Saturday, March 28
11:30 A.M. – 3:00 P.M.
Embarcadero Plaza
Market and Steuart Street
San Francisco, CA 94105
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Veterans For Peace Condemns
U.S. Attack on Iran
Military Members and Civilians:
Resist Illegal Wars!
Veterans For Peace condemns the U.S./Israeli attack on Iran in the strongest possible terms. We call on our members, friends, and allies to resist this dangerous and illegal war. We offer our support to members of the military who decide to refuse illegal orders and resist an illegal war.
A War Based on Lies
The Trump administration’s ever-changing rationales for going to war against Iran are lies. Iran posed no threat to the United States. This military operation is not a defensive war, but rather a war of choice by Israel and the U.S., a war of aggression, a war for regime change – very much like the disastrous U.S. wars that killed millions of people in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan – wars that many veterans remember with horror and regret.
Contrary to President Trump’s oft-repeated lie, Iran has repeatedly stated that it has no intention of acquiring nuclear weapons. Rather, the United States, the only country to attack another nation with nuclear weapons, has unilaterally abrogated multiple arms control treaties, and is investing Two Trillion Dollars in a new generation of nuclear weapons. It was the U.S., not Iran, that violated and withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal. Israel also has nuclear weapons – undeclared and uninspected. Two nuclear powers attacking Iran, claiming to stop it from pursuing a nuclear program, is the height of hypocrisy.
The aggression against Iran follows by less than two months the U.S. attack on Venezuela and the unlawful abduction of its president and wife. It comes amid the ongoing war threats and oil blockade of Cuba. This complete disregard and abuse of the process of negotiations only encourages nuclear proliferation around the world.
Illegal and Unconstitutional
The U.S. war on Iran is illegal in multiple ways. It is a violation of the UN Charter, a treaty which is the “supreme law of the land” under Article VI of the U.S. Constitution. Article 2(4) of the UN Charter states, “All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.”
The unilateral war of aggression against Iran is a blatant violation of the U.S. Constitution, which explicitly grants Congress the sole authority to declare war. This power was intentionally given to the legislative branch to prevent unilateral military action by a single executive.
These legal and constitutional issues may seem quaint to those of us who have seen them routinely violated by president after president with the complicity of a supine Congress. Nonetheless, they constitute both international and domestic law. They are the legal codification of a moral framework for international peace and cooperation. Peace-loving people must struggle to ensure that these laws are followed. We must hold our government officials accountable when they are not.
Refuse Illegal Orders – Resist Illegal Wars
Veterans For Peace reminds our sisters and brothers, children, and grandchildren in the U.S. military that an order to participate in an illegal war is, by extension, an illegal order. You have the right and even the duty to refuse illegal orders. Veterans For Peace and many others will stand with you when you do, and provide helpful information and resources. Whatever legal consequences you may endure pale compared to risking your life in an illegal war or living with Post Traumatic Stress and Moral Injury.
Veterans and civilians also have the right and the responsibility to resist the illegal actions of our government at home and abroad. This attack is a very critical moment in the history of the United States and the world. We must be in the streets protesting. We must be on our phones telling our representatives to Vote Yes on the Iran War Powers resolution. We must be on our keyboards, writing letters to the editors. Tell them to:
IMMEDIATELY HALT U.S. MILITARY ATTACKS ON IRAN!
· End U.S. Support for Israel and Genocide in Palestine!
· End Economic Warfare against Iran, Venezuela, and Cuba!
· End ICE and Authoritarian Repression in U.S. Cities!
· Abolish Nuclear Weapons and War!
PEACE AT HOME, PEACE ABROAD!
https://prod.cdn.everyaction.com/emails/van/EA/EA015/1/94223/Alqa3p0mdFGQOfwCaEOYO6dpWCJEn2qC1GPoEaid_7O_archive?emci=6196a802-9415-f111-a69a-000d3a57593f&emdi=d3c0d4a7-a515-f111-a69a-000d3a57593f&ceid=10474381
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Tell Congress: No War On Iran!
On Saturday, February 28th, the United States and Israel bombed Iran’s capital. Shortly after, President Donald Trump announced a planned prolonged war against Iran and stated that American servicemembers would likely be killed in the process. He addressed Iranians, telling them to stay inside because bombs would be dropping all over Iran, and called on them to overthrow their government. The self-proclaimed “peace president” has launched yet another endless war – risking millions of human lives. The entire world should be outraged.
Tell Congress we want PEACE with Iran, we don’t want the US bombing Iran, we don’t want a regime change war, and we want to lift the sanctions that are hurting everyday Iranians.
https://www.codepink.org/iranaction
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The Trump administration is escalating its attack on Cuba, cutting off the island’s access to oil in a deliberate attempt to induce famine and mass suffering. This is collective punishment, plain and simple.
In response, we’re releasing a public Call to Conscience, already signed by influential public figures, elected officials, artists, and organizations—including 22 members of the New York City Council, Kal Penn, Mark Ruffalo, Susan Sarandon, Alice Walker, 50501, Movement for Black Lives, The People’s Forum, IFCO Pastors for Peace, ANSWER Coalition, and many others—demanding an end to this brutal policy.
The letter is open for everyone to sign. Add your name today. Cutting off energy to an island nation is not policy—it is a tactic of starvation.
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Petition to Force Amazon to Cut ICE Contracts!
https://actionnetwork.org/letters/tell-amazon-end-contracts-with-ice/?source=group-amazon-labor-union&referrer=group-amazon-labor-
Amazon Labor Union
Over 600,000 messages have already been sent directly to Amazon board members demanding one thing: Amazon must stop fueling deportations by ending its contracts with ICE and DHS.
ICE and DHS rely on the data infrastructure provided by Amazon Web Services. Their campaign against immigrants and those who stand with them depends on the logistical, financial, and political support of companies like Amazon.
But workers and communities have real power when we act collectively. That’s why we must expose Amazon’s role in the deportation machine. Help us reach 1 million messages and force Amazon to act by signing our petition with The Labor Force today:
Tell Amazon: End contracts with ICE!
On Cyber Monday 2025, Amazon workers rallied outside of Amazon’s NYC headquarters to demand that Amazon stop fueling mass deportations through Amazon Web Services’ contracts with ICE and DHS.
ICE cannot operate without corporate backing; its campaign against immigrants and those who stand with them depends on the logistical, financial, and political support of companies like Amazon. Mega-corporations may appear untouchable, but they are not. Anti-authoritarian movements have long understood that repression is sustained by a network of institutional enablers and when those enablers are disrupted, state violence weakens. Workers and communities have real power when they act collectively. That is why we must expose Amazon’s role in the deportation machine.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) rely on Amazon Web Services (AWS) as its most commonly used cloud platform. DHS and ICE cannot wage their attack on immigrants without the critical data infrastructure that Amazon Web Services provide, allowing the agencies to collect, analyze, and store the massive amounts of data they need to do their dirty work. Without the power of AWS, ICE would not be able to track and target people at its current scale.
ICE and DHS use Amazon Web Services to collect and store massive amounts of purchased data on immigrants and their friends and family–everything from biometric data, DMV data, cellphone records, and more. And through its contracts with Palantir, DHS is able to scour regional, local, state, and federal databases and analyze and store this data on AWS. All of this information is ultimately used to target immigrants and other members of our communities.
No corporation should profit from oppression and abuse. Yet Amazon is raking in tens of millions of dollars to fuel DHS and ICE, while grossly exploiting its own workers. Can you sign our petition today, demanding that Amazon stop fueling deportations by ending its contracts with DHS and ICE, now?
https://actionnetwork.org/letters/tell-amazon-end-contracts-with-ice/?source=group-amazon-labor-union&referrer=group-amazon-labor-
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End Texas Torture of Revolutionary Elder Xinachtli
Organization Support Letter
Letter to demand the immediate medical treatment and release of Chicano political prisoner Xinachtli (Alvaro Hernandez #00255735)
To the Texas Department of Criminal Justice,
We, the undersigned organizations, write to urge immediate action to protect the life, health, and human rights of Xinachtli (legal name Alvaro Hernandez). Xinachtli is 73-year-old Chicano community organizer from Texas who has spent 23 years in solitary confinement and 30 years incarcerated as part of a 50-year sentence. His health is now in a critical and life-threatening state and requires prompt and comprehensive medical intervention.
Since his conviction in 1997, Xinachtli has spent decades in conditions that have caused significant physical and psychological harm. As an elder in worsening health, these conditions have effectively become a de facto death sentence.
Xinachtli’s current medical condition is severe. His physical, mental, and overall well-being have declined rapidly in recent weeks. He now requires both a wheelchair and a walker, has experienced multiple falls, and is suffering from rapid weight loss. He is currently housed in the McConnell Unit infirmary, where he is receiving only palliative measures and is being denied a medical diagnosis, access to his medical records, and adequate diagnostic testing or treatment.
A virtual clinical visit with licensed medical doctor Dr. Dona Kim Murphey underscores the severity of his condition. In her report of the visit, she wrote: "Given the history of recent neck/back trauma and recurrent urinary tract infections with numbness, weakness, and bowel and bladder incontinence, I am concerned about nerve root or spinal cord injury and/or abscesses that can lead to permanent sensorimotor dysfunction."
Despite his age and visible disabilities, he remains in solitary confinement under the Security Threat Group designation as a 73-year-old. During his time in the infirmary, prison staff threw away all of his belongings and “lost” his commissary card, leaving him completely without basic necessities. He is experiencing hunger, and the lack of consistent nutrition is worsening his medical condition. McConnell Unit staff have also consistently given him incorrect forms, including forms for medical records and medical visitation, creating further barriers to care and communication.
A family visit on November 29 confirmed the seriousness of his condition. Xinachtli, who was once able to walk on his own, can no longer stand without assistance. He struggled to breathe, has lost more than 30 pounds, relied heavily on his wheelchair, and was in severe pain throughout the visit.
In light of these conditions, we, the undersigned organizations, demand that TDCJ take immediate action to save Xinachtli’s life and comply with its legal and ethical obligations.
We urge the immediate implementation of the following actions:
Immediate re-instatement of his access to commissary to buy hygiene, food, and other critical items. Immediate transfer to the TDCJ hospital in Galveston for a full medical evaluation and treatment, including complete access to his medical records and full transparency regarding all procedures. Transfer to a geriatric and medical unit that is fully accessible under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Xinachtli requests placement at the Richard P LeBlanc Unit in Beaumont, Texas. Approval of Medical Recommended Intensive Supervision, the release program for individuals with serious medical conditions and disabilities, in recognition of the severity and progression of his current health issues. Failure to act will result in the continued and foreseeable deterioration of Xinachtli’s health, amounting to state-sanctioned death. We urge TDCJ to take swift and decisive action to meet these requests and to fulfill its responsibility to safeguard his life and well-being.
We stand united in calling for immediate and decisive action. Xinachtli’s life depends on it.
Signed, Xinachtli Freedom Campaign and supporting organizations
Endorsing Organizations:
Al-Awda Houston; All African People’s Revolutionary Party; Anakbayan Houston; Anti-Imperialist Solidarity; Artists for Black Lives' Equality; Black Alliance for Peace - Solidarity Network; Columbia University Students for a Democratic Society; Community Liberation Programs; Community Powered ATX; Contra Gentrificación; Diaspora Pa’lante Collective; Down South; DSA Emerge; Entre nos kc; Fighting Racism Workshops; Frontera Water Protectors; GC Harm Reductionists; JERICHO MOVEMENT; Jericho Movement Providence; Montrose Anarchist Collective; NYC Jericho Movement; OC Focus; Palestine Solidarity TX; Partisan Defense Committee; Partido Nacional de la Raza Unida; PDX Anti-Repression; Red Star Texas; Root Cause; San Francisco Solidarity Collective; Shine White Support Team; Sunrise Columbia; UC San Diego Faculty for Justice in Palestine; Viva Palestina, EPTX; Water Justice and Technology Studio; Workshops4Gaza.
Sign the endorsement letter for your organization here:
https://cryptpad.fr/form/#/2/form/view/MiR1f+iLiRBJC7gSTyfhyxJoLIDhThxRafPatxdbMWI/
IMPORTANT LINKS TO MATERIALS FOR XINACHTLI FREEDOM CAMPAIGN:
PHONE BLAST: Your community can sign up for a 15-minute-long call shift here: bit.ly/xphoneblast
FUNDRAISER: Here is the link to Jericho's fundraiser for Xinachtli: http://givebutter.com/jerichomovement
CASE HISTORY: Learn more about Xinachtli and his case through our website: https://freealvaro.net
CONTACT INFO:
Follow us on Instagram: @freexinachtlinow
Email us:
xinachtlifreedomcampaign@protonmail.com
COALITION FOLDER:
https://drive.proton.me/urls/SP3KTC1RK4#KARGiPQVYIvR
In the folder you will find: Two pictures of Xinachtli from 2024; The latest updated graphics for the phone blast; The original TRO emergency motion filing; Maria Salazar's declaration; Dr. Murphy's report from her Dec. 9 medical visit; Letter from Amnesty International declaring Xinachtli's situation a human rights violation; Free Xinachtli zine (which gives background on him and his case); and The most recent press release detailing who Xinachtli is as well as his medical situation.
