On Wednesday, the Erie County Medical Examiner’s Office announced that it ruled the death of Nurul Amin Shah Alam, a Blind Rohingya refugee who was left on the freezing streets of Buffalo by Border Patrol officers, a homicide. Neither Shah Alam’s family, who had waited to meet him outside the facility where he was being held, nor his lawyers, who had been attempting to contact him, were notified of his location. Shah Alam spoke very little English.

The Associated Press reported that the medical examiner’s office did not “reach any conclusions about responsibility” for the homicide and that Shah Alam’s death was “caused by complications of a perforated duodenal ulcer, precipitated by hypothermia and dehydration. “

“The designation of homicide does not imply intent to cause harm or death,” Erie County official Mark Poloncarz said at a press conference on Wednesday. “Manner-of-death determinations are neutral, non-legal, and exist for vital statistical purposes only. They do not indicate criminality, which is the purview of the justice system.”

Shah Alam was initially arrested after an incident where he became lost attempting to return home; the Buffalo Police Department approached him as a threat, ostensibly for holding a curtain rod he used as a walking stick. Instead of trying to assist him, officers tased and arrested him. He was incarcerated for a year before his release, when Border Patrol in effect dumped him.

The Department of Homeland Security claimed on X that Shah Alam “showed no signs of distress, mobility issues, or disabilities requiring special assistance,” despite being blind and experiencing other health issues. “DHS is lying,” New York Democrat and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer responded in a quote post.

Poloncarz said that he has spoken to Erie County District Attorney Michael Keane and New York Attorney General Letitia James about the case, and he encouraged questions about criminal investigations to be directed to them.

“I want to express my deepest condolences to the family of Mr. Amin Shah Alam for the death,” Poloncarz also remarked. “It should not have happened. Simple as that. The death was one that we believe could have been prevented.”

James, in a press release, said that her office is continuing to investigate Shah Alam’s death. “Mr. Shah Alam fled genocide to build a life in this country,” James said. “Instead, he was abandoned and left to suffer alone in his final hours.

In a press release, Rep. Tim Kennedy (D-N.Y.), who represents the area in Congress, demanded that the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees Customs and Border Patrol, cooperate in James’ state-level investigation.

“In light of this determination, DHS must fully cooperate with New York State Attorney General James, and newly-confirmed DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin must order an independent and transparent investigation,” he said.

In an 8-1 decision on Tuesday, the Supreme Court ruled against a Colorado law forbidding licensed therapists from trying to change a child’s sexual orientation or gender identity—a practice known as conversion therapy that the medical profession has long since discredited and condemned.

Decades of research show not only that conversion therapy doesn’t work, it puts individuals at higher risk of depression and suicidality. In response to those findings, and a rising tide of acceptance for LGBTQ people since 2012, 23 states have forbidden licensed mental health practitioners from attempting conversion therapy on minors. The decision in the case, known as Chiles v. Salazar, now threatens to overturn those laws nationwide.

The case was brought by a Christian counselor named Kaley Chiles, represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom—the religious-right legal group behind many of the Supreme Court’s recent anti-LGBTQ and anti-abortion rulings. Chiles argued that because she practices talk therapy, not the painful aversion therapy widely used in the past, the Colorado law censors her speech and violates the First Amendment. 

Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor agreed, joining the court’s conservatives in a majority opinion authored by Justice Neil Gorsuch. “Colorado may regard its policy as essential to public health and safety,” Gorsuch wrote.  “Certainly, censorious governments throughout history have believed the same. But the First Amendment stands as a shield against any effort to enforce orthodoxy in thought or speech in this country.”

“As applied to Ms. Chiles, the State seeks neither to regulate her speech incident to any conduct, nor does it seek to compel disclosure of factual and uncontroversial information,” Gorsuch wrote. “Instead, it seeks to silence a viewpoint she wishes to express.”

In a concurring opinion, Justice Kagan wrote that Colorado’s law could have potentially survived if it regulated the content of a therapist’s speech, but did not draw lines based on the therapist’s viewpoint on matters of sex and gender.

“A law drawing a line based on the ‘ideology’ of the speaker—disadvantaging one view and advantaging another—skews the marketplace of ideas our society depends on to discover truth,” Kagan wrote. The Colorado law, she added, “prevents a therapist from saying she can help a minor change his same-sex orientation, but permits her to say that such a goal is impossible and so she will help him accept his gay identity.” A law banning therapists from affirming trans kids’ gender identity, she added, would also run afoul of the First Amendment.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the sole dissenting judge, wrote that Chiles “does not dispute that conversion therapy can be harmful to minors in certain circumstances” nor “does she contest that Colorado has a significant interest in protecting minors from harm.” But, Jackson continued, “Chiles complains nevertheless” because “the particular form of conversion therapy she wants to offer clients utilizes only speech.”

Jackson added that the Colorado law as written did not prohibit Chiles from sharing any views on sexuality, gender identity, or conversion therapy outside of individual talk therapy sessions—like in discussions with patients and their families. The “aim of the statute is not suppressing speech,” she wrote in her dissent. “Talk therapy is a medical treatment. So, why wouldn’t such speech based medical treatments be subject to reasonable state regulation like any other kind of medical care?”

As we’ve reported before, the science on conversion therapy has been considered settled for over a decade:

The science on conversion therapy is unambiguous: it’s both ineffective and dangerous. All the way back in 2009, an American Psychological Association task force issued a landmark report documenting the lack of evidence behind sexual orientation “change efforts,” as scientists refer to them. Since then, APA has only strengthened its stance against both anti-gay and anti-trans conversion efforts. In October 2015, the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration published a report concluding that sexual orientation and gender identity change efforts were “coercive, can be harmful, and should not be part of behavioral health treatment.” 

Nonetheless, conversion therapists have continued to practice on the fringes of the profession, typically working with conservative religious clients. In recent years they’ve turned their attention on transgender youth, capitalizing on politicized controversy over medical treatments for trans kids, a Mother Jones investigation found in 2024. And they’ve embraced so-called “gender exploratory therapy”—a treatment posed an alternative to gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors in a Health and Human Services report last year. 

