![\"Toxic](\"https:\/\/kewus.net\/yesterday\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Tehran-oil-depot.webp\" "\\"Toxic")
<\/a><\/p>\nSteven Beschloss: The Threat of Retaliation in America<\/a><\/h2>\nThe Trump regime’s actions are making America less safe. They are exploiting fear to seize more power. We should not be intimidated.<\/em><\/p>\nSo many of the Trump regime\u2019s actions can break your brain.<\/strong> Launch a war against Iran …<\/p>\n… this massive military assault comes in the wake of FBI Director Kash Patel firing a dozen counterintelligence agents and staff whose responsibilities included monitoring possible threats from Iran on American soil.<\/p>\n
CNN reported<\/a> that this gutting was motivated by \u201ca simple reason\u201d: Trump wanted the removal of agents investigating him for keeping classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. But the story by reporter Hannah Rabinowitz also noted that these firings \u201chave added to concern inside the Justice Department and FBI that counterterrorism and intelligence investigations in the wake of the military operation in Iran could be hampered by a mass exodus of national security experts,\u201d removing \u201cdecades of combined experience in identifying the types of threats that sources say could appear\u201d because of the Iran attack.<\/p>\nHow foolish is that?<\/em> Well, extremely foolish if you think that the Trump regime should be committed to keeping America safe.<\/p>\nAccording to Miles Taylor, former counterterrorism operations lead at the Department of Homeland Security, his old department wasn\u2019t in the room when the bombing started and doesn\u2019t appear to have been involved in the defensive planning. Taylor, who now write the valuable Defiance<\/a> newsletter, notes that \u201cthousands of counterterrorism agents, experts and officials have been moved to \u2018immigration\u2019 enforcement.\u201d
\n…<\/p>\nI think it\u2019s important to hear from On Tyranny<\/em> author Timothy Snyder, who just published a Substack piece entitled \u201cThe Desire for Terror<\/a>.\u201d He talks about \u201cself-terrorism,\u201d which involves \u201callowing things to fall apart, and then grabbing opportunely at a bit of the falling wreckage, which is something that Trump does well.\u201d Snyder explicitly states:\u201cA purpose of the war on Iran might well be to provoke a terrorist attack inside the United States.\u201d …
\n
\n(Steven Beschloss more…)<\/a><\/p>\nHeather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American – March 9, 2026<\/a><\/h2>\nIt has become clear that Trump had no plan in Iran other than to strike it, knock out the leaders he didn\u2019t like, and hope the Iranian people would rise up and put in place new leaders he could deal with. …<\/p>\n
Andrew Egger of The Bulwark<\/em> explains that the Trump administration didn\u2019t bother to have a theory for why the U.S. was going to war with Iran, or to explain to the American people why such a war would be a good thing, because they didn\u2019t think there was going to be a war, just a fast, hard strike that would enable the U.S. to put a new Iranian leader in place.
\n…<\/p>\nThe spreading war in the Middle East threatens the ties between the region and the U.S. that Trump has pushed since taking office. As Eliot Brown, Georgi Kantchev, and Lauren Thomas of the Wall Street Journal<\/em> reported on Friday, the richest countries in the Persian Gulf last year tried to strengthen ties with Trump by pledging billions of dollars of investment into the U.S. Now they are having second thoughts. A prominent Dubai businessman posted at Trump on social media: \u201cWho gave you the authority to drag our region into a war?\u201d Trump had placed the Gulf states \u201cat the heart of a danger they did not choose,\u201d he wrote.
\n…<\/p>\nAaron Rupar of Public Notice commented: \u201cTrump is completely flailing. He didn\u2019t anticipate the economic blowback and now he\u2019s trying to undo the past 10 days and contain the damage.\u201d<\/p>\n
As part of its apparent war on what the administration calls \u201cnarco-terrorists\u201d in Latin America, U.S. Southern Command announced yesterday that it has struck another small vessel in the eastern Pacific, killing another six men.
