Embarcadero Plaza
2:00 P.M.San Francisco, CA
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March 19: The Voice of Hind Rajab Screening @ Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA) Offices
1101 Eighth St, Berkeley, CA 94710, USA
Join the Middle East Children's Alliance for our screening of The Voice of Hind Rajab. This tragic docudrama, written and directed by Kaouther Ben Hania, follows the Red Crescent response during the killing of Hind Rajab, a six-year-old Palestinian girl, by the Israel Occupation Forces during the Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip. It stars Saja Kilani, Motaz Malhees, Amer Hlehel, and Clara Khoury.
Tickets: $10.00
https://events.humanitix.com/the-voice-of-hind-rajab?emci=a59ade92-0318-f111-a69a-000d3a1f0a97&emdi=7c21261a-2118-f111-a69a-000d3a1f0a97&ceid=2453624*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
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Saturday, March 28
11:30 A.M. – 3:00 P.M.
Embarcadero Plaza
Market and Steuart Street
San Francisco, CA 94105
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Veterans For Peace Condemns
U.S. Attack on Iran
Military Members and Civilians:
Resist Illegal Wars!
Veterans For Peace condemns the U.S./Israeli attack on Iran in the strongest possible terms. We call on our members, friends, and allies to resist this dangerous and illegal war. We offer our support to members of the military who decide to refuse illegal orders and resist an illegal war.
A War Based on Lies
The Trump administration’s ever-changing rationales for going to war against Iran are lies. Iran posed no threat to the United States. This military operation is not a defensive war, but rather a war of choice by Israel and the U.S., a war of aggression, a war for regime change – very much like the disastrous U.S. wars that killed millions of people in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan – wars that many veterans remember with horror and regret.
Contrary to President Trump’s oft-repeated lie, Iran has repeatedly stated that it has no intention of acquiring nuclear weapons. Rather, the United States, the only country to attack another nation with nuclear weapons, has unilaterally abrogated multiple arms control treaties, and is investing Two Trillion Dollars in a new generation of nuclear weapons. It was the U.S., not Iran, that violated and withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal. Israel also has nuclear weapons – undeclared and uninspected. Two nuclear powers attacking Iran, claiming to stop it from pursuing a nuclear program, is the height of hypocrisy.
The aggression against Iran follows by less than two months the U.S. attack on Venezuela and the unlawful abduction of its president and wife. It comes amid the ongoing war threats and oil blockade of Cuba. This complete disregard and abuse of the process of negotiations only encourages nuclear proliferation around the world.
Illegal and Unconstitutional
The U.S. war on Iran is illegal in multiple ways. It is a violation of the UN Charter, a treaty which is the “supreme law of the land” under Article VI of the U.S. Constitution. Article 2(4) of the UN Charter states, “All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.”
The unilateral war of aggression against Iran is a blatant violation of the U.S. Constitution, which explicitly grants Congress the sole authority to declare war. This power was intentionally given to the legislative branch to prevent unilateral military action by a single executive.
These legal and constitutional issues may seem quaint to those of us who have seen them routinely violated by president after president with the complicity of a supine Congress. Nonetheless, they constitute both international and domestic law. They are the legal codification of a moral framework for international peace and cooperation. Peace-loving people must struggle to ensure that these laws are followed. We must hold our government officials accountable when they are not.
Refuse Illegal Orders – Resist Illegal Wars
Veterans For Peace reminds our sisters and brothers, children, and grandchildren in the U.S. military that an order to participate in an illegal war is, by extension, an illegal order. You have the right and even the duty to refuse illegal orders. Veterans For Peace and many others will stand with you when you do, and provide helpful information and resources. Whatever legal consequences you may endure pale compared to risking your life in an illegal war or living with Post Traumatic Stress and Moral Injury.
Veterans and civilians also have the right and the responsibility to resist the illegal actions of our government at home and abroad. This attack is a very critical moment in the history of the United States and the world. We must be in the streets protesting. We must be on our phones telling our representatives to Vote Yes on the Iran War Powers resolution. We must be on our keyboards, writing letters to the editors. Tell them to:
IMMEDIATELY HALT U.S. MILITARY ATTACKS ON IRAN!
· End U.S. Support for Israel and Genocide in Palestine!
· End Economic Warfare against Iran, Venezuela, and Cuba!
· End ICE and Authoritarian Repression in U.S. Cities!
· Abolish Nuclear Weapons and War!
PEACE AT HOME, PEACE ABROAD!
https://prod.cdn.everyaction.com/emails/van/EA/EA015/1/94223/Alqa3p0mdFGQOfwCaEOYO6dpWCJEn2qC1GPoEaid_7O_archive?emci=6196a802-9415-f111-a69a-000d3a57593f&emdi=d3c0d4a7-a515-f111-a69a-000d3a57593f&ceid=10474381
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Tell Congress: No War On Iran!
On Saturday, February 28th, the United States and Israel bombed Iran’s capital. Shortly after, President Donald Trump announced a planned prolonged war against Iran and stated that American servicemembers would likely be killed in the process. He addressed Iranians, telling them to stay inside because bombs would be dropping all over Iran, and called on them to overthrow their government. The self-proclaimed “peace president” has launched yet another endless war – risking millions of human lives. The entire world should be outraged.
Tell Congress we want PEACE with Iran, we don’t want the US bombing Iran, we don’t want a regime change war, and we want to lift the sanctions that are hurting everyday Iranians.
https://www.codepink.org/iranaction
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The Trump administration is escalating its attack on Cuba, cutting off the island’s access to oil in a deliberate attempt to induce famine and mass suffering. This is collective punishment, plain and simple.
In response, we’re releasing a public Call to Conscience, already signed by influential public figures, elected officials, artists, and organizations—including 22 members of the New York City Council, Kal Penn, Mark Ruffalo, Susan Sarandon, Alice Walker, 50501, Movement for Black Lives, The People’s Forum, IFCO Pastors for Peace, ANSWER Coalition, and many others—demanding an end to this brutal policy.
The letter is open for everyone to sign. Add your name today. Cutting off energy to an island nation is not policy—it is a tactic of starvation.
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Petition to Force Amazon to Cut ICE Contracts!
https://actionnetwork.org/letters/tell-amazon-end-contracts-with-ice/?source=group-amazon-labor-union&referrer=group-amazon-labor-
Amazon Labor Union
Over 600,000 messages have already been sent directly to Amazon board members demanding one thing: Amazon must stop fueling deportations by ending its contracts with ICE and DHS.
ICE and DHS rely on the data infrastructure provided by Amazon Web Services. Their campaign against immigrants and those who stand with them depends on the logistical, financial, and political support of companies like Amazon.
But workers and communities have real power when we act collectively. That’s why we must expose Amazon’s role in the deportation machine. Help us reach 1 million messages and force Amazon to act by signing our petition with The Labor Force today:
Tell Amazon: End contracts with ICE!
On Cyber Monday 2025, Amazon workers rallied outside of Amazon’s NYC headquarters to demand that Amazon stop fueling mass deportations through Amazon Web Services’ contracts with ICE and DHS.
ICE cannot operate without corporate backing; its campaign against immigrants and those who stand with them depends on the logistical, financial, and political support of companies like Amazon. Mega-corporations may appear untouchable, but they are not. Anti-authoritarian movements have long understood that repression is sustained by a network of institutional enablers and when those enablers are disrupted, state violence weakens. Workers and communities have real power when they act collectively. That is why we must expose Amazon’s role in the deportation machine.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) rely on Amazon Web Services (AWS) as its most commonly used cloud platform. DHS and ICE cannot wage their attack on immigrants without the critical data infrastructure that Amazon Web Services provide, allowing the agencies to collect, analyze, and store the massive amounts of data they need to do their dirty work. Without the power of AWS, ICE would not be able to track and target people at its current scale.
ICE and DHS use Amazon Web Services to collect and store massive amounts of purchased data on immigrants and their friends and family–everything from biometric data, DMV data, cellphone records, and more. And through its contracts with Palantir, DHS is able to scour regional, local, state, and federal databases and analyze and store this data on AWS. All of this information is ultimately used to target immigrants and other members of our communities.
No corporation should profit from oppression and abuse. Yet Amazon is raking in tens of millions of dollars to fuel DHS and ICE, while grossly exploiting its own workers. Can you sign our petition today, demanding that Amazon stop fueling deportations by ending its contracts with DHS and ICE, now?
https://actionnetwork.org/letters/tell-amazon-end-contracts-with-ice/?source=group-amazon-labor-union&referrer=group-amazon-labor-
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End Texas Torture of Revolutionary Elder Xinachtli
Organization Support Letter
Letter to demand the immediate medical treatment and release of Chicano political prisoner Xinachtli (Alvaro Hernandez #00255735)
To the Texas Department of Criminal Justice,
We, the undersigned organizations, write to urge immediate action to protect the life, health, and human rights of Xinachtli (legal name Alvaro Hernandez). Xinachtli is 73-year-old Chicano community organizer from Texas who has spent 23 years in solitary confinement and 30 years incarcerated as part of a 50-year sentence. His health is now in a critical and life-threatening state and requires prompt and comprehensive medical intervention.
Since his conviction in 1997, Xinachtli has spent decades in conditions that have caused significant physical and psychological harm. As an elder in worsening health, these conditions have effectively become a de facto death sentence.
Xinachtli’s current medical condition is severe. His physical, mental, and overall well-being have declined rapidly in recent weeks. He now requires both a wheelchair and a walker, has experienced multiple falls, and is suffering from rapid weight loss. He is currently housed in the McConnell Unit infirmary, where he is receiving only palliative measures and is being denied a medical diagnosis, access to his medical records, and adequate diagnostic testing or treatment.
A virtual clinical visit with licensed medical doctor Dr. Dona Kim Murphey underscores the severity of his condition. In her report of the visit, she wrote: "Given the history of recent neck/back trauma and recurrent urinary tract infections with numbness, weakness, and bowel and bladder incontinence, I am concerned about nerve root or spinal cord injury and/or abscesses that can lead to permanent sensorimotor dysfunction."
Despite his age and visible disabilities, he remains in solitary confinement under the Security Threat Group designation as a 73-year-old. During his time in the infirmary, prison staff threw away all of his belongings and “lost” his commissary card, leaving him completely without basic necessities. He is experiencing hunger, and the lack of consistent nutrition is worsening his medical condition. McConnell Unit staff have also consistently given him incorrect forms, including forms for medical records and medical visitation, creating further barriers to care and communication.
A family visit on November 29 confirmed the seriousness of his condition. Xinachtli, who was once able to walk on his own, can no longer stand without assistance. He struggled to breathe, has lost more than 30 pounds, relied heavily on his wheelchair, and was in severe pain throughout the visit.
In light of these conditions, we, the undersigned organizations, demand that TDCJ take immediate action to save Xinachtli’s life and comply with its legal and ethical obligations.
We urge the immediate implementation of the following actions:
Immediate re-instatement of his access to commissary to buy hygiene, food, and other critical items. Immediate transfer to the TDCJ hospital in Galveston for a full medical evaluation and treatment, including complete access to his medical records and full transparency regarding all procedures. Transfer to a geriatric and medical unit that is fully accessible under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Xinachtli requests placement at the Richard P LeBlanc Unit in Beaumont, Texas. Approval of Medical Recommended Intensive Supervision, the release program for individuals with serious medical conditions and disabilities, in recognition of the severity and progression of his current health issues. Failure to act will result in the continued and foreseeable deterioration of Xinachtli’s health, amounting to state-sanctioned death. We urge TDCJ to take swift and decisive action to meet these requests and to fulfill its responsibility to safeguard his life and well-being.
We stand united in calling for immediate and decisive action. Xinachtli’s life depends on it.