The justices’ decision on Tuesday fell on Transgender Day of Visibility, created by Rachel Crandall-Crocker over 15 years ago. It’s a day to celebrate transgender people and draw attention to the ongoing challenges the community faces. Being a visible, civically active trans person in the United States is becoming increasingly more volatile as Republican legislators—local to federal—seek to codify discrimination against trans and gender nonconforming people. 

In 2025, according to the independent research organization Trans Legislation Tracker, 1,022 bills that would negatively impact the transgender and gender nonconforming community were considered; 126 passed. In 2026, so far, 747 such bills are under consideration—a number that is expected to grow. These laws target people’s ability to seek out gender affirming healthcare, use the bathroom in public and private buildings, dictate what their personal identification says, serve in the military, and celebrate Pride Month, among other things. 

This push is buoyed by President Donald Trump and his administration, who supported the therapist’s position in Tuesday’s Supreme Court case. On day one of his second term, Trump signed an executive order declaring that it would be “the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female,” requiring agencies to base decisions on an outdated and scientifically inaccurate gender binary and providing a runway for anti-trans attacks across the nation.

Shannon Minter, legal director of the National Center for LGBTQ Rights, who helped lead the effort to pass state laws banning conversion therapy, said in a statement on Tuesday that legal avenues remain to fight back against conversion therapy. “Survivors can still bring malpractice and consumer fraud claims,” he said. “Licensing boards can still discipline providers who engage in unethical or harmful conduct” 

“Though today’s ruling is not the outcome we sought, our commitment remains unwavering—as does that of the families, survivors, and advocates who have stood beside us for thirty years,” he added.

The Trevor Project, the leading suicide prevention and crisis intervention nonprofit for queer young people, is one of the groups that filed an amicus brief in Chiles v. Salazar in support of upholding nationwide statutes that ward against conversion therapy. Its CEO, Jaymes Black, called Tuesday’s ruling “a tragic step backward for our country that will put young lives at risk.”

“The Court’s decision today is painful,” Black said in a statement, adding, “but our community has dealt with difficult outcomes time and time again throughout our history. And we will deal with this, too.”

Second Lady Usha Vance is normal and relatable, actually.

Or, at least she said as much on Sunday in an NBC interview promoting her new podcast show Storytime with the Second Lady, where she brings on a guest to read a children’s book. 

“It’s a podcast that really is just for children,” Usha Vance explained. “We will have someone come in—a special reader, we’re calling them—read a fun book, have a very short little conversation about things related to the book, maybe about their career.”

Three episodes were released on YouTube Monday morning, with the first show featuring Vance reading The Tale of Peter Rabbit solo and the next two featuring former racing driver Danica Patrick and author and Paralympian Brent Poppen.

“[We] then invite children to pick up books on their own. It’s sort of just an advertisement for reading,” Vance continued.

The second lady’s launch comes as her husband and other officials in the Trump administration terrorize and inflict brutal violence on children and families around the world—the remainder of the discussion hammered home an awkward whitewashing attempt.

Vance’s young children helped make the podcast set, including building a Lego cherry blossom tree and even has a Costco membership! But when NBC News’ Kate Snow asked her simple questions about her politics and thoughts on the Trump administration, the second lady largely shied away from answering. While Vance doesn’t agree with her husband on every issue, she is “not involved in this in any professional sense,” so she can have “open-minded” and “very productive” conversations with him when his work becomes “important personally.” 

As much as she tries to present the contrary, she is a person with influence within the Trump administration.

“I do feel very comfortable in that no one has ever asked me to engage in any kind of litmus test on anything,” Vance said when asked about her stark political shift from being registered as a Democrat until at least 2014. “What I’ve found is that I was myself in 2014. I can be myself today. And I feel very comfortable in that world.”

Q: In 2014 you were a registered Democrat. Do you feel fully comfortable in the universe you're in now?

Usha Vance: Sometimes I have thoughts that fit very comfortably into one side or another, sometimes I have views that are idiosyncratic pic.twitter.com/yDThevAr5M

— Headquarters (@HQNewsNow) March 30, 2026

The second lady is comfortable in a government that’s trying to replace educators with AI robots while it detains and deports young children, reportedly kills over a hundred elementary school students by missile strike, and starves families in Cuba of basic living essentials.

It’s all normal and relatable as long as you don’t ask too many questions.

On Saturday, millions of people around the country took part in more than 3,000 No Kings protests opposing the presidency of Donald Trump, whose approval ratings have plummeted to 36 percent, a record low since his return to the White House.

Saturday’s rallies were the third major No Kings protest, with organizers saying that 8 million people took part. That estimate has not been independently verified. But to put this weekend’s anti-Trump protests in perspective: about 300,000 people attended the April 2009 Tea Party protests against the Obama administration that were heralded as a seismic political event.

My Mother Jones colleagues were on the ground yesterday covering the action around the country:

St. Petersburg, Florida

Washington, DC

New York City

St. Paul, Minnesota

Oakland, California

Given the immense outpouring, what could these demonstrations mean for future organizing?

According to Payday Report, an outlet that covers labor and union news, Indivisible, one of the lead organizers of the No Kings protests, is backing the May Day Strong coalition, which is calling for “No Work, No School, No Shopping” on May 1.

Leah Greenberg, the co-founder of Indivisible, said, “On May 1, Indivisibles will be joining people across the country with a clear message: we demand a government that invests in our communities, not one that enriches billionaires, fuels endless war, or deploys masked agents to intimidate our neighbors.”

I’ve covered all the No Kings protests in New York City since the start of Trump’s second presidency. What has struck me about all of them is how they fuse people’s fears with their hopes. The fear is what drives people onto the streets: threats to democracy, the war in Iran, attacks on LGBTQ Americans. The hope: each other, the promise of change. So, amid a raucous sea of angry, festive rallygoers along Manhattan’s 7th Avenue on Saturday, I asked people: What is your biggest fear and greatest hope right now?

“I’m here because they’re fucking building concentration camps that they’re locking tens of thousands of people in, and ICE is in our fucking airports,” the artist (and “Mother Jones fan”) Molly Crabapple told me. “Too many people are dying and too many people are in cages.” And while she doesn’t typically think “in hope,” she was inspired by the community. “I know we have each other and I don’t know if that’s enough, but that’s all we have.”

