Born in rural Ohio, Howard Keylor attended a one-room country schoolhouse. He became a mem-ber of the National Honor Society when he graduated from Marietta High School.
After enlisting in the U.S. Army, Howard fought in the Pacific Theater in World War Two, during which he participated in the Battle of Okinawa as a Corporal. The 96th U.S. Army Division, which Howard trained with, had casualty rates above 50%. The incompetence and racism of the military command, the destruction of the capital city of Naha and the deliberate killings of tens of thousands of Okinawan civil-ians – a third of the population - made Howard a committed anti-imperialist, anti-militarist and anti-racist for the rest of his life.
Upon returning to the United States, Howard enrolled in the College of the Pacific, but dropped out to support Filipino agricultural workers in the 1948 asparagus strike, working with legendary labor leader Larry Itliong. He became a longshore worker in Stockton in 1953. As a member of the Communist Party, Howard and his wife, Evangeline, were attacked in the HUAC (McCarthy) hearings in San Francisco. Later, Howard transferred to ILWU Local 10. In 1971 he, along with Brothers Herb Mills, Leo Robinson and a ma-jority of Local 10’s members, opposed the proposed 1971 contract which codified the 9.43 steadyman sys-tem. This led to the longshore strike of 1971-1972, which shut down 56 West Coast ports and lasted 130 days. It was the longest strike in the ILWU’s history.
In Local 10 Brother Keylor was a member of the Militant Caucus, a class struggle rank-and-file group which published a regular newsletter, the “Longshore Militant”. He later left the Militant Caucus and pub-lished a separate newsletter on his own, the “Militant Longshoreman.” Howard advocated deliberate defi-ance of the “slave-labor” Taft-Hartley law through illegal secondary boycotts and pickets. Running on an open class-struggle program which called for breaking with the Democratic and Republican Parties, form-ing a worker’s government, expropriating the capitalists without compensation and creating a planned economy, Howard won election to the Executive Board of Local 10 for twelve years.
The Militant Caucus was involved in organizing protests and boycotts of military cargo bound for the military dictatorship in Chile in 1975 and 1978 and again in 1980 to the military dictatorship in El Sal-vador. The Caucus also participated in ILWU Local 6’s strike at KNC Glass in Union City, during which a mass picket line physically defeated police and scabs, winning a contract for a workforce composed pri-marily of Mexican-American immigrants.
In 1984, Brother Keylor made the motion, amended by Brother Leo Robinson, which led to the elev-en-day longshore boycott of South African cargo on the Nedlloyd Kimberley. In 1986, Howard again partici-pated in the Campaign Against Apartheid’s community picket line against the Nedlloyd Kemba. When Nel-son Mandela spoke at the Oakland Coliseum in 1990 after his release from prison, he credited Local 10 with re-igniting the anti-Apartheid movement in the Bay Area.
Other actions Brother Howard initiated, organized or participated in included the 1995-98 struggle of the Liverpool dockworkers; the 1999 coastwide shutdown and march of 25,000 in San Francisco to de-mand freedom for Mumia Abu-Jamal; the 2000 Charleston longshore union campaign; the 2008 May Day anti-imperialist war shutdown of all West Coast ports; the shutdown of Northern California ports in pro-test of the murder of Oscar Grant; the blockades of Israeli ships to protest the war on Gaza in 2010 and 2014; the 2011 ILWU struggle against the grain monopolies in Longview; Occupy Oakland’s march of 40,000 to the Port of Oakland, and countless other militant job actions and protests. Throughout his life, Brother Keylor always extended solidarity where it was needed. He fought racist police murders and fas-cist terror, defended abortion clinics, and fought for survivors of psychiatric abuse. Having grown up in Appalachia, he has always been an environmentalist, and helped shut down a Monsanto facility in Davis in 2012, as well as fighting pesticide use and deforestation in the East Bay.
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Hands Off Rick Toledo, Pro-Palestine Grad Student at Cal Poly Humboldt! Give Him His Electronics Back!
Don't forget to sign this sign-on letter for Toledo here:
https://stopfbi.org/news/hands-off-rick-toledo-pro-palestine-grad-student-at-cal-poly-humboldt-give-him-his-electronics-back/
Please email any statements of solidarity to:
stopfbi@gmail.com
On the night of March 19, 2026, University Police Department returned with a warrant to the apartment of Rick Toledo, Students for a Democratic Society organizer at Cal Poly Tech Humboldt, and seized his laptop, phone, and other electronics such as a camera. They attempted to force him to give up his passcodes, and he told them no. He did the right thing.
This violation of his privacy comes as part of their effort to charge him with four bogus felonies - false imprisonment, conspiracy, battery, and assault - related to the student protest on Feb 27. This is the latest in their string of acts to suppress any campus free speech for Palestine and divestment from Israel, along with suspending and firing him from his university teaching job.
We should be perfectly clear about it: there is nothing wrong with supporting any student action, including building occupations, that is taken to make demands of a university. Our rights to free speech and freedom of assembly are protected by the First Amendment, enshrined in the constitution. College protest is a long-time tradition, and it continues on today. Toledo committed no crime in supporting the student protest, and the university is determined to create lie after lie in order to demonize him.
In our view, what they really want to do is punish Toledo not for the one-day building occupation last month, but for the 9-day building occupation during the encampment movement in spring of 2024. That display of courage by the students in the name of ending university support for a genocide made it to millions of TV screens, and the state of California and university want someone to pay. Toledo is their target of choice, years later.
We demand that he not be charged of any crime, because he didn't do anything wrong. We demand that his devices be returned ASAP. Activists should learn from his example of not telling the police a single thing, including a passcode. The university and police are the criminals here for trying to scare activists out of speaking out against the university's continued financial support to Israeli apartheid. Now is not the time to suffer in silence; it’s the time to speak out. We need to condemn political repression, stand with Rick Toledo, and defend our rights to speak out for Palestine.
Don’t Charge Rick Toledo!
Give Him His Property Back!
Protesting for Palestine Is Not a Crime!
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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) Judges Fired After Blocking Deportations of Pro-Palestinian Students
The immigration judges’ abrupt dismissals marked the latest efforts by the Trump administration to reshape the country’s immigration courts.
By Hamed Aleaziz, Nicholas Nehamas and Steven Rich, April 11, 2026
The Trump administration has fired two immigration judges who dismissed high-profile deportation cases against international students who had advocated for Palestinians.
The firings of the judges, Roopal Patel and Nina Froes, marked the latest efforts by the Trump administration to reshape the country’s immigration courts.
The administration has dismissed dozens of immigration judges and, according to those on the bench, has put judges under pressure to deny asylum claims and order deportations. Unlike federal judges in the independent judicial branch, immigration judges work for the Justice Department and are hired and fired by the attorney general.
The two judges, who were terminated alongside four colleagues on Friday, oversaw two high-profile cases filed by the government against the students, Rumeysa Ozturk and Mohsen Mahdawi.
Mr. Trump has aggressively sought to reshape the immigration courts since he won a second term, with dramatic results. Judges are ordering a record number of people deported and granting asylum at the lowest rate since at least 2009, the first year for which reliable data is available. Cases are being resolved faster, and a backlog of claims that soared under President Joseph R. Biden Jr. has started to fall.
Ms. Ozturk and Mr. Mahdawi were arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents last year. Their detentions had been part of a string of arrests of international students who had publicly expressed support of Palestinian causes or had taken part in protests on U.S. campuses that the Trump administration labeled antisemitic.
Ms. Ozturk, a Turkish-born student at Tufts University, had her student visa status in the United States repealed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio after writing an article in a student newspaper criticizing university leadership’s stances on Palestinian causes. The government similarly tried to deport Mr. Mahdawi, a Palestinian student at Columbia University and green card holder, because of his involvement in campus protests. Mr. Rubio said his continued presence in the country could “potentially undermine” U.S. foreign policy.
Civil liberties advocates said the arrests were meant to stifle free speech. The government filed cases in immigration court to deport both students.
Ms. Patel, an immigration judge in Boston, ruled in January that there were no grounds to deport Ms. Ozturk. Ms. Froes came to a similar conclusion in Mr. Mahdawi’s case. Ms. Patel and Ms. Froes had been appointed by the Biden administration in 2024. Both were approaching the end of an initial two-year probationary term before their firings.
In an interview, Ms. Froes said she was unsure if ruling against Mr. Mahdawi might have preserved her job.
“I don’t know what’s in the minds of other people,” she said. “But I can’t imagine it was helpful.”
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Saturday.
A U.S. official who was not authorized to speak publicly confirmed that six judges had been fired on Friday. The official said four of them were probationary.
The nation’s immigration courts are little known to the general public but have tremendous power. They are often the final stop before a person can be lawfully removed from the United States.
Before Mr. Trump returned to office, it was rare for immigration judges to be fired. His administration has so far dismissed more than 100 of them. In addition to the firings, the administration has hired more than 140 permanent and temporary judges seen as more aligned with Mr. Trump’s immigration enforcement campaign.
Both Ms. Patel and Ms. Froes fit the profile of many judges who have lost their jobs during the second Trump administration: They had been appointed by a Democrat and previously represented immigrants in court.
They also granted asylum at higher rates than other judges. Under Mr. Trump, Ms. Patel granted asylum in 41.5 percent of cases, while Ms. Froes granted asylum in 33 percent of cases, compared with 18 percent for judges overall, according to a New York Times analysis of immigration court data.