Signed, Xinachtli Freedom Campaign and supporting organizations
Endorsing Organizations:
Al-Awda Houston; All African People’s Revolutionary Party; Anakbayan Houston; Anti-Imperialist Solidarity; Artists for Black Lives' Equality; Black Alliance for Peace - Solidarity Network; Columbia University Students for a Democratic Society; Community Liberation Programs; Community Powered ATX; Contra Gentrificación; Diaspora Pa’lante Collective; Down South; DSA Emerge; Entre nos kc; Fighting Racism Workshops; Frontera Water Protectors; GC Harm Reductionists; JERICHO MOVEMENT; Jericho Movement Providence; Montrose Anarchist Collective; NYC Jericho Movement; OC Focus; Palestine Solidarity TX; Partisan Defense Committee; Partido Nacional de la Raza Unida; PDX Anti-Repression; Red Star Texas; Root Cause; San Francisco Solidarity Collective; Shine White Support Team; Sunrise Columbia; UC San Diego Faculty for Justice in Palestine; Viva Palestina, EPTX; Water Justice and Technology Studio; Workshops4Gaza.
Sign the endorsement letter for your organization here:
https://cryptpad.fr/form/#/2/form/view/MiR1f+iLiRBJC7gSTyfhyxJoLIDhThxRafPatxdbMWI/
IMPORTANT LINKS TO MATERIALS FOR XINACHTLI FREEDOM CAMPAIGN:
PHONE BLAST: Your community can sign up for a 15-minute-long call shift here: bit.ly/xphoneblast
FUNDRAISER: Here is the link to Jericho's fundraiser for Xinachtli: http://givebutter.com/jerichomovement
CASE HISTORY: Learn more about Xinachtli and his case through our website: https://freealvaro.net
CONTACT INFO:
Follow us on Instagram: @freexinachtlinow
Email us:
xinachtlifreedomcampaign@protonmail.com
COALITION FOLDER:
https://drive.proton.me/urls/SP3KTC1RK4#KARGiPQVYIvR
In the folder you will find: Two pictures of Xinachtli from 2024; The latest updated graphics for the phone blast; The original TRO emergency motion filing; Maria Salazar's declaration; Dr. Murphy's report from her Dec. 9 medical visit; Letter from Amnesty International declaring Xinachtli's situation a human rights violation; Free Xinachtli zine (which gives background on him and his case); and The most recent press release detailing who Xinachtli is as well as his medical situation.
Write to:
Alvaro Hernandez CID #00255735
TDCJ-W.G. McConnell Unit
PO Box 660400
Dallas, TX 75266-0400
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Self-portrait by Kevin Cooper
Funds for Kevin Cooper
Kevin was transferred out of San Quentin and is now at a healthcare facility in Stockton. He has received some long overdue healthcare. The art program is very different from the one at San Quentin but we are hopeful that Kevin can get back to painting soon.
For 41 years, an innocent man has been on death row in California.
Kevin Cooper was wrongfully convicted of the brutal 1983 murders of the Ryen family and houseguest. The case has a long history of police and prosecutorial misconduct, evidence tampering, and numerous constitutional violations including many incidences of the prosecution withholding evidence of innocence from the defense. You can learn more here .
In December 2018 Gov. Brown ordered limited DNA testing and in February 2019, Gov. Newsom ordered additional DNA testing. Meanwhile, Kevin remains on Death Row at San Quentin Prison.
The funds raised will be used to help Kevin purchase art supplies for his paintings . Additionally, being in prison is expensive, and this money would help Kevin pay for stamps, books, paper, toiletries, supplies, supplementary food, printing materials to educate the public about his case and/or video calls.
Please help ease the daily struggle of an innocent man on death row!
An immediate act of solidarity we can all do right now is to write to Kevin and assure him of our continuing support in his fight for justice. Here’s his address:
Kevin Cooper #C65304
Cell 107, Unit E1C
California Health Care Facility, Stockton (CHCF)
P.O. Box 213040
Stockton, CA 95213
www.freekevincooper.org
Call California Governor Newsom:
1-(916) 445-2841
Press 1 for English or 2 for Spanish,
press 6 to speak with a representative and
wait for someone to answer
(Monday-Friday, 9:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. PST—12:00 P.M. to 8:00 P.M. EST)
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Dr. Atler Still Needs Our Help!
Please sign the petition today!
https://www.change.org/p/texas-state-university-give-tom-alter-his-job-back
What you can do to support:
—Donate to help Tom Alter and his family with living and legal expenses: https://gofund.me/27c72f26d
—Sign and share this petition demanding Tom Alter be given his job back: https://www.change.org/p/texas-state-university-give-tom-alter-his-job-back
—Write to and call the President and Provost at Texas State University demanding that Tom Alter be given his job back:
President Kelly Damphousse: president@txstate.edu
President’s Office Phone: 512-245-2121
Provost Pranesh Aswath: xrk25@txstate.edu
Provost Office Phone: 512-245-2205
For more information about the reason for the firing of Dr. Tom Alter, read:
"Fired for Advocating Socialism: Professor Tom Alter Speaks Out"
Ashley Smith Interviews Dr. Tom Alter
—CounterPunch, September 24, 2025
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 Russia Confirms Jailing of Antiwar Leader Boris Kagarlitsky In a secret trial on June 5, 2024, the Russian Supreme Court’s Military Chamber confirmed a sentence of five years in a penal colony for left-wing sociologist and online journalist Boris Kagarlitsky. His crime? “Justifying terrorism” — a sham charge used to silence opponents of Putin’s war on Ukraine. The court disregarded a plea for freedom sent by thirty-seven international luminaries. Kagarlitsky, a leading Marxist thinker in Russia’s post-Soviet period, recently addressed socialists who won’t criticize Putin: “To my Western colleagues, who…call for an understanding of Putin and his regime, I would like to ask a very simple question. [Would] you want to live in a country where there is no free press or independent courts? In a country where the police have the right to break into your house without a warrant? …In a country which…broadcasts appeals on TV to destroy Paris, London, Warsaw, with a nuclear strike?” Thousands of antiwar critics have been forced to flee Russia or are behind bars, swept up in Putin’s vicious crackdown on dissidents. Opposition to the war is consistently highest among the poorest workers. Recently, RusNews journalists Roman Ivanov and Maria Ponomarenko were sentenced to seven, and six years respectively, for reporting the military’s brutal assault on Ukraine. A massive global solidarity campaign that garnered support from thousands was launched at Kagarlitsky’s arrest. Now, it has been revived. This internationalism will bolster the repressed Russian left and Ukrainian resistance to Putin’s imperialism. To sign the online petition at freeboris.info —Freedom Socialist Party, August 2024 https://socialism.com/fs-article/russia-jails-prominent-antiwar-leader-boris-kagarlitsky/#:~:text=In%20a%20secret%20trial%20on,of%20Putin's%20war%20on%20Ukraine. Petition in Support of Boris KagarlitskyWe, the undersigned, were deeply shocked to learn that on February 13 the leading Russian socialist intellectual and antiwar activist Dr. Boris Kagarlitsky (65) was sentenced to five years in prison. Dr. Kagarlitsky was arrested on the absurd charge of 'justifying terrorism' in July last year. After a global campaign reflecting his worldwide reputation as a writer and critic of capitalism and imperialism, his trial ended on December 12 with a guilty verdict and a fine of 609,000 roubles. The prosecution then appealed against the fine as 'unjust due to its excessive leniency' and claimed falsely that Dr. Kagarlitsky was unable to pay the fine and had failed to cooperate with the court. In fact, he had paid the fine in full and provided the court with everything it requested. On February 13 a military court of appeal sent him to prison for five years and banned him from running a website for two years after his release. The reversal of the original court decision is a deliberate insult to the many thousands of activists, academics, and artists around the world who respect Dr. Kagarlitsky and took part in the global campaign for his release. The section of Russian law used against Dr. Kagarlitsky effectively prohibits free expression. The decision to replace the fine with imprisonment was made under a completely trumped-up pretext. Undoubtedly, the court's action represents an attempt to silence criticism in the Russian Federation of the government's war in Ukraine, which is turning the country into a prison. The sham trial of Dr. Kagarlitsky is the latest in a wave of brutal repression against the left-wing movements in Russia. Organizations that have consistently criticized imperialism, Western and otherwise, are now under direct attack, many of them banned. Dozens of activists are already serving long terms simply because they disagree with the policies of the Russian government and have the courage to speak up. Many of them are tortured and subjected to life-threatening conditions in Russian penal colonies, deprived of basic medical care. Left-wing politicians are forced to flee Russia, facing criminal charges. International trade unions such as IndustriALL and the International Transport Federation are banned and any contact with them will result in long prison sentences. There is a clear reason for this crackdown on the Russian left. The heavy toll of the war gives rise to growing discontent among the mass of working people. The poor pay for this massacre with their lives and wellbeing, and opposition to war is consistently highest among the poorest. The left has the message and resolve to expose the connection between imperialist war and human suffering. Dr. Kagarlitsky has responded to the court's outrageous decision with calm and dignity: “We just need to live a little longer and survive this dark period for our country,” he said. Russia is nearing a period of radical change and upheaval, and freedom for Dr. Kagarlitsky and other activists is a condition for these changes to take a progressive course. We demand that Boris Kagarlitsky and all other antiwar prisoners be released immediately and unconditionally. We also call on the auth *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........* *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........* |
Mumia Abu-Jamal is Innocent!
FREE HIM NOW!
Write to Mumia at:
Smart Communications/PADOC
Mumia Abu-Jamal #AM-8335
SCI Mahanoy
P.O. Box 33028
St. Petersburg, FL 33733
Join the Fight for Mumia's Life
Since September, Mumia Abu-Jamal's health has been declining at a concerning rate. He has lost weight, is anemic, has high blood pressure and an extreme flair up of his psoriasis, and his hair has fallen out. In April 2021 Mumia underwent open heart surgery. Since then, he has been denied cardiac rehabilitation care including a healthy diet and exercise.
He still needs more complicated treatment from a retinal specialist for his right eye if his eyesight is to be saved:
Donate to Mumia Abu-Jamal's Emergency Legal and Medical
Defense Fund
Mumia has instructed PrisonRadio to set up this fund. Gifts donated here are designated for the Mumia Abu-Jamal Medical and Legal Defense Fund. If you are writing a check or making a donation in another way, note this in the memo line.
Send to:
Mumia Medical and Legal Fund c/o Prison Radio
P.O. Box 411074, San Francisco, CA 94103
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Resources for Resisting Federal Repression
https://www.nlg.org/federalrepressionresources/
Since June of 2020, activists have been subjected to an increasingly aggressive crackdown on protests by federal law enforcement. The federal response to the movement for Black Lives has included federal criminal charges for activists, door knocks by federal law enforcement agents, and increased use of federal troops to violently police protests.
The NLG National Office is releasing this resource page for activists who are resisting federal repression. It includes a link to our emergency hotline numbers, as well as our library of Know-Your-Rights materials, our recent federal repression webinar, and a list of some of our recommended resources for activists. We will continue to update this page.
Please visit the NLG Mass Defense Program page for general protest-related legal support hotlines run by NLG chapters.
Emergency Hotlines
If you are contacted by federal law enforcement, you should exercise all of your rights. It is always advisable to speak to an attorney before responding to federal authorities.
State and Local Hotlines
If you have been contacted by the FBI or other federal law enforcement, in one of the following areas, you may be able to get help or information from one of these local NLG hotlines for:
Portland, Oregon: (833) 680-1312
San Francisco, California: (415) 285-1041 or fbi_hotline@nlgsf.org
Seattle, Washington: (206) 658-7963
National Hotline
If you are located in an area with no hotline, you can call the following number:
National NLG Federal Defense Hotline: (212) 679-2811
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Articles
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1) Trump Tries to Quiet Claims Among Supporters That Israel Dragged Him Into War
Many of President Trump’s allies have urged him and his Make America Great Again movement to shift away from their close ties to Israel and military entanglements in the Middle East.