For Matthew Nichols, a 56-year-old arts worker, the greatest fear is November’s midterms—that “there’ll be some significant interference,” he said. “All of these things that seemed farfetched maybe a year ago or two years ago are actually coming to pass.”

Ash, 29, a Mexican agricultural worker, says he fears people being silenced and “losing empathy” but, like others I met, pointed to “all of us,” gesturing around, as providing him with hope. “People from all walks of life. Rich people, poor people, white people, black people. Everyone. So, it’s quite powerful.”

From hundreds of people standing on the side of a road in St. Petersburg, Florida, to tens of thousands in Manhattan, the third round of No Kings protests has once again brought out people across the country to protest President Donald Trump and his administration. Organizers are expecting several million people to turn out in total.

The flagship event at the Minnesota State Capitol in St. Paul in the afternoon is expected to see around 100,000 people, and there are planned demonstrations in all 50 states. Saturday’s turnout follows two other nationwide events in June and October 2025 from the No Kings coalition, a movement made up of dozens of organizations. The October 18 demonstrations drew millions of Americans to more than 2,700 events, according to organizers.

As the chants, signs, and speeches at Saturday’s events make clear, countless Americas are fed up with federal immigration agents’ violence in American cities, the rising cost of living, the ongoing war against Iran, and the administration’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. 

Ezra Levin, the co-founder of Indivisible, one of the main groups behind the nationwide protests, told me in January that this third No Kings mobilization would be “a response to the secret police force that’s terrorizing American communities.” Yet, he continued, “I reserve the right to say that this is in response to whatever more recent atrocity the regime commits. It’s lashing out quite a bit, so we’ll see.”

Here are just some of the scenes from Saturday’s events. This post will be updated as the day goes on. 

Minnesota

Washington, DC.

Alabama

California

Florida

Georgia

Idaho

Illinois

Kansas

Kentucky

Massachusetts

Michigan

Montana

Nebraska

New Jersey

New York

Pennsylvania

Tennessee

Texas

Virginia

Wisconsin

Former Vice President Al Gore delivered a blistering rebuke of President Trump’s war on Iran this week in his first wide-ranging comments on the escalating crisis, calling Trump’s lack of planning “an astonishing mistake” born of arrogance and corruption.  “I never would have believed that any president would do even one-tenth of the atrocious things Donald Trump has done,” he said.

In an exclusive sit-down with Reveal host Al Letson for an upcoming episode of More To The Story, a visibly angered Gore linked the war to Trump’s climate recalcitrance and a slew of broken promises.

As the Pentagon prepared to send about 2,000 paratroopers to Iran, Gore argued that the president had brushed aside decades of war planning for just such a scenario. The energy crisis unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz has “been the number one question for all the war games and plans for 50 years almost,” Gore told Letson. “President Trump said, ‘Don’t worry about it. They’ll surrender before that comes into play.’ Well, that was an astonishing mistake of the kind that you really do not want the president of your country to make because it has put us in a terrible situation.”

“Could he be just as wrong about that as he has been in attacking Iran without a plan for the Strait of Hormuz?” Gore added. “Could he be just as wrong about that as he was when he threatened to invade Greenland?”

Elsewhere in the interview, Gore launched another broadside against a series of back flips and failed promises from the president: “He told us prices were going to come down. He told us we would not get into any more foreign ‘forever wars.’ He told us inflation was going to subside. He told us the economy was going to really boom. None of those things have come true.”

“This is the most corrupt administration.”

“This is the most corrupt administration, not only in American history, but more corrupt than I could ever have imagined a president would be able to get away with to the extent that he has,” Gore said. “It’s shocking to me.”

This is one clip from a series we’ll be posting in the coming days, ahead of our longer interview with the former Vice President soon, in which he discusses climate action, religion, and what’s giving him hope. Stay tuned.

And in the meantime, subscribe to Reveal on Apple Podcasts so you don’t miss the latest.

Top White House advisor Stephen Miller, the longtime architect of Donald Trump’s anti-immigration policies, asked Texas Republicans last week in a closed-door meeting to kick undocumented children out of public schools, according to reporting from the New York Times. 

It’s an escalation in the right’s push to restrict public education to children who can prove they are US citizens. Such a move could violate a 1982 Supreme Court ruling, Plyler v. Doe, which held that withholding funds to schools teaching undocumented children violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. That case was a result of a class-action lawsuit in Texas in the 1970s. 

As Mother Jones‘ Isabela Dias reported back in 2022, this isn’t the first time that Miller has attempted this. In 2019, during Trump’s first term, he reportedly led a similar push. One that, according to TIME, he’d been driving at since 2017.

In the decades since Plyler, there have been several unsuccessful attempts to upend the highest court’s ruling. The current one is buoyed by the Trump administration’s multi-pronged anti-immigration campaign that has come to define his second term. 

Miller isn’t alone. Also this month, Rep. Chip Roy, a Republican from Texas, led a House hearing to discuss how Plyler “was wrongly decided and how it harms America’s schools and students,” according to his press office. 

During the meeting, Roy said in his opening statement: “It’s time for it to go.” Roy went on to criticize programs in schools that taught English to language learners and refugees. Roy is currently vying for Attorney General of Texas in a runoff election. 

Zeph Capo, president of the Texas American Federation of Teachers, cited Roy’s hopes in his response: “Toying with children’s futures to win a primary election is the tactic of a small, sad man.”

This enlivened push to restrict access to public education comes as scores of immigrant children are already afraid to go to school across the country as Immigration and Customs Enforcement have repeatedly been seen near schools or bus stops. (The Department of Homeland Security has said they do “NOT raid or target schools” despite “media force-feeding the public stories about parents and children being scared to return to school.”)

In Texas’s largest public school district, in Houston, the immigrant student population plummeted by nearly 4,000 students, or a decrease of 22 percent, this school year. In Maine, absences at some schools hit 25 to 30 percent during a week of heavy ICE presence in January. In Minnesota, up to 40 percent of students stayed home during the agency’s violent operations in the Twin Cities.

As Justice William Brennan wrote in the Plyler majority opinion, “It is difficult to understand precisely what the state hopes to achieve by promoting the creation and perpetuation of a subclass of illiterates within our boundaries.”