Write to:
Alvaro Hernandez CID #00255735
TDCJ-W.G. McConnell Unit
PO Box 660400
Dallas, TX 75266-0400
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Self-portrait by Kevin Cooper
Funds for Kevin Cooper
Kevin was transferred out of San Quentin and is now at a healthcare facility in Stockton. He has received some long overdue healthcare. The art program is very different from the one at San Quentin but we are hopeful that Kevin can get back to painting soon.
For 41 years, an innocent man has been on death row in California.
Kevin Cooper was wrongfully convicted of the brutal 1983 murders of the Ryen family and houseguest. The case has a long history of police and prosecutorial misconduct, evidence tampering, and numerous constitutional violations including many incidences of the prosecution withholding evidence of innocence from the defense. You can learn more here .
In December 2018 Gov. Brown ordered limited DNA testing and in February 2019, Gov. Newsom ordered additional DNA testing. Meanwhile, Kevin remains on Death Row at San Quentin Prison.
The funds raised will be used to help Kevin purchase art supplies for his paintings . Additionally, being in prison is expensive, and this money would help Kevin pay for stamps, books, paper, toiletries, supplies, supplementary food, printing materials to educate the public about his case and/or video calls.
Please help ease the daily struggle of an innocent man on death row!
An immediate act of solidarity we can all do right now is to write to Kevin and assure him of our continuing support in his fight for justice. Here’s his address:
Kevin Cooper #C65304
Cell 107, Unit E1C
California Health Care Facility, Stockton (CHCF)
P.O. Box 213040
Stockton, CA 95213
www.freekevincooper.org
Call California Governor Newsom:
1-(916) 445-2841
Press 1 for English or 2 for Spanish,
press 6 to speak with a representative and
wait for someone to answer
(Monday-Friday, 9:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. PST—12:00 P.M. to 8:00 P.M. EST)
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Dr. Atler Still Needs Our Help!
Please sign the petition today!
https://www.change.org/p/texas-state-university-give-tom-alter-his-job-back
What you can do to support:
—Donate to help Tom Alter and his family with living and legal expenses: https://gofund.me/27c72f26d
—Sign and share this petition demanding Tom Alter be given his job back: https://www.change.org/p/texas-state-university-give-tom-alter-his-job-back
—Write to and call the President and Provost at Texas State University demanding that Tom Alter be given his job back:
President Kelly Damphousse: president@txstate.edu
President’s Office Phone: 512-245-2121
Provost Pranesh Aswath: xrk25@txstate.edu
Provost Office Phone: 512-245-2205
For more information about the reason for the firing of Dr. Tom Alter, read:
"Fired for Advocating Socialism: Professor Tom Alter Speaks Out"
Ashley Smith Interviews Dr. Tom Alter
—CounterPunch, September 24, 2025
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 Russia Confirms Jailing of Antiwar Leader Boris Kagarlitsky In a secret trial on June 5, 2024, the Russian Supreme Court’s Military Chamber confirmed a sentence of five years in a penal colony for left-wing sociologist and online journalist Boris Kagarlitsky. His crime? “Justifying terrorism” — a sham charge used to silence opponents of Putin’s war on Ukraine. The court disregarded a plea for freedom sent by thirty-seven international luminaries. Kagarlitsky, a leading Marxist thinker in Russia’s post-Soviet period, recently addressed socialists who won’t criticize Putin: “To my Western colleagues, who…call for an understanding of Putin and his regime, I would like to ask a very simple question. [Would] you want to live in a country where there is no free press or independent courts? In a country where the police have the right to break into your house without a warrant? …In a country which…broadcasts appeals on TV to destroy Paris, London, Warsaw, with a nuclear strike?” Thousands of antiwar critics have been forced to flee Russia or are behind bars, swept up in Putin’s vicious crackdown on dissidents. Opposition to the war is consistently highest among the poorest workers. Recently, RusNews journalists Roman Ivanov and Maria Ponomarenko were sentenced to seven, and six years respectively, for reporting the military’s brutal assault on Ukraine. A massive global solidarity campaign that garnered support from thousands was launched at Kagarlitsky’s arrest. Now, it has been revived. This internationalism will bolster the repressed Russian left and Ukrainian resistance to Putin’s imperialism. To sign the online petition at freeboris.info —Freedom Socialist Party, August 2024 https://socialism.com/fs-article/russia-jails-prominent-antiwar-leader-boris-kagarlitsky/#:~:text=In%20a%20secret%20trial%20on,of%20Putin's%20war%20on%20Ukraine. Petition in Support of Boris KagarlitskyWe, the undersigned, were deeply shocked to learn that on February 13 the leading Russian socialist intellectual and antiwar activist Dr. Boris Kagarlitsky (65) was sentenced to five years in prison. Dr. Kagarlitsky was arrested on the absurd charge of 'justifying terrorism' in July last year. After a global campaign reflecting his worldwide reputation as a writer and critic of capitalism and imperialism, his trial ended on December 12 with a guilty verdict and a fine of 609,000 roubles. The prosecution then appealed against the fine as 'unjust due to its excessive leniency' and claimed falsely that Dr. Kagarlitsky was unable to pay the fine and had failed to cooperate with the court. In fact, he had paid the fine in full and provided the court with everything it requested. On February 13 a military court of appeal sent him to prison for five years and banned him from running a website for two years after his release. The reversal of the original court decision is a deliberate insult to the many thousands of activists, academics, and artists around the world who respect Dr. Kagarlitsky and took part in the global campaign for his release. The section of Russian law used against Dr. Kagarlitsky effectively prohibits free expression. The decision to replace the fine with imprisonment was made under a completely trumped-up pretext. Undoubtedly, the court's action represents an attempt to silence criticism in the Russian Federation of the government's war in Ukraine, which is turning the country into a prison. The sham trial of Dr. Kagarlitsky is the latest in a wave of brutal repression against the left-wing movements in Russia. Organizations that have consistently criticized imperialism, Western and otherwise, are now under direct attack, many of them banned. Dozens of activists are already serving long terms simply because they disagree with the policies of the Russian government and have the courage to speak up. Many of them are tortured and subjected to life-threatening conditions in Russian penal colonies, deprived of basic medical care. Left-wing politicians are forced to flee Russia, facing criminal charges. International trade unions such as IndustriALL and the International Transport Federation are banned and any contact with them will result in long prison sentences. There is a clear reason for this crackdown on the Russian left. The heavy toll of the war gives rise to growing discontent among the mass of working people. The poor pay for this massacre with their lives and wellbeing, and opposition to war is consistently highest among the poorest. The left has the message and resolve to expose the connection between imperialist war and human suffering. Dr. Kagarlitsky has responded to the court's outrageous decision with calm and dignity: “We just need to live a little longer and survive this dark period for our country,” he said. Russia is nearing a period of radical change and upheaval, and freedom for Dr. Kagarlitsky and other activists is a condition for these changes to take a progressive course. We demand that Boris Kagarlitsky and all other antiwar prisoners be released immediately and unconditionally. We also call on the auth *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........* *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........* |
Mumia Abu-Jamal is Innocent!
FREE HIM NOW!
Write to Mumia at:
Smart Communications/PADOC
Mumia Abu-Jamal #AM-8335
SCI Mahanoy
P.O. Box 33028
St. Petersburg, FL 33733
Join the Fight for Mumia's Life
Since September, Mumia Abu-Jamal's health has been declining at a concerning rate. He has lost weight, is anemic, has high blood pressure and an extreme flair up of his psoriasis, and his hair has fallen out. In April 2021 Mumia underwent open heart surgery. Since then, he has been denied cardiac rehabilitation care including a healthy diet and exercise.
He still needs more complicated treatment from a retinal specialist for his right eye if his eyesight is to be saved:
Donate to Mumia Abu-Jamal's Emergency Legal and Medical
Defense Fund
Mumia has instructed PrisonRadio to set up this fund. Gifts donated here are designated for the Mumia Abu-Jamal Medical and Legal Defense Fund. If you are writing a check or making a donation in another way, note this in the memo line.
Send to:
Mumia Medical and Legal Fund c/o Prison Radio
P.O. Box 411074, San Francisco, CA 94103
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Resources for Resisting Federal Repression
https://www.nlg.org/federalrepressionresources/
Since June of 2020, activists have been subjected to an increasingly aggressive crackdown on protests by federal law enforcement. The federal response to the movement for Black Lives has included federal criminal charges for activists, door knocks by federal law enforcement agents, and increased use of federal troops to violently police protests.
The NLG National Office is releasing this resource page for activists who are resisting federal repression. It includes a link to our emergency hotline numbers, as well as our library of Know-Your-Rights materials, our recent federal repression webinar, and a list of some of our recommended resources for activists. We will continue to update this page.
Please visit the NLG Mass Defense Program page for general protest-related legal support hotlines run by NLG chapters.
Emergency Hotlines
If you are contacted by federal law enforcement, you should exercise all of your rights. It is always advisable to speak to an attorney before responding to federal authorities.
State and Local Hotlines
If you have been contacted by the FBI or other federal law enforcement, in one of the following areas, you may be able to get help or information from one of these local NLG hotlines for:
Portland, Oregon: (833) 680-1312
San Francisco, California: (415) 285-1041 or fbi_hotline@nlgsf.org
Seattle, Washington: (206) 658-7963
National Hotline
If you are located in an area with no hotline, you can call the following number:
National NLG Federal Defense Hotline: (212) 679-2811
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Articles
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1) States Move to Limit Access to H.I.V. Treatment
Citing rising costs and shortfalls in federal support, about 20 states are toughening eligibility requirements for patients in drug assistance programs.
By Apoorva Mandavilli, March 2, 2026
Tens of thousands of Americans are losing access to treatment for H.I.V. as nearly 20 states impose restrictions on assistance programs and several others weigh such changes.
The states, led by both Democrats and Republicans, are tightening requirements for people benefiting from Ryan White AIDS Drug Assistance Programs, or ADAPs, according to an analysis released on Monday by the health research group KFF.
The programs help pay for H.I.V. medications or provide them free to some people, and pay insurance premiums for others.
H.I.V. medications suppress the virus to undetectable levels, eliminating the chance of spreading it to others. Interrupting treatment may lead to an increase in new infections and in AIDS cases.
Moreover, some people may try to extend their supplies by alternating days or sharing their pills with others. If the virus replicates in people with only partial protection, it can become resistant to the medications. People living with the virus may then pass the resistant virus on to others.
The biggest change took effect in Florida on Sunday, when officials cut off benefits for at least 16,000 residents living with H.I.V. The state also will no longer cover Biktarvy, the most widely prescribed H.I.V. medication.
On Friday, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services opened a special enrollment period allowing Floridians who lose financial support for insurance premiums to choose a new plan. The period ends April 30.
ADAPs support roughly 25 percent of the 1.2 million people living with H.I.V. in the United States. The programs had a 30 percent surge in enrollment from 2022 to 2024, in part because states were removing people from Medicaid after keeping them on during the pandemic.
ADAPs are funded by Congress through the Ryan White federal H.I.V. program. The programs are contending with rising costs as H.I.V. drugs become more expensive even as health care subsidies have expired, sending premiums soaring.
At the same time, funding for the programs has remained flat for more than a decade.
“Effectively, programs are being asked to do more with less federal funding,” said Lindsey Dawson, associate director of H.I.V. policy at KFF.
The financial constraints have led 18 states to take at least one cost-cutting measure, including restricting eligibility by income and reducing the number of medications covered. Five other states are considering changes that would go into effect next month.
More states may consider such measures, as new work requirements drive patients out of Medicaid and increase enrollment in ADAPs, some experts warned.
“We’re expecting to see more states anticipating or contending with budget deficits, and we do anticipate a growing number of states having to implement cost-containment measures,” said Tim Horn, director of medication access at the National Alliance of State and Territorial AIDS Directors.
The alliance began tracking modifications to state programs last fall, when Pennsylvania amended its eligibility criteria for income from 500 percent of the federal poverty level to 350 percent.
The changes will have ripple effects well beyond the communities of people living with H.I.V., some experts said. The cost of thousands of people losing their insurance will have to be absorbed by other parts of the public health system.
“This is really an economic disaster, a public health disaster, a moral disaster,” said Esteban Wood, director of advocacy and legislative affairs at the advocacy group AIDS Healthcare Foundation.
The foundation has filed an injunction seeking to halt Florida’s health department from carrying out its ADAP restrictions.
With more than 32,000 clients, Florida’s program is the largest in the country. In January, the state informed members that it was altering income eligibility to 130 percent of the federal poverty level from the previous 400 percent — to an annual income of $20,748 for an individual, from the previous $63,840.