By Tyler Pager, Reporting from Washington, Published March 3, 2026, Updated March 4, 2026
“When asked Tuesday if Israel had forced his hand in attacking Iran, Mr. Trump said, ‘No, I might have forced their hand.’ He said later, ‘If anything, I might have forced Israel’s hand.’ Mr. Rubio also sought to walk back his comments that the operation had been triggered by Israel’s plans to strike Iran, insisting the decision had been made independently by Mr. Trump. ‘The bottom line is this: The president determined we were not going to get hit first,’ he said on Tuesday. ‘It’s that simple, guys.’ But in a letter to Congress, sent Monday and made public Tuesday, Mr. Trump wrote that he had ordered the military action in Iran to advance American national interests and eliminate Iran as a global threat, adding that it was carried out ‘in collective defense of our regional allies, including Israel.’”
President Trump attempted to extinguish the idea that Israel forced the United States to enter a war with Iran. Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times
President Trump on Tuesday tried to tamp down an uproar over whether Israel had dragged the United States into a war with Iran, but he and top officials offered contradictory explanations for why, exactly, Mr. Trump had ordered military action.
Many of the president’s anti-interventionist supporters were already skeptical about the joint U.S.-Israel military campaign. The backlash exploded on Monday after Secretary of State Marco Rubio suggested the United States faced an imminent threat because Israel was about to attack Iran.
If Israel attacked, Mr. Rubio explained, Iran was poised to retaliate against U.S. forces.
Mr. Rubio’s comments suggested to some of Mr. Trump’s core supporters that Israel’s decision had led the United States into war. Many of those same allies for years have urged the president and the broader Make America Great Again movement to shift away from their close ties to Israel and military entanglements in the Middle East.
“Rubio’s comments are a record-scratch moment,” Mike Cernovich, a pro-Trump social media commentator, wrote on social media. “He said what most guessed was the case. That he said out loud this is a sea change in foreign policy. There will be massive calls for a walk back.”
Mr. Trump and Mr. Rubio both tried to smooth over tensions on Tuesday, but they continued to offer conflicting accounts of the events that had led the United States into its most expansive military conflict since the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
When asked Tuesday if Israel had forced his hand in attacking Iran, Mr. Trump said, “No, I might have forced their hand.” He said later, “If anything, I might have forced Israel’s hand.”
Mr. Rubio also sought to walk back his comments that the operation had been triggered by Israel’s plans to strike Iran, insisting the decision had been made independently by Mr. Trump.
“The bottom line is this: The president determined we were not going to get hit first,” he said on Tuesday. “It’s that simple, guys.”
But in a letter to Congress, sent Monday and made public Tuesday, Mr. Trump wrote that he had ordered the military action in Iran to advance American national interests and eliminate Iran as a global threat, adding that it was carried out “in collective defense of our regional allies, including Israel.”
Israel, in particular, has led to cracks in parts of Mr. Trump’s base over how much support the United States should provide the country. Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News anchor, has been among the most vocal critics of the United States’ longstanding support of Israel. Mr. Carlson met with the president three times over the last month, urging Mr. Trump to restrain Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel.
Mr. Carlson has come under fire for conducting a friendly interview with the white nationalist Nick Fuentes, who has expressed admiration for Hitler and Stalin and opposes Mr. Trump over his support for Israel. Mr. Trump defended Mr. Carlson after the interview, though he has said neither his party nor his movement had room for people with antisemitic views.
“There’s a segment of the base that has become anti-Israel and they view Rubio’s comments as confirming their prior beliefs of how American foreign policy operates,” said Jack Posobiec, a conservative activist and prominent Trump supporter. “There’s no question that Rubio’s comment set them off.”
Many of Mr. Trump’s supporters say the president’s public disdain for military intervention and his vow to end, not start, wars was a key part of his appeal. They believed it formed the core of an “America First” foreign policy ideology.
Mr. Trump has often floated above the internal discord within his movement, but he has been consistent in supporting Israel and its leaders.
“I have been the best president of the United States in the history of this country toward Israel,” he told The New York Times in an interview in January.
Even as prominent supporters criticize the president for the decision to go to war, most acknowledge Mr. Trump is unlikely to lose much ground with his base. His support is too deep, they say, and his success in recent military operations in Venezuela and Iran has earned him good will.
But Mr. Posobiec, the conservative activist, predicted the intraparty fight over Israel’s future would only accelerate in the years ahead, especially as the party looks toward a future beyond Mr. Trump.
“There’s no way of getting through the 2028 Republican primary without answering the question: What role does Israel play in American foreign policy?” Mr. Posobiec said.
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2) The Iran War Is Trump’s War
By Ross Douthat, March 3, 2026
Illustration by Shannon Lin/The New York Times
Let’s think about the Iran war in the light of Donald Trump’s career to date. What has made him so historically significant, so effective as a politician in spite of all his sins and faults, so enduring and dominant in the American political landscape? One thing especially: an incredible instinct for the weaknesses of enemies and rivals, a willingness to tear away what looks like strength to reveal the rot beneath, an eye for the main chance and an appetite for conquest.
The Republican establishment in 2016 offered a case study in the vulnerabilities that he exploits: a party elite that had been discredited by the Iraq war and the financial crisis but didn’t fully realize it, a cadre of politicians who were easily unmanned by insults and braggadocio, a long list of names who staked out high-minded opposition and then inexorably bent the knee.
The same pattern prevailed in his defeat of Hillary Clinton’s complacent campaign and then his post-2020 comeback against a political establishment that constrained him for a while but allowed itself to be hollowed out by radicalism. And the scene at his second inaugural, where lords of industry who once participated eagerly in the resistance lined up to pay him homage, was the perfect capstone: He had taken their measure all along.
Which left only the world to conquer.
It was obvious enough in Trump’s first term that he was not really a dove or an isolationist. But the second term has made it clear that the recurring Trumpian arguments for foreign policy restraint should be understood primarily as rhetorical bludgeons against his neoconservative and liberal opponents that, having served their purpose, can be discarded when new opportunities appear. Likewise his impulse for deal making should be understood as just one means of power projection, whose pleasures are milder than the thrill of seeing geopolitical rivals humiliated or captive or simply dead.
So what does his eye for weakness see in Iran? First, a regime that has seen its networks of regional power ruthlessly dismantled over the past few years, primarily by Israeli operations, and that has the same government as in the 1980s but a drastically different domestic situation — with far less religious zeal and far less legitimacy for the clerical regime. (Note that this sense of Iranian weakness is a very different rationale for war from the argument about imminent military danger that Trump’s subordinates feel obliged to offer to Congress and the press.)
Second, Trump senses a larger weakness in the quasi-axis arrayed against the American imperium. During Joe Biden’s administration it felt as if Russia, Iran and China were all acting in a kind of loose concert, probing and testing and attacking. But these powers are not actually allied with one another, and when one is imperiled, the others do not necessarily rush to its defense. Still less are they loyal to their client states, whether in Latin America or the Middle East. So the Russian quagmire in Ukraine becomes an opportunity to knock off the Assad regime in Syria. The Chinese and Russians do not bestir themselves in defense of Venezuela (or, tomorrow, Cuba). And Iran in its weakness doesn’t have a powerful authoritarian alliance to back it up. It’s just a wobbly dictatorship that, if toppled, leaves the anti-American world order weaker than before.
Finally, Trump senses a window of opportunity created by advances in military technology, with the earlier strikes on Iran and the raid in Venezuela as proofs of concept, which make it possible to conduct a kind of fatal surgery on an adversary’s leadership class: It’s not shock and awe; it’s drone strike and assassinate. The hope is that this new combination can produce a more tractable elite without the necessity of Iraq-style occupation and counterinsurgency.
Obviously there is more to the story here than just Trump’s instincts. But I think it makes sense to put them at the center of the story, rather than Israeli influence or Saudi pressure (real as those are), the residual power of a baby boomer conservatism that took shape during the Iran hostage crisis or the supposed tendency of right-wing nationalists to look abroad for splendid little wars when domestic politics aren’t going their way.
Put another way, the reason that some of these forces matter is that they dovetail with Trump’s instincts: Trump himself identifies with the Israelis and Saudis and is himself a baby boomer for whom the idea of settling unfinished Cold War business, from Tehran to Havana, has a special historical appeal. He is the key agent here, the central historical character, and the right-wing nationalism he leads and shapes is clearly just being brought along for the ride, voicing much less enthusiasm and more obvious dissension than George W. Bush’s conservative movement ever showed during his Middle East wars.
Take away Trump’s raw instinct, his belief that he has taken the measure of the world in the same way he once took the measure of the Republican establishment, and the pro-war coalition — already a minority of the country in most polls — would unravel tomorrow.
And therein lies one obvious potential future, in which the Iran war is the moment when the Trumpian instinct for weakness finally and fatefully misjudges. This is the pattern of many historical conquerors: The long run of success yields the inevitable hubris, and the grand career ends with a grand debacle and would-be successors reaching for the knife.
I imagine that Trump thinks (or intuits, if you prefer) that he can avoid that fate as long as he never fully invades a country, that the high-tech air-war strategy inherently limits the downside risks of hubris.
But the dark path here — a half-collapsed Iran fighting a decentralized war against its neighbors, a suppurating crisis that will be blamed on Israel by the further right and left alike — seems bad enough to pin Trump down in George W. Bush territory for the remainder of his term. “We destroyed their nuclear program” will not be enough of a justification in his own coalition, let alone the country as a whole.
No: Success now requires some version, however unique to the Iranian situation, of the Venezuelan endgame, in which a somewhat friendlier regime holds power and conducts negotiations and keeps the lid on chaos.
I think Trump believes that’s what this war will achieve. Soon we’ll know if his instincts have one more victory in them or if nemesis is finally here.
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3) UN says Israel has suspended humanitarian movements into Gaza
'It is imperative that all crossings be reopened as soon as possible,' says spokesperson
Merve Aydogan, March 3, 2026
The UN said Monday that Israel has closed all crossings into the Gaza Strip and suspended humanitarian movements in and near areas where Israeli forces remain deployed.
"Israeli authorities have closed all crossings, including Rafah, and have suspended humanitarian movements in and near areas where Israeli troops remain deployed in Gaza. And they've also postponed planned rotation for our humanitarian personnel," UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric told a news conference.
"Medical evacuations and the return of people into Gaza have also been suspended as a result," Dujarric said, stressing that people in Gaza rely on consistent aid deliveries.
"People in Gaza, as you know, rely on a steady flow of humanitarian commercial goods from outside. Given the limited storage capacity and destruction across this war-torn area, we and our partners had worked hard to maintain a sustained and predictable flow of supplies despite the continuing restrictions, but that cannot continue under full blockade," he said.
"It is imperative that all crossings be reopened as soon as possible," he added.
In the occupied West Bank, Dujarric said Israeli forces have kept most checkpoints closed, restricting movement between Palestinian cities and governorates and limiting access to livelihoods and services.
"International humanitarian law is clear. As we keep saying every day and often, many times a day, civilians must be protected and their essential needs met, including through unimpeded entry, movement and distribution of humanitarian assistance," he said.
On Saturday morning, the US and Israel launched a joint attack on Iran, claiming it was meant to remove “threats” posed by the Iranian “regime.” In response, Iran targeted Israel and US bases in the region with missiles and drones.
Israel declared a “special and immediate state of emergency” nationwide.
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4) U.S. Submarine Torpedoed Iranian Warship Off Sri Lanka as Conflict Widens
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said it was the first such strike since World War II. The Sri Lankan authorities said they had rescued 32 sailors from the crew of 180.