A lower court judge put it like this two years earlier: refusing to educate children based on of if their parents came to this country without certain documentation, or were in the process of obtaining that documentation, would create “a permanent underclass of persons who will live their lives in this country without being able to participate in our society.”

Tennessee teenagers are suing Elon Musk’s company xAI over allegations that its artificial intelligence tool Grok undressed photos of them as minors—the latest challenge against the wealthiest living person’s chatbot. 

The three plaintiffs, two of whom are currently minors, are seeking damages after AI-generated images of them spread across Discord and Telegram and were eventually used as bartering tools for users to obtain other child sexual abuse material, according to the complaint detailed in new Washington Post reporting. 

“xAI—and its founder Elon Musk,” the complaint reads, “saw a business opportunity: an opportunity to profit off the sexual predation of real people, including children.”

One of the plaintiffs said she received a link to a Discord server “which contained images and videos of at least 18 other minor females, many of whom Jane Doe 1 recognized from her school,” the lawsuit alleges. 

Some of the images stemmed from her homecoming or yearbook photos. 

The lawsuit comes after months of backlash against Musk’s chatbot after the company allowed Grok to undress people nonconsensually using the “Imagine” tool. The complaint argues that a “model that can create sexualized images of adults cannot be prevented from creating CSAM of minors.” According to earlier reporting from the Post, Grok’s previous leniency towards fulfilling users’ sexually explicit requests was a marketing technique, meant to increase the popularity of the chatbot. 

Musk and his company didn’t respond to the Post in their coverage of the Tennessee lawsuit. Musk has repeatedly placed responsibility onto the individual users requesting such content and has held that Grok “will refuse to produce anything illegal,” despite the chatbot itself, in at least one instance, posting that its actions might have violated the 2025 TAKE IT DOWN Act, legislation criminalizing the nonconsensual publication of intimate images, including AI-generated deepfakes.

According to an investigation by the Center for Countering Digital Hate, Grok generated approximately 3 million sexualized images in just an 11-day period, from December 29 to January 8. Around 23,000 of those, according to researchers, appeared to depict children. In a January 14 post, Musk claimed that he was “not aware of any naked underage images generated by Grok. Literally zero.”

Later than month, 35 state attorneys general penned a letter to xAI demanding the company “take all necessary measures to ensure that Grok is no longer capable of producing” this kind of nonconsensual sexual imagery and child sexual abuse material. The European Union and regulators in the United Kingdom and California have launched investigations into Grok. 

In January, following rising international ethical and legal objections to the mass spread of nonconsensual sexual imagery, some of Grok’s Imagine image generation features were limited to paid X users. Yet Grok image tools are still seemingly offered for free on the standalone website and application. And even if restricting elements of the service to paying users could limit the quantity of material, introducing a nominal fee for those hoping to create nonconsensual sexual imagery of people, including minors, doesn’t answer a key legal question: Will Grok be meaningfully changed to protect women and girls from this kind of digital abuse?

The Tennessee teens are just some of the scores of girls and women impacted by Grok’s undressing, reportedly including at least one woman who Musk knows personally. 

Ashley St. Clair, a conservative content creator who has a child with Musk, said that Grok created nonconsensual sexual imagery of her. Some of the images, according to an interview she did with NBC News, were from when St. Clair was a minor. 

Annika K. Martin, the lead counsel in the suit, had a question for Musk as a father:

“Your child’s voice on video screaming. Can you imagine that as a parent?” she asked. “Can you imagine that for your child and feel okay with what you’ve done?”

The United States is responsible for killing at least 175 people, many of them children, in a Tomahawk missile strike on an Iranian elementary school on the last day of February, according to US officials and others familiar with the ongoing military investigation who spoke with the New York Times. The death toll was reported by Iranian officials. 

The deadly strike on the girls’ school, Shajarah Tayyebeh elementary, followed incorrect targeting intelligence about the area. The school is nearby buildings used by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Navy—which the US also targeted on the same day it decimated Shajarah Tayyebeh. Before it was a school, the site was connected to the base. But, according to a visual analysis for the Times, the school area has been sectioned off from the base for at least a decade. US military intelligence, the preliminary report findings indicate, might have been operating off of old data.

The investigation isn’t over and more information is poised to come out about how the school became designated as a target. While there have reportedly been instances of the US using Claude, the AI model created by Anthropic, in their offensive against Iran, it is unclear if the AI was used in the strike against the school. Government officials told the Times that it may have been the result of human error. 

The Times’ sourcing requested anonymity due in part to the fact that President Donald Trump has suggested, without evidence, that Iran was responsible for the elementary school strike. 

Evidence was already mounting against the United States and their culpability for the strike. For example, the US was the one targeting the nearby Iranian base and its military is the only one involved in the conflict that uses Tomahawk missiles. 

Still, Trump on Saturday told reporters that, “In my opinion, based on what I’ve seen, that was done by Iran.”

On Monday, a Times reporter asked the president why he was why he was alone in his administration in blaming Iran. Top officials including Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth have referred to the ongoing investigation when asked about the school strike. “Because,” Trump began, “I just don’t know enough about it.”

Images and videos circulating online of the decimated school and recently dug graves for the dead children illustrated the human cost of the strikes. 

One mother described the scene on that day in February to NBC News. She received a call from the school that the war had begun and she needed to pick up her child. She didn’t make it in time. Her son died in the strikes. 

“By the time we arrived, the entire school had collapsed on top of the children,” the mother, who asked not to be identified, told NBC News. “People were pulling out children’s arms and legs. People were pulling out severed heads.”

Following the US-Israeli strikes on Iran beginning in late February, Iran has effectively halted all traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, a chokepoint in the Persian Gulf through which about 20 percent of global crude oil and natural gas flows. Many Americans are now experiencing the effects: skyrocketing gas prices. That’s not likely to change any time soon.

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) shared his observations on social media Tuesday that the Trump administration had “no plan” on how to respond.

Did the Trump administration ever really have a plan? To try to answer that question, and its ramifications, I spoke with Jeff Colgan, a political science professor and Director of the Climate Solutions Lab the Watson Institute for Public and International Affairs at Brown University. He’s written extensively about the role of oil in international politics and war, and how it impacts energy and the environment.

