curated news excerpts & citations
Jennifer Kavanagh @ Responsible Statecraft: Iran wipes out US-Israeli radars & sensors, changing course of war
This might be an answer to the biggest question today: why does the airspace suddenly seems penetrable, even against a wounded Tehran military?
A month into the U.S. military campaign against Iran, Israel’s vaunted air defense system is showing its limits. Just in the past 10 days, major cities including Tel Aviv, Dimona, and Arad sustained significant damage when Iranian missiles successfully evaded Israel’s network of interceptors.
The most obvious explanation for the apparent failures is that depletion of Israel’s interceptor stockpiles is forcing the Israel Defense Forces to ration munitions or prioritize targets. But the faults in Israel’s air defenses almost certainly have deeper roots. After all, even if forced to defend only the most important locations, Israel would almost certainly place Dimona — a city located near several of Israel’s key nuclear facilities — at the top of the list.
The more worrisome reality is that gaps in Israel’s air defenses may be detection (rather than interception) failures resulting from damage to the radars and sensors that underlie the integrated air defense network shared by the United States, Israel, and Gulf partners. If true, the implications would be dire. Operating without the “eyes” that the American military relies on to identify and mitigate threats, U.S. forces and assets would be much more vulnerable than previously understood.
(Jennifer Kavanagh @ Responsible Statecraft more…)
Jennifer Rubin: What ‘deadline’?
Trump is flailing, and Iranians know it
Miles Taylor: Trump called it the “worst deal in history.” Now he’s bombing Iran to get Obama’s deal back.
In 2018, Donald Trump scrapped his predecessor’s Iran nuclear agreement. But the framework he’s negotiating to end the war now looks hauntingly familiar.
Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American – March 30, 2026
…
More shocking in this statement, though, is that Trump appears to be trying to force his will on the Iranians by threatening to commit war crimes. International law recognizes attacks on civilian infrastructure—like those Russian president Vladimir Putin has been carrying out on Ukraine for years—as war crimes. The Geneva Convention specifically prohibits attacks on drinking water, so Trump’s threat to attack the desalination plants that make seawater drinkable is, as Shashank Joshi of The Economist notes, not only stupid because Iran could do the same to other Gulf states, but “also, quite obviously,…very illegal.”
Joshi notes that “[Arizona Democratic senator] Mark Kelly et al were right to warn of illegal orders,” and Charles A. Ray of The Steady State explains that not just Trump but anyone carrying out these orders would be implicated in potential criminality. Trump’s threat comes the day after Christiaan Triebert and John Ismay of the New York Times reported that on the first day of attacks, U.S. forces hit not just the girls’ school we knew about, but also, in a different city, a sports hall used by civilians and a nearby elementary school, killing at least 21 people.
(Heather Cox Richardson more…)
Jonathan V. Last @ Bulwark: Trump Orders War Crimes. Then What?
For one thing, we’d learn a lot about America.
-
Christiaan Triebert and John Ismay @ NY Times: New U.S. Missile Hit Iranian Sports Hall and School, Analysis Shows
The Pentagon used missiles untested in combat in a deadly attack that struck civilian sites near a military compound on Feb. 28, according to visual evidence examined by The Times and weapons experts.
(Christiaan Triebert and John Ismay @ NY Times more…)
-
James Eagle: When Hormuz stopped and the world noticed
(James Eagle more…)
-
Cameron Adams @ Daily Beast: New Evidence Corroborates Claims of Trump Sex Accuser, 13
CONNECTING THE DOTS
More information given by the woman has been backed up.
…A report from South Carolina newspaper The Post and Courier released on Sunday has now corroborated key personal details given by the woman about a third man she claims also sexually assaulted her—named Jimmy Atkins. Those details are not directly related to her accusations against Trump, but suggest that she was truthful about other matters she raised with the FBI.
(Cameron Adams @ Daily Beast more…)
-
Jess Piper: That’s 36!
-
Borowitz: Over 400 of Elon Musk’s Children Attended No Kings Rallies
-
404 Media: An AI Agent Was Banned From Creating Wikipedia Articles, Then Wrote Angry Blogs About Being Banned
The incident is yet another example of volunteer Wikipedia editors fighting to keep the world’s largest repository of human knowledge free of AI-generated slop.
-
Bill McKibben: The thing changing the world this year is…batteries.
…
Which is why now is the time to scroll back up to the top of this article, and look at the graph there, courtesy of Nick Fulghum at Ember. It shows California’s electric grid yesterday. The huge yellow blob in the middle represents solar generation, the absolutely dominant source of supply from about 8 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. when it drops very quickly to zero. This is a phenomenon called sunset, which used to be the main argument against solar power.But now look at the purple blob to its right—that’s battery storage coming online as the sun goes down. Those batteries spent the afternoon soaking up sunshine—cheap cheap sunshine—and now they’re distributing it back to the grid. As Californians get home from work, turn on lights, cook dinner, start charging their EVs, and run their frozen margarita machines (I may have an idealized idea of California life), batteries are providing most of the power, outstripping imported power (much of which is renewable too), natural gas, and other sources like nuclear. (You’ll notice wind picking up too, as the onshore breezes start to blow from the Pacific).
This is entirely different from how this graph would have looked even a year or two ago.
(Bill McKibben more…)
xkcd: Home Solar
Al Jazeera Death toll and injuries live tracker
ICE Accountability Project
ICE deaths 2026 – They deserve remembrance and justice.
- March 16: Royer Perez-Jimenez
- March 14: Naseer Paktiawil
- 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
Leave a Reply