Ms. Froes, a judge at the immigration court in Chelmsford, Mass., said she was conducting an asylum hearing on Friday afternoon when she received an email telling her she had been dismissed. She told lawyers for both sides that she needed to halt the case and signed out of the hearing, which was being held virtually.
“I fully expected it,” she said of her firing, citing the number of judges dismissed by the Trump administration.
Ms. Froes also said she had no idea that Mr. Mahdawi’s case was so high-profile when she heard it.
“You have so many people coming before you,” she said. “You don’t go Google people’s names. That’s not how it works. You look at the record.”
Ms. Patel, like many immigration judges interviewed by The Times, said the Trump administration had made it clear that it wanted more immigrants ordered deported.
“It was a pressure I at least tried to actively resist,” she said in an interview. “All people in the United States are entitled to due process, and everyone deserves to have their cases adjudicated fully and fairly.”
Many experts argue that the immigration courts should be granted more independence from the executive branch, like the protections given to the administrative courts that hear tax disputes.
After her stint on the bench, Ms. Patel said she agreed.
“The judges there need more judicial independence,” she said.
Allison McCann contributed reporting. Georgia Gee contributed research.
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2) Trump Says U.S. Will ‘Blockade’ Strait of Hormuz After Peace Talks Fail
Vice President JD Vance said Sunday that marathon talks between the United States and Iran had failed to immediately produce a deal to fully reopen the strait and end the war. Iran’s top negotiator had suggested further talks were possible.
By Tyler Pager, Aaron Boxerman and Isabel Kershner, Tyler Pager reported from Islamabad, Pakistan. April 12, 2026
Vice President JD Vance before departing Islamabad, Pakistan, on Sunday, following talks with Iran. Credit...Pool photo by Jacquelyn Martin
President Trump said Sunday that the United States will enforce a naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, stepping up pressure on Iran after marathon peace talks between top Iranian and American leaders in Pakistan ended without a breakthrough.
The announcement by Mr. Trump plunged the already brittle truce into further uncertainty. Vice President JD Vance and the chief Iranian negotiator, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, met in Pakistan over the weekend, but did not reach a deal to fully reopen the strait and end the war. A naval blockade could be considered an act of war by Iran.
“Any Iranian who fires at us, or at peaceful vessels, will be BLOWN TO HELL!” Mr. Trump wrote in one of two lengthy social media posts on the talks.
Mr. Trump had conditioned the two-week cease-fire on Iran ending its grip on the Strait of Hormuz, a critical waterway for oil and gas in the Persian Gulf. Iran’s own blockade of the strait sent global oil prices soaring by more than 50 percent during the monthlong conflict, which began in late February.
In practice, however, only a few ships have transited the Strait of Hormuz since the cease-fire came into effect last Tuesday. U.S. officials blame Iran, which they say has sought to impose tolls on ships passing through the waterway. Mr. Trump said the U.S. Navy would “seek and interdict” any vessel that paid the fee to Iran.
Iran’s leaders have given no indication that they intend to relax their control of the waterway, which they view as a crucial bargaining chip. In a defiant post on social media earlier on Sunday, Ali Akbar Velayati, a member of Iran’s negotiating team, said “the key” to the Strait of Hormuz “is firmly in our hands.”
Analysts said the issues dividing the two countries were so complex — and their differences so entrenched — that cinching a deal in a single round of talks had been highly unlikely. But neither Mr. Vance nor Mr. Ghalibaf had ruled out another round of negotiations before the two-week cease-fire expires on Apr. 21.
Mr. Ghalibaf said on social media that deep distrust between the two sides posed an obstacle to reaching an agreement. The United States had been “unable to gain the trust of the Iranian delegation in this round of talks,” he said. “Now it is time for it to decide whether it can earn our trust or not.”
The last talks between the United States and Iran fizzled, and were promptly followed by a U.S.-Israeli attack in late February that killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, and ignited more than a month of war. Mediated by Pakistan, this weekend’s negotiations were the highest-level face-to-face encounter between U.S. and Iranian leaders since Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Mr. Trump, who was watching a U.F.C. fight in Florida during the talks, had declared the cease-fire last week in part to ease the shock from the loss of access to 20 percent of the world’s oil supplies. The other two key issues were the fate of nearly 900 pounds of highly enriched uranium and Iran’s demand that about $27 billion in frozen revenues held abroad be released, the officials said.
Here’s what else we’re covering:
· Mines in Hormuz: The Pentagon said on Saturday that two U.S. warships crossed the Strait of Hormuz to begin an operation to clear mines from the critical waterway. Iran denied the claim. Only a handful of ships have passed through the strait since the cease-fire began. U.S. officials said one reason Iran had been unable to get more ships through was that it could not locate and remove all of the mines it had laid in the waterway.
· Israel and Lebanon: Israel was not involved in the weekend negotiations and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu avoided mentioning them in an address on Saturday evening as he faces criticism at home over the cease-fire with Iran. Israel has kept up deadly attacks on southern Lebanon, including on Sunday morning, according to Lebanon’s state media. Iran had accused Israel of breaking the cease-fire by continuing to attack in Lebanon, leading Mr. Trump to ask Israel to rein in its assault. The Israeli and Lebanese ambassadors to the United States are expected to meet in Washington next week for rare direct talks.
· Death tolls: The Human Rights Activists News Agency said at least 1,701 civilians, including 254 children, had been killed in Iran as of Wednesday. Lebanon’s health ministry on Saturday said that 2,020 people had been killed in the latest fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, including 357 in a wave of Israeli strikes on Wednesday. In attacks attributed to Iran, at least 32 people have been killed in Gulf nations. At least 22 people had been killed in Israel as of Sunday, as well as 12 Israeli soldiers fighting in Lebanon. The American death toll stands at 13 service members.
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3) I Can’t Endure This’: Inside a Bombarded City in Southern Lebanon
In Tyre, a city on Lebanon’s coast, near-daily bombardments by Israel have killed and injured civilians, and left many searching for shelter.
By Christina Goldbaum and Hwaida Saad, Visuals by David Guttenfelder, April 12, 2026
Christina Goldbaum, Hwaida Saad and David Guttenfelder traveled to Tyre, a city in southern Lebanon within Israel’s evacuation zone, to report this story.
Medics transporting a man who was critically wounded by an Israeli strike in Tyre, Lebanon, last month.
The mother sat on the curb outside a hospital in southern Lebanon, holding her phone and pleading with a photo of her sons on its screen.
“I’m waiting for you, answer me, answer me,” the woman, Fatima Kholeif, cried. “I’m your mother, just answer me.”
Her relatives huddled around her, unsure of what to do. When one tried to coax the phone from Ms. Kholeif’s hands to calm her down, she just clutched it harder. Didn’t they understand? The photos were all she had left of her sons — the sons who had just bought her hair dye so she could color her wispy, gray curls, a respite from the Israeli bombing. The sons who had kissed her cheeks that morning as they left for work harvesting oranges in an orchard nearby. The sons who were killed on that orchard in an airstrike.
“I can’t endure this,” she cried, her voice trailing off. “Two of my sons, two, two, two.”
Within minutes, a frenzy erupted around her as news arrived that the Israeli military had issued a warning about imminent strikes near the hospital in Tyre, a coastal city within the large swath of southern Lebanon where Israel has told residents to flee north. Other families waiting outside the hospital scattered, racing away on motorcycles toward the seaside. “Come on,” Ms. Kholeif’s neighbor said, lifting her off the curb and shuttling her into a car before Israeli warplanes arrived overhead.
Ms. Kholeif’s sons, 23-year-old Abdul Rahman Jadour and 30-year-old Ayman Jadour, were among several Syrian farmworkers killed in the strikes, according to relatives, hospital officials and rescue workers. They were the latest casualties in a war that has consumed Tyre. The fighting began after Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militant group, fired on Israel last month in support of Tehran, prompting Israel to bombard and invade Lebanon.
Ever since, Tyre has been transformed by fear. The city’s population is predominantly Shiite Muslim, the same sect as Hezbollah. Its busiest streets have emptied, the metal shutters have been pulled over storefronts, and residents are wary of leaving their homes.
Despite a fragile cease-fire in Iran, Israel has vowed to keep striking Hezbollah and on Wednesday launched a barrage of airstrikes across Lebanon that killed more than 300 people. It was the deadliest day since the war began.
Littered across the roads are the remains of Israeli airstrikes. There are buildings with their facades sheared off. Entire rooms of apartments were hurled across the road and lie on top of mounds of rubble. Poking through the wreckage are signs of the lives once lived there: A doll with blond hair. A black and bright green roller blade. The severed half of a headphone.
Tyre is within the large swath of land south of the Litani River — around 10 percent of the country — that Israel says it plans to occupy after its ground invasion ends. That rhetoric has stoked concerns among residents that if they abide by the evacuation warnings and leave their homes, they may never be able to return. Israel’s defense minister, Israel Katz, has said that Israeli forces will not allow Shiite residents who flee north to return south until the “security of northern Israeli residents is ensured.”
That fear has pushed many more residents of Tyre to remain in the city compared with the previous hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel in 2024, according to municipal officials. Even in the surrounding countryside, which has been battered by airstrikes, around 5,000 residents have stayed in their villages — twice as many as during the 2024 war, the officials said. Nearly 20,000 more have fled southern villages for Tyre rather than head north of the Litani River.