What is the Strait of Hormuz? 

The Strait of Hormuz is the most important chokepoint in the world, particularly for oil and natural gas. So this is absolutely the nightmare scenario that many risk analysts have been worrying about for decades.

Although this region has seen a lot of warfare over the decades, the tanker flows [to transport crude oil] have managed to continue. Often, the combatants on both sides want the flow of oil to continue because at least one of the sides are profiting from it.

So this does put us in uncharted waters where the Strait of Hormuz gets bottled up in a modern context.

Why is the Strait of Hormuz bottled up right now?

Because the US attacked Iran and Iran has no viable counter strategy to strike back at the US. In some sense, this is an extreme step by Iran, but they feel like they have no other choice. Their leadership is wiped out, and they’re fighting for their lives. 

So in this war, unlike others, they are using their full capacity to lash out in every direction, including all of the US military bases that are located in the region—in Bahrain, UAE, and Qatar especially. Iran was also in a difficult “use it or lose it” situation with their missiles because the US bombing campaign was directed toward destroying missiles to make sure they couldn’t use them. 

Iran has long avoided closing the Strait of Hormuz because Iran’s own oil has flowed through it and they don’t want to cut off their only revenue source. But their backs are to the wall.

It seems like the Trump administration started the war in Iran without a plan for the Strait of Hormuz. What are your thoughts on the administration’s handling of the situation?

It is shocking and, frankly, appalling how little planning and foresight the White House has brought to the situation. The poor planning of the war appears to be on many issues, including many Americans who are in Gulf countries, munitions, etc. 

It’s striking because it seems like they have tried to walk back from the situation on Monday and say, “We’re going to wrap this war up quickly.”

How do you see the blockade on the Strait of Hormuz from a historical perspective? 

I have been writing for a couple months now about the Trump administration’s return to what I call “petro-imperialism”—the idea that the US, prior to 1973 would intervene in global oil markets in support of American oil companies and use force like the 1953 coup in Iran backed by the CIA when Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh nationalized oil. 

This happened in multiple countries: “We’re going to select your political leader, and if you don’t pick the right one, we’re going to get rid of them.” 

In Trump’s rhetoric, with regard to Venezuela, especially, but also with Iran, we see echoes of that.

What do you think is the immediate impact on oil and trade?

One thing we saw in the 1980s was the so-called Tanker War between Iran and Iraq. Tankers are resilient to being hit by missiles so it is possible to keep the flow of oil going during the war. But this warfare has changed. Drone technology [in Iran] is untested waters. 

It’s striking to see how even oil markets reacted very strongly on Monday, bringing the oil price way back down, because the president signaled that we wanted to keep the war from getting out of hand. But it’s not like oil markets always get it right either. 

There’s real uncertainty on how long it will take to restore the flow of oil when statements like the one today from Saudi Aramco [the national oil company of Saudi Arabia] saying that if the situation doesn’t stop very soon, the effects will be “catastrophic.” 

On Tuesday, Energy Secretary Chris Wright made an announcement on X that the US Navy escorted an oil tanker through the Strait of Hormuz. In response, oil prices plunged and stocks jumped. But shortly after, the post was deleted. Is this mixed messaging something you’ve come across before?

The fog of war is a problem for all wars, where you have misinformation and uncertainty. On the other hand, the Trump administration has far more inconsistency and incoherence than a typical US administration. There are probably multiple reasons why they are more incoherent, but we can observe how President Trump himself has said conflicting things about the war—that it’s pretty much complete and then demanding unconditional surrender in the next breath.

As someone trying to absorb everything going on in Iran, is there something key that you think we should understand?

We have choices about how we consume energy, and what isn’t spiking right now is the price of sunshine and wind. We should be thinking, as consumers, about the choices that [the U.S. government is] making and the energy security, economic security, and national security consequences. No energy source is perfect and there’s always trade-offs, but renewables have a significant national security advantage in situations like this, where the basic fuel source of fossil fuels can be interrupted by political events. It’s not only wars, but also embargoes, as we saw with Russia and Ukraine and the negotiations with Europe about various flows of fossil fuels. What kind of energy we consume does matter.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

When six-year-old Joseph Rodriguez got sick, his mother had to bring him along to her regular check-in at a California ICE office. There, last week, he was immediately detained and quickly deported—all without his hearing aids.

Rodriguez is Deaf; he and his mother Lesly Rodriguez Gutierrez, an asylum seeker from Colombia fleeing domestic violence, live in the congressional district of Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.), who sent staff to Colombia over the weekend to return Rodriguez’ assistive devices. A relative who attempted to provide them to the boy while he was in ICE detention was turned away; ICE officials refused to give him the hearing aids, according to local station KRON.

“This child has been dragged from detention center to detention center, to places that are not meant for children,” his attorney said to KRON. “They are definitely not built for children with severe disabilities. It’s inhuman, illegal, and unconstitutional.”

The family, who were deported as a group—six-year-old Joseph, his four-year-old brother, and Rodriguez Gutierrez, their mother—had lived for four years in the Bay Area city of Hayward, until their detention last week without due process or contact with their lawyers. Joseph was enrolled at the California School for the Deaf in nearby Fremont.

“Think about that for a moment: a six-year-old child with a disability suddenly in a different country, separated from the country he has come to know,” Swalwell said, “now surrounded by silence. The horror stories from this White House continue from ICE.”

Unlike many other medical devices, most hearing aids are highly customized to an individual’s hearing loss, and quality hearing aids can easily cost thousands of dollars, making them extremely difficult or impossible to replace in a situation like Rodriguez’s. (Some Deaf people choose to not use hearing devices and rely entirely on signing; Rodriguez and his family’s proficiency in ASL or other sign languages is unclear, and ICE facilities are not equipped to accommodate Deaf people without assistive devices.)

At the press conference, Swalwell also referenced ICE’s deportation of a six-year-old with cancer, among other deportations and deaths in custody that sum to a pattern of sometimes fatal hostility towards kids and adults with disabilities or other health needs. As I reported in February, the Department of Homeland Security now has just a few staff investigating civil rights complaints, meaning the department and its officials are unlikely to face any internal repercussions for their conduct—or any pressure to change course.

