.

And the bill, according to analysts at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, is growing by roughly half a billion dollars every day.

A week after American and Israeli forces began their assault on Iran, and its repressive leadership, Pentagon officials told lawmakers in a closed-door briefing that the cost of the war had already exceeded $11.3bn in its first six days.

But that figure is only part of the story: sources familiar with the content of the briefing told the Guardian the estimate appeared largely limited to munitions expenditures and not the full cost of the opening days of the conflict, which could include forces deployed to the region, medical expenses, and the replacement of military aircraft lost in combat.

By day six, CSIS put the cumulative cost at $12.7bn. Today, it is likely to have exceeded $18bn – and the meter is still running.

Damien Gayle, The Guardian -   Since the beginning of March, thousands of Israeli American bombs and missiles have fallen on Iran’s oil refineries, military bases, industrial areas and nuclear facilities. Iran, in exchange, has launched retaliatory suicide drones and ballistic missiles at similar targets inside Israel and across Gulf states including the UAE, Qatar and Bahrain.

Every impact is a human and environmental catastrophe, which together will add up to a toxic legacy that will blight the whole region – but especially Iran – for decades to come.

With attacks coming thick and fast, environmental monitors have struggled to keep up with incidents. Wim Zwijnenburg, a remote sensing specialist with the Dutch peace advocacy organisation Pax, told me on Wednesday that he has already compiled a database of more than 500 incidents of environmental harm inside Iran and a further 100 outside. 

Word

The happiest countries

Bloomberg - Finland is once again the world’s happiest country, according to the World Happiness Report for 2026, its ninth year on top.  The US ranks 23rd, based on a three-year average of quality-of-life factors like income, health, having someone to count on, a sense of freedom, generosity and trust. Endless scrolling doesn’t help.

So, what’s Finland’s secret? Nature, and a culture built around it. Wellness here means living with the seasons and getting outside. Foraging and hiking are everyday habits, protected by “everyman’s right” (jokaisenoikeudet), which lets anyone roam, camp and fish freely, as long as they respect the land.

The rest of the world is taking note. Visitor numbers are rising despite Finland’s 830-mile border with Russia. So is its sauna culture, a ritual of heat, cold and contrast that reflects a broader mindset: pleasure and discomfort go hand in hand.

Donald Trump

Trump's last resort: Inside his four-part plan to topple American democracy

Immigration

The Guardian -  The Trump administration is deporting a significant number of parents without asking them if they have children or allowing them to decide whether to bring their children with them, in apparent violation of its own policies, a major report has found.

In interviews with dozens of parents deported to Honduras, as well as physicians and psychologists, government officials and staff at reception centers for deportees, researchers found that many parents were deported quickly after they were detained, without a chance to arrange for the care of their children.

According to the report by the Women’s Refugee Commission (WRC) and Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), parents were forced to leave their children under the informal care of friends or family members who were also vulnerable to deportation. Others were separated from young children and toddlers – including a mother who was deported without her two-month-old baby.

Immigration officials “didn’t ask me anything”, one 22-year-old mother told researchers in Honduras, where she was sent without her two-year-old child. “They never said: ‘You have a daughter, you can bring her,’ because I would have brought [my daughter], she is very attached to me.”

Epstein

How a CEO tried to unlock his secrets about Trump

Headline USA - Sen. Ron Wyden, D-OR, accused Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche of personally intervening to block the Drug Enforcement Administration from releasing documents related to a secret drug trafficking investigation into Jeffrey Epstein.

Wyden, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, announced on social media that “Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche — Trump’s former personal lawyer who was also responsible for Ghislaine Maxwell’s transfer to a cushy club fed — has intervened to block the DEA from providing details of a mysterious Epstein investigation to my Finance Com.”

Meanwhile. . .