“People are saying that if we leave, it will make it easier for them to occupy,” said Daher Habib Baher, 59, referring to Israeli forces. Mr. Baher left Tyre during the 2024 escalation, but chose to stay in the city this time in a school turned shelter that felt safer than his neighborhood.
“We have roots here,” he said. “We have to do whatever we can to keep our land.”
For those in the city, daily life has been upended. The thunder of warplanes has echoed overhead along with the clap of outgoing artillery fired by Hezbollah fighters. White plumes of smoke from Israeli airstrikes and artillery hitting the hinterland billow over the horizon as Israeli ground forces inch closer to the city, stoking fears that it could soon be invaded or besieged.
One recent afternoon in central Tyre, Zeinab Judi, 55, watched as her brother tried to untangle the spider web of electrical wires that had come crashing down after a strike hit her neighbors’ apartment building.
In the two days since, all she could focus on was furiously cleaning up her home. She swept glass off the floors, fixed the doors that had flown off their hinges and searched in the broken porcelain tub for her missing shower head — small tasks to regain the sense of control that the war had stripped from her.
“I want to go back to how life used to be,” Ms. Judi said, bursting into tears. “How can we live like this?”
Around the corner, her neighbor, Salwa Mamlouk, 35, looked on as she patched a broken pipe that was still spouting water.
“We are still paying the price from the last war,” Ms. Mamlouk said.
Still, she said, any frustration she felt with Hezbollah for firing on Israel and kicking off the war had been replaced by anger at Israel for the devastation it has wrought, and by exasperation with the Lebanese government for being unable to stop it.
“Hezbollah is the only one defending us against Israel,” she said. “The government is just sitting by and watching.”
That sentiment is widespread in Tyre, where Hezbollah maintains a large base of support and where they have made their presence known. The highway leading into the city is decorated with yellow and green Hezbollah flags. In recent weeks, posters with photos of Iran’s slain leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and his son and successor, Mojtaba Khamenei, have cropped up across the city.
So, too, have temporary graves for civilians and Hezbollah fighters killed in the war, whose bodies cannot be transported to the border villages that Israeli forces have captured. Instead, they are placed in plywood coffins, lowered into trenches beside a shopping mall and marked with numbers spray-painted in red on cinder blocks.
Much of the life that remains in Tyre takes place in the city’s Christian enclave by the seaside, the only area that has not been included in the evacuation warnings. There, Christian residents mix with Shiites from other parts of the city who have slept in cars or city-run shelters.
Inside one broken-down school bus, 7-year-old Jana Fadi Muhana looked up when she heard the thud from Israeli strikes one recent afternoon.
“There’s a sound! There’s a sound!” she cried out. She paused, looked to the bus door, which was jammed shut, and then asked her sister to pull her out through the driver’s side window and take her to their mother.
“Sometimes she collapses or cries when she hears the planes and the drones,” her father, Fadi Muhana, 50, muttered as he stood nearby. By the time the family decided to leave their house, the shelters had filled up, so his boss lent him the bus to sleep in after the restaurant where he worked shuttered.
“What can we do? Where can we go?” Mr. Muhana said.
Down the road, Yousef Ghafary cut through plywood in his carpentry shop, among the only businesses open on the street. A Christian whose family has lived in Tyre for generations, Mr. Ghafary said that Tyre’s minority Christian and Sunni Muslim residents had been tightly integrated with its Shiite population for decades.
But the war has strained that delicate social fabric. Many Christians now decline invitations from their Shiite friends for fear that they could become collateral damage in Israeli attacks targeting Shiites.
“You know they are the ones under threat, and you worry about exposing yourself to it by being with them,” Mr. Ghafary said.
“I just don’t see an end to this war,” he added.
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4) Israel Launches New Attacks in Lebanon, Days Ahead of Rare Direct Talks
Israel’s campaign targeting Hezbollah in Lebanon has been a source of tension in the U.S.-Iran cease-fire. Israeli and Lebanese officials plan to meet for rare talks in Washington this week.
By Isabel Kershner, Reporting from Jerusalem, April 12, 2026
A building in the Lebanese capital, Beirut destroyed after Israeli strikes on the city. David Guttenfelder/The New York Times
Israel launched new attacks on Lebanon on Sunday after the United States and Iran failed to reach a quick peace deal over the weekend.
Last week, President Trump asked Israel to scale back its attacks on Lebanon. The fighting in recent days, which Israel says is targeting the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah, appears to be focused on southern Lebanon; Israel has not bombed the capital, Beirut, since an onslaught on Wednesday.
Israeli and Lebanese officials plan to meet for rare talks in Washington this coming week.
On Sunday, two Israeli attacks on towns in southern Lebanon killed at least 11 people, according to Lebanon’s official news agency. The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the raids on Sunday.
The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah fired more rockets toward Israel over the weekend. The Israeli military said that it had struck a rocket launcher in southern Lebanon overnight that was poised to fire toward Israel.
Israel’s ongoing invasion of Lebanon has been a source of tension in the cease-fire with Iran. Iran had demanded that the truce extend to Lebanon as well. But Israel and the United States said it was not part of their agreement.
Hours after the cease-fire was announced, Israel bombarded Beirut and other parts of Lebanon on Wednesday. That wave of Israeli strikes killed more than 300 people, according to the Lebanese authorities. It was the deadliest day of fighting since Hezbollah joined the fray in early March by firing rockets at Israel in solidarity with Tehran. Israeli officials said that about 200 of those killed in Lebanon on Wednesday belonged to Hezbollah, without providing any evidence.
One person familiar with Israeli policy decisions said on Sunday that Israel’s ongoing campaign was focused on southern Lebanon, and it was holding back from targeting Beirut and the city’s outskirts. The Israeli military declined to comment.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Saturday night that Israel was “still active” on the Lebanese front.
“We are fighting Hezbollah and we are determined, I am determined, to return security to the residents” of northern Israel, he said.
He added that the preparatory talks expected between Israel and Lebanon would focus on the disarmament of Hezbollah and efforts to reach a lasting peace between the two countries. The Israeli and Lebanese ambassadors to the United States are expected to meet in Washington on Tuesday.
Differences have already emerged over the scope of that meeting.
The office of President Joseph Aoun of Lebanon said on Friday that the parties agreed to discuss a cease-fire announcement and the setting of a date for the start of negotiations between Lebanon and Israel under U.S. auspices.
Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Yechiel Leiter, said Israel had “agreed to begin formal peace negotiations this coming Tuesday,” but that it “refused to discuss a cease-fire” with Hezbollah.
The Israeli authorities appear to be bracing for the possibility of more fighting and Hezbollah fire in the lead-up to the meeting planned for Tuesday. Restrictions limiting public gatherings were tightened in the northern border areas of Israel and a decision to reopen schools there on Sunday was reversed.
Hwaida Saad and Reham Mourshed contributed reporting.
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5) A New Era of World War Has Arrived
By Paul Poast, April 12, 2026
Dr. Poast is an associate professor of political science at the University of Chicago.
Vincent Longhi
By the time the war in Iran began on Feb. 28, the world was already fighting. The past two years brought more war — both within and between countries — than in any years since the end of World War II. A new normal of rising conflict had arrived.
Now, as the war in Ukraine drags on and the American and Israeli war against Iran is paused under a fragile cease-fire, we are watching another unwelcome phenomenon return to the global stage: the world war. Two large conflicts on different continents have become theaters for strategic competition between major powers. Each war’s dynamics have had a direct impact on the other’s, and both have dragged ancillary states into the fray. And while the combined scale and intensity of the conflicts falls far short of the two devastating world wars fought last century, they have arisen from the same dangerous reflex: competing nations fully embracing military force as the first and primary means of exerting power.
Russia and the United States went to war for different reasons. President Vladimir Putin of Russia sought to expand his territorial reach and regain land that — in his mind — belongs in the Russian sphere. The stated objectives for the United States in going to war against Iran varied, but President Trump has consistently said that Iran can’t be allowed to acquire a nuclear weapon. (Israel, America’s partner in the war, shares that objective, but has political aims of its own, a reality that could scuttle the cease-fire altogether.) Still, both Mr. Putin and Mr. Trump believed success would be easy and that their goal justified virtually any level of violence — even if it broke the bounds of international law.
In a few short weeks, the conflicts in Ukraine and Iran became expressions of the great power competition underway. In both theaters, Russia and the United States have backed each other’s adversaries. The United States continues to provide arms, intelligence and planning to Ukraine in its fight against Russia, and Russia was reported to be doing the same for Iran by providing targeting information and mapping on U.S. military positions and sending drones to Tehran. While the United States and Russia aren’t directly firing on each other, the powers have essentially loaded and pointed the guns being fired by others.
Each war has affected the other. The shock to global oil prices induced by Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz has become a financial windfall for Russia, both in higher prices for its own oil and through the easing of sanctions on that oil by a Trump administration desperate to lower global prices. As attention and resources are diverted to Iran, Russia has launched a spring offensive aimed at consolidating and expanding its territorial gains in Ukraine. Ukraine, meanwhile, has offered the expertise in drone defense it has acquired in its fight against Russia to the United States and the Arab nations being targeted by Iran.