By Pamodi Waravita, Anupreeta Das and Lynsey Chutel
Pamodi Waravita reported from Colombo, Sri Lanka., March 4, 2026
“The Iranian ship ‘thought it was safe in international waters,’ but ‘instead, it was sunk by a torpedo,’ Mr. Hegseth said at a Pentagon briefing. ‘America is winning, decisively, devastatingly and without mercy,’ Mr. Hegseth said, adding that ‘more waves’ are coming. He said it was the first time an American submarine has been used to fire a torpedo against an enemy ship in combat since World War II.”
An ambulance at the naval headquarters in Galle, Sri Lanka, on Wednesday. Sri Lanka said it had rescued 32 critically injured sailors after their ship sank earlier in the day. Credit...Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
A U.S. submarine torpedoed an Iranian warship in the Indian Ocean near Sri Lanka, Pete Hegseth, the U.S. defense secretary, said on Wednesday, as part of a widening military campaign against Iran.
Although Mr. Hegseth did not name the ship, an Iranian vessel with a crew of 180 sank in the Indian Ocean on Wednesday off the southern coast of Sri Lanka, officials in the country said. At least 80 people were killed, according to Arun Hemachandra, the deputy foreign minister of Sri Lanka. Government officials said 32 people were rescued earlier, and a search was underway for other survivors.
The torpedoed Iranian warship risks dragging Sri Lanka, a South Asian island nation of around 22 million, into a political situation not of its making.
The Iranian ship “thought it was safe in international waters,” but “instead, it was sunk by a torpedo,” Mr. Hegseth said at a Pentagon briefing.
“America is winning, decisively, devastatingly and without mercy,” Mr. Hegseth said, adding that “more waves” are coming. He said it was the first time an American submarine has been used to fire a torpedo against an enemy ship in combat since World War II.
Iran’s naval fleet has been under attack since the United States and Israel launched a war on Iran last weekend, targeting the country’s military and security apparatus.
The Iris Dena, described as a destroyer, was sailing outside Sri Lanka’s territorial waters when it sent a distress signal at 5:08 a.m. local time, the Sri Lankan foreign minister, Vijitha Herath, told Sri Lanka’s Parliament. Sri Lanka responded, sending naval ships and its air force to the endangered vessel.
The strike, more than 2,000 miles from Tehran, stretched the battlefield to its furthest point since the war began. Iran has targeted multiple countries with missiles in recent days, including aiming as far as Cyprus and Turkey.
The Sri Lankan government has not taken a public stance on the conflict, but it has long maintained friendly relations with Iran, analysts said.
“We have a fairly good relationship with Iran — very much a microcosm of our wider relationship with the Arab and the Islamic world,” said Uditha Devapriya, a foreign policy analyst based in Colombo, the capital.
Earlier on Wednesday, Mr. Herath said in a post on X that he had signed the condolence book for Iran’s slain supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, at the Iranian embassy in Colombo. The two countries had strengthened their bilateral ties under his tenure, he said, adding that Sri Lanka remained “appreciative of lran’s friendship.”
Sri Lankan officials said the 32 rescued crew members were taken to the Karapitiya Hospital, in the southern coastal city of Galle.
Officers found bodies floating in the water where the ship went under, Capt. Buddhika Sampath, a spokesman for the Sri Lankan navy, said during a news conference.
“We haven’t seen the ship, but observed oil patches and life craft,” Captain Sampath said.
While the incident took place outside of Sri Lankan waters, the island nation responded in line with its commitment to an international maritime search and rescue treaty, the foreign minister said.
“We are signatories so we intervened on a humane basis as is our responsibility,” Mr. Herath told Parliament.
The Iris Dena, a prized destroyer in the Iranian navy, had participated in an international naval exercise in India last month. The ship had been making its way back toward Iran from Visakhapatnam, a city in India where the joint exercise ended on Feb. 25. The United States was among the many participants in the drills.
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5) This Summer, Students From Hundreds of Colleges Will Heed One Urgent Call
By Michael S. Roth, March 4, 2026
Mr. Roth is the president of Wesleyan University.
Between 1962 and 1966, Martin Luther King Jr. visited Wesleyan University four times to talk with students and teachers about the struggle for civil rights and nonviolent activism. It was a dark time in this country, but Dr. King told his audience that moral ends could yet be achieved through moral means, and that “we can move through the darkness of the hour to the brightness of a new day.”
Some undergraduates heeded that call, and were inspired to join the many others around the country traveling to Mississippi, where voting rights were under attack. Freedom Summer, as that unforgettable season in 1964 was called, involved dangerous work. Many participants were beaten or arrested. A few were murdered. But they shook the conscience of a nation, and their efforts eventually led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act.
American voting rights are once again endangered, this time by the White House. The threat of violence isn’t nearly as immediate as it was in 1964, but from demanding Minnesota’s voter rolls to reinvestigating the 2020 election to making remarks about nationalizing elections, the Trump administration’s actions should leave no doubt as to what the nation is up against. Now is the time for everyone — Republicans, Democrats and independents — to come together and defend our foundational democratic right. And higher education has a unique role to play.
Inspired by those volunteers seven decades ago, Wesleyan University and a network of hundreds of schools and allied organizations are uniting for Democracy Summer, a nationwide program to educate citizens and protect our elections in the coming year.
This isn’t some passing fad: American colleges and universities have been educating people to participate in public life since the founding of the Republic. Thomas Jefferson and George Washington regarded civic education as a fundamental component of liberty. Throughout the 1800s, colleges considered this work — training people to fulfill their duty as citizens — to be central to their mission, because they knew, as Frederick Douglass put it, that learning was “the direct pathway from slavery to freedom.”
The brave volunteers of Freedom Summer knew it, too, and put it into action with Freedom Schools, which taught basic math and reading skills while also helping students explore their role in a functioning democracy.
That is the resolve that we now all must muster to secure our most fundamental right, our most fundamental freedom. Doing so won’t just strengthen our republic; it will also directly enhance the education of students who participate, empowering them to build a better future. And what better way this summer to celebrate our nation’s 250th birthday?
The Democracy Summer network includes research-intensive universities like Yale and Duke, big state schools such as Michigan and Texas and small religious institutions such as Goshen College and Trinity Washington University, as well as interest groups from the American Association of Colleges and Universities to Interfaith America. Civic engagement centers at more than 400 colleges and universities have joined the effort, and more are expected.
How these schools interpret the mandate to protect our democracy is up to them. Many will work with organizations such as Campus Compact and Civic Nation to encourage voting. Others are focused on promoting free speech and civil dialogue on their campuses. They might work on local issues by canvassing and organizing in communities, or focus on national obstacles to voting such as poor access to polling places, misinformation and administrative constraints. Many will offer internships that enable students to join campaigns from Alaska to Texas, or hold workshops on how to register voters and help them get to the polls. And by the end of the summer, as midterm elections come into view, the network of schools will dispatch thousands of students for meaningful work, under the guidance of election administrators and civic organizations, to recruit poll workers and monitor voting as it’s underway. Many different ways to ensure one simple promise: that every eligible voter has the chance to cast a ballot, and that all ballots are accurately counted.
The Trump administration has taken steps to limit how colleges and universities distribute voter registration materials. But Democracy Summer is not a partisan effort: We are drawing students from conservative-leaning civics centers and older progressive organizations alike, and they will work side by side, in districts where they feel politically at home as well as those where they are outliers. Nor is this a one-time effort. The elections of 2026 are crucial, but we are building democratic muscles in young people that should endure well beyond the current election cycle.
Leonard Edwards, who met Dr. King during one of his visits to Wesleyan, was asked about why he joined Freedom Summer. It was “the fastest decision I could make,” he said. “This was my chance to make a difference on an issue that had bothered me my entire life.” Mr. Edwards went on to be a distinguished superior court judge in California, an expert on juvenile justice. Looking back, he concluded: “I couldn’t have chosen a better foundation than doing the work in Mississippi.”
College students may not be an exact demographic match for the country as a whole, but they are a diverse lot, and the work of Democracy Summer will offer all of them the same strong foundation that Mr. Edwards described. It will bring students out of their campus bubbles, providing young people with an extraordinary opportunity during our semiquincentennial to learn about the broad array of problems, opportunities and aspirations in America, and to learn how to listen to and communicate with people who don’t share their own convictions or life experiences.
Higher education has thrived in the ecosystem of freedoms provided by our democracy. Today that ecosystem is under enormous strain, and as teachers and students we must now rise to its defense. We can, as Dr. King said, “move through the darkness of the hour to the brightness of a new day.”
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6) With Fuel Running Out, Cuba’s Tourism Is Collapsing
The Trump administration’s decision to cut off foreign oil to the island is devastating its tourism industry, a key source of income for a government being pushed to the edge.
By Frances Robles and Vjosa Isai, March 4, 2026
Frances Robles reported from Florida, and Vjosa Isai from Toronto.
Tourists in an old American car used as a taxi last month in Havana. Yamil Lage/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
By the second week of Debbie Sutherland’s vacation to Cuba last month, there were ominous signs of trouble.
Gasoline was being rationed, excursions were canceled and all of the stores in a nearby mall were closed.
Ms. Sutherland’s hotel in Cayo Las Brujas, a part of a small chain of islands just north of central Cuba, reserved a block of rooms for stranded employees. That section of the hotel was completely dark: Only tourists got electricity.
Cuba has relied on tourism, and on sun-starved Canadian visitors above all others, as a key pillar of its collapsing economy.
“The Cuban people love Canadians,” said Ms. Sutherland, 64, a behavioral therapist from Ontario. “They would say, ‘You know, we would die without Canada.’”
But President Trump’s travel restrictions and move to to block all foreign oil from Cuba has brought the industry — already weakened after the Covid-19 pandemic — to its knees and intensified an economic meltdown threatening the government’s survival.
Like many other travelers, Ms. Sutherland’s vacation was cut short last month as the country’s crippling energy crisis began paralyzing tourism.
With the government saying it was running out of jet fuel and with power outages worsening, Russian and Canadian airlines suspended flights to Cuba, a move that jeopardizes the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of people.
Airlines sent empty jets to the island to take thousands of tourists back home, a stark sign of the volatile conditions in Cuba as the Trump administration’s campaign has created an increasingly desperate situation for Cuba and its people. Abandoned trucks, cars and motorbikes, apparently out of gas, littered the road to the airport, Ms. Sutherland said.
The Trump administration, in its quest to topple Cuba’s 67-year-old Communist government, has targeted the country’s main sources of foreign currency, including tourism, but also medical missions to other countries in exchange for payments to the Cuban government.
Even before Mr. Trump’s executive order in January threatening to impose tariffs on countries that provide oil to Cuba, his administration had been chipping away at Cuba’s tourism industry.
Mr. Trump limited Americans’ ability to travel to Cuba, stay at government hotels or travel there aboard a cruise ship. His decision to put Cuba on the list of state sponsors of terrorism meant that Europeans who went to Cuba lost their ability to travel to the United States without a visa.
Last year, Cuba had just 1.8 million international visitors, down from 4.7 million in 2018, said Paolo Spadoni, a social sciences professor at Augusta University in Georgia who recently published a book on Cuba’s tourism industry.
Even as their numbers have also decreased, Canadians have remained a cornerstone of tourism, accounting for roughly 40 percent of foreign visitors. Cuba has actively courted Canadians, who can enter Cuba legally, and like to spend money on winter getaways and are reliable return visitors.
But as international headlines focus on nationwide blackouts, the spread of mosquito-borne illnesses and the growing piles of garbage in the streets, many European and Canadian tourists are choosing other destinations. Some tour operators have removed Cuba from their list of offerings.
Even Cubans living in the United States are staying away, Mr. Spadoni said.