NBC News - The late Cesar Chavez, one of the nation's most prominent civil rights leaders, has been accused of sexually abusing girls and women.  Civil rights icon Dolores Huerta said in a statement that Chavez, her co-founder of what became the United Farm Workers, manipulated and pressured her into sex once and, in a second encounter, forced her “against my will” to have sex

Trump regime

Newsworthy News -  President Trump deployed Cold War-era emergency powers to restart offshore oil drilling off California’s coast, bypassing state laws and court orders in a move that ignites a constitutional showdown with Governor Gavin Newsom. Trump invoked the Defense Production Act to override California’s environmental regulations and restart dormant offshore oil platforms shut down since a 2015 spill. The executive order enables Sable Offshore Corp. to bypass state approval and court-ordered safety requirements, citing national security amid the Iran war energy crisis.

Governor Newsom vows immediate lawsuits, calling the move a “power grab” that threatens California’s coastline.

Immigration

Newsworthy News -   Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has reversed a 25-year policy, stripping undocumented immigrants of their ability to obtain occupational licenses across 46 regulated professions—a move that could affect over 778,000 licensees and ripple through the state’s construction, personal services, and small business sectors.

AG Paxton’s new legal opinion overturns a 2001 interpretation, barring undocumented immigrants from obtaining occupational licenses in Texas effective January 26, 2026.

The Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation now requires proof of lawful presence for license applicants across dozens of fields including electricians, plumbers, cosmetologists, and CDL drivers.

State Senator Sarah Eckhardt warns the rule is a voluntary policy choice—not federally mandated—that threatens 778,000+ current licensees and millions of Texas consumers who depend on their services.

Texas simultaneously expanded licensing pathways for legally present foreign-trained doctors through HB 2038, revealing a two-track approach based on immigration status rather than citizenship alone.

Trump on Iran

                         Democratic Coalition

Word

Sen. Bernie Sanders - The war in Iran has already cost $22.8 billion. For $22.8 billion, we could:

 

• Provide Medicaid to 6.8 million kids

• Build 2.6 million public housing units

• Fund Head Start for 1.3 million

• Hire 240,000 teachers

• Cancel $20,000 in student debt for 1 million borrowers

Silly stuff

Trump on his knowledge 

Markwayne Mullin

Independent, UK - The top Republican on the Senate’s Homeland Security committee has ripped into Sen. Markwayne Mullin, who is asking for his colleagues’ approval to run the Department of Homeland Security under Donald Trump.

Mullin refused to apologize for his comments about Sen. Rand Paul, saying in his opening statements to the committee during his confirmation hearing that he “understands” why Paul’s neighbor attacked him, leaving him with several broken ribs.

The Oklahoma senator, who is set to be the face of the agency behind the president’s anti-immigration agenda, enters the picture after Trump fired Kristi Noem days after she came under bipartisan fire in congressional hearings earlier this month.

Polls

Newsweek -    Trump's overall approval rating is 37 percent compared to a 56 percent disapproval rating. His approval rating with men is 41 percent versus 55 percent disapproval.

It is the lowest approval rating Trump has received from men in his second term in office. In a survey in early February, he received an approval rating of 42 percent from men, with a disapproval rating of 52 percent.

Trump's dipping approval rating comes amid the war with Iran. Recent approval ratings show mixed reaction, as a poll from the conservative-leaning Trafalgar Group said he has a net positive in double digits. In the poll from The Economist and YouGov on Tuesday, Trump's approval rating on Iran is 36 percent and his disapproval 56 percent.

Study Finds -   About 19.3 million American adults, roughly the combined populations of New York City and Los Angeles, have at some point seriously thought about shooting another person. That’s the stunning extrapolation from a new national survey published in JAMA Network Open, an effort to put a number on this poorly understood group and frame it as a focus for gun violence prevention.

Conducted by researchers at the University of Michigan, the study found that about 7.3% of adults reported having those thoughts at some point in their lifetime. Another 3.3%, an estimated 8.5 million people, said they had thought about it in just the past year. Those are not passing frustrations or fleeting anger. Researchers asked specifically about serious thoughts of shooting another person.

Beyond thoughts alone, a meaningful number of people reported taking concrete steps toward carrying out violence. An estimated 4 million adults said they had thought about getting a gun specifically to shoot someone. Roughly 1.5 million reported having actually brought a gun to a location with the intention of shooting someone. For some respondents, those thoughts were paired with concrete steps toward action.