Both conflicts have pulled in other countries. In Ukraine, Russia’s war effort has long been enabled by the economic and technical support of China, the direct manpower contributions of North Korea and drones from Iran. European allies have played an increasingly important role in helping arm Ukraine, even taking the lead in that effort over the past year. And while NATO countries have not answered Mr. Trump’s call to help keep the Strait of Hormuz open, last month NATO-run missile defense systems shot down Iranian missiles directed toward Turkey. Iranian missiles aimed at several Gulf states have dragged those nations into the fight, while Israel has attacked Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen have launched missiles at Israel.
The First and Second World Wars involved millions of soldiers from great powers directly fighting one another, resulting in millions of deaths. But not all world wars will look like those two cataclysmic conflicts. Indeed, those events were not even the first or second world wars. The Seven Years’ War of the mid-18th century and the Napoleonic wars of the early 19th century were also global fights, comprising separate wars occurring on different continents involving major powers that were either directly fighting or coordinating between the conflicts.
The Seven Years’ War of 1756 to 1763 is instructive for understanding the meaning of world war as it’s playing out today. The war was primarily fought in Europe, with Britain and Prussia on one side and France and Austria on the other. With Britain and France in possession of global empires, the battles extended across multiple continents. This, too, was a time when countries were embracing the use of military force to assert their national power.
Some argue that the Cold War was a world war. It is certainly true that the notion that the Cold War was cold is a misnomer: It was a period of intense conflict touching many parts of the globe. But Cold War conflicts lacked the interconnectedness and simultaneity on display in Europe and the Middle East. And, importantly, the superpowers during this time exercised caution about using military force that constrained their actions, in no small part because of the nuclear arsenals they were amassing. Today, both Mr. Putin and Mr. Trump display a more cavalier approach to using the military to achieve their goals — and a greater indifference to the consequences, both economic and social.
Why is it important to see the wars in Iran and Ukraine as part of a global event, rather than two conflicts unfolding in parallel?
Looking at how the wars are connected shows the necessity for our leaders to think globally in an emerging multipolar world where powers vie for control of regions or spheres of influence. A conflict in one region almost certainly will spill over into another. Resources allocated to one fight may mean fewer resources for another, undermining efforts to deter a threat or assist an ally in need. Failing to recognize the global span of security issues is exactly how states can stumble from a limited war of choice into a world war they did not intend.
Last year was 80 years since the end of the Second World War. That conflict’s devastation remains unmatched, and we should hope that remains the case. Even if we never endure another global conflict of that scale, we are nevertheless once again witnessing a return to an era of a world war.
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6) Mutually Automated Destruction: The Escalating Global A.I. Arms Race
China, the U.S., Russia and others have ramped up their contest over artificial-intelligence-backed weapons and military systems. The buildup has been compared to the dawn of the nuclear weapons age.
By Sheera Frenkel, Paul Mozur and Adam Satariano, April 12, 2026
Sheera Frenkel reported from San Francisco; Paul Mozur from Taipei, Taiwan; and Adam Satariano from London.
Anduril’s autonomous air vehicle, Fury, which recently began production at the company’s new factory outside Columbus, Ohio. Kristian Thacker for The New York Times
At a military parade in Beijing in September, President Xi Jinping and his special guests, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, watched as Chinese forces showed off several models of drones that could autonomously fly alongside fighter jets into battle.
The demonstration of technological might immediately set off alarm bells in the United States. Pentagon officials concluded that America’s program for unmanned combat drones was lagging China’s, according to three U.S. defense and intelligence officials. Russia, too, was thought to be ahead in building facilities that could produce advanced drones, said the officials, who were not authorized to speak publicly on military capabilities.
U.S. officials pushed domestic defense companies to step up. Last month, Anduril, a defense technology start-up in California, began manufacturing A.I.-backed, self-flying drones that appeared similar to the ones shown in China. Production at a factory outside Columbus, Ohio, started three months ahead of schedule, part of an effort to close the gap with China, one defense official said.
China’s military display and the U.S. countermove were part of an escalating global arms race over A.I.-backed autonomous weapons and defense systems. Designed to operate by themselves using A.I., the technology reduces the need for human intervention in decisions like when to hit a moving target or defend against an attack.
In recent years, many nations have quietly engaged in a contest of one-upmanship over these arsenals, including drones that identify and strike targets without human command, self-flying fighter jets that coordinate attacks at speeds and altitudes that few human pilots can reach, and central systems run by A.I. that analyze intelligence to recommend airstrike targets quickly.
The United States and China, the world’s largest military powers, are at the center of the competition. But the race has widened. Russia and Ukraine, now in their fifth year of war, are looking for every technological advantage. India, Israel, Iran and others are investing in military A.I., while France, Germany, Britain and Poland are rearming amid doubts about the Trump administration’s commitment to NATO.
Each nation is aiming to amass the most advanced technological stockpile in case they need to fight drone against drone and algorithm against algorithm in ways that people cannot match, defense and intelligence officials said.
Russia, China and the United States are all building A.I. arms as a deterrent and for “mutually assured destruction,” Palmer Luckey, Anduril’s founder, said in an interview in February.
Exactly which nation is furthest ahead is unclear. Many programs are in a research and development phase, and budgets are classified. Operatives from China, the United States and Russia watch one another’s factory lines, military displays and weapons deals to deduce what the other is doing, intelligence officials said.
China and Russia are experimenting with letting A.I. make battlefield decisions on its own, two U.S. officials said. China is developing systems for dozens of autonomous drones to coordinate attacks without human input, while Russia is building Lancet drones that can circle in the sky and autonomously pick targets, they said.
Even as the specifics of the technologies remain veiled, the intentions are clear. In 2017, Mr. Putin declared that whoever leads in A.I. “will become the ruler of the world.” Mr. Xi said in 2024 that technology would be the “main battleground” of geopolitical competition. In January, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth directed all branches of the U.S. military to adopt A.I., saying they needed to “accelerate like hell.”
Billions of dollars are being poured into the efforts. The Pentagon requested more than $13 billion for autonomous systems in its latest budget, and has spent billions more over the past decade, though the total is difficult to track because A.I. funding has been spread across many programs.
China, which some researchers said was spending amounts comparable to those of the United States, has used financial incentives to spur private industry to build A.I. capabilities. Russia has invested in drone and autonomy-related programs, analysts said, using the war in Ukraine to test and refine them on the battlefield.
Liu Pengyu, a spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, said China had proposed international frameworks for governing military A.I. and called for “a prudent and responsible attitude” toward its development.
The Pentagon and Russia’s Ministry of Defense did not respond to requests for comment.
The dynamics may resemble the Cold War, but experts cautioned that the A.I. era was different. Start-ups and investors now play a role in the military and are as critical as universities and governments. A.I. technology is becoming widely available, opening the door for countries from Turkey to Pakistan to develop new capabilities. What’s emerging is a grinding innovation race without any obvious endpoint.
Ethical questions about ceding life-or-death choices to machines are being overtaken by the rush to build. The only major accord on A.I. weaponry between China and the United States was reached in 2024, a nonbinding pledge to maintain human control over the decision to use nuclear weapons. Other countries, like Russia, have made no commitments.
Some argued that A.I.’s impact would be bigger than any arms race.
“A.I. is a general-purpose technology like electricity. And we don’t talk about an electricity arms race,” said Michael Horowitz, a former Pentagon official involved in autonomous weapons development. “To the extent A.I. is transforming our military, it’s the way that electricity or computers or the airplane did.”
The Buildup Begins
In 2016 at an air show in the southern Chinese city of Zhuhai, a Chinese supplier flew 67 drones in unison. An animated film separately showed the drones destroying a missile launcher, a demonstration of their capabilities.
Russia, too, was building its drone arsenal. In 2014, its military planners set a goal of making 30 percent of its combat power autonomous by 2025. By 2018, the Russian military was testing an unmanned armed vehicle in Syria. While the tank failed, losing its signal and missing targets, it underscored Moscow’s ambitions.
In Washington, Lt. Gen. Jack Shanahan, who had previously worked in intelligence at the Defense Department, was assessing whether A.I. could solve a more immediate problem. The U.S. military was collecting so much data — drone footage, satellite imagery, intercepted signals — that nobody could make sense of it all.
“There was nothing in any of the research labs in the military that were capable of generating results in less than a couple of years,” General Shanahan said. “We had a problem we could not solve without A.I.”
In 2017, General Shanahan helped create Project Maven, a Defense Department effort for the military to incorporate A.I. into its systems. One aim was to work with Silicon Valley to build software to swiftly process images like drone footage for intelligence purposes. Google was tapped to help.
But the project quickly ran into hurdles. The Pentagon’s procurement system, built around legacy contractors and long timelines, slowed things down.
When word spread inside Google about Project Maven, employees also protested, saying a company that had once pledged “Don’t be evil” should not help identify targets for drone strikes. Google eventually backed away from the project.
In 2019, Palantir, a data analytics company co-founded by the tech investor Peter Thiel, took over Maven. New defense tech start-ups like Anduril also emerged, supplying the federal government with A.I.-backed sensor towers along the southern U.S. border.
In China, Beijing pushed commercial tech companies toward defense partnerships in a strategy called “civil-military fusion.” Private firms were drawn into military procurement, joint research and other work with defense institutions. Companies working on drones and unmanned boats found growing military demand for their technologies.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 turned theory into reality.
Outgunned, outspent and outnumbered, Ukraine held off Russia with an improvised arsenal of cheap technology. Hobbyist racing drones were used to attack Russian positions on the front lines, eventually becoming more lethal than artillery and, in some cases, gaining autonomous capabilities. Remote-controlled boats kept Russia’s Black Sea fleet pinned down.