As a result, Cuba’s tourism industry is likely to suffer a year comparable only to the pandemic, when travel around the world largely shut down, experts say.
It was not long ago that Cuba enjoyed a brief tourism boom after President Barack Obama’s decision in 2014 to restore diplomatic relations with Cuba.
He also relaxed prohibitions against Americans traveling there, even allowing cruise ship sailings. Cuba had long been a forbidden destination for Americans, so the numbers of them visiting Cuba suddenly soared.
The loosening of restrictions was short-lived; Mr. Trump put tougher regulations back in place during his first term in office. The number of Americans visiting Cuba plummeted to 110,000 in 2025 from 638,000 in 2018, according to Cuban government statistics.
But even as the number of tourists heading to Cuba dwindled, Cuba doubled down on its investment, pouring billions into new hotels.
The government added 22,000 new rooms from 2014 to 2025, with some 70 new hotels, Mr. Spadoni said. Cuba has 85,000 hotel rooms nationwide, but an occupancy rate of only about 20 percent, he added.
Cuba’s state-run hotels are managed by Gaviota, a subsidiary of the military-run conglomerate GAESA, which controls the Cuban economy. That means Cuba’s best hotels and prime real estate are in the hands of military officials, Mr. Spadoni said.
“One key misconception is: How can Cuba build so many hotels when the occupancy rate is so low?” Mr. Spadoni said. “One thing people miss is that to the Cuban military, these are real estate investments more than tourism.”
Military officials are likely taking the “long view” by wanting to be in control of valuable properties should the Communist government transition to democracy, he said.
Some new luxury hotels, like the iconic Torre K in Havana, are largely empty.
In the past 15 years, the Cuban government invested about $24 billion in hotels, said Emilio Morales, a Miami-based former marketing official for Cimex, Cuba’s retail conglomerate, who now studies Cuba’s tourism industry and is a harsh critic of its government.
“There were many hotels, and in two or three and a half years, everything shut down or kept deteriorating,” Mr. Morales said. “They didn’t invest in the other sectors that support tourism, such as the energy grid itself.”
The Cuban government did not respond to requests for comment.
In public statements, Cuban officials have denounced the Trump administration for trying to push it toward collapse.
“What does it mean to prevent a single drop of fuel from reaching a country?” President Miguel Díaz-Canel said recently. “It means affecting food transportation, food production, public transportation, the functioning of hospitals, institutions of all kinds, schools, economic output, and tourism.”
He added: “Surrender is not an option.”
The Cuban government last month abruptly closed more than a dozen hotels and transferred its guests to consolidate tourists and save on energy.
Some airlines have continued their flights, adding stops in the Dominican Republic for refueling, while some countries are warning against visiting Cuba.
Air Canada said it decided to suspend the flights because the added stops for fuel would disrupt schedules.
“More broadly, ongoing fuel supply challenges in Cuba, combined with instability in the power grid, have broader implications for customers,” said Christophe Hennebelle, a spokesman for Air Canada, which had 3,000 customers in Cuba on vacation packages.
Basic necessities like food and medical care were becoming scarce, he added. “We do not want to put the health, safety, and well-being of our passengers at risk.”
Lorne Berkun, an 80-year-old in Vancouver, British Columbia, who organizes coffee tour trips to Cuba, said he had received only one inquiry from a potential client this year, compared with the at least 15 he would have expected by now.
“There’s no way I would take anybody now,” he said.
Lucy Davies, a British tour operator who specializes in cycling trips, said that once countries like Canada and Britain elevated their travel advisories, her business was largely finished.
“The rest of our clients have canceled because once a government advises against all but essential travel to a destination, travel insurance won’t cover travelers to that destination,” she said. “We very much hope that Cuba and the U.S.A. can find a resolution soon — and before the country falls into total collapse.”
Drew Garneau, 42, who works at a car dealership in Nova Scotia, had planned to visit Cayo Cruz, an island just off Cuba’s coast, from Feb. 4 until the 18th.
Five days into his trip, Mr. Garneau had put down the microphone after performing a Bon Jovi hit during karaoke night at his hotel when a porter approached him in the lobby.
“He took me aside and said, ‘Hey, you two gotta pack. You’re leaving at 6 a.m.,” Mr. Garneau said.
Airlines, he learned, were taking tourists home. “I’ve never been kicked out of a country before,” he said.
Hannah Berkeley Cohen contributed reporting from Curaçao.
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7) U.S. Opens Military Action in Ecuador Against ‘Terrorist Organizations’
U.S. Special Forces soldiers are advising and supporting Ecuadorean commandos on raids across the country against suspected drug shipment facilities and other drug-related sites.
By Eric Schmitt and Luis Ferré-Sadurní, Published March 3, 2026, Updated March 4, 2026
Eric Schmitt reported from Washington, and Luis Ferré-Sadurní from Bogotá, Colombia.
Members of the Ecuadorean Navy stand guard in the facilities of the Coast Guard Command at the Port of Manta, Ecuador, in 2025. Credit...Marcos Pin/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The United States and Ecuador have launched joint military operations against “designated terrorist organizations” in the South American country, the Pentagon said on Tuesday night, in what appeared to be a major expansion of the U.S. military’s unilateral strikes against boats in the Caribbean Sea and Eastern Pacific that the Trump administration has accused of carrying drugs.
U.S. Special Forces soldiers are advising and supporting Ecuadorean commandos on raids across the country against suspected drug shipment facilities and other drug-related sites, according to a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters.
The Americans are not believed to be participating in the actual raids, but are helping the Ecuadorean troops plan their operations, and are providing intelligence and logistics support, the official said.
In a 30-second video released by the military’s Southern Command, a helicopter is seen taking off in early morning or dusk, flying over an area, then picking up soldiers. The U.S. official said the video depicted the first in what was expected to be a series of raids across the country, some with U.S. advisers assisting nearby, some with Ecuadorean forces only. In this instance, involving mostly Ecuadorean forces, the official said, it was unclear what the mission’s objective was or whether it was successful.
“The operations are a powerful example of the commitment of partners in Latin America and the Caribbean to combat the scourge of narco-terrorism,” the United States Southern Command said in a statement, which did not provide other details about the operations.
The White House did not immediately comment on the military activity. In a visit to Ecuador last September, Secretary of State Marco Rubio strongly implied that the United States and Ecuador might conduct joint strikes.
Across Latin America, cartels have battled each other and authorities to produce cocaine and smuggle it to the United States. Ecuador, the world’s largest exporter of the drug, does not produce it, but serves as a trafficking route for criminal groups operating in Colombia and Peru.
On Monday, Southern Command posted footage of a visit by Gen. Francis L. Donovan, the head of the command, with President Daniel Noboa and senior Ecuadorean officials in Quito, the capital, “to discuss security cooperation and reaffirm the United States’ strong commitment to supporting the nation’s efforts to confront narco-terrorism and strengthen regional security.”
General Donovan, whose command oversees operations in Latin America, said in a statement Tuesday that “we commend the men and women of the Ecuadorean armed forces for their unwavering commitment to this fight, demonstrating courage and resolve through continued actions against narco-terrorists in their country.”
Ecuador has emerged as a key South American ally of the United States since Mr. Trump returned to power in 2025 and kicked off a contentious campaign against supposed drug trafficking boats in Latin America.
Since early September, the United States has killed at least 150 people in 44 known strikes against boats in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific that the Trump administration has said, without providing evidence, are carrying drugs.
Legal specialists on the use of lethal force have said the strikes are illegal, extrajudicial killings, because the military cannot deliberately target civilians who do not pose an imminent threat of violence, even if they are suspected of engaging in criminal acts.
Mr. Noboa, who has centered his presidency on the use of military force to fight drug-gang violence that has led to a record number of homicides in the country, has sought to build a close alliance with Mr. Trump.
He has hosted Mr. Rubio and Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, in Ecuador. Last year, Mr. Noboa sought to allow the United States to establish military bases in Ecuador, a measure that was resoundingly defeated by Ecuadoreans in a referendum last November.
On Monday, after meeting with General Donovan, Mr. Noboa said in a post on X that Ecuador was “launching a new phase against narco-terrorism and illegal mining.”
“In the month of March, we will conduct joint operations with our regional allies, including the United States,” he wrote. “The security of Ecuadoreans is our priority, and we will fight to achieve peace in every corner of the country.”
Also attending the meeting was Rear Adm. Mark A. Schafer, the top commander of U.S. Special Forces in Latin America.
The raids come barely three weeks after Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, convened military leaders from around the Western Hemisphere in Washington to press for further coordination to fight drug trafficking and transnational criminal groups in the region. Since taking office, the Trump administration has made border security and drug interdiction a top priority of its national security policy.
Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Edward Wong contributed reporting.
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8) Interior Secretary Visits Venezuela as Part of Oil and Mining Expansion
The trip is part of the Trump administration’s push to build production in the South American nation.
By Lisa Friedman, March 4, 2026
The El Palito refinery of Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA in Puerto Cabello, Venezuela, earlier this year. Credit...Gaby Oraa/Reuters
Doug Burgum, the Interior secretary, traveled to Venezuela on Wednesday as part of the Trump administration’s efforts to boost oil production and expand U.S. investments there.
Mr. Burgum, who leads the White House National Energy Dominance Council, will meet with Delcy Rodríguez, the acting president of Venezuela, the White House confirmed.
He also will meet with U.S. and Venezuelan oil, gas and mining companies, “and work toward a legitimate mining sector,” in the country, according to the U.S. Embassy in Caracas.
Mr. Burgum is expected to announce a deal related to rare earth minerals on Thursday, Taylor Rogers, a White House spokeswoman, confirmed. She declined to release further details.
In January, U.S. forces captured the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, and President Trump promised to open up Venezuela’s oil industry to U.S. companies.
Venezuela has about 17 percent of the world’s known oil reserves — more than 300 billion barrels, a larger total than any other country. But its production is only about 1 percent of the world total.
That is partly because of decades of underinvestment, mismanagement and U.S. sanctions, and partly because Venezuela’s tar-like oil is difficult and expensive to refine.
The administration has urged U.S. oil companies to spend about $100 billion to rebuild Venezuela’s production and refining capacity.
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9) Mass Hysteria. Thousands of Jobs Lost. Just How Bad Is It Going to Get?
By Michael Steinberger, March 5, 2026
Mr. Steinberger is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine.
Thomas Greifenberger graduated from the University of Delaware last spring. Although he double-majored in finance and marketing and minored in economics, it took him just three years to earn his bachelor’s degree. He had hoped that his solid grades and demonstrated drive would help him land a position in the financial services industry. But when Mr. Greifenberger began his job search, it quickly became apparent to him that he was sending résumés into a void. He got a few nibbles — several companies invited him to do asynchronous video interviews.
Nothing more came of those opportunities, however, and after a point, he concluded that he was on a futile quest. “It was super discouraging,” he said.
He has returned home to Long Island, where he is now employed by his family’s tree service business. Mr. Greifenberger enjoys the work — he is often the guy up in the bucket, pruning branches — and the tangible results it yields. But he admits that it’s not the future he had envisioned for himself. “I still go on LinkedIn from time to time, but I think that ship has sailed for me,” he said.
Just a few years ago, an entry-level role with a bank or an asset management firm might have been Mr. Greifenberger’s for the asking. But the white-collar job market has cooled dramatically. While the unemployment rate remains relatively low, 4.3 percent, office jobs are suddenly a lot harder to come by, for recent college graduates and experienced professionals alike.