\n(Heather Cox Richardson more…)<\/a><\/p>\nKen Klippenstein: Homeland Security Warns of Iranian \u201cFatwa\u201d<\/a><\/h2>\nMalcolm Nance: Boots on the Ground is Coming: Three More Arabian Nightmare Scenarios<\/a><\/h2>\nCan US Special Forces raid Iran’s hidden nuclear stash, Seize Islands and Control the Straight of Hormuz without casualties like the Maduro operation?<\/p>\n
\n\n- \n
Paul Krugman: Dire Strait<\/a><\/h2>\n
\n![\"crude](\"https:\/\/kewus.net\/yesterday\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/crude-oil-prices.webp\" "\\"crude")
<\/a>
\n<\/center>
\n… oil markets went wild while I was airborne.<\/p>\nIn a way that was odd, because the Strait of Hormuz has been effectively closed since the war on Iran began, with no obvious way to get it reopened quickly. As I showed in yesterday\u2019s primer, continued closure of the Strait is a shock to world oil supplies bigger than the oil shocks of the 1970s. What changed?<\/p>\n
Well, on Friday Trump called for UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER, suggesting both intransigence and a tenuous grip on reality. Then the Iranians chose Khamenei\u2019s son, reputedly a hard-liner, as the new Supreme Leader. These developments may have dashed the hopes of oil traders who still thought we might have cosplay regime change, Venezuela-style: The regime basically continues, but a new leader makes conciliatory noises and throws a bunch of money Trump\u2019s way. That could still happen, but not for a while.<\/p>\n
Time matters here. As the Strait remains closed, producers are shutting down, and this isn\u2019t like turning off a tap that can be quickly restarted.
\n(Paul Krugman more…)<\/a><\/p>\n
\n- \n
BBC Mundo: How Iran is using cheap drones to respond to attacks from Israel and the US.<\/a><\/h2>\n…
\nIn the days since the conflict began – on Saturday, February 28 – Iran has launched nearly 2,000 drones at various targets in the Middle East in an effort to overwhelm defenses and spread chaos in the region.<\/p>\n
These Shahed drones, known as kamikaze drones, carry explosives that detonate on impact and can cause significant damage. The largest attack inflicted by Iran on the U.S. was a drone strike on a base in Kuwait that killed six American soldiers.
\n
\n![\"Shahed](\"https:\/\/kewus.net\/yesterday\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Shahed-drones.jpg\" "\\"Shahed")
<\/a>
\n<\/center>
\n(BBC Mundo more…)<\/a><\/p>\n
![\"China](\"https:\/\/kewus.net\/yesterday\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/China-Surge-in-tech-exports.webp\" "\\"China")
<\/a><\/p>\n- \n
James Eagle: China\u2019s export machine enters a new technological phase<\/a><\/h2>\nAt the start of the century China\u2019s rise as an export powerhouse was driven largely by labour intensive manufacturing. After joining the World Trade Organization in 2001 the country rapidly expanded production of textiles, basic electronics and other goods that relied on low cost labour, driving a sharp rise in its trade surplus.
\n(James Eagle more…)<\/a><\/p>\n
![\"closed](\"https:\/\/kewus.net\/yesterday\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/closed-waiting-room.webp\" "\\"closed")
<\/a><\/p>\n- \n
Jennifer Rubin: Tens of thousands of civilians are stranded and at risk<\/a><\/h2>\n\u201cEveryone saw this coming except the President<\/a>.\u201d An \u201cunmitigated disaster of epic proportions<\/a>.\u201d Were these the words from Democrats decrying Donald Trump for failing to plan to evacuate hundreds of thousands of civilians under a blizzard of retaliatory fire raining down on the Gulf States? No, those were Republicans<\/a> excoriating former President Joe Biden for the botched 2021 exit from Afghanistan. Back then, Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA)<\/a> thundered, \u201cIt\u2019s a very dire situation when you see the United States Embassy being evacuated.\u201d<\/p>\nFast forward to last week. The Trump regime closed down three<\/em> of our embassies (Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, and Kuwait), abandoning U.S. citizens in those countries. Trump\u2019s minions failed to consider advanced planning to evacuate Americans from the region, leaving them to fend for themselves in places where missiles are flying and buildings are ablaze.