Russia adapted as well. Its Lancet drone, which was initially piloted by humans, has incorporated autonomous targeting features.
“The four years of brutality on the battlefield in Ukraine has served as a laboratory for the world,” said Mr. Horowitz, the former Pentagon official.
In recent months, Ukraine began sharing its troves of battlefield data with Palantir and other firms so A.I. systems can better learn to fight wars.
Across Europe, where governments are aiming to diminish their reliance on the American military, the lessons from Ukraine resounded. In February, Germany, France, Italy, Britain and Poland said they would develop a joint air defense system to guard against drones.
China also advanced. At the 2024 Zhuhai Airshow, Norinco, one of the country’s main defense manufacturers, revealed multiple weapons with A.I. capabilities. One of its systems showed an entire brigade, including armored vehicles and drones, which were controlled and operated by A.I.
Another craft, unveiled by the state-run Aviation Industry Corporation of China, was a 16-ton jet-powered drone designed to serve as a flying aircraft carrier that could deploy dozens of smaller drones midflight.
‘Left Click, Right Click’
A week after American and Israeli forces struck Iran in February, a senior Pentagon official gave a glimpse into what computerized warfare now looks like at a conference livestreamed by Palantir.
A satellite feed showed a warehouse. With the click of a mouse, an officer selected a row of white trucks parked outside to target in real time. In seconds, the A.I. software suggested a weapon, calculated fuel and ammunition needs, weighed the cost and generated a strike plan.
It was the present-day version of Project Maven, which General Shanahan had started and was now run by Palantir and powered by commercial A.I. The system analyzed intelligence from various sources, generated target lists ranked by priority and recommended weapons, all but eliminating the lag between identifying a target and destroying it.
Embedded with a military version of Claude, the chatbot made by the A.I. firm Anthropic, Maven helped generate thousands of targets in the opening weeks of the Iran campaign, a pace that Adm. Brad Cooper, the head of U.S. Central Command, attributed in part to “advanced A.I. tools.”
Cameron Stanley, the Defense Department’s chief digital and artificial intelligence officer, who spoke at Palantir’s conference, said that what Maven was doing was “revolutionary.” Human involvement amounted to “left click, right click, left click,” he said.
The claims about Maven’s abilities might be overstated and much of the American advantage came from the scale of data flowing in and the skills of the people using it, said Emelia Probasco, a senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology.
“It’s not rocket science,” she said. “I suspect that China already has something like it.”
In a recent report analyzing thousands of People’s Liberation Army procurement documents, Ms. Probasco found that China was building systems that mirrored American ones. In one case, China was trying to replicate the Joint Fires Network, an American program set up to link sensors and weapons globally so a drone on one side of the world could cue a strike from the other.
In some areas, China clearly leads. Its manufacturing dominance means it can produce autonomous weapons at a scale the Pentagon cannot match.
Inside the Trump administration, the push for A.I. weapons has taken on an almost evangelical fervor. Last month, the Pentagon labeled Anthropic a security risk, partly because the company wanted to limit its technology’s use for automated weapons.
“We will win the A.I. race,” Jacob Helberg, the under secretary of state for economic affairs, said last month at the Hill & Valley Forum, an annual conference in Washington, which he co-founded to bridge Silicon Valley and the government.
At the conference, tech executives, investors and government officials cheered speakers who called for tech companies to give the military unfettered access to A.I.
Anduril’s Mr. Luckey argued that the A.I. arms buildup might prevent major wars. The logic mirrored the Cold War: If both sides knew what the machines could do, neither would risk finding out.
“Conflicts between superpowers will similarly deteriorate if you can build the things that deter warfare effectively enough,” he said.
Yet deterrence assumes rationality, while A.I. weapons are designed to move faster than human reason. In exercises dating to 2020, researchers explored how autonomous systems could accelerate escalation and erode human control — with some alarming results.
In one scenario, a system operated by the United States and Japan responded to a missile launch from North Korea by autonomously firing an unexpected counterattack.
“The speed of autonomous systems led to inadvertent escalation,” said the report by analysts at RAND Corporation, a nonprofit research organization that works with the military.
General Shanahan, who retired from the military in 2020 and is now a fellow at the Center for a New American Security, a think tank, said the race he had helped start kept him up at night. Governments must set clear boundaries before the technology outruns their control, he said.
“There is a risk of an escalatory spiral where we’re in danger of fielding untested, unsafe and unproven systems if we’re not careful, because we each feel like the other side is hiding something from us,” he said.
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7) High Gas Prices Won’t End Even if the War Does
By Mark Finley, Mr. Finley is an energy fellow at the Baker Institute at Rice University, April 12, 2026
Aleksey Kondratyev for The New York Times
The cease-fire announced Tuesday night by President Trump has been greeted enthusiastically by oil traders, who quickly pushed crude futures contract prices below $100 a barrel. But don’t expect gasoline prices to fall sharply because the bombing might have stopped. Oil actually available today overseas can cost nearly $150 a barrel.
Iran insists that, for now, tankers transiting the Strait of Hormuz must continue to seek its approval. More important for prices, Iran’s leaders have made it clear that shipping traffic is likely to remain well below prewar levels.
This will extend the disruption that sent gasoline prices above $4 a gallon nationally in March. If prices remain at this level, American families will pay on average more than $1,000 more annually for gasoline according to my calculations, a significant extra expense for families already struggling with affordability — and a potentially influential factor in the fall’s midterm elections. A 21.2 percent increase in gas prices in March helped push the annual inflation rate to 3.3 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The overall impact of the current price shock, and its aftermath, on the U.S. economy will not be as bad as the disruptions of the 1970s and 1980s, because the United States has become such a large oil producer. Our economy has also become much more efficient in using energy over the decades. But that is not much consolation for consumers who are shelling out more of their disposable dollars to drive to work or to shop.
The oil market still faces geopolitical, logistical and economic speed bumps. Before the war, some 20 million barrels of crude oil and refined products flowed through the Strait of Hormuz each day. That’s about 20 percent of the global supply, making this by far the largest supply break in the history of the world oil market, dwarfing the OPEC Oil Embargo, the Suez crisis and the previous Persian Gulf wars.
That lost inventory can’t be easily replaced anytime soon. There’s still a war on, too: Ukrainian attacks may further limit Russian oil exports — and keep pressure on prices.
Even in a best-case scenario, the six-week supply bottleneck since the Iran war began on Feb. 28 — and the lengthy shipping voyages involved — means that we will face an extended period of adjustment before prices normalize. Keep in mind, too, that “normal” has been redefined. We now inhabit a world that seems a lot more perilous than the one that existed on Feb. 27.
These lingering threats to the oil trade mean that a risk premium is likely to persist. Owners of oil tankers will be paying a lot more in insurance. To the extent that oil and natural gas facilities in the region were damaged in the war — including Iranian attacks on facilities in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and elsewhere after the cease-fire was announced — supplies could remain below prewar levels until repairs are completed.
That too, keeps upward pressure on prices. And obviously, any relapse in fighting or further interruption of flows through the strait will quickly put us back to where we were.
Mr. Trump has rightly noted that the United States is the world’s largest oil producer and that we export more than we import. That didn’t stop fuel prices from surging because oil is a global marketplace and prices reflect the bigger picture. Iran’s closure of the strait affected Asian countries most quickly, because that’s where most Persian Gulf supplies are destined. But as those countries have desperately sought other supplies, that disruption — and the higher prices that come with it — arrived at our shores.
As much as the price of gasoline has risen, prices of diesel and jet fuel have risen even faster, with diesel nearing $5.70 a gallon. About a quarter of the Gulf’s oil exports are refined products such as diesel, so losing that supply has boosted prices for many refined products well beyond the increase in crude.
Those extra costs are showing up in everything that gets moved around the country, which is why the U.S. Postal Service, Amazon, FedEx and UPS have said that they are tacking on fuel surcharges. Companies that use oil in the manufacturing process are also paying up. So, too, are farmers who buy diesel fuel and imported fertilizers that are derived using natural gas.
Surprisingly, American oil producers don’t seem to be scrambling to ramp up supply to help offset the Middle East outages. A recent survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas shows that fewer than a quarter of the companies operating in its district plan to significantly increase drilling this year. (Those looking to ramp up drilling are predominantly smaller companies, though.) Perhaps the oil producers in the Permian Basin in the American Southwest will enjoy a profit lift until there is more clarity about the oil producers in the Middle East and the durability of higher prices.
Trying to explain why oil prices have or have not moved in line with expectations is always a fool’s errand. The market is inscrutable — and a terrible predictor of price moves. One thing we do know, though, is that we can’t separate ourselves from the global marketplace. For American families and businesses, it means that if something goes wrong, anywhere, oil prices go up everywhere.
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8) Oil Climbs Back Above $100 as U.S. Plans Hormuz Blockade
The U.S. military said it would block ships entering or exiting Iranian ports or coastal areas starting at 10 a.m. Eastern. European leaders distanced themselves from the plan.
By Katie Rogers, Tyler Pager, Aaron Boxerman and Isabel Kershner, April 13, 2026
A U.S. naval blockade of Iranian ports in the Strait of Hormuz was set to take effect on Monday in an effort to raise pressure on Tehran, even as questions surrounded the plan and U.S. allies distanced themselves from it.
