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Trump cited debunked claims in video address that Iran was on verge of nuclear weapons to justify US casualtiesDonald Trump recorded a new video address on Sunday, vowing to avenge three American deaths after the joint US-Israeli strikes on Iran and accusing the Iranian regime of waging war against civilization itself".The US president addressed the deaths, saying we grieve for the true American patriots who have made the ultimate sacrifice for our nation, even as we continue the righteous mission for which they gave their lives" and called for prayers for the full recovery" of five others that were seriously wounded. Continue reading...

US president says he is willing to speak to Iran's remaining leadership as war spreads across Middle East - key US politics stories from 1 March 2026Republican senators have defended Donald Trump's decision to launch a war against Iran, but some Democrats, while welcoming the elimination of the Iranian senior leadership, said the case for the attack should have been made to the American public and Congress.Three US service members have been killed so far in the military operation, and Trump appeared to link the ordering of the attack to his 2020 election loss. Continue reading...

State trooper used Pit ramming maneuvre to stop Dillon Hess from speeding while transporting his son to hospital

FBI official says evidence found on the suspect and in his car indicated a potential nexus to terrorism'

They should have done it sooner, they waited too long,' says Trump but he doesn't say when talks would take place

The US-Israeli military action will test the fragile rules governing the use of forceThe killing of Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, by a US-Israeli strike is a targeted assassination of a head of state. It also marks a grave escalation in a region already burdened with smoulderingwars and fragile states. The consequencesof the deliberate strike will reverberate across a Middle East marked by the aftershocks of foreign intervention. Revulsion against the hardline regime in Tehran, or the desire for a better future for the Iranian people, does not confer a legal justification.Force is lawful, under the UN charter, only in self-defence against an imminent attack or with security council approval. Neither condition has been met. There was no evidence of an instant, overwhelming"Iranian attack being prepared. What Donald Trump's Operation Epic Fury looks like is not pre-emption but prevention: a decision to eliminate a future risk while an enemy appeared weak. It is a war of choice. MrTrump's call to overthrow a sovereign government was extraordinary.Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...

The US joined an Israeli assault after intel suggested Iran's top clerics and commanders could be hit at once

Isaiah Martin's videos have gone viral - he thinks his party should follow his lead and stand up to Republican excessDynamism, courage, and wit are words that few are likely to associate with the mainstream Democratic party, particularly after its capitulation to Republicans' budget demands last year.Polls show that majorities of Democratic voters think their party is weak and ineffective. Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senate leader, is even more unpopular than Donald Trump. People are crying out for a bold voice, someone to take the fight to an increasingly authoritarian Republican party. Continue reading...

The desire to see an increasingly ruthless Iranian regime collapse has intensified in Iranian expat communities

Trump calls Anthropic a Radical Left AI company run by people who have no idea what the real World is all about'

President says in social media post that Iran tried to stop Trump' and now faces renewed war with United States'

Five additional personnel have been reported seriously wounded as part of Operation Epic Fury, US military said

Though the supreme court ruled against the levies, businesses hit hard by the tariffs shouldn't hold their breath for any rebates

Their actions are no different from Putin's invasion of Ukraine or Rwandan president Paul Kagame's invasion of the Democratic Republic of CongoWe shouldn't beat around the bush: Donald Trump's and Benjamin Netanyahu's military attack on Iran is an illegal act of aggression. There is no lawful justification for it. It is no different from Russian president Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine or Rwandan president Paul Kagame's invasion of the Democratic Republic of Congo.The United Nations charter allows the use of military force in only two circumstances - with authorization of the UN security council, or as self-defense from an actual or imminent armed attack. Neither was present.Kenneth Roth is a Guardian US columnist, visiting professor at Princeton's School of Public and International Affairs, and former executive director of Human Rights Watch. He is the author of Righting Wrongs: Three Decades on the Front Lines Battling Abusive Governments Continue reading...

A bill to create a state intelligence operation would allow scrutiny based on opinions' - and could prompt other states to followFlorida man seeks to create a state counterintelligence unit and claim sweeping surveillance powers over people whose views' or opinions' he dislikes." It's not nearly as amusing as the usual Florida man" headline, and it may lead to a blueprint for lawmakers far beyond Florida.If Florida enacts House Bill 945, it will create a national first - CIA-style structure at the state level that blurs the traditional line between state law enforcement and intelligence work. It likely wouldn't remain a local experiment. Red states often borrow aggressively from one another's policy playbooks, on everything from gerrymandering to anti-abortion laws to transporting immigrants to Democratic-led states. A state-level intelligence office empowered to scrutinize residents based on ideology is precisely the kind of proposal likely to spread once normalized. Continue reading...

James Talarico and Jasmine Crockett adopt contrasting strategies as party hopes to tap into Trump backlash in reliably red stateAt a packed town hall meeting last month in Laredo for James Talarico, the 36-year-old Democrat vying for a US Senate seat in Texas, Cristina Rodriguez took the microphone. Rodriguez, a 16-year Marine Corps veteran, said she had never cast a ballot. She didn't identify as either a Democrat nor a Republican, and to her it didn't matter. Regardless of what party the president belonged to, she had to obey orders.Her attitude changed after the re-election of Donald Trump, whom she viewed as spiteful and divisive. In Talarico, a state representative from the Austin suburb of Round Rock, she found the exact opposite - a former middle school teacher and current seminary student who speaks in measured tones and preaches mutual respect. Continue reading...

