curated news excerpts & citations
WSJ: If Seizing Iran’s Nuclear Material Is the Endgame, Here’s What It Would Take
President Trump has said preventing Iran from ever developing nuclear weapons is a central aim of the war he is waging. In the absence of regime change—or at least a deal to hand over its enriched uranium by Tehran’s leaders—that could mean seizing the country’s fissile material.
Accomplishing that in the face of resistance from Iranian forces would be a complex military operation that could require the deployment of hundreds of troops at one or more sites for days, former U.S. military officers and experts said.
The U.S. military has elite teams specially trained to remove radioactive material from a conflict zone. But locating and seizing the hundreds of kilograms of highly enriched uranium that Iran possesses would require an intricate choreography and could be fraught with risk.
(WSJ more…)
Jennifer Rubin: Trump’s War is the Worst Conceived in American History
… Netanyahu is now back-pedaling furiously. …
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Judd Legum: Kushner breaks pledge, seeks $5 billion more from foreign governments
After Donald Trump won the presidency in 2024, Jared Kushner, his son-in-law, dismissed concerns that his private equity firm would be a vehicle to buy foreign influence.
In December 2024, Kushner said that he “preemptively” raised $1.5 billion earlier that year. The $1.5 billion came from Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund and Lunate, an investment fund linked to the UAE government.
The influx of cash, Kushner said, would allow his firm “to avoid any conflicts” and ensure “we don’t have to raise capital for the next four years.” …
(Judd Legum more…)
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Adam Kinzinger: Why Retiring Members of Congress Still Won’t Stand Up
Even members who know the direction of their party is wrong rarely use the power they have on their way out. The reasons are uncomfortable—and one day many of them will regret it.
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The first reason is pressure. Turning against your own party in a meaningful way is one of the hardest things a member of Congress can do.
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But the second reason is the one people rarely talk about openly.Money.
(Adam Kinzinger more…)
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James Eagle: China is the dominant buyer of Iranian oil
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One of the recurring lessons of energy markets is how quickly economics becomes geopolitics. Trade routes turn into strategic relationships. Currency movements become energy shocks. A handful of decisions in distant capitals can ripple through the global economy in unexpected ways.
(James Eagle more…)
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Dissent in Bloom: How the Modeling Industry Built the Epstein Pipeline
Four men. Four agencies. Decades of the same methods, the same cities, the same victims. The fashion world gave them cover. The U.S. government gave them titles.
…Their names are John Casablancas, Jean-Luc Brunel, Paolo Zampolli, and Jeffrey Epstein. Two of them are dead under suspicious circumstances. One ran a modeling agency funded directly by Epstein. And the fourth is currently serving as a Special Envoy in the current Trump administration.
(Dissent in Bloom more…)
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Hans Christensen: For Science, Epstein Scandal is a Wake-up Call
The scientific community is stunned by the extent of entanglement of academia with the convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, and the willingness of researchers and their institutions to accept funding from an obviously compromised source. In an op-ed in the scientific journal Nature, professor Arthur Caplan urgently advises that safeguards must be put in place to avoid infiltration of illicit money and illicitly motivated funding in universities and other public research institutions.
(Hans Christensen more…)
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Adam Unikowsky: How hard is it to refund the tariffs?
On February 20, 2026, the Supreme Court ruled, correctly in my view, that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) does not authorize tariffs.
While the case was pending, the government collected billions of dollars in IEEPA tariffs. Because the government lost, it must now refund all that money, with interest.
The jury is still out on how eagerly the government will cooperate with the refund process. Early signs, however, are not promising. Among other things, after the Court of International Trade issued an order directing the government to immediately stop liquidating entries subject to the illegal tariffs, the government asserted it couldn’t comply with the order.
In the Paleolithic era of, say, 2022, we would have had no choice but to wince and trust the government. In 2026, we can ask AI whether the government’s assertions are correct. In this post, I’ll first walk through what’s happened so far in the tariff refund litigation and then address whether AI has any role to play.
(Adam Unikowsky more…)
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Steve Vladeck: Taking the TPS Cases Seriously
Two emergency applications seeking to put especially cruel Trump administration immigration policies back into effect are a referendum on the judicial role—and on the emergency docket, in particular.
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404 Media: The Removed DOGE Deposition Videos Have Already Been Backed Up Across the Internet
The DOGE deposition videos a judge ordered removed from YouTube on Friday after they had gone massively viral have since been backed up across the internet, including as a torrent and to the Internet Archive. The videos included DOGE members unable or unwilling to define DEI; discussing how they used ChatGPT and terms such as “black” and “homosexual” to flag grants for termination but not “white” or “caucasian,” and acknowledgements that despite their aggressive cuts they failed to achieve the stated goal of lowering the government deficit.
(404 Media more…)
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Home of the Brave: Meet the Immigrant Delivering Free Groceries to Families Afraid to Leave Their Homes
His small business is suffering, but he’s doing everything he can to support his community.
(Home of the Brave more…)
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Phenix S Halley @ Root: 6 Years After Breonna Taylor’s Killing, Trump Admin Quietly Gets Rid of Law That Could Have Saved Her Life
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A federal policy honoring Taylor has officially been rescinded by the Trump administration, MS Now reported. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche announced the change in a March 2 memo informing attorneys and top supervisors that no-knock entries are permissible.
(Phenix S Halley @ Root more…)
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Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American – March 16, 2026
In early 1775, the people of Boston were bitterly divided. The town was on a peninsula that was almost an island, connected only by a narrow spit of land on which four horses could walk abreast at high tide. There, and on the surrounding lands—Medford, Charlestown, Cambridge, Brookline, Roxbury, Dorchester Heights, Noddle Island, and Governor’s Island—and in the vessels in Boston Harbor and beyond, men, women, and children were weighing their loyalties.
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General Howe ordered the soldiers to torch the town if anyone disturbed their departure. On March 10, he began to load the British ships with soldiers and the Loyalists who wanted to go with them, including Lucy Knox’s parents, who would never see their daughter again. For a week, March winds battered at the loaded ships, keeping them trapped in the harbor. Finally, at 4:00 am on March 17, 120 ships carrying more than 10,000 soldiers and more than 1,000 Tories weighed anchor and left Boston.
(Heather Cox Richardson more…)
Al Jazeera Death toll and injuries live tracker
ICE Accountability Project
ICE deaths 2026 – They deserve remembrance and justice.
- February 25: Nurul Amin Shah Alam
- January 24: Alex Pretti
- January 14: Heber Sanchaz Dominguez
- January 14: Victor Manuel Diaz
- January 9: Parady La
- January 7: Renée Good
- January 6: Luis Beltran Yanez-Cruz
- January 5: Luis Gustavo Nunez Caceres
- January 3: Geraldo Lunas Campos
- December 31, 2025: Keith Porter
Suffering Under President Obama
NACDL Criminal Case Tracker
Texas Tribune: A Walk for Peace: photos of Fort Worth monks’ journey to Washington
Walk for Peace – Dhammacetiya – The Ancient Sacred Buddhist Scripture Stupas
Margaret Chase Smith: Declaration of Conscience
NPR: January 6, 2021: A visual archive
Accountability Initiative ICE List
GriftMatrix
Trump Action Tracker
Timeline: Tracking the Trump Justice Department’s Anti-Voting Shift
Tracking the Lawsuits Against Trump’s Agenda
Trump Pardons Database
Project 2025 Tracker
DOGE Tracker
ProPublica: Elon Musk’s Demolition Crew
Wired: 6 Tools for Tracking the Trump Administration’s Attacks on Civil Liberties
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