The blockade was scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. Eastern time, but the United States had not formally acknowledged that it had taken effect.
The announcement of the blockade, declared by President Trump on Sunday, rattled the already fragile cease-fire among the United States, Israel and Iran, which began last week. A round of high-level talks over the weekend between negotiators from Iran and the United States, including Vice President JD Vance, ended without a breakthrough.
Now Mr. Trump is seeking to prevent Iran from profiting from oil exports and force its leaders to accept American conditions for ending more than a month of war. Iranian forces have largely barred Western tankers and ships from transiting the strait, the Persian Gulf waterway through which about one fifth of the world’s oil passes. The price of oil has soared by more than 50 percent since the war began in late February.
The U.S. military said that it would block ships “entering or departing Iranian ports and coastal areas” starting at 10 a.m. Eastern on Monday, while allowing other vessels to transit the strait on their way to or from non-Iranian ports. Two tankers linked to Iran — one carrying naphtha, a petroleum product, and the other carrying gas oil — slipped through the Strait of Hormuz on Monday hours before the blockade went into effect.
Earlier on Monday, Iran warned of repercussions. Ebrahim Zolfaghari, an Iranian military spokesman, said Monday that if Iranian ports were threatened, “no port in the Persian Gulf and the Sea of Oman will be safe.” The price of Brent crude, the global benchmark for oil, rose about 7 percent on Monday, to nearly $102 a barrel. U.S. markets opened slightly lower after stocks fell in Asia and Europe.
Experts on Iran questioned whether a U.S. blockade would force Iran’s leadership to accept terms that five weeks of war and the killing of many Iranian leaders had not. The Trump administration has been insisting on stopping Iranian nuclear enrichment, as well as confiscating stockpiles of enriched uranium they say could form the basis for a bomb.
European leaders, already frustrated by Mr. Trump’s military campaign in Iran, quickly distanced themselves from the blockade, despite his promise “that numerous countries are going to be helping us with this.” Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain said in a radio interview that the United Kingdom would not participate, while Spain’s defense minister said the maneuver “makes no sense.”
Mr. Trump had conditioned the two-week cease-fire with Iran, which went into effect last Wednesday, on Iran reopening the Strait of Hormuz. But in practice, only a handful of tankers have passed through the waterway, fearing Iranian mines or other interference.
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9) Iran Blockade Sets Up a Test of Which Side Can Endure More Pain
President Trump is trying to choke off the country’s lifeline with a blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. But the Iranians are betting that his tolerance for political pain is limited.
By David E. Sanger, April 13, 2026
David E. Sanger has covered five American presidents and written extensively over the past 20 years about efforts to compel Iran to surrender its nuclear program, by diplomacy, sabotage and force.
Fuel prices reflected on a semi-truck in Aurora, Ore., last week. “Soon you’ll be nostalgic for $4 to $5 gas,” Iran’s top negotiator warned American consumers after peace talks fell apart over the weekend. Credit...Jenny Kane/Associated Press
President Trump’s decision to blockade all Iranian shipments out of or into the Strait of Hormuz starting Monday morning sets up the next great test in the Iran war: Which side can endure more economic pain, Tehran’s new leadership or Mr. Trump himself?
Almost everything about how this new turn in the war plays out is likely to look very different than what has unfolded so far.
Instead of directing missiles and bombs at military sites, missile emplacements and Iran’s defense industry, Mr. Trump will try to choke off the country’s lifeblood, the oil that accounts for more than 50 percent of its exports and just about all of the government’s revenue.
The president’s first hope, administration officials said on Sunday, is to force the government to surrender to the terms that Vice President JD Vance laid out in peace talks in Islamabad, Pakistan — and that Iran rejected, just as it did in negotiations in Geneva before the war began on Feb. 28. The list of terms starts with Iran’s agreement to turn over every ounce of its uranium stockpile, permanently dismantle its huge infrastructure for producing nuclear fuel and give up its claims to regulate traffic in the strait.
Failing an Iranian capitulation, Mr. Trump appears to still harbor the hope he expressed the first evening of the war: that a restive Iranian populace will rise up and overthrow the military-clerical regime that has guided the country since the revolution in 1979. But engineering that outcome is no easier than it was a month and a half ago.
For its part, Iran’s strategy appears to be one of waging the conflict in the global markets, where Tehran has discovered new powers. Acutely aware that they lost the military contest in the first five weeks, but performed above expectations in the information arena and in terrorizing their neighbors with well-aimed missile and drone strikes, the Iranians are betting that Mr. Trump’s tolerance for political pain is limited.
If no Iranian oil gets through the strait, prices could keep rising over time — some companies say they are planning for $175 a barrel. The Iranians understand the potential political effects of continued inflation in the United States less than seven months before midterm elections.
“Soon you’ll be nostalgic for $4 to $5 gas,” Iran’s top negotiator and the speaker of its Parliament, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, warned American consumers after the failure of the talks he led with Mr. Vance. As of Monday morning, with the naval blockade about to begin, the markets did not seem especially panicked: Brent crude oil prices rose about 6 percent, to just above $101 a barrel, but were still below where they were before the cease-fire was declared last week.
Mr. Trump, for his part, is dialing back his previous claim that as the shooting stops, gas prices will drop. He told Fox News on Sunday that prices “should be around the same” during the midterms and might be “a little bit higher.” That is the exact fear of many Republican candidates.
This is uncharted territory. Like President John F. Kennedy’s “quarantine” of Cuba in 1962, intended to keep the Soviets from bringing nuclear weapons onto Cuban soil, it is impossible to know beforehand how this will play out. Back then, Kennedy and his advisers watched anxiously to see if the Soviets would try to “run the line” and risk military confrontation with the U.S. Navy or whether they would retreat, negotiate and find a face-saving way out.
The Soviet leader at the time, Nikita Khrushchev, chose to back off.
After the blockade on any ships leaving or destined for Iranian ports goes into effect, at 10 a.m. Eastern on Monday, it may become clear whether the new ayatollah, Mojtaba Khamenei, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps make the same choice. But without a navy, Iran knows it has virtually no chance in a direct confrontation.
For Mr. Trump, this is yet another reversal of strategy. A few weeks ago, he decided to allow Iran to sell oil that was already at sea, in hopes of easing supply shortages. But the effects on prices were minimal. And Mr. Trump looked as though he were conducting a halfhearted war, bombing Iran while allowing it to profit. And the country's imposition of tolls on traffic going through the strait meant that a new revenue stream was opening up for Tehran at the moment it needed it most.
“The current situation, in which Iran gets to deny use of the strait to all except its friends or those who pay up, is untenable,” said Richard Haass, a former Republican senior national security official and the former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, who was among the first to advocate a blockade strategy.
“It gets rich while others get poor,” he continued. “A blockade adds to the economic pressure on Iran that already existed before the war and was made worse by the war. If they want to sell their oil, they need to reopen the strait to all.”
The test of the strategy may well be how Iran’s biggest customers react. Mr. Haass argues for pairing the blockade with a diplomatic strategy to get China, India, Pakistan and Turkey — all major customers of Iran — to pressure the country to give in to U.S. demands and get oil flowing again. But it is unclear whether they will do so, especially if China sees an opportunity to profit in the long term from the confrontation.
Mr. Haass also said that “we should couple the threat or reality of a blockade with a proposal to establish new governance authority for the strait that would include Iran,” giving it a voice — but not control — over governance of the waterway.
It might work. But there is also the possibility that Iran’s reaction will be to resume attacks on energy facilities in the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and perhaps even Saudi Arabia. In that scenario, Iran would essentially say that if it cannot ship oil, its Arab neighbors will not be able to, either.
As with so much in this war, there was confusion on Sunday about what, exactly, was subject to blockade. Mr. Trump’s social media post declared a “complete” blockade on all traffic in and out of the strait. But as described in a news release on Sunday from U.S. Central Command, the blockade applies only to ships going to or from Iranian ports. Cargo from other Gulf states will be allowed to pass, assuming they are willing to take the risk of hitting mines or being attacked by Iranian speedboats or drones. It was also unclear how the United States would determine which ships had paid a toll to the Iranians.
The strait has been shuttered before, of course, but history does not provide much guidance that fits the current situation.
As Mr. Haass, along with the historians Niall Ferguson and Philip Zelikow noted in The Free Press last week, the Portuguese first took control of the strait 519 years ago and charged a toll. They were ousted by Persian and British forces. Half a millennium later, the Portuguese and the British made clear that the attack on Iran, even in the name of preventing it from getting within reach of a nuclear weapon, was ill considered.
In the early 1950s, Britain blockaded the strait after Iran’s prime minister at the time, Mohammad Mossadegh, nationalized the country’s oil industry. He was overthrown in a coup that was partly supported by the C.I.A., a covert intervention that the Iranians resent to this day and that history has not treated kindly.
And there were episodic disruptions during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s.
But none of those experiences is a very close analog to the complex confrontation that is currently unfolding. If the blockade is short-lived and ends Iran’s ability to extort the global economy, Mr. Trump’s gamble may well look like a savvy turning of the tables. And if the Iranian leadership gives in to his demands, it may ratify Mr. Trump’s conclusion that the new leadership is more “reasonable” than the last.
If the blockade drags on, though, Mr. Trump runs the risk of looking once again as though he failed to see around corners, anticipating what could go wrong with an attack on what appeared to be a weakened Iran. The war that he thought might last only days is entering its seventh week. And for the global economy, the hard part is not close to over.