The Florida health department has cited a projected $120 million budget shortfall as the reason for the adjustments, but it has not released details. The department did not respond to a request for comment.
Advocacy groups tried to stop the limits from going into effect, noting that the state had not followed the protocols for changing the rules. On Tuesday, the state filed an emergency rule that would enforce the restrictions beginning on Sunday.
“We’re seeing patients across the state full of anxiety and fear rationing their lifesaving medication,” Mr. Wood said.
“These are people who have no other safety net,” he added. “ADAP is the safety net.”
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2) Five Takeaways on America’s Boom in Billionaires
The number of billionaires in the United States has soared, with nowhere feeling the effects quite like Jackson, Wyo. Here’s where all that money came from.
By Katie Benner and Steven Rich, March 2, 2026
Construction of a home in Jackson, Wyo. Credit...Will Warasila for The New York Times
The billionaire class has never been bigger.
Supercharged by Trump-era tax cuts and other policies that favor the rich, America’s wealthy minority has more power over the country than at any time in the last century.
At the dawn of this new plutocracy, the United States faces a central quandary: Will it allow several hundred families to continue to amass economic control and political influence? And what will the country look like as it becomes increasingly shaped by the needs and beliefs of its top 1 percent?
Nowhere is the dilemma more pronounced than in Teton County, Wyo., the area around Jackson Hole. Long the richest per capita in America, the county is now the home of the nation’s most pronounced wealth gap. With the help of the Freedom Caucus (itself supported by ultrarich donors), the top 1 percent has exerted influence over many decisions on land use, education and tax policy. Life for those who are not rich has become unaffordable.
Here are five takeaways from a New York Times examination of the nation’s emerging plutocracy, and how it is playing out in places like Jackson, Wyo.
About 350 people became billionaires in just eight years.
The analysis shows the stunning velocity at which the fortunes of the 1 percent have increased in recent years. The richest Americans saw their net worth soar by 120 percent from 2017 to 2025, a colossal leap from the 45 percent growth they had seen over the previous similar period.
As a result, the number of U.S. billionaires jumped by 50 percent from 2017 to 2025, to more than 900 people, according to some estimates.
Moreover, the top 0.1 percent of households — the richest of the rich — saw their fortunes grow at a faster pace than everyone else did, in part because wealthy people benefit the most when stock markets rise.
The top 1 percent of American households, which have a minimum net worth of $11.1 million, now collectively own about $25.6 trillion worth of stocks and mutual funds, the same amount as the remaining 99 percent of the country, according to the Federal Reserve.
Of the $25.6 trillion worth of stock owned by the 1 percent, more than half is in the hands of the top 0.1 percent.
Trump’s tax cuts bolstered private jet sales, corporate profits and billionaire bank accounts.
While the wealth gap has widened steadily for 40 years, President Trump’s 2017 tax cuts supercharged the trend, according to a Times analysis and a range of new studies.
The tax law allowed private jet buyers to write off the cost of planes — ostensibly purchased for business — and global jet transactions grew by 42 percent from 2017 to 2025, according to Global Jet Capital. The law also doubled the amount of money that households could pass on to heirs tax-free.
The provision that lowered the corporate tax rate to 21 percent from 35 percent had the biggest impact on the ultrarich. As companies became more profitable, they used the additional profits to buy back stock. The stock market soared, benefiting the executive class, which receives much of its compensation in company shares. Few companies meaningfully reinvested in businesses and employees, a Brookings analysis found, and the raises that wage workers received were rarely high enough to offset higher food and housing costs.
The pandemic was a force multiplier.
The coronavirus pandemic supercharged the effects of the tax cuts. Tech prices soared as employees geared up to work at home, and technology gains contributed to about half of the wealth gained by all billionaires. About two-thirds of new billionaires minted since the start of 2020 also made their money in tech.
Elon Musk led the pack, with his wealth growing to well over half a trillion dollars, from $25 billion in early 2020 — a 2,100 percent increase. Jeff Bezos’ net worth jumped by 165 percent; Mark Zuckerberg’s increased more than fourfold; and Larry Ellison, the billionaire co-founder of Oracle, saw his fortune rise by 275 percent.
The pandemic blew open the socioeconomic gaps that emerged during Mr. Trump’s first term. Most of the country sheltered at home and weathered a sharp recession in early 2020, and then grappled with skyrocketing inflation that ate up most of the wage increases that companies had given workers.
But rich Americans used the downturn to buy stocks, real estate and other assets, essentially on sale. UBS found that the 2,000 or so billionaires in the world at that time added more than $2 trillion to their wealth, a 28 percent jump from April to July 2020. And their spending, especially on real estate and construction, helped increase housing and construction costs for all.
Vast wealth in Teton County
This confluence of events was deeply felt in Teton County, where the rich saw their fortunes rise during the first Trump administration. Even more elites flocked to the area during the pandemic, sending prices for real estate (and everything else) sky-high. The average price for a single family home has pushed past $7 million.
By 2024, Teton County’s per capita income hit $532,903, the highest county-level figure in the country; Summit County, Utah, clocking in at around $280,000, was a far second. That high income was largely driven by the top 1 percent of residents, who have an estimated annual income of about $35 million, according to a Times analysis of tax data. That amounts to 221 times the average annual income of the bottom 99 percent in the county.
Nowadays, some people no longer recognize their town. Andrew Munz, who was raised in Jackson Hole, said that it was as if the region went into a deep slumber during the pandemic and awoke to find that the uberwealthy had taken over.
The conservative Freedom Caucus rose to power in the State Legislature at the end of 2024, thanks in part to wealthy donors like the former commodities trader Dan Brophy, who lives in Wyoming. Soon after that year’s general election, lawmakers approved a substantial cut in property taxes, one of the state’s few sources of revenue from wealthy residents — a move that many economists said was regressive. In November, they considered a bill that would repeal property taxes entirely, another boon for the rich.
They also passed a universal school voucher program that would give Wyoming families $7,000 a year in taxpayer funds to spend outside the public school system. The new law could divert funds from public schools and toward the kinds of private and charter schools often favored by wealthy families. The Wyoming Supreme Court is weighing whether the law will take effect.
In Teton County, the social contract is fraying.
Local residents said there used to be much to like about living among the 1 percent, even as inequality rose. Teton County had better medical care than the rest of the state. The public schools had better academic outcomes. But the latest billionaire boom, paired with a tax regime that favors the rich, has eroded the quality of life.
The property tax cut took an immediate toll on funding for schools, police forces, road and parking maintenance, and hospitals, according to Mike Yin, a Democratic state legislator who represents Teton County. The county hospital has cut clinics. The Health Department has reduced staff. Last year, two sheriff’s deputies assigned to patrol duty did not have proper vehicles.
And the affordable housing shortage, which has been a problem for decades, is now so acute that teachers, medical staff members and even doctors are being priced out of the county.
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3) What to Know About the Widening Fallout From the Bombing of Iran
The Middle East is facing deaths and destruction as Iran retaliates against a huge American-Israeli military campaign.
By Amelia Nierenberg, Reporting from London, March 2, 2026
A yacht sailing past a plume of smoke rising from the port of Jebel Ali, in Dubai, following a reported Iranian strike there on Sunday. Credit...Fadel Senna/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Fallout from an extensive U.S.-Israeli bombing campaign against Iran has spread across the Middle East in recent days, killing scores of people, damaging military bases and civilian infrastructure, and severely disrupting air travel and commercial shipping.
The United States and Israel have conducted thousands of airstrikes across Iran since Saturday. These have killed some of the country’s top officials — including its supreme leader — and hundreds of other people, including civilians.
Iran has responded by firing drones and missiles at Israel, American bases in the region, and U.S. allies in the Persian Gulf. Israel and Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militia in Lebanon, also traded strikes on Monday, opening another front in the widening conflict.
Iran
The U.S. and Israeli strikes have killed several military leaders and senior officials in Iran — including Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country’s supreme leader for over three decades.
Many of the strikes have damaged military infrastructure and government buildings. Israel said it had hit Iranian missile launchers, air defense systems and command centers. The U.S. military said it had targeted Iran’s ballistic missile program and the headquarters of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, a powerful military force; and left at least one Iranian warship sinking.
The assault has also left many civilians dead. The Iranian Red Crescent said on social media on Monday that the American and Israeli strikes had killed 555 people across Iran.
At least 175 people, most of them likely children, were killed in a strike on a girls’ elementary school in southern Iran on Saturday, health officials and Iranian state media said. It was not immediately clear why the school had been hit or by whom. The school is near a naval base belonging to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps.
United States
An Iranian strike at a base in Kuwait killed three American soldiers, who have not been identified. Five other service members were seriously wounded in the attack.
A fourth American soldier later died after being wounded during “Iran’s initial attacks,” the U.S. military said on Monday. It was not immediately clear if that soldier was one of those wounded at the base in Kuwait.
Three American jets were also shot down, targeted “mistakenly” by Kuwaiti air defenses during “an apparent friendly fire incident,” the U.S. military said on Monday, adding that all six crew members had ejected safely and were recovered.
Israel
At least 10 people have been killed in Israel. Nine of them were killed on Sunday by an Iranian missile strike in Beit Shemesh, about 18 miles west of Jerusalem — Israel’s worst casualty event since the start of the conflict. A woman also died after a missile strike in Tel Aviv on Saturday.
Missile barrages and air-raid sirens have sent Israelis running repeatedly to bomb shelters.
Lebanon
At least 31 people have been killed in Israeli airstrikes, the Lebanese Health Ministry said on Monday in a statement carried by official government media.
Israel struck around Beirut, the capital, and in the country’s south, in response to Hezbollah rocket fire on Monday morning. Hezbollah said it had attacked Israel to avenge Ayatollah Khamenei. The strikes shattered a fragile truce that had held for about a year.
Gulf States
Countries in the Persian Gulf that are allied with the United States or that host U.S. military bases have been targeted by Iranian strikes. Iran has hit six facilities across Bahrain, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait, including a key naval headquarters, air bases hosting U.S. forces and a naval recreational area. Iranian drones have also hit hotels and airports.
Most of the Iranian attacks were intercepted, the Gulf countries said, but at least six people were killed in the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Bahrain.
The Emirates: In Dubai, five-star hotels caught fire, explosions shattered the windows of apartment towers and the bustling international airport was damaged, injuring four people and shaking the city’s image as a safe haven.
Three people from Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh were killed across the Emirates, an indication that foreign workers, who make up a large proportion of the population, could be among the worst affected.
Bahrain: One person was killed and two were seriously injured after debris falling from an intercepted missile started a fire on a ship, the interior ministry said. A luxury hotel and several residential buildings were hit in Manama, the capital. An Iranian drone hit a building, starting a fire, a Times analysis showed.
Kuwait: At least one person was killed and more than 30 were injured, Kuwaiti authorities said.
Oman: An oil tanker in Omani waters was attacked, Oman said on Monday. One crew member, an Indian, was killed.
Qatar: At least 16 people were injured in the country, its interior ministry said. Qatar hosts a major American air base.
Iraq
Videos and photos verified by The Times appeared to show that Iran had struck the military base at Erbil International Airport, which hosts U.S. forces. Smoke and flames could be seen rising from the direction of the base.
Syria
Four people were killed in Syria after an Iranian missile struck a building in the southern city of Sweida, according to a Syrian state news agency. The missile was most likely intended for Israel. Sweida is near Israeli-controlled territory.
Pakistan
At least 22 people were killed on Sunday as thousands gathered across the country to denounce the U.S.-Israeli airstrikes against Iran. At least 10 of those people were killed as crowds tried to storm the U.S. Consulate in Karachi.
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4) As Trump Bombs Iran, America’s Allies Watch Fitfully From Sidelines
Disregarded by President Trump over Iran, Europe’s leaders are adapting to a world in which they are little more than bystanders.
By Mark Landler, Reporting from Paris, March 2, 2026
Strikes on Tehran on Sunday. Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times
As American and Israeli warplanes continue to bombard Iranian cities, European allies have been left in a familiar place: on the sidelines. President Trump cut them out of planning for a conflict that has direct implications for their security.
The awkward patchwork of responses from European leaders — a mix of guarded approval and plaintive calls for a return to diplomacy — attest to the complexities of dealing with a United States increasingly untethered to post-World War II rules and norms.
Chancellor Friedrich Merz of Germany suggested on Sunday that Mr. Trump was doing a job that Europe could not do itself. Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, flatly rejected the strikes as destabilizing. President Emmanuel Macron of France tried to keep the focus on Europe’s campaign to defend Ukraine.
“For Europeans, the dilemma is that they were always defenders of the liberal world order,” said Vali R. Nasr, a professor of international affairs at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. “But their response to the war in Gaza, and now their response to the bombing of Iran, underscores the incoherence of their position.”