Swalwell, who is also running for governor of California, said that his office was working with the family’s lawyers to secure their return under humanitarian parole, but it’s not clear how long that would take.

“We will not stand by while ICE tears our families apart and endangers innocent children,” Swalwell said at the conference. “What happened here was not about public safety.”

Zohran Mamdani maintained the right to peaceful protest on Monday, two days after two counterprotesters allegedly deployed two explosive devices during an anti-Muslim demonstration targeting the New York City mayor. 

“Anti-Muslim bigotry is nothing new to me, nor is it anything new for the one million or so Muslim New Yorkers who know this city as our home,” Mamdani said in a Monday press conference. “While I found this protest appalling, I will not waver in my belief that it should be allowed to happen.”

Mamdani called the demonstration a “vile protest rooted in white supremacy,” but stressed that “violence at a protest is never acceptable.” 

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani confirms that he and his wife, Rama Duwaji, were at a museum in Brooklyn when an improvised explosive device was thrown near their home during a weekend protest.

— NBC News (@nbcnews.com) 2026-03-09T16:51:09Z

Jake Lang, a right-wing influencer and pardoned January 6 rioter, organized Saturday’s demonstration outside Mamdani’s official residence at Gracie Mansion. The rally, billed as “Stop the Islamic Takeover of New York City, Stop New York City Public Muslim Prayer,” drew counterprotesters who allegedly detonated two explosive devices at the scene. Lang has a history of organizing similar events; in January, he led an anti-immigration, pro-ICE rally in Minneapolis shortly after federal agents killed Renée Good.

According to NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch, Lang’s weekend protest drew about 20 people. The counterprotest, called “Run the Nazis out of New York City, Stand Against Hate,” drew about 125 demonstrators.

Tisch said one protester from Lang’s group used pepper spray against counterprotesters. About 15 minutes later, an 18-year-old counterprotester threw a lit device toward the protest area, where it hit a barrier and went out. The same counterprotester then took a second device from a 19-year-old and dropped it on the ground about a block from Gracie Mansion; that device also failed to detonate. No injuries from either device were reported.

Six people were arrested following the protest on Saturday: the two men involved in handling and deploying the devices, the person who used pepper spray, and three others related to disorderly conduct.

Mamdani said that he and his wife, Rama Duwaji, were not at the residence during the incident.

During the Monday press conference, Tisch said at least one of the devices NYPD officials found contained TATP, a chemical commonly used in improvised bombs. The two men who were arrested for deploying the devices would be prosecuted in federal court. The incident is being investigated as an act of “ISIS-inspired terrorism.” 

A federal criminal complaint was released on Monday afternoon, which charges the two men with attempting to provide support to ISIS and using weapons of mass destruction.

On Friday, the Buffalo-based Investigative Post reported that New York Attorney General Letitia James is investigating the death of Nurul Amin Shah Alam, a Blind Rohingya refugee who died in the cold streets of Buffalo days after Border Patrol dumped him without coordinating with his family or lawyers.

Shah Alam’s wife and sons waited to pick him up, but sheriff’s deputies instead turned him over to Border Patrol.

In a letter to Rep. Tim Kennedy (D-N.Y.), James wrote that her “office is continuing to gather and review facts as to any state or local involvement in this tragedy” and is prepared to coordinate with federal authorities as necessary. James also said her office is coordinating with the Buffalo Police Department to “canvass for additional witnesses and surveillance footage” that may help her office understand what happened to Shah Alam.

“The loss of life under these circumstances demands a searching and independent assessment of what occurred,” James wrote. “I also agree that a close examination of release and transfer protocols of vulnerable individuals from law enforcement custody is warranted.”

Since his death was initially reported, more information has also come out about Buffalo police officers’ initial arrest of Shah Alam, who did not speak English. Shah Alam had wandered to a woman’s home and seemed confused about his location. Viewing body cam footage, the Washington Post reported that Shah Alam apologized while slowly approaching police officers, who responded by tasing him.

At a press conference last weekend, the family of Shah Alam spoke publicly for the first time. His wife, Fatimah Abdul Roshid, and the two of their five sons who also have refugee status in the US, had waited outside the Erie County Holding Center to pick him up on his release, but Erie County sheriff’s deputies instead turned him over to Border Patrol.

“We were ready with food, clothing, everything,” Abdul Roshid said. “We thought he would be able to break fast with us. He was so close, so close to my hand.”

In the week since launching Operation Epic Fury, President Donald Trump’s war without an apparent endgame has killed 787 Iranians, a death toll the administration has made clear it is hellbent on expanding. It includes at least 175 Iranians, mostly young children, who were killed at Shajarah Tayyebeh elementary school as US strikes targeted a nearby naval base. Trump’s self-made crisis has now killed at least six American service members, including Sgt. First Class Noah L. Tietjens, who had been finishing his final deployment in Kuwait when a retaliatory drone attack killed him. As of Friday, more than 120 people in Lebanon are reported dead as the war expands across the Middle East.

This White House, like many White Houses before it, invites the possibility of death when it declares war. But has an administration ever been so naked in its lust for it? Take Pete Hegseth, who on Wednesday could barely contain his enthusiasm for dead Iranians:

Death and destruction from the sky all day long. We’re playing for keeps. Our warfighters have maximum authorities granted personally by the president and yours truly.

Our rules of engagement are bold, precise and designed to unleash American power, not shackle it. This was never meant to be a fair fight, and it is not a fair fight. We are punching them while they’re down, which is exactly how it should be.

Later, when asked about the US service members killed, Hegseth’s excitement quickly curdled into petulance. “The press only wants to make the president look bad,” he complained, suggesting that reporting on dead Americans is not only bad publicity but evidence of traitorous behavior.

The comments were shocking, even if they were an extension of long-held American foreign policy, one that has always accepted, even desired, to kill people in far-flung countries. (Similarly, we’ve always sent American troops to fight wars, knowing that some won’t make it back home.) But where Hegseth cheers on mass death, the president himself offers a shruggy nihilism. Consider that in the first three days of war, Trump opted for a leisurely stay at Mar-a-Lago, where he posted two videos of himself briefly talking about the war on Truth Social. From there, Trump went forward with a previously scheduled $1 million-a-head fundraiser because he “had to eat dinner anyway.” Once back in the White House, Trump ignored questions about Iran and, instead, urged reporters to gaze upon some new statues erected in the Rose Garden. On Monday, he finally gave a five-minute briefing on the war that featured updates on his ballroom renovations.