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10) Israelis Don’t Feel Much Like Victors in War With Iran
The regime in Iran has not changed and the nuclear and missile threats have not been eliminated, leaving many Israelis to wonder what this was all for.
By David M. Halbfinger, Reporting from Jerusalem, April 13, 2026
Activists held posters of war victims from around the region during a protest in Tel Aviv on Saturday. Amit Elkayam for The New York Times
The roads are jammed again, businesses are reopening and children have returned to their classrooms. In all but the far north of Israel, people have emerged from their bomb shelters and safe rooms.
But the 40-day war with Iran and the ongoing war with Hezbollah in Lebanon have left many despairing over how little they believe the fighting accomplished, particularly compared to what they had been promised, according to two new polls.
Regime change in Iran? Senior government and military leaders have been killed, but it is still the same regime.
The destruction of Iran’s nuclear program? Damaged or delayed, perhaps, but not ended.
The elimination of Iran’s ability to threaten Israel with ballistic missiles? Reduced, perhaps, but still a threat.
As Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself told Israelis in a televised address on Saturday night: “They have a missile stockpile, and it’s getting smaller.”
Even now, as President Trump alternately taunts, threatens and tries to negotiate with the leadership in Tehran, Israel is left on the sidelines. It is forced to accept whatever Washington decides — as when it received a scolding for a furious wave of airstrikes on Beirut on Wednesday that Iran protested was a violation of the day-old cease-fire.
Barely a third of Israelis believe that when Israel and the United States disagree, Israel can act on its own judgment, according to a an opinion poll released Sunday by the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv.
A separate poll also released Sunday by Agam Institute and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem found that three times as many Israelis see the war as a failure than a victory. Some 70 percent believe the cease-fire reflects an American concession to Iran, and two-thirds oppose it.
Many Israelis have become pessimistic, fatigued, disillusioned and distrustful of the information that they are receiving, the Agam-Hebrew University survey found.
It all adds up to a sense that this victory isn’t much of a victory at all, said Yaakov Katz, an Israeli analyst and co-founder of the Middle East-America Dialogue.
“What’s the Israeli story today?” he said. “It’s a narrative of a country that’s constantly fighting, and presents no alternatives except for more war.”
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11) How Iran, Suffering Under Sanctions, Diversified Its Economy
As the nation contended with high inflation, high unemployment and unrest before the war, it became more than just an oil exporter.
By Patricia Cohen and Robert Gebeloff, April 13, 2026
Patricia Cohen is the global economics correspondent based in London. Robert Gebeloff is a data reporter in New York.
Tehran earlier this year. Sanctions have hobbled Iran’s economy, but they have not broken its back. Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times
For nearly 50 years, Iran has been treated as an outlaw, earning a spot as one of the most heavily sanctioned countries in the world for its nuclear and weapons programs, its support for terrorism, its human rights abuses and more.
But despite persistent efforts by the United States, the European Union, Britain and the United Nations Security Council to choke off Iran’s international trade and freeze assets, the country has managed to keep doing business with much of the world, a New York Times analysis shows.
The nation has exchanged goods with more than 170 nations since 2019, even as international restrictions have fueled inflation, soaring unemployment and civil unrest. Overall trade is down, but the country has imported much needed food, electronics and auto parts while it sells oil, gas, construction materials, specialty foods and thousands of other products. Sanctions hobbled Iran’s economy, but they have not broken its back.
The shifts in Iranian trade
Iran conducts an increasing share of trade business with China, its neighbors and other Asian nations.
“The expectation is that sanctions have isolated Iran from global trade but that is not entirely the case,” said Esfandyar Batmanghelidj, chief executive of the Bourse & Bazaar Foundation, a research organization based in London. “Iran’s trade has grown more complex over time in response to sanctions.”
The war with the United States and Israel has conspicuously shifted the country’s prospects. Iran’s blockade of shipping traffic in the Strait of Hormuz has interfered with its own ability to access critical goods and conduct trade. Israeli and American missiles have pounded the country, destroying infrastructure including electricity facilities, transportation, factories, military bases and schools. The possibility of more devastating damage looms if a two-week cease-fire does not hold.
Yet trade data over the past 30 years may offer clues about the shape-shifting power of the Islamic Republic’s 94-million-person economy. Its ability to adapt under the strain of sanctions and other disruptions could signal how it would operate going forward.
China has been Iran’s savior
Precise trade figures are difficult to obtain. Most analysts distrust official government statistics, and Iran’s partners often omit or understate the value of commodity transactions.
Even so, what’s clear is that China has stepped up as Iran’s primary trading partner, accounting for a steadily growing share of Iran’s imports and exports over the past two decades.
A growing reliance on China and Asia
Here is breakdown of Iran’s international trade by country or region
During the pandemic, Beijing vowed to invest $400 billion in the country in the coming decades in exchange for a steady supply of oil. In 2024, it purchased 90 percent of Iran’s oil exports, according to the International Energy Agency. China also accounted for roughly a quarter of Iran’s non-oil exports from 2019 to 2024, according to data compiled by Harvard University’s Atlas of Economic Complexity, purchasing billions of dollars of Iranian chemicals and metals.
Payments are made in renminbi, China’s currency, avoiding the use of dollars and the need to involve American banks, which are often the primary entities used to help enforce sanctions violations. China, in return, appears to provide nearly 30 percent of the commodities that Iran imports, selling everything from furniture to sunflower seeds.
There is another crucial layer of trade between the nations not recorded in official statistics. Both countries have engaged in a complicated barter system that involves secret financing channels. Iran ships oil to China and in return, Chinese state-backed construction companies have built airports and other infrastructure.
This hidden system of trade extends elsewhere in the world, experts said, in part to avoid running afoul of sanctions. The shadow activity involves shell companies and frontmen that mask the identity of the actual buyers, the use of non-Iranian banks and diversions through other countries that are used to conceal the fact that Iran is involved.
Iran is no longer purely reliant on oil
Twenty years ago, petroleum accounted for nearly 80 percent of Iran’s export ledger, but that figure shrunk over time as Iran’s economy diversified.
The shift began accelerating when the United States, under President Barack Obama, imposed a new round of harsh sanctions that forced Iran into a tailspin.
“The Iranian economy didn’t start really struggling until about 2012,” Mr. Batmanghelidj said. “The rise in trade from 2000-2012 was associated with a rise in living standards and the growth of Iran’s middle class.”
The sanctions primarily targeted Iran’s oil trade and discouraged Western companies from doing business with Iranian counterparts. That pushed Iran to develop more trade in other areas, and with new partners, a pattern that is continuing, trade data shows.
Some of the sanctions were lifted after the Iran-U.S. nuclear deal in 2015. But since 2019, when President Trump reimposed sanctions against companies doing business with Iran, the pattern resumed.
During that time, Iran has exported more than $120 billion in non-petroleum commodities, the Harvard data shows — a figure roughly on par with the total exports of Costa Rica, Ecuador or Croatia.
What else Iran sells to the world
Here are some of the products whose export value has notably grown in recent years.
Iran is helped by its access to several trade corridors, both overland and by water. It borders seven countries, including Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq and Turkey and has Caspian seaports in addition to occupying one side of the Hormuz strait that has been a central feature of the current war.
Both Turkey and Iraq are key customers of Iranian goods. With China, these three nations have accounted for more than half of Iran’s non-oil export trade since 2019.
Kuwait is a major buyer of Iranian cement and sheep. Bulgaria, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan import large quantities of packaging material. Most of the imported saffron in Spain comes from Iran.
Iran makes more of what it needs, but it’s unclear to what extent
One response to sanctions over the years has been to produce more things at home. The country has developed an extensive manufacturing sector that produces automobiles, steel, iron, electronics and pharmaceuticals, as well as a thriving business in food products.
“They’ve made a concerted effort at being self-reliant,” said Kislaya Prasad, academic director of the Center for Global Business at the University of Maryland.
Sanctions have made it much more difficult for Iran to import materials it needs for production like machinery and replacement parts.
European countries used to account for more than half of reported Iranian imports in the mid-1990s. Today, they make up less than 20 percent.
Where Iran imports goods from
In addition to being one of Iran’s largest customers, China has become one of its biggest suppliers.
The United Arab Emirates provides electronics; India ships large quantities of rice; and Brazil sells Iran soybeans and maize.
In several ways, American efforts to block imports to Iran have been more damaging than efforts to curb Iran’s oil exports, the biggest single source of its trade revenue, Mr. Batmanghelidj of the Bourse & Bazaar Foundation said.
He added that the diversification of Iran’s economy was not the result of government policies. “Companies managed to find export opportunities,” he said.
Measuring the magnitude of trade with Iran’s partners, though, involves some guesswork.
“Many assume that trade data should be highly accurate because shipments are recorded at ports of export and import, and because governments have strong incentives to monitor trade for taxation and regulatory purposes,” said Sebastian Bustos, a research fellow at Harvard who helped develop the atlas project.
“While these controls do exist, the reality is that global trade data remain incomplete and poor in quality,” he added. “This problem is worse for developing countries, and even more in countries facing sanctions.”
What’s next?
If the Strait of Hormuz remains paralyzed and fighting escalates, especially after negotiations this weekend between fell apart, Iran’s postwar economy could take years or possibly decades to recover.