\n(Jennifer Rubin more…)<\/a><\/p>\n
![\"Rebecca](\"https:\/\/kewus.net\/yesterday\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Rebecca-Solnit.jpg\" "\\"Rebecca")
<\/a><\/p>\n- \n
Rebecca Solnit: Terminology, Clarity, and the Question of What Is the Left?<\/a><\/h2>\n…
\nIn this New York Times thing, I got to say something I was very glad to get out into the world, in an answer to whether Gavin Newsom or Zohran Mamdani was the hero we needed: “One of the great weaknesses of our era is that we get lone superhero movies that suggest that our big problems are solved by muscly guys in spandex, when actually the world mostly gets changed through collective effort. Thich Nhat Hanh<\/a> said before he died a few years ago that the next Buddha will be the Sangha. The Sangha, in Buddhist terminology, is the community of practitioners. It\u2019s this idea that we don\u2019t have to look for an individual, for a savior, for an \u00dcbermensch. I think the counter to Trump always has been and always will be civil society. A lot of the left wants social change to look like the French Revolution or Che Guevara. Maybe changing the world is more like caregiving than it is like war. Too many people still expect it to look like war.”<\/p>\nAnd I said something I was less happy about. I replied to another question with Newsom in it, “I\u2019m watching the left gear up to attack Gavin Newsom just in case he\u2019s the nominee in 2028, and it makes my heart sink, because I watched people tear down Al Gore, I watched people tear down Hillary Clinton, I watched people tear down Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. There are definitely major things to critique about every one of them, but at the moment, when the job is to defeat the other guy, we defeat ourselves.” That’s something I would not have written or, having written it, would have revised and qualified and cleaned up, but you don’t get to do that in an interview. I’m now seeing moderates use it to blame progressives and the left for lots of things, and leftists assert that I meant there should be no critiques, though clearly I said there should be. Somewhere else in the interview I did manage to say, “the left is a lot of different things, not a monolith.”
\n(Rebecca Solnit more…)<\/a><\/p>\n
\n- \n
Daily Beast: MAGA Melts Down Over Hours-Long Airport Line Chaos<\/a><\/h2>\nFLIGHT CLUB
\nMAGA voices are trying to find anyone but Trump to blame for the shutdown.
\n
\n![\"congested](\"https:\/\/kewus.net\/yesterday\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/congested-airport-terminal.avif\" "\\"congested")
<\/a>
\n<\/center>
\n(Daily Beast more…)<\/a><\/p>\n
\n- \n
Jay Kuo: New Secrets from the Epstein Files<\/a><\/h2>\nWhile Trump commits war crimes abroad, he can\u2019t escape mounting evidence of sex crimes here at home.<\/p>\n
Three separate reports\u2014from the South Carolina Post and Courier, the Miami Herald, and even the Murdoch-owned New York Post\u2014corroborate the account of a sex crime victim interviewed four times by the FBI. They raise serious questions about Jeffrey Epstein\u2019s death in custody, including stunning evidence of a possible cover-up and apparent payoffs to a guard.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s walk through what we\u2019ve learned just in the last few days thanks to some intrepid reporting.
\n(Jay Kuo more…)<\/a><\/p>\n
\n
\n
So many of the Trump regime\u2019s actions can break your brain.<\/strong> Launch a war against Iran …<\/p>\n … this massive military assault comes in the wake of FBI Director Kash Patel firing a dozen counterintelligence agents and staff whose responsibilities included monitoring possible threats from Iran on American soil.<\/p>\n CNN reported<\/a> that this gutting was motivated by \u201ca simple reason\u201d: Trump wanted the removal of agents investigating him for keeping classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. But the story by reporter Hannah Rabinowitz also noted that these firings \u201chave added to concern inside the Justice Department and FBI that counterterrorism and intelligence investigations in the wake of the military operation in Iran could be hampered by a mass exodus of national security experts,\u201d removing \u201cdecades of combined experience in identifying the types of threats that sources say could appear\u201d because of the Iran attack.<\/p>\n How foolish is that?<\/em> Well, extremely foolish if you think that the Trump regime should be committed to keeping America safe.<\/p>\n According to Miles Taylor, former counterterrorism operations lead at the Department of Homeland Security, his old department wasn\u2019t in the room when the bombing started and doesn\u2019t appear to have been involved in the defensive planning. Taylor, who now write the valuable Defiance<\/a> newsletter, notes that \u201cthousands of counterterrorism agents, experts and officials have been moved to \u2018immigration\u2019 enforcement.