Then, an even more troubling attitude emerged: “I guess.” That’s how Trump responded when Time asked whether Americans should be concerned about the possibility of retaliatory attacks here in the US.

“But I think they’re worried about that all the time,” he continued. “We think about it all the time. We plan for it. But yeah, you know, we expect some things. Like I said, some people will die. When you go to war, some people will die.”

Unlike Hegseth, who appears drunk on performance as he thirsts for death, Trump’s thoughts here are eerily relaxed. They are notable because they appear to lack even a modicum of critical thinking. No, this is not a man remotely bothered by mass death. He simply does not care. Again, insouciance might not be new when it comes to America’s thirst for war. But carrying it so openly and inelegantly is something else entirely.

Sen. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma, President Donald Trump’s next pick for Homeland Security secretary, consistently uses his social media platforms to share anti-abortion and anti-trans content. 

Mullin, a former MMA fighter who has long championed Trump and thinks of him as a “true friend,” has repeatedly referred to abortion as “murder.” Last month, he shared a clip on Instagram saying he would be arrested for “assault” of a “high school male pretending to be a girl” if a transgender wrestler went up against his daughter in the sport. 

As Trump announced Thursday in a Truth Social post, Mullin is poised to replace Kristi Noem at the Department of Homeland Security after she reportedly fell out of the president and key Republicans’ graces.

If confirmed, Mullin will oversee the Trump administration’s mass detention and deportation campaign, an effort that has proved uniquely dangerous for pregnant people and transgender migrants. Under his leadership, the already hazardous situation could continue unchanged—or worsen. His appointment is also the latest in a string of Trump handpicking leaders who hold anti-abortion and anti-trans views. 

For years, Mullin, whose social media bios read, “Christian. Husband. Father of 6.” has posted about his disdain for abortion access. In a 2021 post about Roe v. Wade’s potential overturning, he wrote, “May the Supreme Court finally stand up for the unborn.” A year later, he posted a grainy video of an anti-abortion speech from Ronald Reagan. In 2024, he shared photos of a meeting with top anti-abortion activists. “Every child, born or unborn, is a gift from God,” he wrote in a 2025 post. 

Multiple of Mullin’s kids, like their father, are involved in some form of wrestling or fighting—a fact that he has repeatedly used to argue against transgender athletes. “Democrats can’t even tell us what a woman is,” an advertisement for his 2022 Senate campaign began. In a video posted to Instagram that appears to be filmed in a gym, Mullin says he can help with that, before introducing his daughter and son with their wrestling titles. In a video from about two years later, Mullin stands alongside fellow Trump Cabinet nominee Tulsi Gabbard at a college volleyball game as he thanks the athletes for “fighting for” his daughters. 

And it’s not just lip service. Throughout his time in office, Mullin has repeatedly introduced or supported anti-abortion and anti-trans legislation. 

Since Trump took office for the second time and under Noem’s tenure, immigrant rights groups have held that pregnant people have received inadequate care, queer and trans immigrants have alleged forced labor and sexual assault in detention facilities, and, according to federal officials, pregnant unaccompanied minors have been shipped to a substandard detention facility in Texas, a move that advocates believe is to keep them from having abortion access.

“While there will be a new head of DHS, this administration’s inhumane anti-immigrant agenda is unchanged,” Reproductive Freedom for All, an abortion rights group, wrote in a statement following Mullin’s appointment.

As the prospective head of DHS, Mullin would no longer directly pen this kind of legislation, but the role would grant him new leeway to control how detained immigrants receive reproductive or gender-affirming health care. 

In a 2019 post, he hinted how he’d handle the job.

That summer, the then-newly elected Rep. Ilhan Omar wrote in a post that “no one should fear receiving medical care because they are undocumented,” adding, “We must ensure that all people in our country have access to reproductive health care.”

One day later, Mullin responded, referencing Omar and writing, “Let me get this straight, we need to ensure ‘illegal’ immigrants have access to abortion? This is crazy on so many levels.”

Kristi Noem’s time as Department of Homeland Security secretary is coming to an end, according to a Truth Social post from President Donald Trump. Sen. Markwayne Mullin, a Republican from Oklahoma who is a former Mixed Martial Arts fighter, is Trump’s pick to replace her. 

“A MAGA Warrior, and former undefeated professional MMA fighter, Markwayne truly gets along well with people, and knows the Wisdom and Courage required to Advance our America First Agenda,” Trump wrote, adding that Noem “has served us well, and has had numerous and spectacular results (especially on the Border!)”

It’s unclear if or when Mullin will get Senate approval, as Congress remains locked on funding the agency he’s named to lead.

Noem will move into a new role, according to the president, as “Special Envoy for The Shield of the Americas” a “new Security Initiative in the Western Hemisphere” the administration plans to announce Saturday. Her removal will be effective March 31. 

Since Noem was confirmed in January of 2025, her tenure has been defined by a violent mass-detention and deportation campaign, which included Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s deadliest year in two decades in 2025, two US citizens being shot and killed—who Noem painted as domestic terrorists—and the repeated use of chemical weapons on protestors and minors by DHS agents. 

Her replacement, Mullin, is the only sitting Native American senator. He describes himself as a “Christian. Husband. Father of 6” in his social media profiles and repeatedly posts in support of DHS and ICE’s actions. 

On January 7, hours after DHS confirmed that an agent had shot and killed a woman in Minneapolis—who would later be identified as Renée Good—Mullin posted a message defending agents. “ICE agents aren’t Disney villains. They’re our neighbors, friends, and loved ones,” he wrote. “These immigration and customs enforcement officers are red-blooded American patriots doing a tough job to keep our nation safe.”

A lawyer for the Justice Department argued on Wednesday that Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s vaccine decisions are protected from legal scrutiny, in a case brought by medical groups challenging HHS’s vaccine policy changes. So much so that the Trump administration appears to believe that Kennedy’s actions are “totally unreviewable.”