Europe’s inability to control its message is not altogether surprising. From the president’s capricious tariffs to his open-ended military campaigns, America’s allies are discovering, to their chagrin, that it’s Mr. Trump’s world and they’re just living in it.
Whether it was the targeted killing on Saturday of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, or the nighttime capture in January of Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, Mr. Trump has acted without any pretense of enlisting international support, a stamp of approval from the United Nations, or legal legitimacy.
“I don’t suppose it ever crossed his mind that he should consult the Europeans,” said Kim Darroch, who served as Britain’s ambassador to Washington during Mr. Trump’s first term. “It shows that America First mainly means America Alone.”
It was not always this way. Mr. Darroch contrasted Mr. Trump’s latest attack with his missile strike on Syria in April 2018. Back then, the United States was joined by Britain and France, after the Syrian government carried out a chemical weapons attack on civilians during that country’s civil war.
Such collaboration, Mr. Darroch said, is hard to imagine in the second Trump administration, given the makeup of Mr. Trump’s national security team and unyielding tone of its language, especially at it applies to the European Union.
In one way, he said, Mr. Trump’s brazen disregard of the Europeans has made it easier for the leaders. Had he asked for European support in the strikes against Iran, Mr. Darroch said, they would likely have felt obliged to rebuff him, driving an even greater wedge between Europe and the United States.
While European leaders were careful to note they were not involved in the strikes, they endorsed two of Mr. Trump’s ostensible goals: preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and degrading its missiles, some of which could theoretically hit Europe. Some also welcomed the elimination of its supreme leader.
A spokeswoman for the French government, Maud Bregeon, said Ayatollah Khamenei was “a bloodthirsty dictator who oppressed his people,” degraded women and minorities, and was responsible for the deaths of thousands of civilians. “We can only be satisfied with his death,” she told reporters.
Germany said the White House had notified it in advance of the attacks. On Sunday, Mr. Merz voiced surprising tolerance for Mr. Trump, given the lack of consultation. “Now is not the moment to lecture our allies and partners,” Mr. Merz said, before leaving on a trip to Washington to meet with Mr. Trump. “Despite all doubts, we share many of their goals without being able to achieve them ourselves.”
Arancha González Laya, a former foreign minister of Spain, said Europe’s cautious response reflected both its skepticism about Mr. Trump’s war aims, and the fact that the war in Ukraine remains its overriding priority.
“Europe is looking at this through the eyes of Russia in Ukraine,” said Ms. González Laya, who is the dean of the Paris School of International Affairs at Sciences Po, a French university. “We’re much closer to the risks than the U.S. is,” she said, citing Iranian missiles that could hit European targets.
On Sunday, the leaders of Britain, France and Germany issued a joint statement in which they said they were are “appalled by the indiscriminate and disproportionate missile attacks launched by Iran against countries in the region, including those who were not involved in initial U.S. and Israeli military operations.”
Whatever their ambivalence about the American operation, the risks of being drawn into it are real. Britain’s prime minister, Keir Starmer, said on Sunday that he would allow British bases to be used for “defensive” strikes, hours before a drone crashed into a Royal Air Force base on the island of Cyprus in the Mediterranean.
Amid the fears of escalation in the Middle East, Mr. Macron separately promoted a military operation in the North Sea in which French Navy helicopters dropped Belgian forces aboard a tanker carrying Russian oil. He called it a “major blow” against the so-called shadow fleet, which helps finance the war in Ukraine.
Mr. Macron is sticking to a plan to deliver a speech Monday about France’s nuclear deterrence in Europe, despite the likelihood that it will be overshadowed by Iran. French officials said the timing of his remarks, at a submarine base in Brittany, would demonstrate the value of having an independent military force in dangerous times.
Among European leaders, only Mr. Sánchez of Spain came out squarely against the attacks. “We reject the unilateral military action of the United States and Israel, which represents an escalation and contributes to a more uncertain and hostile international order,” he wrote on social media.
Ms. González Laya recalled that Spain’s support of the American invasion of Iraq in 2003 triggered the fall of a previous Spanish government. She said that hostility to Mr. Trump in Spain made this a popular position for Mr. Sánchez, her former boss, to take, at a time when he is facing political problems.
For every European leader who has struggled to respond to Mr. Trump, there are leaders elsewhere in the world who are well positioned to profit from him. Indeed, some already have.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has succeeded, twice now, in getting the United States to back a long-sought military campaign against Iran, even though its rationale for the United States this time is questionable.
Analysts say President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia could use Mr. Trump’s new enthusiasm for regime change to justify his aggression in Ukraine. The same goes for President Xi Jinping of China, who seeks to control Taiwan, which China regards as a breakaway province.
In Europe, critics say, acquiescing to Mr. Trump’s military adventurism in the Middle East could exacerbate problems closer to home. He might, for example, feel emboldened to revisit his designs on Greenland.
“They’re having trouble navigating this new world because they are caught between these two positions,” Mr. Nasr said. “If you’re defending the principle that the U.S. and Israel can bomb everybody they want, you can’t turn around and say, ‘This doesn’t apply to Ukraine.’ Why wouldn’t the United States take Greenland?”
Ana Castelain contributed reporting from Paris and Christopher F. Schuetze from Berlin.
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5) Under Pressure from Trump, Cuban Leader Calls for ‘Urgent’ Economic Change
President Miguel Díaz-Canel said the private sector needed more autonomy, as the island confronts a U.S. oil blockade that has deepened a humanitarian crisis.
By Luis Ferré-Sadurní and David C. Adams, March 2, 2026
President Miguel Díaz-Canel of Cuba, center, at a funeral in January for those killed in U.S. strikes on Venezuela. Credit...Pool photo by Adalberto Roque
President Miguel Díaz-Canel of Cuba called on Monday for an “urgent” transformation of the country’s economic model, according to Cuban state media, as Cuba confronts an oil blockade by the Trump administration that has deepened a humanitarian crisis on the island.
Mr. Díaz-Canel spoke of the need to give municipalities and the Cuban private sector more autonomy, urged more foreign investment in the energy sector and called for a “resizing of the state apparatus,” according to state media.
“We must focus immediately on implementing the most urgent and necessary transformations to the economic and social model,” Mr. Díaz-Canel said in a speech to the Council of Ministers, the highest body of the government, according to state media.
Mr. Díaz-Canel’s calls for change, which were vague and light in details, appeared to be a direct response to the United States’ increased pressure on the Communist regime and a stark acknowledgment of the toll the U.S. oil blockade has inflicted on Cuba, which is facing one of its most severe economic and humanitarian crisis in decades.
Cuban leaders have long promised to reform the inefficient and centrally controlled economy, before backtracking over fears of losing political control. Those proposals have become more urgent as the 67-year-old Communist government confronts an existential crisis, according to experts who expressed skepticism about Mr. Díaz-Canel’s speech.
Earlier this year, the Trump administration blocked fuel shipments from Venezuela to Cuba, once the island’s main source of foreign oil, and announced tariffs on any country that shipped oil to Cuba, largely cutting off the island from oil imports and worsening an already painful energy shortage.
The U.S. blockade has contributed to blackouts that have virtually paralyzed the economy. The Cuban government has cut back on school hours, called off surgeries at hospitals, reduced public transportation and limited gasoline sales, leaving many residents to bike or walk to work. Food prices have shot up as tons of imported food shipments have been held up at ports.
After the United States led military attacks on Venezuela and Iran, two of Cuba’s closest allies, Mr. Trump hinted that bringing down the Cuban government may be next, leading to divergent views from Cubans who are afraid of a military intervention, but also want to see the Communist government toppled.
“Maybe we’ll have a friendly takeover of Cuba,” Mr. Trump told reporters last week, adding that his government was in talks with the Cuban government.
Mr. Díaz-Canel called on Monday for a “macroeconomic stabilization” of the economy, according to state media, encouraging municipalities to increase partnerships with the private sector and promote investments from Cubans living abroad. He also called for a ramp-up in food production, after a staggering drop in domestic production in recent years left the country increasingly dependent on a growing but heavily restricted private sector.
Cuba has been undergoing a tentative opening of the private sector since 2021, with the creation of hundreds of private small-to-medium businesses limited to 100 employees each. More recently, the private sector grew after a series of reforms allowing private ownership of a wide range of businesses, including construction, clothing, food production, software development, small hotels, bars, restaurants and private taxi services.
But experts have questioned whether the country can achieve more far-reaching change without a greater dismantling of the state’s control over the economy.
“This is not a genuine reflection on much-needed and long overdue change,” said Ricardo Torres, a Cuban-born economist at American University. He described the Cuban president’s proposals on Monday as “change so that everything remains the same.”
Carlos Miguel Pérez Reyes, a businessman and member of Cuba’s legislature, said in a Facebook post that Mr. Díaz-Canel’s speech was “necessary,” but lacked a clear plan to bolster the private sector.
“Beyond the speech, what is needed is an implementation program with clear priorities, defined responsibilities, deadlines and popular control,” he wrote.
The comments by Mr. Díaz-Canel came a week after Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants with a hard-line stance against the island’s Communist regime, said the United States was open to seeing gradual economic and political change on the island.
“Cuba needs to change,” Mr. Rubio said last week on Saint Kitts and Nevis. “And it doesn’t have to change all at once. It doesn’t have to change from one day to the next. Everyone is mature and realistic here. We’re seeing that process play out, for example, in Venezuela.”
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6) Global Markets Tumble After U.S. Warns War Could Last Weeks
Oil and gas prices surged and stock markets fell, after U.S. and Israeli officials signaled that strikes on Iran would intensify. As the conflict widened, Israel’s military stepped up operations against Iran-backed Hezbollah, which fired rockets into Israel.
By Aaron Boxerman, Helene Cooper and Yan Zhuang, March 3, 2026
Here’s the latest.
Global stock markets tumbled on Tuesday and the price of oil surged, as the widening conflict in the Middle East sent a shudder through the world economy and American and Israeli officials signaled that their bombing campaign against Iran could last weeks.
President Trump was set to meet with Chancellor Friedrich Merz of Germany in Washington on Tuesday morning, the president’s first meeting with a foreign leader since the war began, and the two were expected to speak with reporters. The meeting was long planned, but is likely to be dominated by discussions of the attacks on Iran, which continued for a fourth day.
With Iran retaliating for the killing of its supreme leader, the U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia warned of imminent drone and rocket attacks in Dhahran, the eastern city that is home to Saudi Aramco, the government-controlled oil producer, threatening to put more pressure on global oil supplies. The embassy itself was hit by a drone attack early Tuesday, a day after a drone struck the U.S. embassy in Kuwait. The United States announced that it was closing both facilities, and said its embassy in Beirut would be closed until further notice because of “ongoing regional tensions.”
Fighting escalated between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. The Israeli military said that it was carrying out additional strikes in Iran, and had targeted weapons storage facilities in Beirut, the Lebanese capital, as Hezbollah said it had fired attack drones at Israel. Israel’s advance in southern Lebanon prompted fears that it could be weighing a wider ground assault similar to the one it launched during its yearlong war with Hezbollah that ended in late 2024.
More than 800 people have been killed in the conflict across the Middle East since Saturday, when the United States and Israel launched their opening attacks on Iran and killed the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The war has prompted a global market sell-off that intensified on Tuesday, with stocks and bonds slipping and oil and gas prices surging because of attacks on production facilities and tankers, and Iran’s threats to close the Strait of Hormuz.
Here’s what we’re covering:
· Global markets: Brent Crude, the global oil benchmark, rose above $80 a barrel, its highest level since 2024, and gasoline prices in the United States jumped 11 cents per gallon overnight. The S&P 500 opened almost 2 percent lower, following sharp stock market declines in Asia and Europe. Read more ›
· U.S. advisory: The State Department urged Americans to depart immediately from 14 Middle East countries. The advisory cited “serious safety risks” and included Iran, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, along with Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Syria, Yemen and the Palestinian territories. The State Department separately ordered nonessential staff members and their families to evacuate six countries: Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
· Southern Lebanon: Israel Katz, the Israeli defense minister, said the country’s forces had been ordered to advance and take control of additional strategic locations in Lebanon to prevent Hezbollah attacks on Israeli border communities. Read more ›
Death toll: Iran’s Red Crescent Society, the country’s main humanitarian relief organization, said on Tuesday that the death toll had risen to 787 since the start of the U.S.-Israeli attacks on Saturday. The Pentagon said that six U.S. service members had been killed in the conflict and the Lebanese health ministry said that at least 31 people had been killed in fighting. In Israel, at least 10 people have been killed, and in the Gulf, there have been six deaths since Saturday, according to the authorities.
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7) An Emboldened Israel Is Seizing Opportunities to Remake Region
With the war against Iran underway, and the U.S. military as a powerful ally, the Israeli government is seizing its chance to move against other adversaries.