Dylan Lopez Contreras, a senior at Ellis Prep academy, was taken by ICE in May. The Guardian invited him and five of his classmates to share their lives and dreamsThe students at Ellis Prep academy - like most high schoolers - have a lot on their mind right now.Essay deadlines, college applications, younger siblings and dance rehearsals. But also, the immigration operations across the US and the president's goal of mass deportations". Continue reading...

Jackson's body lay in repose at his Rainbow/Push Coalition headquarters as thousands visited to pay their respectsSome were older, some were younger and some were strangers, but many more were friends - they had lined up down the blocks of Chicago in mercifully mild weather for a chance to say goodbye to the civil rights leader Jesse Jackson.Friday was the last day of public visitation as Jackson lay in repose at the headquarters of his Rainbow/Push political activism coalition in the city he called home. Continue reading...

Plumes of smoke rose above Tehran and explosions could be heard across the city on day two of US-Israeli strikes on Iran. In a statement the Israel Defense Forces said the country's air force was striking targets 'in the heart of Tehran'. The strikes came after Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed in the first wave of attacks. Although Israel said it was targeting military assets in Iran, there have also been reports of a high civilian death toll

Ex-official calls transfer of unaccompanied girls as young as 13, many pregnant due to rape, a human rights violationAll unaccompanied immigrant children who are pregnant, many by rape, are being moved to a single facility in Texas in order to avoid providing abortion services in a significant human rights violation, critics say.As detainees are frequently moved across state lines quickly, often to red states like Texas, pregnant people are facing challenges accessing reproductive health care in detention centers. Continue reading...

Kash Patel's partying went viral and the US men's team came to Washington. Now it's all part of the culture warAh, hockey. The most impish of sports. A bunch of blissfully beefy individuals wearing colorful sweaters zoom around in skates chasing a wee little object called, of all things, a puck". It's adorable. It's like A Midsummer Night's Dream for people missing teeth. These days, if you're talking about hockey, you probably are thinking about HBO Max's gay sex-capade romance, Heated Rivalry. In the TV series, two hockey players on opposing teams fall in love, engaging in various erotic scenarios in between smashing each other into plexiglass. Actually, maybe that second part is connected to the first part.Heated Rivalry has become an absolute phenomenon, enthralling American audiences despite all the factors that might prevent someone less than tolerant from connecting with the show - it's gay, it's about one of our least popular major team sports, and most damning of all, it's Canadian. It might as well be about talking beavers. And yet, it's a major hit that's done a lot of good for healthy representation of the LGBTQ+ community. Continue reading...

A reporter ponders on how to repair a religious structure long thought of as good but supported by an evil undersideIn 1965, just shy of my junior year at the Jesuit high school of New Orleans, with good potential as an offensive end, I had an epiphany in the muddy slog of August football practice: Why are you doing something you don't like?Soon after, I quit, and was trailed by guilt for a dereliction of duty. Jesuit vaunted student achievements of all kinds. I played on the golf team and did some pieces for the school paper. Jesuit fostered a fraternal culture, molding friendships I carry to this day. Continue reading...

News of Ali Khamenei's killing sparks backlash from Marjorie Taylor Greene and other America First loyalistsDonald Trump had come to Fayetteville, near Fort Bragg military base in North Carolina, with a promise. We will stop racing to topple foreign regimes that we know nothing about, that we shouldn't be involved with," the then US president-elect said in December 2016.Trump has pushed his isolationist message in the decade since, repeatedly assuring his America first" base that there would be no repeat of the forever wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Continue reading...

Thousands go missing every year, including more than 5,000 Native American and Alaska Native women and girlsSavannah Guthrie is moving back to New York to resume anchoring NBC's Today show and acknowledging that her 84-year-old mother, Nancy, may not be found a month after she disappeared from her Tucson, Arizona, home in the middle of the night.We still believe in a miracle," Guthrie said in a video last week announcing a $1m reward for her mother's return in an enduring mystery that has gripped the US for four weeks. We also know that she may be lost. She may already be gone." Continue reading...

Footage released by Iran's state media show the aftermath of a school building in the south of the country reportedly destroyed by US and Israeli strikes. At least 100 children had been killed in the strike on Shajareh Tayyebeh girls' school in Minab, the Mizan news agency reported, with dozens more unaccounted for

The Iranian foreign minister says Donald Trump's aim of regime change is mission impossible' after US-Israeli strikes hit multiple sites in Iran.Reports say at least 201 people have been killed and there are growing fears the move could plunge the region into a conflict that could last weeks or months.The Guardian's Patrick Wintour explains what we know so far and what to expect

A halt on trade flows through the strait of Hormuz could spell trouble for many developed economies

The America First president who built his political brand on opposing foreign military adventures has unleashed a war of choice aimed at regime changeIt turns out that Donald Trump, the self-proclaimed candidate of peace," is just as eager to start new wars. Throughout the 2024 presidential campaign, Trump pitched himself as the antithesis of his Democratic opponents Joe Biden, and later, Kamala Harris. Trump insisted he would use his deal-making skills to end multiple global conflicts that started under the Biden administration, including Israel's war on Gaza and Russia's invasion of Ukraine.In his election night victory speech in November 2024, Trump told his supporters: I'm not going to start a war. I'm going to stop wars." Two months later, in his inaugural address, he went even further in trying to establish himself as a global peacemaker. We will measure our success not only by the battles we win but also by the wars that we end - and perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into," he said.Mohamad Bazzi is director of the Center for Near Eastern Studies, and a journalism professor, at New York University Continue reading...