Post Office may run out of cash

The Guardian -  The US Postal Service will run out of funds within a year, unless lawmakers lift a cap on how much money the agency can borrow, according to the postmaster general.

In an interview with the Associated Press, David Steiner warned that the postal service – which relies on stamps and service fees rather than tax dollars to deliver mail six days a week to every address in the country – would run out of cash for employees and vendors by February next year.

The agency has operated with a financial shortfall almost every fiscal year since 2007, as people and businesses have moved toward paperless billing and digital communication, forgoing first-class mail. But mail deliveries have continued, with USPS borrowing money from the US treasury to compensate for losses.

Independent, UK -   Amazon plans to significantly reduce the number of packages it ships through the U.S. Postal Service as the agency struggles to stay afloat financially.

USPS’s biggest customer has scaled back the number of packages it sends through the service and intends to slash that number by at least two-thirds this fall, Amazon sources told The Wall Street Journal.

Nearly 15 percent of packages delivered by USPS in 2025 came from Amazon...

Amazon has relied heavily on USPS’s last-mile service to reach customers in remote and rural areas. The last mile of delivery is the most expensive part of the shipping process, accounting for up to 53 percent of a shipment’s total cost, according to the Association for Supply Chain Management.

Gavin Newsom

5 years ago,

@CAGovernor

Gavin Newsom signed the Free School Meals for All Act — making California the first state in the nation to guarantee free breakfast and lunch to EVERY public school student. Today, 5.8+ million kids eat at school for free

Health

Washington Post - By 2050, a drop in physical activity as a result of a warming climate could result in 470,000 to 520,000 additional deaths and $2.4 billion to $2.59 billion in annual productivity losses, according to a study published in Lancet Global Health

Trump and the law

Occupy Democrats -   A federal judge hammers the Trump administration over the White House East Wing demolition, says that calling it simply an "alteration" requires a "brazen interpretation of the laws of vocabulary."  And he wasn't done there...

“It would have been a heck of a lot easier by any standard to have just gone to Congress to get the authority to do it,” said U.S. District Judge Richard Leon, slamming the administration for using "shifting theories and shifting dynamics” to argue that Trump had the legal authority to perform the demolition.

The case was brought by the National Trust for Historic Preservation who are seeking an end to construction of Trump's ballroom unless he can acquire congressional approval and pass independent reviews. The $400 million ballroom has become a central fixation for Trump despite the floundering economy and a worsening war in the Middle East. He sees the insanely corrupt project — which is being financed by large corporate donations — as a means of eking out a permanent legacy for himself.

In addition to rejecting the idea that Trump can pursue the project under a law that grants the power to pursue "alteration" and "improvement" as "the President may determine," Judge Leon dismissed the idea that the White House falls under the National Park's Authority for approval. “This isn’t any national park. This is an iconic symbol of this nation," he said.

.... Leon has stated that he intends on issuing his final ruling by the end of March. If he rules against Trump, the case will almost certainly move into the appeals process.

Alternet - In its desperation to replace fleeing prosecutors and defectors, President Donald Trump’s DOJ is now loosening hiring requirements for federal prosecutors. Trump’s DOJ says new applicants no longer need have any attorney experience to get a job. They can be fresh out of college, and CNN Chief Legal Affairs Correspondent Paula Reid says Americans can probably expect predictable results.

Washington Post -   A federal judge ruled that the Trump administration’s dismantling of Voice of America was unlawful and ordered more than 1,000 employees, who have spent a full year on paid administrative leave, back to work.

Independent, UK - A journalist in Nashville who was arrested by immigration officers earlier this month argues that the federal government violated her First Amendment rights by “retaliating” against her reporting on the local impacts of Donald Trump’s mass deportation efforts.

Lawyers for the Department of Justice, however, claim she has no such constitutional rights.