Reuters reports that Trump administration lawyer Isaac Belfer was asking District Judge Brian Murphy to rule that Kennedy and other health officials are protected from legal challenges by, for example, medical groups who accuse the department of imperiling the public’s health. 

Murphy asked: “If the secretary said instead of getting a shot to prevent measles, I think you should get a shot that gives you measles, is that unreviewable?”

“Yes,” Belfer replied.

As of February 27, 1,136 confirmed measles cases were reported in the United States in 2026, primarily from the large outbreak in South Carolina, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention—though that number is likely higher.

Should Murphy, a Biden appointee, rule in the DOJ’s favor, Kennedy and his team could have further leeway to upend long-held vaccine schedules and inject confusion into the health decisions of everyday Americans.

James Oh, a lawyer for the American Academy of Pediatrics and other medical groups included in the case, urged Murphy to block a series of actions by HHS, including a May directive to the CDC to remove its vaccination schedule recommendation for COVID-19 shots for pregnant women and children, as well as another move from January to reshape and diminish childhood vaccination schedules. 

He also requested that the judge block a meeting from the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices scheduled for later this month that will cover “COVID-19 vaccine injuries and Long-COVID.” Oh told the judge that the meeting is a “recipe for spreading distrust and dare I say misinformation or disinformation about vaccines.”

This is the same advisory committee that voted to abandon the universal hepatitis B birth dose recommendation for newborns in December, ending a decades-old advisement. Oh argued that the committee violates balance rules in the Federal Advisory Committee Act after Kennedy, last Summer, fired all 17 members of ACIP and installed allies. 

Murphy said he plans to rule on the arguments before the next ACIP meeting, calling it his “hard deadline.”

Without providing clear guidance on how to do so or how it will help, the United States government is advising Americans abroad to depart immediately from 14 countries, including Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Qatar, as its deadly offensive in Iran continues. 

Americans abroad remain stuck in place. Thousands of flights have been cancelled and there’s uncertainty surrounding which airspaces will be safe, and when.

New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand told Mother Jones that President Donald Trump “has essentially told the thousands of citizens who are stuck in the Middle East because of a war he started that they are on their own.” Gillibrand, a Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee and the Senate Intelligence Committee, called the administration’s actions “completely unacceptable and downright disgraceful.” 

Sen. Gillibrand has criticized US actions in the region, saying in a statement on Saturday that, “America voted for lower costs, not forever wars.” She said she’s working with New Yorkers currently in the region to get back to the state.

Since the US and Israel initially launched strikes in Iran earlier this week, Americans in the region have been trying to flee a war that has already resulted in hundreds of deaths. Counterstrikes by Iran, and fear of future strikes, have led the US to close multiple embassies in the region. Others are operating with limited staff—giving Americans even less support as they try to find a way to the states. 

When Trump was asked about why there wasn’t a plan for stranded Americans prior to the decision to strike Iran, he said, “well, because it happened all very quickly.”

The State Department has been pointing stranded citizens to a phone number. Yet, the message callers heard hasn’t been providing clear help. As of Tuesday afternoon, according to the Washington Post, callers were told to “not rely on the U.S. government for assisted departure or evacuation at this time. There are currently no United States evacuation points.”

On Wednesday, Gillibrand sent a letter, shared with Mother Jones, to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, relaying the “dismay” her office has heard from Americans abroad and urging him to “respond no later than close of business tomorrow with the Administration’s plan to evacuate American citizens from the region.”

“The Trump administration just told Americans: ‘you’re on your own.”,” Gillibrand’s letter reads, referencing the State Department hotline. “When it comes to the safety of American citizens,” she continued, “‘you’re on your own’ is an unacceptable answer.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Wednesday criticized news outlets for highlighting the deaths of six US service members in Iran’s retaliatory strikes, suggesting the coverage was unfair because “the press only wants to make the president look bad.”

“This is what the fake news misses,” Hegseth said during a Pentagon briefing on the escalating US and Israeli campaign against Iran, which he claimed has already secured control of the country’s airspace and waterways. “When a few drones get through or tragic things happen, it’s front-page news.”

Iran launched the drone attack Sunday, striking a US command center in Kuwait in retaliation for US and Israeli strikes that began the day before. At least six American service members were killed.

Hegseth’s remarks underscored the partisan tone surrounding the military campaign. During the briefing, he called on just ten reporters—including representatives from the Daily Wire, LindellTV, and the Daily Caller, outlets founded by far-right commentators Ben Shapiro, Mike Lindell, and Tucker Carlson and Neil Patel.

Several questions echoed administration talking points, including one about the killing of Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei—described in the briefing as “the leader of the group who was trying to assassinate President Trump” —and another about Tehran’s claim that it could outlast US missile defenses. Hegseth dismissed the idea.

Hegseth: This is what the fake news misses. We've taken control of Iran's airspace and waterways without boots on the ground, But when a few drones get through or tragic things happen, it's front page news. I get it, the press only wants to make the president look bad. But try… pic.twitter.com/LNMuKuutTR

— Acyn (@Acyn) March 4, 2026

Still, the deaths of six US service members—and the growing civilian toll in Iran—are difficult to ignore. The US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency reported Wednesday that 1,097 civilians have been killed in Iran since Saturday, including 181 children under the age of 10.

At the briefing, Hegseth signaled that the US is preparing for a deeper military engagement.

“We are accelerating, not decelerating,” he told reporters. “More bombers and more fighters are arriving just today.” He added that the US would be deploying a “nearly unlimited” supply of 500-, 1,000-, and 2,000-pound bombs.

America’s Gold Star Families, a nonprofit supporting families of service members killed in the line of duty, issued a statement Tuesday mourning the losses.

“The recent escalation of military conflict between the United States and Iran and the heartbreaking news of U.S. service members killed in action have profound consequences for our nation,” the group said. “But the heaviest burden is borne by the families who now face a chair that will forever stay empty.”

President Donald Trump struck a very different tone. After reports Sunday that three service members had died, he said: “Sadly, there will likely be more before it ends. That’s the way it is.”

A day later, after a fourth death was reported, Trump suggested the war could last weeks—or longer.

“Right from the beginning, we projected four to five weeks,” he said. “But we have capability to go far longer than that.”