\u201d I think it\u2019s important to hear from On Tyranny<\/em> author Timothy Snyder, who just published a Substack piece entitled \u201cThe Desire for Terror<\/a>.\u201d He talks about \u201cself-terrorism,\u201d which involves \u201callowing things to fall apart, and then grabbing opportunely at a bit of the falling wreckage, which is something that Trump does well.\u201d Snyder explicitly states:\u201cA purpose of the war on Iran might well be to provoke a terrorist attack inside the United States.\u201d … It has become clear that Trump had no plan in Iran other than to strike it, knock out the leaders he didn\u2019t like, and hope the Iranian people would rise up and put in place new leaders he could deal with. …<\/p>\n Andrew Egger of The Bulwark<\/em> explains that the Trump administration didn\u2019t bother to have a theory for why the U.S. was going to war with Iran, or to explain to the American people why such a war would be a good thing, because they didn\u2019t think there was going to be a war, just a fast, hard strike that would enable the U.S. to put a new Iranian leader in place. The spreading war in the Middle East threatens the ties between the region and the U.S. that Trump has pushed since taking office. As Eliot Brown, Georgi Kantchev, and Lauren Thomas of the Wall Street Journal<\/em> reported on Friday, the richest countries in the Persian Gulf last year tried to strengthen ties with Trump by pledging billions of dollars of investment into the U.S. Now they are having second thoughts. A prominent Dubai businessman posted at Trump on social media: \u201cWho gave you the authority to drag our region into a war?\u201d Trump had placed the Gulf states \u201cat the heart of a danger they did not choose,\u201d he wrote. Aaron Rupar of Public Notice commented: \u201cTrump is completely flailing. He didn\u2019t anticipate the economic blowback and now he\u2019s trying to undo the past 10 days and contain the damage.\u201d<\/p>\n As part of its apparent war on what the administration calls \u201cnarco-terrorists\u201d in Latin America, U.S. Southern Command announced yesterday that it has struck another small vessel in the eastern Pacific, killing another six men. Can US Special Forces raid Iran’s hidden nuclear stash, Seize Islands and Control the Straight of Hormuz without casualties like the Maduro operation?<\/p>\n In a way that was odd, because the Strait of Hormuz has been effectively closed since the war on Iran began, with no obvious way to get it reopened quickly. As I showed in yesterday\u2019s primer, continued closure of the Strait is a shock to world oil supplies bigger than the oil shocks of the 1970s. What changed?<\/p>\n Well, on Friday Trump called for UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER, suggesting both intransigence and a tenuous grip on reality. Then the Iranians chose Khamenei\u2019s son, reputedly a hard-liner, as the new Supreme Leader. These developments may have dashed the hopes of oil traders who still thought we might have cosplay regime change, Venezuela-style: The regime basically continues, but a new leader makes conciliatory noises and throws a bunch of money Trump\u2019s way. That could still happen, but not for a while.<\/p>\n Time matters here. As the Strait remains closed, producers are shutting down, and this isn\u2019t like turning off a tap that can be quickly restarted. … These Shahed drones, known as kamikaze drones, carry explosives that detonate on impact and can cause significant damage. The largest attack inflicted by Iran on the U.S. was a drone strike on a base in Kuwait that killed six American soldiers. At the start of the century China\u2019s rise as an export powerhouse was driven largely by labour intensive manufacturing. After joining the World Trade Organization in 2001 the country rapidly expanded production of textiles, basic electronics and other goods that relied on low cost labour, driving a sharp rise in its trade surplus. \u201cEveryone saw this coming except the President<\/a>.\u201d An \u201cunmitigated disaster of epic proportions<\/a>.\u201d Were these the words from Democrats decrying Donald Trump for failing to plan to evacuate hundreds of thousands of civilians under a blizzard of retaliatory fire raining down on the Gulf States? No, those were Republicans<\/a> excoriating former President Joe Biden for the botched 2021 exit from Afghanistan. Back then, Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA)<\/a> thundered, \u201cIt\u2019s a very dire situation when you see the United States Embassy being evacuated.