... Her arrest — which sparked widespread outrage from press freedom groups and free speech advocates — amounts to unconstitutional “retaliation” for “exercising her First Amendment rights as a journalist reporting on ICE enforcement activities,” according to her attorneys.

But in their response on Tuesday, lawyers with the U.S. the Attorney's Office in Tennessee argue that the Supreme Court has never “explicitly ruled that undocumented immigrants or illegal aliens have protections under the First Amendment.”

Government lawyers said her attorneys “incorrectly represent” that she “clearly has First Amendment rights.”

“Neither history nor precedent indicates that the First Amendment definitively applies to illegal aliens,” they wrote.

Artificial Intelligence

Bloomberg

• Even as big tech companies and some leading AI startups plan to spend billions, if not trillions, of dollars on chips, data centers, electricity and talent, the debate on Wall Street is raging over whether the financial rewards will offset these vast costs.
• The payoff—if it comes—may be a long time away. The industry’s success depends on offering more advanced software, but that means having to educate businesses on what the tech can do in order to convince them to buy at scale.
• It’s not just money that could derail AI’s future, but physical constraints. AI data centers already face long queues to get connected to the grid and lawmakers are beginning to scrutinize their impact on power prices and water resources.
• But high-profile investors say not to underestimate the technology’s impact. Watch Oaktree Capital Management co-founder Howard Marks chat with Bloomberg TV about his approach.

Oil

Bloomberg - Oil prices stabilized as Iraq started exports via a route that avoids the Strait of Hormuz. The prospect of the narrow chokepoint reopening looks increasingly unlikely without a ceasefire, adding to worries about a growing global energy crisis, with Russia capitalizing on freer sales of its oil to India.

Meanwhile. . .

People -   A Florida hospital fi.led a lawsuit to remove a former patient who was discharged in October 2025. Tallahassee Memorial Hospital says the woman’s continued stay is using resources and preventing the bed from being available for others

Independent,  UK - Marriage between first cousins is still legal in Florida after a bill banning the union failed to pass the state Senate. While the Sunshine State bans marriage between most family members, Floridians are still allowed to tie the knot with their first cousins.

NPR - Arizona’s attorney general is accusing Kalshi of running an illegal gambling business, marking the first criminal charges against the popular prediction market site. Users of the site bet billions of dollars each week on everything from the number of rate cuts the U.S. will see this year to what politicians might say during public appearances. State prosecutors claim that Kalshi, which is based in New York City, operates without a gambling license, allowing residents to wager on sports and elections without approval from Arizona regulators.  Sports gambling is regulated by the Arizona gaming commission, and gambling on elections is illegal in the state.

NPR - A sweeping review of cannabis studies over the past 45 years found that there is little evidence that the drug helps with anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder or depression

Iran

How many people have been displaced in Iran? Up to 3.2 million people, according to the UN’s refugee agency. Here, Tehran residents speak about their daily life under bombardment. NPR - Iran launched a barrage of missile attacks on Israel after confirming the deaths of two high-ranking officials, Ali Larijani and Gholamreza Soleimani. The Revolutionary Guard announced that it launched multiple warhead missiles today targeting the Tel Aviv area. Israel also carried out an assault on central Beirut overnight, resulting in the deaths of 10 people. The Israeli military stated that it aimed to target Hezbollah militants and their installations.

NPR’s Arezou Rezvani tells Up First that she spent a few hours at the Haji Omeran border crossing interviewing people who were leaving Iran and entering Iraq. During that time, she says that one of the most striking things she noticed was how terrified people were to speak. Rezvani spoke with a woman in her 60s from a border city in Iran who asked not to be named for fear of government reprisal, even outside of the country. The woman avoided talking about the war, but did tell Rezvani that she wished the airstrikes on her city had killed her, expressing how her life had become unbearable. Iran has been under an intense internet blackout for the last couple of weeks, making it hard to contact people inside the country. Iranians who have managed to get online report seeing increased checkpoints in their cities and towns, where security forces are checking phones for apps used to bypass the blackout.