Many companies went on hiring sprees coming out of the pandemic, and the slowdown is perhaps just the inevitable adjustment. But it is happening against the backdrop of the generative A.I. revolution and fears that vast numbers of knowledge workers will soon be evicted from their cubicles and replaced by machines — fears being amplified by an army of online Cassandras. In a sequence of events that called to mind the 1938 Orson Welles radio adaptation of “The War of the Worlds,” famous for convincing panicked listeners that aliens had really invaded, a recent Substack post imagining the economic hellscape that could result from an A.I.-induced white-collar blood bath helped send the Dow Jones industrial average tumbling 800 points. Anxious times.
It is certainly possible that we are in another moment of mass hysteria, even mass hallucination, and that A.I. will not cause permanent widespread joblessness — either because its capabilities will prove to be more limited than observers first thought or because our highly adaptable species will respond to technological change as it always has, by finding new sources of gainful employment. That the people selling the artificial intelligence are among those sounding the most ominous warnings about its potential fallout is notable, however. Some of them are prone to bombastic claims, but it is hard to see how spooking the public serves their interests. It might be wise to take their predictions at face value and assume that A.I. is indeed going to devour a lot of white-collar jobs.
While new ones will hopefully emerge, the transition won’t be painless, and if the cracks we are seeing in the labor market become sinkholes, the effect not just on our economy but also our politics could be profound. If millions of college-educated voters have their lives upended by A.I., they will surely make their fury known. That prospect should be causing alarm in Washington and spurring efforts to try to cushion Americans from the blow that may soon befall them — by giving serious consideration, for instance, to something like universal basic income. But it is an election year, Congress is barely functioning, and on this issue, as with so many others, inertia will very likely prevail.
So are those cracks the first signs of an A.I. jobs apocalypse? It’s too soon to say, but the employment picture has darkened. The economy added only 181,000 jobs in 2025, a shockingly low figure in a year that saw gross domestic product grow by a modest but respectable 2.2 percent. According to Lawrence Katz, a professor of economics at Harvard University, what we are experiencing now — a sustained period of “slow job growth and gradually rising unemployment without a real recession” — is virtually unprecedented.
Another anomaly: White-collar workers have been disproportionately affected. Blue-collar and service workers are usually hit hardest when the job market turns, while white-collar occupations enjoy a degree of insulation because they are concentrated in “safer, less cyclically sensitive sectors,” says Mr. Katz. Now, however, knowledge workers are the ones struggling.
To be sure, this is not the first time the future of white-collar employment has been called into doubt. In the 2000s, some economists predicted that globalization would eviscerate office work much as it had manufacturing. But while a lot of jobs were sent overseas, others were simply transferred to less expensive parts of the country, and the anticipated white-collar collapse never materialized. It is very possible that the current slowdown is nothing more than a necessary correction after a period of overhiring.
But in a recent Substack post, the economist Gad Levanon of the Burning Glass Institute offered an alternative hypothesis. He noted that hiring has come to a virtual standstill in finance, insurance, accounting, consulting and tech, which are pillars of the “knowledge” economy. Mr. Levanon pointed out that companies in these areas have generally performed well of late while either trimming their head counts or keeping them largely unchanged, which suggested to him that they have found new ways to increase productivity without adding workers. It is unclear if A.I. is contributing to this trend, but the industries he cited all involve functions that seem especially ripe for automation.
This, of course, is the specter haunting millions of Americans who hold white-collar positions. In the not-so-distant past — which is to say, before the debut of ChatGPT in November 2022 — people with desk jobs feared being fired; now, they must also fret about whether the positions they have will even exist a year from now and if the skills they have developed over the course of a career are about to be rendered obsolete. Last year, Microsoft published a study identifying 40 jobs that it said could be most vulnerable to A.I. The list ranged from historians to P.R .specialists to data scientists to — gulp — writers. More recently, the Microsoft A.I. chief executive, Mustafa Suleyman, stated that most professional tasks will be fully automated over the next 12 to 18 months.
It looks all but certain that A.I. will transform knowledge work; the question is to what extent. The optimal outcome, says Harvard’s Mr. Katz, is that A.I. becomes a kind of “co-pilot” that helps people improve their skills and efficiency, and that new types of jobs replace those that are lost. Word that IBM plans to triple the number of entry-level employees it hires this year prompted lots of relieved chatter among office grunts sweating out the A.I. rollout.
The doomsday scenario is that businesses embrace A.I. agents as a substitute for querulous humans. The financial technology company Block announced last month that it was laying off 40 percent of its staff, around 4,000 people, because of the progress it claims to be seeing with A.I. In a social media post, Jack Dorsey, its chief executive, said that “the intelligence tools we’re creating and using, paired with smaller and flatter teams, are enabling a new way of working which fundamentally changes what it means to build and run a company.”
A few former employees have challenged his explanation: They contend that poor management left Block with a bloated payroll and that A.I. is just a convenient excuse for the pink slips. Whatever the truth, investors responded with delight to the news: Block’s stock soared over 20 percent, which is perhaps indicative of where Wall Street comes down on the job augmentation vs. job elimination question.
Some of those being let go may find comparable work. Others, however, could be unemployed for a while — it is a tough market — and as they run short of options and savings, they might have to follow Mr. Greifenberger’s example and consider nonoffice roles. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Sure, when you hear tech oligarchs who haven’t screwed in a lightbulb or fixed a toilet in years extolling the virtues of being an electrician or a plumber, it is hard to suppress a laugh — and hard, too, not to see it as a cynical ploy to persuade Americans to dial back their expectations as A.I. comes for their jobs and more of the nation’s wealth is funneled upward.
But it seems a growing number of white-collar workers are looking at the skilled trades as a potential fallback, and if the rise of A.I. leads to a modest brain drain from the professions into fields such as construction and carpentry, it might also cause us to re-evaluate the prestige that we assign to certain types of labor but not others. It will definitely accelerate the development of so-called “new-collar” jobs, which blur the distinction between white and blue.
I got a glimpse of this trend during a recent visit to a company called Hadrian, a manufacturing start-up that leans heavily on automation and A.I. to produce parts for planes, rockets and satellites. One employee on its factory floor had worked for a commercial real estate brokerage. He traded a white-collar job for a nominally blue-collar one, but in a high-tech setting, and like all of the company’s employees, he is partly compensated with equity — a stake that could be lucrative if and when Hadrian goes public.
Still, that is just one person who made the switch, and there are only so many Hadrians. If A.I. proves to be a job killer and several million people are culled from the white-collar work force, it stands to reason that a significant percentage of them will have trouble maintaining their economic footing. For decades, white-collar jobs have been the main driver of social mobility in the United States. Even now, college-educated workers command an enormous wage premium — more than 70 percent, by most calculations — over those with only high school diplomas.
Many Americans already take a dim view of A.I. and feel as if they are being frog-marched to a future that they neither asked for nor wanted. If A.I. robs some of them of their livelihoods, knocks them out of the middle class and thwarts the aspirations of their kids, wariness will quickly give way to rage.
In a recent interview, Martin Wolf, the chief economics commentator of The Financial Times, suggested that if lots of “skilled, trained thinking activities” are displaced by machines, it could provoke a furious backlash. “We could have a social and political crisis that makes deindustrialization look trivial,” he said. “Deindustrialization, though one of the biggest forces shaping our world, shook the working class, particularly the male working class, from top to bottom. Shaking the prospects of the educated middle class is socially far more dangerous and explosive because it affects them and their parents, who are the people who run our societies in almost every possible way.”
Mr. Wolf is not inclined to hyperbole, and when someone as reliably levelheaded as he is talking this way, it is a good indication that the risk is real. Given the upheaval we may soon be facing, it would be nice if we had a president capable of leading a thoughtful national conversation about where A.I. is taking us. Suffice it to say, Donald Trump is not that kind of president.
Some on Capitol Hill are treating the job threat seriously. Last fall, Senators Mark Warner and Josh Hawley introduced legislation that would require companies to provide information to the Department of Labor about the number of jobs they have cut or created because of A.I. and how they are helping employees navigate the new technology. But the bill would do nothing to ameliorate the circumstances of those who lose their jobs to A.I. On that front, we are apparently just going to hope for the best, not really plan for the worst and trust that creative destruction will somehow see us through it all.
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10) F.D.A. Faces Upset Over Denials of New Drugs
Agency officials promise fast reviews of new treatments while vowing they will not be a “rubber stamp” for the industry. But patients with rare diseases view recent decisions as signs that the doors are closing on their options.
By Christina Jewett, March 5, 2026
“…the agency has increasingly issued drug rejections or refusals — about 20 in the last eight months — that underscore a break from decades of general stability in the F.D.A.’s top ranks across several presidential administrations. It has advised companies to launch costly and complex studies that could add years to finding treatments for rare diseases with no cure.”
Megan and Ed Selser with their son, Ben, who is 2 and a half. He has Hunter syndrome, a genetic defect that eliminates an enzyme needed to break down sugar. Will Crooks for The New York Times
Megan Selser has been savoring the antics of her toddler son, who laughs as he leaps from a household ottoman each night before bed and points to Minion characters on TV while shouting, “Eyeballs!”
She has also been anxiously awaiting the Food and Drug Administration’s decision on a promising gene therapy for children like her son, who has Hunter syndrome. The disease floods children with cell fragments that their brains and bodies can’t break down, robbing them of the ability to walk and talk by age 8.
The agency rejected the therapy last month, one in a series of denials over the last eight months that have dashed the hopes of desperate families. Though Ms. Selser’s son wasn’t a candidate for this particular gene therapy, she has been worried about other options awaiting an F.D.A. decision.
She fears that her son’s first steps and words will soon be followed by his last.
“I don’t want to see anything that makes my son disappear, slip away,” she said.
In the Trump administration, the F.D.A.’s drug review process has undergone a considerable shift, brought into stark relief in recent weeks by the agency’s refusal to consider Moderna’s flu vaccine, and then its reversal of that decision.
Many attributed the initial Moderna action to the anti-vaccine leanings of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his opposition to mRNA technology, which the company successfully used in Covid vaccines and was testing in the flu shot.
But the agency has increasingly issued drug rejections or refusals — about 20 in the last eight months — that underscore a break from decades of general stability in the F.D.A.’s top ranks across several presidential administrations. It has advised companies to launch costly and complex studies that could add years to finding treatments for rare diseases with no cure.
The F.D.A.’s recent decisions have generated concerns in Congress and at the White House.
Emily Hilliard, a spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Human Services, defended the agency’s actions. “The American people voted for an F.D.A. that works for them, not the industry, and the agency is delivering by refusing to rubber-stamp approvals,” she said.
Though the F.D.A.’s current approach partly reflects growing skepticism aimed at pharmaceutical companies, it has also taken hold with little public dialogue or debate.
Dr. Marty Makary, the agency’s commissioner, often sends mixed messages in TV appearances and interviews, promising speedy drug reviews and fewer clinical trials at the same time that the agency is rejecting new treatments for rare diseases.
“I bring a sense of urgency and a sense of ‘We’ve got to do something about this community’ to my role at the agency,” Dr. Makary said on CNBC last week. “We say, ‘If this is safe and looks like it works for an ultrarare disease, we’re going to go ahead and greenlight that therapy.’ ”
Still, he defends the spate of denials issued under the leadership of Dr. Vinay Prasad, his chief science and medical officer, who often overruled agency scientists last year. Dr. Prasad rose to prominence as an academic known for picking apart medical studies. Before his appointment, he castigated the F.D.A. for what he called “revolving-door politics,” saying that scientists were approving marginal drugs to curry favor with potential future employers in the industry.
“I constantly see medicine that’s completely Hail Mary batshit crazy medicine,” Dr. Prasad said in a podcast released in January 2025, several months before he joined the F.D.A. He added, “I guess my concern is: How can we live in a world where society is taxed to pay for these unproven things?”
Before joining the F.D.A., some of Dr. Prasad’s harshest critiques targeted a gene therapy by the company Sarepta, which agency officials approved over the objections of staff scientists who said it was ineffective. The treatment, for boys with Duchenne muscular dystrophy, proved deadly for two teenagers. After the second death last year, Dr. Prasad demanded that the company stop using it to treat older children.