\u201d<\/p>\n Fast forward to last week. The Trump regime closed down three<\/em> of our embassies (Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, and Kuwait), abandoning U.S. citizens in those countries. Trump\u2019s minions failed to consider advanced planning to evacuate Americans from the region, leaving them to fend for themselves in places where missiles are flying and buildings are ablaze. … And I said something I was less happy about. I replied to another question with Newsom in it, “I\u2019m watching the left gear up to attack Gavin Newsom just in case he\u2019s the nominee in 2028, and it makes my heart sink, because I watched people tear down Al Gore, I watched people tear down Hillary Clinton, I watched people tear down Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. There are definitely major things to critique about every one of them, but at the moment, when the job is to defeat the other guy, we defeat ourselves.” That’s something I would not have written or, having written it, would have revised and qualified and cleaned up, but you don’t get to do that in an interview. I’m now seeing moderates use it to blame progressives and the left for lots of things, and leftists assert that I meant there should be no critiques, though clearly I said there should be. Somewhere else in the interview I did manage to say, “the left is a lot of different things, not a monolith.” FLIGHT CLUB While Trump commits war crimes abroad, he can\u2019t escape mounting evidence of sex crimes here at home.<\/p>\n Three separate reports\u2014from the South Carolina Post and Courier, the Miami Herald, and even the Murdoch-owned New York Post\u2014corroborate the account of a sex crime victim interviewed four times by the FBI. They raise serious questions about Jeffrey Epstein\u2019s death in custody, including stunning evidence of a possible cover-up and apparent payoffs to a guard.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s walk through what we\u2019ve learned just in the last few days thanks to some intrepid reporting.
\n…<\/p>\n
\n
\n(Steven Beschloss more…)<\/a><\/p>\nHeather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American – March 9, 2026<\/a><\/h2>\n
\n…<\/p>\n
\n…<\/p>\n
\n(Heather Cox Richardson more…)<\/a><\/p>\nKen Klippenstein: Homeland Security Warns of Iranian \u201cFatwa\u201d<\/a><\/h2>\n
Malcolm Nance: Boots on the Ground is Coming: Three More Arabian Nightmare Scenarios<\/a><\/h2>\n
\n\n
Paul Krugman: Dire Strait<\/a><\/h2>\n
\n<\/a>
\n<\/center>
\n… oil markets went wild while I was airborne.<\/p>\n
\n(Paul Krugman more…)<\/a><\/p>\n
\nBBC Mundo: How Iran is using cheap drones to respond to attacks from Israel and the US.<\/a><\/h2>\n
\nIn the days since the conflict began – on Saturday, February 28 – Iran has launched nearly 2,000 drones at various targets in the Middle East in an effort to overwhelm defenses and spread chaos in the region.<\/p>\n
\n
\n<\/a>
\n<\/center>
\n(BBC Mundo more…)<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\nJames Eagle: China\u2019s export machine enters a new technological phase<\/a><\/h2>\n
\n(James Eagle more…)<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\nJennifer Rubin: Tens of thousands of civilians are stranded and at risk<\/a><\/h2>\n
\n(Jennifer Rubin more…)<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\nRebecca Solnit: Terminology, Clarity, and the Question of What Is the Left?<\/a><\/h2>\n
\nIn this New York Times thing, I got to say something I was very glad to get out into the world, in an answer to whether Gavin Newsom or Zohran Mamdani was the hero we needed: “One of the great weaknesses of our era is that we get lone superhero movies that suggest that our big problems are solved by muscly guys in spandex, when actually the world mostly gets changed through collective effort. Thich Nhat Hanh<\/a> said before he died a few years ago that the next Buddha will be the Sangha. The Sangha, in Buddhist terminology, is the community of practitioners. It\u2019s this idea that we don\u2019t have to look for an individual, for a savior, for an \u00dcbermensch. I think the counter to Trump always has been and always will be civil society. A lot of the left wants social change to look like the French Revolution or Che Guevara. Maybe changing the world is more like caregiving than it is like war. Too many people still expect it to look like war.”<\/p>\n
\n(Rebecca Solnit more…)<\/a><\/p>\n
\nDaily Beast: MAGA Melts Down Over Hours-Long Airport Line Chaos<\/a><\/h2>\n
\nMAGA voices are trying to find anyone but Trump to blame for the shutdown.
\n
\n<\/a>
\n<\/center>
\n(Daily Beast more…)<\/a><\/p>\n
\nJay Kuo: New Secrets from the Epstein Files<\/a><\/h2>\n
\n(Jay Kuo more…)<\/a><\/p>\n
\n
\n