By David M. Halbfinger and Ronen Bergman, Reporting from Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, March 3, 2026
A worker breaking down structural steel after American airstrikes on Tehran on Monday. Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times
For years, as it railed against Iran’s nuclear program, Israel seemed held in check from confronting Iran militarily. It feared that Hezbollah, Tehran’s political ally and proxy army in Lebanon, would respond on Iran’s behalf, unleashing its arsenal of thousands of missiles and rockets and raining hellfire down on Haifa and Tel Aviv.
Now, Israel and the United States own the skies over Iran and are steadily blowing up its ballistic missile infrastructure and arsenal.
And when Hezbollah joined the fight, however symbolically — with a single, relatively feeble volley of rockets and drones launched into northern Israel at about 1 a.m. Monday — Israel had the pretext it needed. It announced a much more significant and long-in-the-making counteroffensive, striking Hezbollah leaders in Beirut and throughout the country.
Emboldened by its partnership with the United States, feeling its own military strength, and sensing the weaknesses of its two fiercest adversaries, Israel is seizing the new war as an opportunity to pursue its own geopolitical agenda.
“We will end this campaign with not just Iran being struck, but with Hezbollah suffering a devastating blow,” the Israeli military’s chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, told division commanders on Israel’s northern border on Monday. He hinted at a long fight with Hezbollah, saying it would not end “before the threat from Lebanon is eliminated.”
This is also a war that Israel started opportunistically. And that fact reflects an important shift in the country’s strategic thinking since the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7, 2023, and the catastrophic intelligence failures that made it possible.
No longer does Israel trust its intelligence establishment’s ability to read its adversaries’ intentions accurately. So when enemies bent on Israel’s destruction begin amassing the means to achieve it, Israel now sees an imperative to destroy those capabilities whenever it gets the chance.
“That’s why the conversation about whether Iran was really on the verge of developing nuclear weapons doesn’t even really matter at this point,” said Shira Efron, an Israel analyst at RAND, referring to a major rationale for the Israeli-U.S. attack on Saturday.
According to three Israeli defense officials, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered military leaders at the end of last year to begin planning for a solo strike against Iran to be carried out sometime between April and June.
Military commanders were unenthusiastic, one defense official said, because they did not believe that Israel, acting alone, could achieve much more than it had in the 12-day war in June 2025. They were also concerned about their ability to defend against what they expected would be an Iranian response targeting Israeli population centers with ballistic missiles, the defense official said.
Once it became clear that the United States would be Israel’s partner in an attack on Iran and it began to amass forces in the region, two defense officials said, Israeli generals changed their tune. They grasped a historic opportunity to batter Iran, destroy its missile arsenal, further damage its nuclear program, and even try to push the Iranian government to the breaking point.
The shouldering of much of the burden by the Americans — including sending aloft a huge fleet of midair-refueling tankers — made it possible for Israel to deploy its largest air fleet ever on Saturday, the two officials said. That allowed for what proved a devastating assault on Iranian missile launchers, they said.
By contrast, Israel’s campaign against Hezbollah, analysts said, reflects the fact that it had made plans months ago for such an attack and was waiting for an excuse to execute them.
“Israel was waiting for the opportunity,” said Orna Mizrahi, a former deputy national security adviser who specializes in Lebanon at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv. She called Monday’s missile and drone strike by Hezbollah a profoundly “stupid adventure.”
Since its eight-week war with Hezbollah in October and November of 2024, Israel has accused the militant group of violating a truce and has struck what it calls terrorist targets in Lebanon almost daily.
“That was the reason to plan for another campaign,” Ms. Mizrahi said. “Every two houses or so, there was military infrastructure and places and equipment and missile launchers. There was a lot to do, and the I.D.F. couldn’t complete all of it.”
Hezbollah, for its part, says those Israeli strikes are violations of the cease-fire, and described its attack on Monday as a response to Israeli provocations. Tens of thousands of people have been displaced in Lebanon since the fighting began, and 52 were killed on Monday, according to the Lebanese government.
For months, Israel threatened to launch a new offensive if Lebanon’s government did not hasten the disarmament of the group, as required under the 2024 cease-fire. Though severely weakened, Hezbollah resisted nationwide disarmament unless Israel stopped its strikes in Lebanon and withdrew from several small areas it has held onto in Lebanese territory.
In January, the Lebanese Army said it had taken operational control south of the Litani River, except for those Israeli outposts.
“But that didn’t mean they had eliminated all the military existence of Hezbollah there,” Ms. Mizrahi said. “They didn’t even pretend to. And this is not enough for Israel.”
As for what a new Lebanon campaign will entail, analysts said they expected a ground operation, not just airstrikes, and noted the deployment of reservists to infantry and armored units along the northern border. An Israeli military spokesman announced Tuesday morning that troops had indeed seized new areas of southern Lebanon close to the border overnight, but insisted that this was a “tactical step” and not part of a broader maneuver or invasion.
Shimon Shapira, a retired brigadier general who has studied Hezbollah for many years, said the objective of the new offensive against the group had to be nothing short of dismantling its military.
“The goal is to make Hezbollah a political party without any weapons or army,” he said. “You can take the missiles, the weapons, the ammunition. That you can do. And on the way, kill the commanders.”
On Monday, Mr. Netanyahu, visiting the scene of a deadly Iranian missile strike, assured Israelis and Iranians that the “day is nearing” when the Iranian people would be able to break free from “the yoke of tyranny.” And when that day comes, he said, “Israel and the United States will be there.”
If Israel’s leaders sound upbeat about the prospects for this two-front war and what it could mean for the region, that should not come as a complete surprise, analysts said.
Apart from the war in Gaza, Israel has had a powerful run militarily in the past few years, weakening Iran’s proxies in Syria and Lebanon, and overshadowing its Oct. 7 failures with repeated intelligence coups and devastating aerial attacks.
But the country’s swaggering self-confidence also carries the possibility of overreach.
Ms. Efron, the RAND analyst, said that Israel needed to remember to make political agreements, not just make war.
“For a country of 10 million people to think that, just through the use of force, it can transform the whole region, is a bit of a stretch,” she said. “No one likes Iran, but that doesn’t mean that bullyish behavior by Israel is acceptable.”
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8) Noem appears before Congress for the first time since the Minnesota immigration surge.
By Michael Gold, Congressional reporter, March 3., 2026
Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, repeatedly declined on Tuesday to apologize for suggesting that two American citizens killed by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, were domestic terrorists.
Asked by Democratic and Republican senators about comments she made in the aftermath of both shootings that Ms. Good and Mr. Pretti had committed acts of domestic terrorism, Ms. Noem did not retract her remarks. She said repeatedly that her characterizations came from immigration officers in Minneapolis.
“I was getting reports from the ground, from agents at the scene,” Ms. Noem said at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. “And I would say that it was a chaotic scene.”
Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the top Democrat on the panel, scoffed in disbelief. “You believe calling the victims of violence ‘domestic terrorists’ is a way to calm the scene?” he asked.
Ms. Noem’s account contradicted testimony from the heads of two federal immigration agencies, who told senators last month that their agencies did not provide Ms. Noem with an assessment that either Ms. Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, and Mr. Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive-care nurse, were domestic terrorists. The acting director of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, Todd Lyons, said that he had seen no evidence to suggest the claims were true.
After the shooting of Ms. Good on Jan. 7, Ms. Noem accused her of trying to run over officers with her car, which she described as “an act of domestic terrorism.” Video analysis by The New York Times has shown that Ms. Good appeared to be turning the car away from the officer as he opened fire.
After Mr. Pretti was shot by immigration officers on Jan. 24, Ms. Noem said at a news conference without evidence that he had committed an act of “domestic terrorism.” Stephen Miller, a top aide to President Trump and the driving force of the administration’s immigration crackdown, called Mr. Pretti a “domestic terrorist.”
During the hearing on Tuesday, Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota, told Ms. Noem that her remarks were “one of the most hurtful things” that Mr. Pretti’s family could have heard after the shooting and asked if Ms. Noem had anything she wanted to say to his relatives.
Ms. Noem offered condolences, but she did not retract her remarks, even as Ms. Klobuchar pressed her.
“I did not call him a domestic terrorist,” Ms. Noem said. “I said it appeared to be an incident of domestic terrorism.”
Senator John Kennedy, a Louisiana Republican who generally aligns himself with Mr. Trump, also pressed Ms. Noem on how she reached her conclusions about Mr. Pretti and Ms. Good.
Then, he accused her of blaming those comments on Mr. Miller, citing an Axios report. “Do you think it was fair to blame Mr. Miller for your words?” he asked.
“I did not do that,” Ms. Noem said, dismissing the report as false and saying it had come from anonymous sources.
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9) Homeland Security Investigates Remarks of Border Patrol Leader Gregory Bovino
Mr. Bovino, who was the face of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdowns in American cities, was reported to have made disparaging comments in reference to the U.S. attorney in Minnesota, who is an Orthodox Jew.
By Ernesto Londoño and Hamed Aleaziz, Ernesto Londoño reported from Minneapolis, March 3, 2026
Gregory Bovino, a senior Border Patrol commander, during Operation Midway Blitz in Chicago last fall. Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York Times
The Department of Homeland Security has opened an internal investigation into a report that Gregory Bovino, a senior Border Patrol commander, made disparaging remarks about the Jewish faith of the top federal prosecutor in Minnesota during an immigration operation in the state.
Mr. Bovino, who was the most visible figure in the government’s crackdown in Minnesota, complained in a phone call to federal prosecutors in January that the U.S. attorney in Minnesota, Daniel N. Rosen, was hard to reach over the weekend because he observes Shabbat, according to several people with knowledge of the call. Shabbat is a 25-hour period of rest that starts Friday at sundown and often includes refraining from using electronic devices.
Mr. Bovino used the term “chosen people” in voicing his frustration about Mr. Rosen, an Orthodox Jew, and asked sarcastically whether Orthodox Jewish criminals refrained from breaking the law during the weekend, the people with knowledge of the call said.
The New York Times reported on the call in late January, based on the accounts of people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a sensitive conversation. CBS News later reported that it confirmed key details of the conversation.
John Breckenridge, an investigator with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s office of professional responsibility, told The Times in an email that he had opened an “official inquiry into the allegation” that Mr. Bovino had made “unprofessional comments.” Customs and Border Protection is part of the Department of Homeland Security.
Mr. Breckenridge contacted The Times as part of the investigation, seeking voluntary assistance in contacting the people who gave accounts of the call. The Times did not provide information regarding its reporting, in keeping with longstanding policy to such requests. Mr. Breckenridge declined to say whether he was investigating other aspects of Mr. Bovino’s conduct.
Mr. Bovino did not respond to an email on Monday about the internal investigation. In an email, a representative for the Department of Homeland Security said that the inquiry was started after a member of Congress sent a letter about “anonymous allegations.” Such an inquiry is standard procedure, the representative said, and does not indicate “any confirmation of wrongdoing.”
Mr. Rosen, who previously said that a main reason he pursued his current role was to combat antisemitism, declined to comment about the inquiry.
The Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General said last month that it was conducting a broad review of the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement tactics as it pursues a broad deportation campaign.
Mr. Breckenridge’s inquiry is the only publicly known effort by a federal agency to examine Mr. Bovino’s actions during tense enforcement operations he led in Los Angeles, Chicago, Charlotte, N.C., and the Minneapolis region.
Mary Moriarty, the elected prosecutor in Hennepin County, said on Monday that her office was “actively investigating” behavior by Mr. Bovino during a confrontation with protesters near a Minneapolis park on Jan. 21. She said that investigation was part of a broader review of “potentially unlawful behavior” by federal agents.
On that day, Mr. Bovino was captured on video warning, “I’m going to gas — get back! — gas is coming,” before lobbing a gas canister toward protesters that generated a big plume of green smoke, videos showed. Last fall, a federal judge criticized Mr. Bovino for his use of tear gas in the Chicago area, finding that he had, in one instance, falsely claimed that a protester hit him with a rock before he deployed tear gas.
The remarks Mr. Bovino is said to have made about Mr. Rosen occurred as officials at the U.S. attorney’s office were debating how to address the fatal shooting of Renee Good by an immigration agent. At the time, Mr. Bovino was asking prosecutors to more aggressively pursue criminal charges against residents who he said were impeding and assaulting federal agents.
Weeks later, after federal agents fatally shot a second American citizen in Minneapolis, Mr. Bovino asserted that agents had fired “defensive shots,” claiming that the man, Alex Pretti, a nurse, “wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.”
An analysis by The New York Times of videos of the shooting contradicted Mr. Bovino’s characterization, showing that agents had disarmed and pinned down Mr. Pretti before shooting him repeatedly from behind.
Soon after Mr. Pretti’s death, the Trump administration withdrew Mr. Bovino from Minnesota.
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10) No Empire. No Kings.
By Peter Beinart, March 3, 2026
Mr. Beinart is a contributing Opinion writer at The Times.