Even if a peace deal eventually comes together, rebuilding the economy will take time given the extensive damage that has already been done to housing, schools, factories, research universities, transportation hubs and more.
Tehran has been insisting on an end to sanctions as part of any deal. But if the sanctions continue, the process of repairing the damage while also providing essential goods and services will be longer and more painful. And it’s unclear the extent to which Iran has further isolated itself by attacking some of its regional trade partners during the conflict.
But while the United States and others can squeeze Iran’s economy, what Tehran has demonstrated with its blockage of the Strait of Hormuz, is that it, too, can inflict economic damage that reverberates across the globe.
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12) The Iran War Has Made Clear the Old Arrangements Are Over
By Badr Jafar, April 13, 2026
Mr. Jafar is the special envoy of the United Arab Emirates minister of foreign affairs for business and philanthropy. He wrote from Dubai.
Ricardo Tomás
The United Arab Emirates in March 2025 undertook to invest $1.4 trillion in the United States — the largest single-country pledge on record. The commitment, accelerated during President Trump’s visit to the Gulf two months later, covered artificial intelligence, semiconductors, clean energy and the infrastructure of the future. In both countries, it was considered historic.
Nine months later, amid an uneasy cease-fire in the Iran war, the Gulf region is assessing the fallout from Iranian missiles. The economic disruption has been severe: Iran has choked the Strait of Hormuz and hit energy infrastructure, and now America has declared a naval blockade. Governments across the region are reassessing the pace of overseas commitments they can sustain under fire. The implicit bargain, as one economist put it, was that those investment pledges rested on a foundation of regional stability.
For decades, the U.S.-Gulf relationship was described in shorthand: oil for security. The Gulf provided the energy stability; America provided the military umbrella. But that framework was obsolete even before the war started. The United States achieved energy independence. Gulf economies are spending trillions to diversify beyond oil. The terms of exchange have fundamentally changed — and nowhere is this more evident than in the relationship between the United States and the Emirates.
What this moment calls for is not a rupture, but a recognition that the partnership is structurally deeper than either side fully acknowledged, and that it has outgrown the institutional architecture governing it. America and the Emirates need a more honest accounting of what they owe each other, one that goes beyond the ceremonial arithmetic of investment announcements. It requires recognizing that the United Arab Emirates is not simply a source of capital, but is also a strategic co-investor in shared prosperity; that stability in this region is the foundation on which the entire edifice rests; and that even the strongest partnerships require deliberate stewardship to endure.
The Emirates has been the top destination for American exports in the Middle East for 17 consecutive years, with bilateral trade in 2025 generating a $23.8 billion surplus for the United States, the fourth largest it gets from any country. The trade figures capture only one dimension. New York University has a full campus in Abu Dhabi. The Cleveland Clinic runs a major hospital there. The Guggenheim is building a museum on Saadiyat Island.
Sixty-five thousand Americans call the Emirates home; tens of thousands of Emiratis have studied at U.S. universities, and many have returned with deep ties to American institutions. The Abu Dhabi technology company G42 partners directly with American giants such as Microsoft, which has committed $15.2 billion to A.I. infrastructure in the country. The Commerce Department approved the export of advanced Nvidia chips to G42 for a reason: These collaborations serve American interests as much as Emirati ones.
This is not oil for security. It is a 360-degree partnership — economic, technological, cultural and human — that has been built quietly over decades by businesses, universities, hospitals and millions of individual choices. It is the kind of relationship that great powers spend generations trying to construct. And it already exists.
The current crisis has made the invisible visible. The Emirates is not a passive recipient of American security guarantees. It is an active partner that has bet its diversification strategies and sovereign wealth on the stability of the international order the United States leads. When that order is disrupted, the consequences fall first and hardest on the countries nearest the fire.
The Emirates did not seek this war. It has absorbed thousands of strikes on its airports, ports and cities. Its air defenses have intercepted over 95 percent of incoming missiles and drones, according to its Defense Ministry. The country’s response has been to defend its people, keep its economy open and reaffirm its investment commitments. This is resilience in action. That resolve should not be taken for granted.
I have no doubt this relationship will survive the current crisis. The interdependencies are too deep and too mutual. The Emirates’ commitment to the United States is not contingent on any single administration or conflict.
But surviving is not the same as thriving. The U.S.-Emirates relationship has the potential to be the most consequential economic partnership of the coming decades for both sides. American firms increasingly see the Emirates as a launchpad into Africa, South Asia and the wider Indo-Pacific. In the other direction, the country’s vast network of family-run businesses, a largely untapped force in cross-border investment, is ready to deepen its stake in the American economy alongside Emirati sovereign capital.
Whether this partnership fulfills its extraordinary potential will depend on whether both sides govern it as the strategic asset it has become, rather than the transactional convenience it once was.
The missiles have clarified something important: not that the relationship is at risk, but that it has become far too valuable to leave on autopilot.
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13) Gun Manufacturers Won the Ultimate Legal Shield. Big Oil Wants That, Too.
By Dave Jones, April 13, 2026
Mr. Jones was California’s insurance commissioner from 2011 through 2018.
Photo illustration by Alex Bandoni/ProPublica. Source images: iStock/Getty Images.
As far back as the 1970s, some of the world’s largest oil corporations were aware that burning their products could have potentially catastrophic consequences. But they withheld the evidence, carried out a decades-long campaign that misled the public about climate science and fought the transition to cleaner and cheaper energy sources.
Eventually scientists and activists took oil and gas companies to court to try to get them to pay for their deceptive campaign and the potentially trillions of dollars in damages from disasters made worse by a climate warmed by their products.
Now the fossil fuel industry has mounted a carefully orchestrated campaign to stop these cases. Backed by the Trump administration, the industry is seeking to block all climate lawsuits that seek compensation from fossil fuel producers for damages. Last month Utah became the first state to enact a law that shields companies from such climate-related claims, and Republican lawmakers have introduced similar bills in Iowa, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Tennessee. But the biggest prize the industry is after would come from Congress: total legal immunity from liability in climate cases.
Putting any industry above the law — especially one responsible for creating many of the greenhouse gas emissions that have helped fuel climate-related destruction of homes, businesses and whole communities — would be beyond dangerous. If Big Oil gets its wish, it would be an injustice with lasting and cascading harm.
The question of whether the industry can be held accountable for the damage from climate change is coming to a head in part because at the end of February — following the urging of the Trump administration and over 100 House Republicans — the Supreme Court announced it would hear arguments about whether the industry can be sued under state law over its role in global warming. The industry has asked the court to dismiss a Colorado Supreme Court decision that allowed a lawsuit filed by Boulder and Boulder County to proceed. In that case, the city and county want Exxon Mobil and Suncor Energy to pay for climate damage like that from the 2021 Marshall Fire, which destroyed more than 1,000 homes.
How the Supreme Court rules could have profound implications for dozens of other states and municipalities seeking similar recourse against oil companies. But the Supreme Court is not where the industry’s efforts to evade any accountability end. Oil and gas companies have also been lobbying Congress for a legal shield that would block communities from trying to hold them responsible for climate-linked damage. A Republican House member from Wyoming recently announced that she is working on legislation to establish such a shield.
More than a year ago, oil company executives reportedly asked President Trump to help them quash the rising number of climate lawsuits and “climate superfund” laws that state and local governments have advanced. The Trump administration responded by suing New York and Vermont to block enforcement of the nation’s first two climate superfund laws, and by suing Michigan and Hawaii to prevent them from bringing their own climate cases against Big Oil. A federal judge already dismissed the administration’s lawsuit against Michigan, and the states have moved forward with their cases undeterred.
States like New York, Rhode Island, Hawaii and California are also considering bills to make oil companies pay for climate change’s contribution to rising insurance costs. California is pressing forward with a lawsuit over its alleged role in plastics pollution. And the daughter of a woman killed in the 2021 heat dome in the Pacific Northwest filed the first-ever wrongful death lawsuit against oil companies linked to climate change.
A Supreme Court ruling in favor of the oil companies in the Boulder case will probably not make all of the legal threats against Big Oil go away. But a sweeping liability waiver from Congress could — and we’d all be worse off for it.
In addition to food, rent and housing, costs from climate disasters are growing at a frightening pace — now nearly $1 trillion a year by some estimates. And right now everyday Americans are the ones picking up the tab.
Governments are struggling with the growing costs of rebuilding communities and infrastructure like roads, water and sewer systems after extreme weather. Their budgets often can’t cover these costs and there is pressure to raise taxes and fees. Disaster costs are also making home insurance increasingly unavailable and unaffordable — a phenomenon I saw firsthand during my time as California’s insurance commissioner. Some politicians may pretend that climate change isn’t real, but insurance rates don’t lie. In some states, home insurance premiums are projected to continue to rise as insurers’ growing financial losses from previously unthinkable climate disasters get passed on to policyholders.
It is rare for Congress to grant liability waivers to entire industries, and it should be. The 2005 Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act that has shielded gun manufacturers from nearly all legal accountability is now widely regarded as terrible public policy that has fueled gun-related deaths in this country. Yet Republican state attorneys general have proposed using that exact law as a model for protecting fossil fuel companies.
If Big Oil were to secure immunity from liability for climate damage, the public would keep paying for the costs of climate change, while the fossil fuel companies most responsible for them would continue to pay nothing.
As climate disasters mount, and the Trump administration slashes federal disaster response, the most important thing members of Congress can do is protect their constituents’ ability to make polluters pay.
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