The F.D.A. estimates that about 30 million people, nearly one in 10 in the United States, has a rare disease. So the agency’s decisions have hit companies developing drugs for rare diseases in a particularly hard way, and rare-disease treatments make up a large share of drugs seeking approval.
Frustrated by the F.D.A., advocates for rare-disease treatments flooded the Capitol last month. Lawmakers held a hearing on the topic. Though no one from the agency testified, Dr. Makary defended Dr. Prasad on television that day, calling him a “genius” and claiming that he was being targeted unfairly.
The F.D.A. has unveiled a series of new initiatives, including one to expedite approval of individual gene therapies like the high-profile treatment for Baby KJ that was tailor-made to treat his rare disease.
But those announcements have not slowed the drug rejections, which are startling companies that worked for years with the agency to define the criteria for approvals.
“The F.D.A. actions are not backing up the positive rhetoric about accelerating development of cell and gene therapies,” said Stephen Majors, vice president of communications for the Alliance for Regenerative Medicine, a trade group. “And over the past few months, surprising regulatory U-turns on promising medicines for rare diseases are frustrating patients and confusing the companies trying to bring them to the market.”
He called for the agency to hold more public meetings of advisory committees on proposed drugs “to transparently review the evidence.”
Former agency officials rejected their share of new drugs, upholding standards that caused drugmakers to abandon many therapies. But in interviews, they defended their overall record. By approving treatments that showed signs of helping dire conditions, the officials said, they encouraged biotech investments that could eventually result in breakthroughs.
Dr. Janet Woodcock, who worked at the F.D.A. for 37 years and retired as a top official in 2024, said the recent refusals had shocked both companies that invested hundreds of millions of dollars in new therapies and the patients who volunteered for studies.
“To then move the goal posts at the end cuts both of those parties down at the knees,” she said.
Ms. Selser has closely tracked therapies under development for her son’s disease, Hunter syndrome, a genetic defect that deprives children of an enzyme that breaks down sugar. Cellular waste builds up in the body and damages the brain and heart, reducing children around age 7 to a state that resembles dementia.
About 50 U.S. newborns, mostly boys, are diagnosed with the disease each year. Ms. Selser’s son, Ben, who is 2 and a half, receives a weekly infusion to manage the buildup in his body.
One gene therapy that Ms. Selser monitors is made by RegenXbio, a Maryland biotech company, which was seeking accelerated approval based on the drug’s ability to improve learning and motor skills. A year’s data showed an 82 percent reduction in heparin sulfate, a toxin that accumulates in spinal fluid, the company reported.
The F.D.A. denied authorization for RegenXbio’s therapy, according to the company. Ms. Hilliard of H.H.S. said RegenXbio “must identify a new, reliable biomarker or demonstrate that patients live longer and experience meaningful clinical improvement.”
Curran Simpson, the company’s chief executive, said the therapy took 10 years to develop and that the company would try to persuade the F.D.A. by providing more data.
“It’s like you have the rules to a game and you’ve won the game,” Ms. Selser said, adding, “Now, all of a sudden, the F.D.A. would change the rules.”
She is worried about other treatments in development, hoping that her son has a milder form of the syndrome and can benefit from an infusion aimed at the brain. It is up for F.D.A. approval next month.
Dr. Cara O’Neill, chief science officer for the Cure Sanfilippo Foundation, said her daughter was an early participant in a study 10 years ago for a gene therapy that was rejected last summer.
Last month, Ultragenyx Pharmaceutical, which makes the therapy, reported additional promising data from a small study of children given the gene therapy before the age of 2. The company is working toward agency approval.
“It’s painful to see these time windows tick on, the clock tick on, and children continue to be damaged when they don’t have to be,” Dr. O’Neill said.
Dr. Woodcock, the former F.D.A. official, said the most jarring decision in recent months was the agency’s decision not to review an application for a gene therapy to treat Huntington’s disease, a genetic condition that strikes in midlife and causes an early decline in mental and physical abilities.
As many as 40,000 people in the United States have symptomatic Huntington’s, for which there is no treatment. UniQure, a Massachusetts biotech company, reported in September that a small study of a dozen people given a gene therapy showed a slowing of the progression of symptoms by about 75 percent over three years.
In a news release, the company said that the F.D.A. told the company that it no longer agreed with the parameters of its study, which agency officials had OK’d in 2024. Matt Kapusta, the UniQure chief executive, called the reversal an unexpected and drastic change.
Ms. Hilliard, of H.H.S., said that agency scientists concluded the trial was not “adequate or well controlled,” F.D.A. nomenclature for an acceptable study. The company had compared people on the gene therapy with a control group described in a large data set gathered over years. UniQure reported Monday that the F.D.A. requested a new study.
Dr. Woodcock, a top drug regulator for decades, said that such reversals for a promising therapy send shock waves through the industry.
“The Huntington’s refusal I thought was truly evil,” she said. “I just feel so bad for those people.”
Amy Turner LaDow, 61, a retired software executive who lives in Northwest Indiana, has Huntington’s disease. Twenty-eight members of her family, living and dead, across four generations also have or had the disease.
Her nieces and nephews, many of whom are in college, form the largest group.
UniQure’s gene therapy would probably have been out of reach for many in her family, given that it would have involved costly brain surgery.
Still, she said, progress toward an approved treatment would have given them hope.
“It tells them there’s an opportunity for somebody to keep watching and paying attention and trying to make that solution better,” she said.
In January, Huntington patients and their allies marched to the F.D.A.’s Maryland headquarters to deliver a petition with more than 40,000 signatures asking the agency to honor its commitment and review the application.
“There’s bureaucracy involved, and it sometimes can move at a snail’s pace,” said Amy Gray, president of the Huntington’s Disease Society of America, “while Huntington’s disease continues to move forward, somewhat like a freight train.”
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11) South African President Talks Trump, Racism and That Oval Office ‘Ambush’
In an interview with The New York Times, President Cyril Ramaphosa opened up about the role of middle powers, relations with Washington and apartheid.
By John Eligon and Zimasa Matiwane, March 5, 2026
The reporters interviewed South Africa’s president at his office in Cape Town.
“The tensions between South Africa and the Trump administration erupted early last year after Mr. Ramaphosa signed into law a measure that would allow the government to take privately held land without providing compensation. Though white South Africans make up roughly 7 percent of the population, white-owned farms still cover about half the country’s entire surface area.”
President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa opened up about his relationship with President Trump. Joao Silva/The New York Times
The reporters interviewed South Africa’s president at his office in Cape Town.
When South Africa’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, visited President Trump in the Oval Office last year, he expected to correct Mr. Trump’s false claim that white South Africans were being killed and discriminated against because of their race.
Mr. Ramaphosa said the Oval Office meeting turned into a “spectacle” and an “ambush” instead of a discussion, during which Mr. Trump handed him a stack of newspaper clippings, some of which were unrelated to South Africa, dimmed the lights and presented misleading video footage to double down on his point.
Mr. Trump even suggested that white South Africans now have it as bad as Black people did during apartheid.
“I just thought that he is so uninformed, truly uninformed,” Mr. Ramaphosa said of Mr. Trump. “I realized that he is looking at South Africa through a completely, sort of, foggy lens, without realizing the real, real harm that apartheid did. In my view, he was just dismissive.”
In an interview with The New York Times, Mr. Ramaphosa spoke about his relationship with the American president and the challenges facing South Africa in a world where consensus building and multilateral cooperation appear to be falling away. He called some of Mr. Trump’s policies “racist,” said that Ukraine should not seek to join NATO and pressed the importance of “nonaligned” middle powers like his, particularly during times of crisis and conflict.
The interview took place before last week’s attack by the United States and Israel on Iran, a country that Mr. Ramaphosa and his government have been criticized by Western allies for supporting. Yet Mr. Ramaphosa defended his country’s relations with Tehran, arguing that South Africa’s critics “have much deeper dealings with the very countries that they malign.”
Mr. Ramaphosa, 73, and his country have become regular targets of the second Trump administration. Mr. Trump and his officials have accused South Africa of “doing very bad things,” imposed steep tariffs, cut American aid and created a pathway for Afrikaners, a white ethnic minority, to enter the United States as refugees.
“I do think the Afrikaner policy is racist,” Mr. Ramaphosa said. “It is that racist sort of demeanor that we want to be able to whittle down so that he can see the truth of the situation.”
Mr. Trump is calling attention to “the harrowing stories of Afrikaners,” the White House said in a statement to The Times. “The South African government, at minimum, does not respond, but President Trump has a humanitarian heart. He will continue to speak the truth about these injustices.”
One of Nelson Mandela’s closest lieutenants during apartheid, Mr. Ramaphosa became president in 2018. He acknowledged that South Africa would continue its effort to improve relations with the Trump administration despite the Oval Office blowup and even though “it is irritating, it is demeaning at times when we are insulted.”
But as he sat in a slightly stuffy room in a presidential office in Cape Town with the air-conditioning switched off — it makes him sick — he opened up about how Mr. Trump appeared to be ignorant when it came to the facts on South Africa.
“I think he’s just bereft of any reality about what South Africa is all about and what it stands for,” he said. “We are rather amazed at the attention he gives to us. We are a small country, and we are no threat to the United States.” He said he believed that Mr. Trump’s visa restrictions and bans unfairly targeted African nations and were driven by “a racist demeanor.”
Mr. Ramaphosa has fashioned himself as one of Africa’s leading statesmen. He leads the continent’s largest economy and has lobbied for more African influence on the global stage. “Africa is the future,” he said.
He emphasized that he is in touch with both Iran and China, the United States and the United Nations. (No, South Africa will not be joining the Board of Peace, he said, but he does want African representation on the United Nations Security Council.)
He has also served as a mediator between Presidents Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine. As Mr. Ramaphosa sees it, Ukraine’s effort to join NATO was a central cause of the conflict between the two nations. And given that it was one of the causes of the war, he said, Russia’s demand that Ukraine not join NATO “needs to heeded.”
“At the same time, the guarantees that Ukraine wants also need to be heeded,” said Mr. Ramaphosa. “There needs to be a balance.”
The tensions between South Africa and the Trump administration erupted early last year after Mr. Ramaphosa signed into law a measure that would allow the government to take privately held land without providing compensation. Though white South Africans make up roughly 7 percent of the population, white-owned farms still cover about half the country’s entire surface area.
The law is meant, in part, to undo the severe wealth and ownership disparities in South Africa that were created when the white-led colonial and apartheid governments forcibly removed Black people from their land. Redressing such imbalances has been a central pillar of Mr. Ramaphosa’s party, the African National Congress.
But Mr. Trump saw in the law what some South Africans say is anti-white racism. Mr. Trump said falsely that the South African government was using the law to seize white-owned land and that Afrikaners were being targeted and killed, a situation he said amounted to genocide. (No land has been seized as part of the new legislation.)
“There’s no white genocide and there is no grabbing of land, of white people’s land,” Mr. Ramaphosa told The Times. “And white farmers are not being driven out of the country and badly treated.”
He said he was “truly bemused” when Mr. Trump turned down the lights to play the video in the Oval Office. “I didn’t know what was happening,” he said. “As I sort of unpacked it later, I realized that it was an ambush, and I was least prepared for that.”
In the months after that meeting, Mr. Trump has continued his attacks on South Africa, slapped the country with 30 percent tariffs — among the highest in Africa — skipped the Group of 20 meeting in Johannesburg and disinvited South Africa from this year’s G20 meeting hosted by Mr. Trump in Florida.
Mr. Ramaphosa said he invited Mr. Trump for a state visit ahead of the G20 summit last November but did not receive a response. The White House meeting “in many ways, just shook the relationship quite a bit,” he said.