Illustration by The New York Times
President Trump has offered various explanations for attacking Iran: the regime’s nuclear program, its proxies’ history of attacks on U.S. troops, its repression of its people. He offered a different set of explanations for attacking Venezuela: its suspected role in drug smuggling, and what he called its theft of “our” oil. He’s also provided justifications for wanting to acquire Greenland, reassert influence over the Panama Canal and even annex Canada.
These rationales share a theme: The United States should be free to remove foreign leaders and dominate foreign lands without regard to national sovereignty and the conventions of international law. “My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me,” Mr. Trump told The Times.
In other words, Donald Trump’s foreign policy vision is imperialism. It’s a global outlook that closely resembles Mr. Trump’s governing style at home — both feature spectacular violence and contempt for the restraints of law.
Leading Democrats once understood the link between imperialism abroad and despotism at home. At the end of the 19th century, one of Mr. Trump’s heroes, President William McKinley, set out to establish an American empire in the Caribbean and the Pacific. William Jennings Bryan, McKinley’s Democratic opponent in the presidential election of 1900, argued that these conquests didn’t only trample the rights of those outside America’s borders. They also endangered liberty in the United States. “Imperialism might expand the nation’s territory,” he said, “but it would contract the nation’s purpose. It is not a step forward toward a broader destiny; it is a step backward, toward the narrow views of kings and emperors.”
Bryan’s theme was nearly as old as the United States. In the 19th century, even as the United States spilled across the continent, stealing Native land, massacring native populations and expanding slavery, prominent Americans still contrasted their supposedly republican, liberty-loving nation with imperial, despotic Europe. In 1821, John Quincy Adams warned that if the United States imposed its will on people in foreign lands, “the fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force.” A generation later, during the Mexican-American War, Ralph Waldo Emerson argued that domestic liberty and foreign conquest were incompatible. “The United States will conquer Mexico,” he wrote, “but it will be as the man swallows the arsenic, which brings him down in turn.”
Anti-imperialism brought together Americans across the ideological spectrum. Abolitionists like Frederick Douglass and Henry David Thoreau also opposed President James Polk’s invasion of Mexico. So did John C. Calhoun, among the Senate’s foremost defenders of slavery. Similarly, McKinley’s attempt to build an empire in the Caribbean and the Pacific met opposition from both W.E.B. Du Bois, a founder of the N.A.A.C.P., and the racist South Carolina senator John Lowndes McLaurin.
When America became a global superpower after World War II, presidents largely ceased trying to incorporate territory into the country. But in the name of fighting communism and later terrorism, they still used America’s military to control foreign lands. In response, new generations of anti-imperialists — like Senator Wayne Morse, who opposed the Tonkin Gulf Resolution in 1964, and Representative Barbara Lee, who refused to vote for the authorization of military force three days after 9/11 — warned that such conquests would corrupt the United States.
Critics of modern imperialism often did not carry the day. Their logic, however, could prove potent today, as no other president in modern history has so brazenly showcased the connection between lawlessness abroad and lawlessness at home, as has Mr. Trump. Last September, Mr. Trump told an audience of top military officials, “We’re under invasion from within. No different than a foreign enemy.” Minnesota Governor Tim Walz has said that in January when he questioned the federal government’s actions in his state, Mr. Trump told him, “it was successful in Venezuela” (the White House later denied that Mr. Trump had made that comparison).
Anti-imperialism also enjoys broad appeal in this moment because Americans are less afraid of external threats than they once were. When President George W. Bush launched his war on terror, smoldering embers still burned in Lower Manhattan. By contrast, Mr. Trump had to lard his case by reaching back to 1979, 1983 and 2000 to find examples of Iran and its proxies targeting Americans. Surveys suggest that Americans today are less worried about national security than they are about civil liberties.
Imperial conquests have generally proved most popular when the U.S. government is flush with cash. The United States went to war with Spain during the economic boom that followed the panic of 1893. Lyndon Johnson could pour money and troops into Vietnam because the postwar decades had created what John Kenneth Galbraith famously called the Affluent Society, a country with the funds to simultaneously battle communism in Southeast Asia and poverty in the United States. When Mr. Bush took office in 2001, the United States boasted a budget surplus.
Today, by contrast, the federal budget deficit is about $2 trillion, and most Americans believe that American power is in decline.
Even as his advisers reportedly urge Mr. Trump to focus on economic concerns at home, he’s grown infatuated with the spectacle of American military might. As a result, he’s pursuing wars that most Americans reject. A Reuters/Ipsos poll taken the day after the United States attacked Iran found that 56 percent of Americans — including 23 percent of Republicans — think Mr. Trump relies too heavily on force.
A revived anti-imperialist movement can rally a diverse group of Americans — progressives who oppose attacking Iran because it violates international law as well as America Firsters who oppose the war because they think America’s moral obligations end at the country’s borders.
While Mr. Trump peddles a fantasy of omnipotence in which the United States assassinates foreign leaders and bombs fishermen, anti-imperialists can help Americans adapt to an era in which they have less power. They can embrace a multipolar world because they don’t want America to be imperial Rome.
As an authoritarian president launches another war, it’s time for a new generation to raise William Jennings Bryan’s historic banner: No empire, no kings.
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11) Trump Tries to Quiet Claims Among Supporters That Israel Dragged Him Into War
Many of President Trump’s allies have urged him and his Make America Great Again movement to shift away from their close ties to Israel and military entanglements in the Middle East.
By Tyler Pager, Reporting from Washington, Published March 3, 2026, Updated March 4, 2026
“When asked Tuesday if Israel had forced his hand in attacking Iran, Mr. Trump said, ‘No, I might have forced their hand.’ He said later, ‘If anything, I might have forced Israel’s hand.’ Mr. Rubio also sought to walk back his comments that the operation had been triggered by Israel’s plans to strike Iran, insisting the decision had been made independently by Mr. Trump. ‘The bottom line is this: The president determined we were not going to get hit first,’ he said on Tuesday. ‘It’s that simple, guys.’ But in a letter to Congress, sent Monday and made public Tuesday, Mr. Trump wrote that he had ordered the military action in Iran to advance American national interests and eliminate Iran as a global threat, adding that it was carried out ‘in collective defense of our regional allies, including Israel.’”
President Trump attempted to extinguish the idea that Israel forced the United States to enter a war with Iran. Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times
President Trump on Tuesday tried to tamp down an uproar over whether Israel had dragged the United States into a war with Iran, but he and top officials offered contradictory explanations for why, exactly, Mr. Trump had ordered military action.
Many of the president’s anti-interventionist supporters were already skeptical about the joint U.S.-Israel military campaign. The backlash exploded on Monday after Secretary of State Marco Rubio suggested the United States faced an imminent threat because Israel was about to attack Iran.
If Israel attacked, Mr. Rubio explained, Iran was poised to retaliate against U.S. forces.
Mr. Rubio’s comments suggested to some of Mr. Trump’s core supporters that Israel’s decision had led the United States into war. Many of those same allies for years have urged the president and the broader Make America Great Again movement to shift away from their close ties to Israel and military entanglements in the Middle East.
“Rubio’s comments are a record-scratch moment,” Mike Cernovich, a pro-Trump social media commentator, wrote on social media. “He said what most guessed was the case. That he said out loud this is a sea change in foreign policy. There will be massive calls for a walk back.”
Mr. Trump and Mr. Rubio both tried to smooth over tensions on Tuesday, but they continued to offer conflicting accounts of the events that had led the United States into its most expansive military conflict since the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
When asked Tuesday if Israel had forced his hand in attacking Iran, Mr. Trump said, “No, I might have forced their hand.” He said later, “If anything, I might have forced Israel’s hand.”
Mr. Rubio also sought to walk back his comments that the operation had been triggered by Israel’s plans to strike Iran, insisting the decision had been made independently by Mr. Trump.
“The bottom line is this: The president determined we were not going to get hit first,” he said on Tuesday. “It’s that simple, guys.”
But in a letter to Congress, sent Monday and made public Tuesday, Mr. Trump wrote that he had ordered the military action in Iran to advance American national interests and eliminate Iran as a global threat, adding that it was carried out “in collective defense of our regional allies, including Israel.”
Israel, in particular, has led to cracks in parts of Mr. Trump’s base over how much support the United States should provide the country. Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News anchor, has been among the most vocal critics of the United States’ longstanding support of Israel. Mr. Carlson met with the president three times over the last month, urging Mr. Trump to restrain Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel.
Mr. Carlson has come under fire for conducting a friendly interview with the white nationalist Nick Fuentes, who has expressed admiration for Hitler and Stalin and opposes Mr. Trump over his support for Israel. Mr. Trump defended Mr. Carlson after the interview, though he has said neither his party nor his movement had room for people with antisemitic views.
“There’s a segment of the base that has become anti-Israel and they view Rubio’s comments as confirming their prior beliefs of how American foreign policy operates,” said Jack Posobiec, a conservative activist and prominent Trump supporter. “There’s no question that Rubio’s comment set them off.”
Many of Mr. Trump’s supporters say the president’s public disdain for military intervention and his vow to end, not start, wars was a key part of his appeal. They believed it formed the core of an “America First” foreign policy ideology.
Mr. Trump has often floated above the internal discord within his movement, but he has been consistent in supporting Israel and its leaders.
“I have been the best president of the United States in the history of this country toward Israel,” he told The New York Times in an interview in January.
Even as prominent supporters criticize the president for the decision to go to war, most acknowledge Mr. Trump is unlikely to lose much ground with his base. His support is too deep, they say, and his success in recent military operations in Venezuela and Iran has earned him good will.
But Mr. Posobiec, the conservative activist, predicted the intraparty fight over Israel’s future would only accelerate in the years ahead, especially as the party looks toward a future beyond Mr. Trump.
“There’s no way of getting through the 2028 Republican primary without answering the question: What role does Israel play in American foreign policy?” Mr. Posobiec said.
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12) The Iran War Is Trump’s War
By Ross Douthat, March 3, 2026
Illustration by Shannon Lin/The New York Times
Let’s think about the Iran war in the light of Donald Trump’s career to date. What has made him so historically significant, so effective as a politician in spite of all his sins and faults, so enduring and dominant in the American political landscape? One thing especially: an incredible instinct for the weaknesses of enemies and rivals, a willingness to tear away what looks like strength to reveal the rot beneath, an eye for the main chance and an appetite for conquest.
The Republican establishment in 2016 offered a case study in the vulnerabilities that he exploits: a party elite that had been discredited by the Iraq war and the financial crisis but didn’t fully realize it, a cadre of politicians who were easily unmanned by insults and braggadocio, a long list of names who staked out high-minded opposition and then inexorably bent the knee.
The same pattern prevailed in his defeat of Hillary Clinton’s complacent campaign and then his post-2020 comeback against a political establishment that constrained him for a while but allowed itself to be hollowed out by radicalism. And the scene at his second inaugural, where lords of industry who once participated eagerly in the resistance lined up to pay him homage, was the perfect capstone: He had taken their measure all along.
Which left only the world to conquer.
It was obvious enough in Trump’s first term that he was not really a dove or an isolationist. But the second term has made it clear that the recurring Trumpian arguments for foreign policy restraint should be understood primarily as rhetorical bludgeons against his neoconservative and liberal opponents that, having served their purpose, can be discarded when new opportunities appear. Likewise his impulse for deal making should be understood as just one means of power projection, whose pleasures are milder than the thrill of seeing geopolitical rivals humiliated or captive or simply dead.
So what does his eye for weakness see in Iran? First, a regime that has seen its networks of regional power ruthlessly dismantled over the past few years, primarily by Israeli operations, and that has the same government as in the 1980s but a drastically different domestic situation — with far less religious zeal and far less legitimacy for the clerical regime. (Note that this sense of Iranian weakness is a very different rationale for war from the argument about imminent military danger that Trump’s subordinates feel obliged to offer to Congress and the press.)
Second, Trump senses a larger weakness in the quasi-axis arrayed against the American imperium. During Joe Biden’s administration it felt as if Russia, Iran and China were all acting in a kind of loose concert, probing and testing and attacking. But these powers are not actually allied with one another, and when one is imperiled, the others do not necessarily rush to its defense. Still less are they loyal to their client states, whether in Latin America or the Middle East. So the Russian quagmire in Ukraine becomes an opportunity to knock off the Assad regime in Syria. The Chinese and Russians do not bestir themselves in defense of Venezuela (or, tomorrow, Cuba). And Iran in its weakness doesn’t have a powerful authoritarian alliance to back it up. It’s just a wobbly dictatorship that, if toppled, leaves the anti-American world order weaker than before.
Finally, Trump senses a window of opportunity created by advances in military technology, with the earlier strikes on Iran and the raid in Venezuela as proofs of concept, which make it possible to conduct a kind of fatal surgery on an adversary’s leadership class: It’s not shock and awe; it’s drone strike and assassinate. The hope is that this new combination can produce a more tractable elite without the necessity of Iraq-style occupation and counterinsurgency.