The WRECK America Act

Alternet - President Donald Trump has demanded that Congress treat the SAVE America Act as its "no. 1 priority," but according to a new analysis from the New York Times, the bill would upend the voting process for millions to fix a problem that is "virtually nonexistent."...

Political commentator Jamelle Bouie broke down why the bill would impose "a broad set of new voting restrictions" for no good reason. Trump has claimed that the new rules — requiring proof of citizenship when registering to vote and a photo ID at polling places — will address widespread voter fraud, both from non-citizens voting and from people pretending to be others at polling locations. As Bouie explained, these are two issues that are so rare as to be negligible.

"Both noncitizen voting and in-person voter fraud are virtually nonexistent — they simply do not happen," Bouie explained. "Election officials aren’t flying blind either; every state that requires voter registration requires some identification to register, and 36 states have explicit voter ID laws. No matter where you vote in the United States, you must at some point prove your residence and identity."

The SAVE Act would, then, impose new barriers to voting that are both redundant and, for many, a considerable inconvenience. As Bouie explained further, while supporters of the bill have argued that the requirements around proving citizenship are reasonable, in practice, they require documentation — like birth certificates or passports – that many Americans lack easy access to.

"To register to vote, you would have to prove that you were an American citizen," Bouie wrote. "And the only acceptable documents under the law are a passport, a REAL ID that verifies citizenship, a valid military or tribal ID or a birth certificate. You do not need a sharp mind to see the problems here. Roughly half of Americans do not have a passport and millions of people, especially older Americans, lack easy access to their birth certificates. Overall, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, an estimated 9 percent of eligible voters, or 21.3 million Americans, do not have ready access to documents that could prove their citizenship."

The obstacles do not stop there. Acquiring a passport can cost a minimum of $165, which many low-income Americans simply do not have to spare. New birth certificate copies also carry fees, leading many critics to brand the SAVE Act as a new form of discriminatory "poll taxes." The bill would also require all voter registration to be done in-person, which Bouie explained would be "a serious obstacle for the tens of millions of Americans who are infirm, disabled, rely on public transportation or live in rural areas, far from a government office."

The Hill - Tempers are starting to boil within the Senate Republican Conference as disagreements arise over how to handle President Trump’s No. 1 legislative priority, the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE America) Act, which Trump wants to push through the Senate despite staunch Democratic opposition.

Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), a leading proponent of the bill, angered some colleagues this week by suggesting on social media that Republican senators who don’t want to force Democrats to wage a “talking filibuster” to oppose the legislation should be ousted from the Senate.

“If your senators don’t support using the talking filibuster to pass the SAVE America Act, you might need to replace them,” Lee posted on the social platform X.

That ticked off some Republican senators, according to Senate GOP sources.

One Republican senator said the response to Lee’s post was “not very favorable.”

The squabble reflects rising tensions over how to handle the bill amid intense pressure from Trump to add language to ban no-excuse mail-in voting and to ram it through the chamber even though no Democrats support it.

Epstein files

The Guardian -   The release of the Epstein files has reverberated around the world, leading to at least nine resignations and investigations into high-profile figures, including the former UK ambassador to Washington, Peter Mandelson, and the ex-prince Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor.

The deluge of information has made it hard to assess the extent of the connections but a Guardian data analysis reveals how frequent, deep and longstanding his ties were to a number of high-profile figures.

The Guardian examined more than a million emails released so far and identified over 150,000 unique emails between Epstein and a select group of elites and influential people (including those sent to or from assistants or close associates).

The SAVE Trump, WRECK DEMOCRACY Act

AFL-CIO - The SAVE America Act would require you to have a valid passport or a certified copy of your birth certificate, and present those documents in person at an election office each time you want to register to vote or update your voter registration. If you’ve ever changed your name, such as through marriage, you would need to provide even more documents to convince an election official that you are who you say you are. 

For working people who don’t have the money to get a passport and go on a fancy vacation, or the time to chase down documents and stand in another DMV-style line, this bill could prevent many eligible voters—from every political party—from casting their ballots.  