But he said he had not lost hope.
The United States is South Africa’s second-largest trading partner. Away from the cameras, officials from both countries have continued to talk, particularly on trade. “The quiet layer of the relationship continues,” Mr. Ramaphosa said. “It continues because the United States is a strategic country for us.”
He pointed out that South Africa had not been kicked out of a long-running trade agreement between the United States and dozens of African countries, a sign, he said, that efforts to maintain ties were bearing fruit.
“Time is a great healer,” he said.
Mr. Ramaphosa said his optimism was shaped by the dark days of apartheid, when he was arrested twice and almost killed during a police crackdown on protests. “Many people, in looking at the South African situation, would have lost hope. It seemed intractable,” he said.
But Mr. Mandela and many other heroes of the liberation struggle never gave up.
“My hope derives from that human spirit that resides in all of us,” Mr. Ramaphosa said. “And that human spirit to want to do good, to advance, will forever remain embedded in humanity.”
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12) Why Does Child Care Seem Less Affordable Than Ever?
It has always been expensive, but recently prices have risen faster than inflation.
By Asmaa Elkeurti and Claire Cain Miller, March 5, 2026
Sherry Picha runs a child-care center in La Crosse, Wis. She has a second job because it pays so little. Tim Gruber for The New York Times
Child care has always been a large expense in parents’ lives. Recently, it has become even more so.
Though costs vary depending on where you live, families earning the median income in every U.S. state spend far more than the 7 percent of household income that the Department of Health and Human Services considers affordable.
In, Alabama, the average cost for Infant care was $22,628 per year in 2024, which is 20.0% of the median state family income.
Prices reflect center-based care. Source: Child Care Aware 2024 state surveys and U.S. Census Bureau state-level family median income. By The New York Times
Nationally, the cost of child care now significantly outpaces inflation, rising 8 percent since June 2024, compared with a 4 percent increase in general inflation.
It’s one of the main factors weighing on Americans’ economic outlook, according to New York Times/Siena University polling, which found that affordability concerns are largely about the costs of family life — things like paying for child care, health care and a home. In most states, the average price for child care is even higher than in-state college tuition.
In high-profile races last fall for governor of New Jersey and Virginia and mayor of New York City, the winning candidates all made child care affordability a key issue, including Zohran Mamdani’s pledge to make it free in New York.
Child care has become more expensive because providers’ operating expenses have increased, largely from higher costs and shrinking government financing. And because the business operates on very slim margins, higher costs almost always mean higher fees.
Erica Phillips, the executive director of the National Association for Family Child Care, said care for her 9-month-old and 7-year-old in New Rochelle, N.Y., costs nearly as much as her mortgage, forcing her family to make do with one car and cut back on retirement savings.
“Every winter we have to carefully go over our budget and adjust around child care expenses,” Ms. Phillips said.
Rising costs
Today’s high prices are in part a result of the pandemic, which stressed an already precarious business. Other factors have continued to drive up costs. In a survey of child care providers released last week by the National Association for the Education of Young Children, most said that expenses had increased in the last year — significantly more than said so in 2025 — and that they had raised fees as a result.
More child care providers are citing higher costs than before
Percent of survey respondents who said these expenses had gone up the previous year:
Inflation has driven up the prices of supplies and food — in the new survey, nine in 10 respondents said those costs had risen in the last year.
By far the largest expense for child care providers is wages.
The work is labor-intensive, with strict limits set by state governments on the number of children each worker can care for. Pay is the most important contributor to high-quality care, research shows.
Yet the median wage for child care workers is $13 an hour. As states and cities have raised the minimum wage, child care providers said they increasingly compete for workers with fast food jobs paying as much as $20 an hour. Hiring has also become harder as increased immigration enforcement has reduced the number of foreign-born child care workers.
Unlike many industries, which can absorb wage increases by making cuts elsewhere or automating tasks, child care providers have little choice but to pass on wage increases to parents, or decrease their already-low profits.
“I could either raise the prices to where the parents probably couldn’t afford it or not give the workers raises or me take a cut, and I chose myself to take the cut,” said Wanda Crawford, who for three decades has run Ms. Wanda’s Daycare in Nashville, where price increases have been particularly steep. “Being rich is not a part of it. I continue to do it because of my love of working with kids.”
Falling government support
To help pay for child care, millions of low-income families are eligible for subsidies from states and the federal government, the largest source of which is something known as the child care block grant.
But in recent months, many states have cut that funding, facing budget constraints. They are helping fewer families with fees and lowering reimbursement rates. Some states had also temporarily given money to child care providers after the federal pandemic aid for the sector expired, and most of that has now ended too.
In the new survey, nearly one-third of providers said federal or state funding for their program had declined in the past year.
Government support could decrease further: In January, the Trump administration said it planned to freeze $10 billion in funding for child care and other family services in five Democratic states. A judge has temporarily blocked the move.
Sherry Picha and her daughter run a child-care center in La Crosse, Wis. After federal pandemic funding expired, the state provided monthly payments of $13,000 to help offset operating costs, but those end this summer.
Ms. Picha doesn’t know where she’ll make up the difference. Ninety-seven percent of her costs are for wages and benefits for workers, and she and her daughter split a $47,000 salary. She has a second job, teaching part time, to make ends meet.
“You look at those numbers, and you see this is not getting better, this is only getting worse,” she said.
Some policies meant to improve the quality of child care or make it accessible to more children have wound up making it more expensive.
As more cities and states offer public pre-K, for example, it sometimes has the unintended consequence of increasing the cost of care for infants and toddlers. Caring for older children costs less because there can be more of them with each adult. As a result, their tuition helps offset the cost of caring for younger children — and when they enter public programs, infant care costs rise.
Efforts to improve quality — like requiring facility upgrades or caregivers who have college degrees — can also result in higher prices, said RB Fast, who has worked in child care for nearly three decades and opened her own program in Denver in 2022.
“There’s a big effort to improve quality, which is great and I fully support,” she said. “But the government wants it but doesn’t give money, which means it’s the parents who are going to pay for that quality.”
She has, reluctantly, raised fees each year. After taking a significant loss last year, she’s considering closing: “I can’t just not pay myself forever.”
What could help
One solution is for the government to help by financing child-care centers or offsetting parents’ fees — which is what most other rich countries do.
“If you’re looking at trying to reduce the cost to families, the solution lies in how you’re going to subsidize it — there’s not much to do to run down the cost of child care,” said Hailey Gibbs, associate director of early childhood policy at the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank.
Democrats have, in every Congress since 2017, proposed that the government subsidize child care fees so no working family pays more than 7 percent of their income.
When Donald J. Trump was a candidate in 2024, a spokeswoman said he planned to reduce child care prices. But his administration has done little on family policy beyond expanding the child tax credit, and has in some cases blocked child care funding.
Other Republicans, along with Democrats, have generally endorsed tax credits or child allowances — which parents could use as they see fit, including to stay home with children — or an expansion of the child care block grant to cover more low-income families. Another idea is for employers to subsidize child care the way they do health insurance.
But the current approach — parents paying more — is unsustainable, researchers and child care providers said.
“It is a lot of money, but it’s because of the quality, the skilled professionals,” said Nina Buthee, executive director of EveryChild California, an industry group. “It should cost that money — it should cost even more than that — but all that burden shouldn’t be placed on the individual parents.”
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13) He Didn’t Kill Anyone. Alabama Is About to Execute Him Anyway.
By Elizabeth Vartkessian, March 5, 2026
Ms. Vartkessian has investigated death penalty cases on behalf of defendants for over two decades
Tarini Sharma
Sonny Burton is not a killer. No one disputes this. Yet he has spent nearly half his life on death row. At age 75, he spends most of his days in a wheelchair and wears a padded helmet because he falls frequently.
Unless Kay Ivey, the governor of Alabama, decides to commute Mr. Burton’s sentence, the state is set to kill him on March 12. In the near decade she has been governor, clemency is a mercy that Ms. Ivey has bestowed just once.
Here are the facts of Mr. Burton’s case: On a summer day in 1991, he accompanied Derrick DeBruce and four other men to an AutoZone store in Talladega. He carried a gun. He traumatized people. He stole recklessly. Then, Mr. Burton left the store. Mr. DeBruce stayed behind and killed a man.
Mr. DeBruce was convicted of murder and sentenced to death. Mr. Burton was also convicted of murder and was sentenced under a state law that permits accomplices to receive the death penalty if a murder happens during the course of another felony, like a robbery.
After Mr. DeBruce appealed his case, the State of Alabama told the court that relief for Mr. DeBruce would lead to an “arguably unjust” result: Mr. Burton would remain on death row while the person who actually took the man’s life would receive a lesser sentence. Still, Mr. DeBruce’s death sentence was vacated and he was resentenced to life without the possibility of parole.
I have worked on death penalty cases for over two decades as a mitigation specialist — a member of the defense team who carries out the investigation into the background of a person accused of murder. I closely track all executions in America, and the prospect of Mr. Burton being killed is sticking in my bones. It is exceptionally rare for someone like Mr. Burton to be executed when all sides agree that he did not kill the victim. Governors of other states with similar laws have granted clemency under such conditions. Yet Mr. Burton’s execution date remains fixed.
In a state with some of the most overcrowded and deadly prisons in the country, Mr. Burton’s case provides an opportunity for a different kind of justice to prevail. In choosing mercy for Mr. Burton, Governor Ivey would not just be extending grace to a man who deserves it; she would be challenging a culture of indifference that has allowed Alabama’s prison system to grow too comfortable with its own inhumanity.
Several jurors from Mr. Burton’s trial have said that they do not want him to be killed. Tori Battle, the daughter of Doug Battle — the man who was killed at the AutoZone — also doesn’t want the state to kill in her father’s name. In an essay published in December, Ms. Battle wrote that her opposition to Mr. Burton’s execution embodies the values her father lived by. “Justice can be measured by our commitment to truth and our willingness to show mercy,” she wrote.
If Ms. Ivey doesn’t intervene, Mr. Burton will be lifted onto a gurney where officers will affix a mask to his face and suffocate him with lethal nitrogen gas. It is a method of killing that the American Veterinary Medical Association has declared inappropriate for euthanizing most animals. If his execution goes the way previous nitrogen executions have gone, he will writhe on the gurney for minutes before losing consciousness.
Although a handful of states allow for nitrogen gas to be used in executions, Alabama was the first to try it when it killed Kenneth Eugene Smith in 2024. That was after Mr. Smith survived an attempted lethal injection of drugs in 2022, when executioners repeatedly punctured his arms and chest with needles, unable to establish intravenous lines; in all, Mr. Smith spent four hours strapped to a gurney waiting to die.
If Mr. Burton’s execution proceeds, he will be yet another casualty of the indifference pervasive throughout Alabama’s legal system. In 2019, the Justice Department released a report detailing rampant and unchecked violence in the state’s prisons. Page after page contained accounts of prisoners who were tortured, raped, burned, sodomized, stabbed and killed in mostly unsupervised dorms. Instead of using this report as an impetus for change, Alabama seems to have largely accepted the status quo. Prisons remain understaffed and overcrowded. Well over 1,000 people have died inside the state’s prisons since the report came out. Recently, I sat with a client who is incarcerated in the maximum-security prison in Bessemer. He scanned the room nervously as he recounted the stabbings he had witnessed since I had seen him months earlier.
Justice includes mercy. It must. What we allow for one person, regardless of the individual’s circumstance, we permit for all people. Indifference cannot be allowed to prevail. With Sonny Burton’s case, Alabama has a chance to pivot toward a more humane form of justice. In a state that rarely shows mercy to those behind bars, here is an opening. Let us hope Governor Ivey will take it.
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