Obviously there is more to the story here than just Trump’s instincts. But I think it makes sense to put them at the center of the story, rather than Israeli influence or Saudi pressure (real as those are), the residual power of a baby boomer conservatism that took shape during the Iran hostage crisis or the supposed tendency of right-wing nationalists to look abroad for splendid little wars when domestic politics aren’t going their way.
Put another way, the reason that some of these forces matter is that they dovetail with Trump’s instincts: Trump himself identifies with the Israelis and Saudis and is himself a baby boomer for whom the idea of settling unfinished Cold War business, from Tehran to Havana, has a special historical appeal. He is the key agent here, the central historical character, and the right-wing nationalism he leads and shapes is clearly just being brought along for the ride, voicing much less enthusiasm and more obvious dissension than George W. Bush’s conservative movement ever showed during his Middle East wars.
Take away Trump’s raw instinct, his belief that he has taken the measure of the world in the same way he once took the measure of the Republican establishment, and the pro-war coalition — already a minority of the country in most polls — would unravel tomorrow.
And therein lies one obvious potential future, in which the Iran war is the moment when the Trumpian instinct for weakness finally and fatefully misjudges. This is the pattern of many historical conquerors: The long run of success yields the inevitable hubris, and the grand career ends with a grand debacle and would-be successors reaching for the knife.
I imagine that Trump thinks (or intuits, if you prefer) that he can avoid that fate as long as he never fully invades a country, that the high-tech air-war strategy inherently limits the downside risks of hubris.
But the dark path here — a half-collapsed Iran fighting a decentralized war against its neighbors, a suppurating crisis that will be blamed on Israel by the further right and left alike — seems bad enough to pin Trump down in George W. Bush territory for the remainder of his term. “We destroyed their nuclear program” will not be enough of a justification in his own coalition, let alone the country as a whole.
No: Success now requires some version, however unique to the Iranian situation, of the Venezuelan endgame, in which a somewhat friendlier regime holds power and conducts negotiations and keeps the lid on chaos.
I think Trump believes that’s what this war will achieve. Soon we’ll know if his instincts have one more victory in them or if nemesis is finally here.
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13) UN says Israel has suspended humanitarian movements into Gaza
'It is imperative that all crossings be reopened as soon as possible,' says spokesperson
Merve Aydogan, March 3, 2026
The UN said Monday that Israel has closed all crossings into the Gaza Strip and suspended humanitarian movements in and near areas where Israeli forces remain deployed.
"Israeli authorities have closed all crossings, including Rafah, and have suspended humanitarian movements in and near areas where Israeli troops remain deployed in Gaza. And they've also postponed planned rotation for our humanitarian personnel," UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric told a news conference.
"Medical evacuations and the return of people into Gaza have also been suspended as a result," Dujarric said, stressing that people in Gaza rely on consistent aid deliveries.
"People in Gaza, as you know, rely on a steady flow of humanitarian commercial goods from outside. Given the limited storage capacity and destruction across this war-torn area, we and our partners had worked hard to maintain a sustained and predictable flow of supplies despite the continuing restrictions, but that cannot continue under full blockade," he said.
"It is imperative that all crossings be reopened as soon as possible," he added.
In the occupied West Bank, Dujarric said Israeli forces have kept most checkpoints closed, restricting movement between Palestinian cities and governorates and limiting access to livelihoods and services.
"International humanitarian law is clear. As we keep saying every day and often, many times a day, civilians must be protected and their essential needs met, including through unimpeded entry, movement and distribution of humanitarian assistance," he said.
On Saturday morning, the US and Israel launched a joint attack on Iran, claiming it was meant to remove “threats” posed by the Iranian “regime.” In response, Iran targeted Israel and US bases in the region with missiles and drones.
Israel declared a “special and immediate state of emergency” nationwide.
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14) U.S. Submarine Torpedoed Iranian Warship Off Sri Lanka as Conflict Widens
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said it was the first such strike since World War II. The Sri Lankan authorities said they had rescued 32 sailors from the crew of 180.
By Pamodi Waravita, Anupreeta Das and Lynsey Chutel
Pamodi Waravita reported from Colombo, Sri Lanka., March 4, 2026
“The Iranian ship ‘thought it was safe in international waters,’ but ‘instead, it was sunk by a torpedo,’ Mr. Hegseth said at a Pentagon briefing. ‘America is winning, decisively, devastatingly and without mercy,’ Mr. Hegseth said, adding that ‘more waves’ are coming. He said it was the first time an American submarine has been used to fire a torpedo against an enemy ship in combat since World War II.”
An ambulance at the naval headquarters in Galle, Sri Lanka, on Wednesday. Sri Lanka said it had rescued 32 critically injured sailors after their ship sank earlier in the day. Credit...Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
A U.S. submarine torpedoed an Iranian warship in the Indian Ocean near Sri Lanka, Pete Hegseth, the U.S. defense secretary, said on Wednesday, as part of a widening military campaign against Iran.
Although Mr. Hegseth did not name the ship, an Iranian vessel with a crew of 180 sank in the Indian Ocean on Wednesday off the southern coast of Sri Lanka, officials in the country said. At least 80 people were killed, according to Arun Hemachandra, the deputy foreign minister of Sri Lanka. Government officials said 32 people were rescued earlier, and a search was underway for other survivors.
The torpedoed Iranian warship risks dragging Sri Lanka, a South Asian island nation of around 22 million, into a political situation not of its making.
The Iranian ship “thought it was safe in international waters,” but “instead, it was sunk by a torpedo,” Mr. Hegseth said at a Pentagon briefing.
“America is winning, decisively, devastatingly and without mercy,” Mr. Hegseth said, adding that “more waves” are coming. He said it was the first time an American submarine has been used to fire a torpedo against an enemy ship in combat since World War II.
Iran’s naval fleet has been under attack since the United States and Israel launched a war on Iran last weekend, targeting the country’s military and security apparatus.
The Iris Dena, described as a destroyer, was sailing outside Sri Lanka’s territorial waters when it sent a distress signal at 5:08 a.m. local time, the Sri Lankan foreign minister, Vijitha Herath, told Sri Lanka’s Parliament. Sri Lanka responded, sending naval ships and its air force to the endangered vessel.
The strike, more than 2,000 miles from Tehran, stretched the battlefield to its furthest point since the war began. Iran has targeted multiple countries with missiles in recent days, including aiming as far as Cyprus and Turkey.
The Sri Lankan government has not taken a public stance on the conflict, but it has long maintained friendly relations with Iran, analysts said.
“We have a fairly good relationship with Iran — very much a microcosm of our wider relationship with the Arab and the Islamic world,” said Uditha Devapriya, a foreign policy analyst based in Colombo, the capital.
Earlier on Wednesday, Mr. Herath said in a post on X that he had signed the condolence book for Iran’s slain supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, at the Iranian embassy in Colombo. The two countries had strengthened their bilateral ties under his tenure, he said, adding that Sri Lanka remained “appreciative of lran’s friendship.”
Sri Lankan officials said the 32 rescued crew members were taken to the Karapitiya Hospital, in the southern coastal city of Galle.
Officers found bodies floating in the water where the ship went under, Capt. Buddhika Sampath, a spokesman for the Sri Lankan navy, said during a news conference.
“We haven’t seen the ship, but observed oil patches and life craft,” Captain Sampath said.
While the incident took place outside of Sri Lankan waters, the island nation responded in line with its commitment to an international maritime search and rescue treaty, the foreign minister said.
“We are signatories so we intervened on a humane basis as is our responsibility,” Mr. Herath told Parliament.
The Iris Dena, a prized destroyer in the Iranian navy, had participated in an international naval exercise in India last month. The ship had been making its way back toward Iran from Visakhapatnam, a city in India where the joint exercise ended on Feb. 25. The United States was among the many participants in the drills.
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15) This Summer, Students From Hundreds of Colleges Will Heed One Urgent Call
By Michael S. Roth, March 4, 2026
Mr. Roth is the president of Wesleyan University.
Between 1962 and 1966, Martin Luther King Jr. visited Wesleyan University four times to talk with students and teachers about the struggle for civil rights and nonviolent activism. It was a dark time in this country, but Dr. King told his audience that moral ends could yet be achieved through moral means, and that “we can move through the darkness of the hour to the brightness of a new day.”
Some undergraduates heeded that call, and were inspired to join the many others around the country traveling to Mississippi, where voting rights were under attack. Freedom Summer, as that unforgettable season in 1964 was called, involved dangerous work. Many participants were beaten or arrested. A few were murdered. But they shook the conscience of a nation, and their efforts eventually led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act.
American voting rights are once again endangered, this time by the White House. The threat of violence isn’t nearly as immediate as it was in 1964, but from demanding Minnesota’s voter rolls to reinvestigating the 2020 election to making remarks about nationalizing elections, the Trump administration’s actions should leave no doubt as to what the nation is up against. Now is the time for everyone — Republicans, Democrats and independents — to come together and defend our foundational democratic right. And higher education has a unique role to play.
Inspired by those volunteers seven decades ago, Wesleyan University and a network of hundreds of schools and allied organizations are uniting for Democracy Summer, a nationwide program to educate citizens and protect our elections in the coming year.
This isn’t some passing fad: American colleges and universities have been educating people to participate in public life since the founding of the Republic. Thomas Jefferson and George Washington regarded civic education as a fundamental component of liberty. Throughout the 1800s, colleges considered this work — training people to fulfill their duty as citizens — to be central to their mission, because they knew, as Frederick Douglass put it, that learning was “the direct pathway from slavery to freedom.”
The brave volunteers of Freedom Summer knew it, too, and put it into action with Freedom Schools, which taught basic math and reading skills while also helping students explore their role in a functioning democracy.
That is the resolve that we now all must muster to secure our most fundamental right, our most fundamental freedom. Doing so won’t just strengthen our republic; it will also directly enhance the education of students who participate, empowering them to build a better future. And what better way this summer to celebrate our nation’s 250th birthday?
The Democracy Summer network includes research-intensive universities like Yale and Duke, big state schools such as Michigan and Texas and small religious institutions such as Goshen College and Trinity Washington University, as well as interest groups from the American Association of Colleges and Universities to Interfaith America. Civic engagement centers at more than 400 colleges and universities have joined the effort, and more are expected.
How these schools interpret the mandate to protect our democracy is up to them. Many will work with organizations such as Campus Compact and Civic Nation to encourage voting. Others are focused on promoting free speech and civil dialogue on their campuses. They might work on local issues by canvassing and organizing in communities, or focus on national obstacles to voting such as poor access to polling places, misinformation and administrative constraints. Many will offer internships that enable students to join campaigns from Alaska to Texas, or hold workshops on how to register voters and help them get to the polls. And by the end of the summer, as midterm elections come into view, the network of schools will dispatch thousands of students for meaningful work, under the guidance of election administrators and civic organizations, to recruit poll workers and monitor voting as it’s underway. Many different ways to ensure one simple promise: that every eligible voter has the chance to cast a ballot, and that all ballots are accurately counted.
The Trump administration has taken steps to limit how colleges and universities distribute voter registration materials. But Democracy Summer is not a partisan effort: We are drawing students from conservative-leaning civics centers and older progressive organizations alike, and they will work side by side, in districts where they feel politically at home as well as those where they are outliers. Nor is this a one-time effort. The elections of 2026 are crucial, but we are building democratic muscles in young people that should endure well beyond the current election cycle.
Leonard Edwards, who met Dr. King during one of his visits to Wesleyan, was asked about why he joined Freedom Summer. It was “the fastest decision I could make,” he said. “This was my chance to make a difference on an issue that had bothered me my entire life.” Mr. Edwards went on to be a distinguished superior court judge in California, an expert on juvenile justice. Looking back, he concluded: “I couldn’t have chosen a better foundation than doing the work in Mississippi.”
College students may not be an exact demographic match for the country as a whole, but they are a diverse lot, and the work of Democracy Summer will offer all of them the same strong foundation that Mr. Edwards described. It will bring students out of their campus bubbles, providing young people with an extraordinary opportunity during our semiquincentennial to learn about the broad array of problems, opportunities and aspirations in America, and to learn how to listen to and communicate with people who don’t share their own convictions or life experiences.
Higher education has thrived in the ecosystem of freedoms provided by our democracy. Today that ecosystem is under enormous strain, and as teachers and students we must now rise to its defense. We can, as Dr. King said, “move through the darkness of the hour to the brightness of a new day.”
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16) With Fuel Running Out, Cuba’s Tourism Is Collapsing
The Trump administration’s decision to cut off foreign oil to the island is devastating its tourism industry, a key source of income for a government being pushed to the edge.
By Frances Robles and Vjosa Isai, March 4, 2026
Frances Robles reported from Florida, and Vjosa Isai from Toronto.
Tourists in an old American car used as a taxi last month in Havana. Yamil Lage/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
By the second week of Debbie Sutherland’s vacation to Cuba last month, there were ominous signs of trouble.