Newsweek - "Only sick, demented, or deranged people in the House or Senate could vote against THE SAVE AMERICA ACT. If they do, each one of these points, separately, will be used against the user in his/her political campaign for office - A guaranteed loss!" Trump wrote to Truth Social. He described it as one "of the most IMPORTANT & CONSEQUENTIAL pieces of legislation in the history of Congress, and America itself."

Alternet -  President Donald Trump's obsession with ending mail-in voting, even for those who are sick or serving in the military, has several Republicans at odds with him, according to The Hill, and the brewing conflict could further sink the SAVE America Act.

Trump has pushed hard for Republicans in Congress to pass the bill, which would require proof of citizenship for individuals registering to vote and a photo ID at polling places, based on his long-debunked claims that undocumented immigrants are committing widespread voter fraud. While it was able to pass in the House, the SAVE Act has stalled out in the Senate due to the filibuster, and now, some of its other provisions are causing a stir among Republicans.

At Trump's behest, the SAVE Act would also eliminate mail-in voting or absentee voting, even for those serving overseas, living out-of-state or dealing with an illness. The president has long claimed that voting by mail, which was more widely embraced by Democrats in 2020, is another source of fraud, despite providing no evidence to support the idea. According to a Tuesday report from The Hill, this provision has gone down poorly with several Republicans in states where these voting methods are widely popular.

Word

Iran war

Factpost - Reporter: The Irish president has said that your war against Iran is illegal. It's an attack on international law.

Trump: Who said that?.... Reporter: The Irish president. Trump: Look, he's lucky I exist. That's all I can say.

Daily Mail, UK  -   Donald Trump's inner circle is growing alarmed that he may be losing control of the Iran war after allied countries flatly rejected his plan to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

Trump has demanded US allies deploy warships to reopen the critical oil passageway, but France, Japan, Australia and the United Kingdom have all declined to help protect commercial shipping from Iranian attack.  

Gas prices have surged to an average of $3.80 a gallon from $2.90 before the conflict began three weeks ago, while the narrow strait - through which a fifth of the world's oil flows - remains blocked by the threat of Iranian mines and missiles

NBC News -   The director of the National Counterterrorism Center, a retired Green Beret and longtime supporter of President Donald Trump, said he has resigned over the war with Iran. "I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran. Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation," Joe Kent said in a statement posted on X. "It is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby."

Axios - Countries across Asia are imposing emergency measures — rationing energy, closing universities, shortening workweeks and even changing how crematoriums operate — to manage the fallout from the Iran war, Axios' Emily Peck writes.

• Bangladesh closed universities.
• South Korea capped gas prices for the first time in nearly three decades.
• Thailand is encouraging work from home.
• Some local governments in the Philippines ordered civil servants to work four days a week.
• Pakistan has shut schools, mandated a four-day workweek for some government offices and raised gas prices, the Financial Times reports.  

NBC News - Military officials have included options in regular war planning for Trump to end the conflict in Iran should he decide to do so, six people familiar with the plans told NBC News. So far, he hasn’t.

The timeline for the war’s duration “could change every day,” one source said. As the conflict widens, America’s stated terms for ending the war have varied wildly, and aides and allies have sought to pull the president in different directions. 

The off-ramps are built into daily war planning, along with options for escalation if the White House seeks to increase the pressure on Iran. Some in communication with Trump who favor an exit strategy are concerned about global economic instability, while others are focused on the opportunity to erode the regime’s influence in the region by staying.

Trump said one of his predecessors told him he wished he had been the one to bomb Iran, but denials from four former presidents’ staffs say otherwise. Read more about Trump’s war planning here.

Bloomberg - Israel said it killed Iran’s security chief Ali Larijani in an overnight strike, intensifying the region-wide war which shows no sign of abating. Donald Trump reiterated his appeals for other nations to help secure the Strait of Hormuz, as he threatened to expand strikes on Iran’s Kharg Island to target its oil infrastructure. And the UAE was forced to close its airspace for about two hours overnight as its defenses intercepted drones and missiles.