Gasoline was being rationed, excursions were canceled and all of the stores in a nearby mall were closed.
Ms. Sutherland’s hotel in Cayo Las Brujas, a part of a small chain of islands just north of central Cuba, reserved a block of rooms for stranded employees. That section of the hotel was completely dark: Only tourists got electricity.
Cuba has relied on tourism, and on sun-starved Canadian visitors above all others, as a key pillar of its collapsing economy.
“The Cuban people love Canadians,” said Ms. Sutherland, 64, a behavioral therapist from Ontario. “They would say, ‘You know, we would die without Canada.’”
But President Trump’s travel restrictions and move to to block all foreign oil from Cuba has brought the industry — already weakened after the Covid-19 pandemic — to its knees and intensified an economic meltdown threatening the government’s survival.
Like many other travelers, Ms. Sutherland’s vacation was cut short last month as the country’s crippling energy crisis began paralyzing tourism.
With the government saying it was running out of jet fuel and with power outages worsening, Russian and Canadian airlines suspended flights to Cuba, a move that jeopardizes the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of people.
Airlines sent empty jets to the island to take thousands of tourists back home, a stark sign of the volatile conditions in Cuba as the Trump administration’s campaign has created an increasingly desperate situation for Cuba and its people. Abandoned trucks, cars and motorbikes, apparently out of gas, littered the road to the airport, Ms. Sutherland said.
The Trump administration, in its quest to topple Cuba’s 67-year-old Communist government, has targeted the country’s main sources of foreign currency, including tourism, but also medical missions to other countries in exchange for payments to the Cuban government.
Even before Mr. Trump’s executive order in January threatening to impose tariffs on countries that provide oil to Cuba, his administration had been chipping away at Cuba’s tourism industry.
Mr. Trump limited Americans’ ability to travel to Cuba, stay at government hotels or travel there aboard a cruise ship. His decision to put Cuba on the list of state sponsors of terrorism meant that Europeans who went to Cuba lost their ability to travel to the United States without a visa.
Last year, Cuba had just 1.8 million international visitors, down from 4.7 million in 2018, said Paolo Spadoni, a social sciences professor at Augusta University in Georgia who recently published a book on Cuba’s tourism industry.
Even as their numbers have also decreased, Canadians have remained a cornerstone of tourism, accounting for roughly 40 percent of foreign visitors. Cuba has actively courted Canadians, who can enter Cuba legally, and like to spend money on winter getaways and are reliable return visitors.
But as international headlines focus on nationwide blackouts, the spread of mosquito-borne illnesses and the growing piles of garbage in the streets, many European and Canadian tourists are choosing other destinations. Some tour operators have removed Cuba from their list of offerings.
Even Cubans living in the United States are staying away, Mr. Spadoni said.
As a result, Cuba’s tourism industry is likely to suffer a year comparable only to the pandemic, when travel around the world largely shut down, experts say.
It was not long ago that Cuba enjoyed a brief tourism boom after President Barack Obama’s decision in 2014 to restore diplomatic relations with Cuba.
He also relaxed prohibitions against Americans traveling there, even allowing cruise ship sailings. Cuba had long been a forbidden destination for Americans, so the numbers of them visiting Cuba suddenly soared.
The loosening of restrictions was short-lived; Mr. Trump put tougher regulations back in place during his first term in office. The number of Americans visiting Cuba plummeted to 110,000 in 2025 from 638,000 in 2018, according to Cuban government statistics.
But even as the number of tourists heading to Cuba dwindled, Cuba doubled down on its investment, pouring billions into new hotels.
The government added 22,000 new rooms from 2014 to 2025, with some 70 new hotels, Mr. Spadoni said. Cuba has 85,000 hotel rooms nationwide, but an occupancy rate of only about 20 percent, he added.
Cuba’s state-run hotels are managed by Gaviota, a subsidiary of the military-run conglomerate GAESA, which controls the Cuban economy. That means Cuba’s best hotels and prime real estate are in the hands of military officials, Mr. Spadoni said.
“One key misconception is: How can Cuba build so many hotels when the occupancy rate is so low?” Mr. Spadoni said. “One thing people miss is that to the Cuban military, these are real estate investments more than tourism.”
Military officials are likely taking the “long view” by wanting to be in control of valuable properties should the Communist government transition to democracy, he said.
Some new luxury hotels, like the iconic Torre K in Havana, are largely empty.
In the past 15 years, the Cuban government invested about $24 billion in hotels, said Emilio Morales, a Miami-based former marketing official for Cimex, Cuba’s retail conglomerate, who now studies Cuba’s tourism industry and is a harsh critic of its government.
“There were many hotels, and in two or three and a half years, everything shut down or kept deteriorating,” Mr. Morales said. “They didn’t invest in the other sectors that support tourism, such as the energy grid itself.”
The Cuban government did not respond to requests for comment.
In public statements, Cuban officials have denounced the Trump administration for trying to push it toward collapse.
“What does it mean to prevent a single drop of fuel from reaching a country?” President Miguel Díaz-Canel said recently. “It means affecting food transportation, food production, public transportation, the functioning of hospitals, institutions of all kinds, schools, economic output, and tourism.”
He added: “Surrender is not an option.”
The Cuban government last month abruptly closed more than a dozen hotels and transferred its guests to consolidate tourists and save on energy.
Some airlines have continued their flights, adding stops in the Dominican Republic for refueling, while some countries are warning against visiting Cuba.
Air Canada said it decided to suspend the flights because the added stops for fuel would disrupt schedules.
“More broadly, ongoing fuel supply challenges in Cuba, combined with instability in the power grid, have broader implications for customers,” said Christophe Hennebelle, a spokesman for Air Canada, which had 3,000 customers in Cuba on vacation packages.
Basic necessities like food and medical care were becoming scarce, he added. “We do not want to put the health, safety, and well-being of our passengers at risk.”
Lorne Berkun, an 80-year-old in Vancouver, British Columbia, who organizes coffee tour trips to Cuba, said he had received only one inquiry from a potential client this year, compared with the at least 15 he would have expected by now.
“There’s no way I would take anybody now,” he said.
Lucy Davies, a British tour operator who specializes in cycling trips, said that once countries like Canada and Britain elevated their travel advisories, her business was largely finished.
“The rest of our clients have canceled because once a government advises against all but essential travel to a destination, travel insurance won’t cover travelers to that destination,” she said. “We very much hope that Cuba and the U.S.A. can find a resolution soon — and before the country falls into total collapse.”
Drew Garneau, 42, who works at a car dealership in Nova Scotia, had planned to visit Cayo Cruz, an island just off Cuba’s coast, from Feb. 4 until the 18th.
Five days into his trip, Mr. Garneau had put down the microphone after performing a Bon Jovi hit during karaoke night at his hotel when a porter approached him in the lobby.
“He took me aside and said, ‘Hey, you two gotta pack. You’re leaving at 6 a.m.,” Mr. Garneau said.
Airlines, he learned, were taking tourists home. “I’ve never been kicked out of a country before,” he said.
Hannah Berkeley Cohen contributed reporting from Curaçao.
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17) U.S. Opens Military Action in Ecuador Against ‘Terrorist Organizations’
U.S. Special Forces soldiers are advising and supporting Ecuadorean commandos on raids across the country against suspected drug shipment facilities and other drug-related sites.
By Eric Schmitt and Luis Ferré-Sadurní, Published March 3, 2026, Updated March 4, 2026
Eric Schmitt reported from Washington, and Luis Ferré-Sadurní from Bogotá, Colombia.
Members of the Ecuadorean Navy stand guard in the facilities of the Coast Guard Command at the Port of Manta, Ecuador, in 2025. Credit...Marcos Pin/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The United States and Ecuador have launched joint military operations against “designated terrorist organizations” in the South American country, the Pentagon said on Tuesday night, in what appeared to be a major expansion of the U.S. military’s unilateral strikes against boats in the Caribbean Sea and Eastern Pacific that the Trump administration has accused of carrying drugs.
U.S. Special Forces soldiers are advising and supporting Ecuadorean commandos on raids across the country against suspected drug shipment facilities and other drug-related sites, according to a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters.
The Americans are not believed to be participating in the actual raids, but are helping the Ecuadorean troops plan their operations, and are providing intelligence and logistics support, the official said.
In a 30-second video released by the military’s Southern Command, a helicopter is seen taking off in early morning or dusk, flying over an area, then picking up soldiers. The U.S. official said the video depicted the first in what was expected to be a series of raids across the country, some with U.S. advisers assisting nearby, some with Ecuadorean forces only. In this instance, involving mostly Ecuadorean forces, the official said, it was unclear what the mission’s objective was or whether it was successful.
“The operations are a powerful example of the commitment of partners in Latin America and the Caribbean to combat the scourge of narco-terrorism,” the United States Southern Command said in a statement, which did not provide other details about the operations.
The White House did not immediately comment on the military activity. In a visit to Ecuador last September, Secretary of State Marco Rubio strongly implied that the United States and Ecuador might conduct joint strikes.
Across Latin America, cartels have battled each other and authorities to produce cocaine and smuggle it to the United States. Ecuador, the world’s largest exporter of the drug, does not produce it, but serves as a trafficking route for criminal groups operating in Colombia and Peru.
On Monday, Southern Command posted footage of a visit by Gen. Francis L. Donovan, the head of the command, with President Daniel Noboa and senior Ecuadorean officials in Quito, the capital, “to discuss security cooperation and reaffirm the United States’ strong commitment to supporting the nation’s efforts to confront narco-terrorism and strengthen regional security.”
General Donovan, whose command oversees operations in Latin America, said in a statement Tuesday that “we commend the men and women of the Ecuadorean armed forces for their unwavering commitment to this fight, demonstrating courage and resolve through continued actions against narco-terrorists in their country.”
Ecuador has emerged as a key South American ally of the United States since Mr. Trump returned to power in 2025 and kicked off a contentious campaign against supposed drug trafficking boats in Latin America.
Since early September, the United States has killed at least 150 people in 44 known strikes against boats in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific that the Trump administration has said, without providing evidence, are carrying drugs.
Legal specialists on the use of lethal force have said the strikes are illegal, extrajudicial killings, because the military cannot deliberately target civilians who do not pose an imminent threat of violence, even if they are suspected of engaging in criminal acts.
Mr. Noboa, who has centered his presidency on the use of military force to fight drug-gang violence that has led to a record number of homicides in the country, has sought to build a close alliance with Mr. Trump.
He has hosted Mr. Rubio and Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, in Ecuador. Last year, Mr. Noboa sought to allow the United States to establish military bases in Ecuador, a measure that was resoundingly defeated by Ecuadoreans in a referendum last November.
On Monday, after meeting with General Donovan, Mr. Noboa said in a post on X that Ecuador was “launching a new phase against narco-terrorism and illegal mining.”
“In the month of March, we will conduct joint operations with our regional allies, including the United States,” he wrote. “The security of Ecuadoreans is our priority, and we will fight to achieve peace in every corner of the country.”
Also attending the meeting was Rear Adm. Mark A. Schafer, the top commander of U.S. Special Forces in Latin America.
The raids come barely three weeks after Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, convened military leaders from around the Western Hemisphere in Washington to press for further coordination to fight drug trafficking and transnational criminal groups in the region. Since taking office, the Trump administration has made border security and drug interdiction a top priority of its national security policy.
Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Edward Wong contributed reporting.
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18) Interior Secretary Visits Venezuela as Part of Oil and Mining Expansion
The trip is part of the Trump administration’s push to build production in the South American nation.
By Lisa Friedman, March 4, 2026
The El Palito refinery of Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA in Puerto Cabello, Venezuela, earlier this year. Credit...Gaby Oraa/Reuters
Doug Burgum, the Interior secretary, traveled to Venezuela on Wednesday as part of the Trump administration’s efforts to boost oil production and expand U.S. investments there.
Mr. Burgum, who leads the White House National Energy Dominance Council, will meet with Delcy Rodríguez, the acting president of Venezuela, the White House confirmed.
He also will meet with U.S. and Venezuelan oil, gas and mining companies, “and work toward a legitimate mining sector,” in the country, according to the U.S. Embassy in Caracas.
Mr. Burgum is expected to announce a deal related to rare earth minerals on Thursday, Taylor Rogers, a White House spokeswoman, confirmed. She declined to release further details.
In January, U.S. forces captured the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, and President Trump promised to open up Venezuela’s oil industry to U.S. companies.
Venezuela has about 17 percent of the world’s known oil reserves — more than 300 billion barrels, a larger total than any other country. But its production is only about 1 percent of the world total.
That is partly because of decades of underinvestment, mismanagement and U.S. sanctions, and partly because Venezuela’s tar-like oil is difficult and expensive to refine.
The administration has urged U.S. oil companies to spend about $100 billion to rebuild Venezuela’s production and refining capacity.
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