NPR - A second front in the U.S. and Israel's war with Iran is heating up in Lebanon, where Israel has intensified ground attacks on the Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah. Israel’s defense minister says the military has killed two top Iranian commanders in a targeted strike. Iran did not immediately confirm the killings. Meanwhile, some of the U.S.’ European allies have refused to send warships to the Strait of Hormuz, a vital oil passage blocked by Iran amid the conflict. NATO countries are set to convene in Brussels today to discuss the escalating tensions in the Middle East....

President Trump has said that NATO allies should help the U.S. reopen the Strait of Hormuz. But European countries firmly believe this isn’t their war... The president didn’t consult them before taking action, and then demanded to use European military bases in the Middle East. European allies are currently focused on Russian President Vladimir Putin, who they see as their enemy, and on Ukraine as a territory to protect. Schultz says it remains to be seen if Trump will intensify pressure to shift European leaders’ priorities. 

MS NOW -   Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, during a televised press briefing at the Pentagon on the Iran war on March 13, vowed this about America’s response to Iran’s ruling regime: “We will keep pushing, keep advancing. No quarter, no mercy for our enemies.”

These words in themselves could be a violation of both U.S. and international law...

The law of war prohibits military leaders from the speech act of announcing “no quarter” alone.

Dating back to at least the Civil War, the denial of quarter has been forbidden. As articulated in the 1863 Lieber Code (Instructions for the Government of Armies of the United States in the Field, General Order No. 100), “It is against the usage of modern war to resolve, in hatred and revenge, to give no quarter. No body of troops has the right to declare that it will not give, and therefore will not expect, quarter.” (emphasis added) This rule would subsequently be incorporated into treaties to which the United States is a party, including in the regulations annexed to the 1907 Hague Convention IV, and as customary law binding on all states. Importantly, this law of war rule applies to air, land and sea warfare. 

As reflected in the Lieber Code (and the Department of Defense’s own Law of War Manual), the ban on denial of quarter includes both: 1) a prohibition on conducting hostilities on the basis that legitimate offers of surrender by enemy personnel will not be accepted, but instead that there should be no survivors, and 2) a prohibition on simply declaring no quarter itself. 

In other words, the law of war prohibits military leaders from the speech act of announcing “no quarter” alone.

Alternet -  One of President Donald Trump’s staunchest supporters has a warning for him: Americans will not support his war against Iran “forever.”

“I think they will back him for a little while, but they will not back him forever,” Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) told Fox Business’ “Kudlow” on Monday. He went on to identify “three huge challenges” facing the administration including keeping the Strait of Hormuz open, stabilizing the global economy and dismantling the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. If he succeeds in all three, he will be regarded as a “genius,” Gingrich argued, but if he fails it will be “a step into quicksand.” 

Gingrich, despite supporting Trump in all three of his presidential campaigns and generally aligning with him ideologically, has occasionally parted ways with his fellow Republican. 

Alternet -   The Atlantic's Jonathan Lemire, during a Tuesday morning, March 17 appearance on MS NOW's "Morning Joe," argued that Iran, its "diminished" capacity, could be even more dangerous — from holding up the flow of oil in the Strait of Hormuz to the possibility of terrorist attacks in the United States. And some Washington insiders interviewed by Politico fear that Trump in way over his head with Iran.

Politico's Megan Messerly, in an article published on March 17, reports, "When the U.S. started firing Tomahawk missiles at Iran late last month, many of President Donald Trump's allies hoped it would be a quick, surgical operation, similar to last year's strike against Iran's nuclear facilities or the ouster of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro in January. Though uneasy, they were reassured by the belief that Trump's open-ended objectives gave him the flexibility to declare victory whenever he saw fit. Now, more than two weeks into the campaign, some of those allies believe the president no longer controls how, or when, the war ends."

Messerly adds, "They fear Iran's attacks on oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz, which have rattled global crude markets and threaten broader economic distress, are boxing Trump into a situation where escalating the conflict — potentially even putting American boots on the ground — becomes the only way to credibly claim victory."