The regime may now have to meet Trump's demands merely to save itself. And he needs a coherent plan to deal with what he has unleashedThe coordinated strikes on Iran launched by the United States and Israel in the early hours of Saturday morning formally reignited a conflict that had been simmering since last summer's 12-day war. They targeted key command structures and killed senior figures, most notably Iran's supreme leader Ali Khamenei, who had been in power since 1989. Donald Trump marked his demise with a post saying one of the most evil people in history" was dead, adding: This is not only justice for the people of Iran, but for all Great Americans."Israel has published reports claiming that Mohammad Pakpour, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), defence minister Aziz Nasirzadeh and Admiral Ali Shamkhani, head of the defence council, have also been killed. In response, Iranian forces have fired missiles and drones at Israel, at US bases in the Gulf, Iraq and Jordan, and at some civilian targets across the Gulf. Events are moving quickly, but far from predictably.Sanam Vakil is the director of the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Chatham House Continue reading...

Strikes on Iran by the US and Israel, as well as Donald Trump's announcement that the supreme leader Ali Khamenei had been killed lead the news pages

War launched by US and Israel on Iran has quickly escalated prompting anxiety and concern in whole region

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's death confirmed by state media in Iran as Trump urges citizens to take back' their country

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US and Israel strike Iran; supreme leader confirmed killed; fierce domestic criticism of military action - key US politics stories from 28 February at a glanceThe US launched attacks against Iran on Saturday as part of a joint operation with Israel. Hours after the bombs started falling across Iran, Trump claimed the Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had been killed, calling it the greatest chance" for the Iranian people to take back" their country. State media in Iran later confirmed his death.The announcement came after a joint US and Israeli aerial bombardment that targeted Iranian military and governmental sites. Trump said the heavy and pinpoint bombing" was to continue through the week or as long as necessary. There was no immediate comment from Iran on Khamenei's status. Continue reading...

Crowds gather in DC, New York and beyond to denounce Trump's Iran strikes as an illegal act of war

The question of who owns and authorizes the month holds particular relevance amid attacks on Black history in the USThere is a myth that persists about Black History Month that can be heard in the common gripe: They gave us the shortest month of the year" (they, the unnamed powers that be). Jarvis Givens, the author of I'll Make Me a World: The 100-Year Journey of Black History Month, hates it. Every time I hear that backhanded comment it doesn't seem right," said Givens, an associate professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. If you know anything about the basic origins of Black History Month then you know that we weren't given' anything."The question of who owns and authorizes Black History Month holds particular relevance now, in its centennial year, and at a time when efforts to celebrate, preserve, and acknowledge Black people's past in this country are under attack. Official recognition of Black American resistance to centuries of racial injustice is being challenged by local, state, and national efforts to restrict, ban and possibly criminalize such information in public schools, universities and other institutions. So the sentiment that Black history can be quite literally given or taken away by state officials is valid.Saida Grundy is an associate professor of sociology and African American studies at Boston University, and the author of Respectable: Politics and Paradox in Making the Morehouse Man Continue reading...

Joint operation prompts Tehran to retaliate with missile attacks on bases across Middle East

The building appears to be among many devastated in Trump's major combat operations' as long expected attacks arrive

Coordinated daylight assault on Tehran sparked Iranian retaliation and plunged the region into wider conflict

Iran strikes are attempt to hijack the global narrative and drown out Epstein and tariffs with the thunder of cruise missilesIn 2003, the United States invaded Iraq without deciding whether it should. The George W Bush administration failed to ask whether the costs, risks and likely consequences of regime change justified the gamble. The result was tragedy - for Iraq, for the Middle East and for America.Donald Trump's attack on Iran now follows the same pattern - but with an even narrower logic of performative power. In the run-up to Iraq, Washington devoted enormous energy to planning the invasion. Almost no attention was given to the more important question: was war necessary, and could it realistically produce a stable political outcome?Christopher S Chivvis is a senior fellow and director of the American Statecraft Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Continue reading...

Body of Nathan Smith, known professionally as DJ Young Slade, was found in pond north of Atlanta in FebruaryThe son of the rapper Lil Jon drowned after ingesting hallucinogenic mushrooms, officials in the US state of Georgia said.The body of Nathan Smith, known professionally as DJ Young Slade, was found in a pond north of Atlanta in early February. Continue reading...

Imam Shuaib Din was not hit by multiple shots fired by Abdul Raouf Afridi, who ambushed him outside his homeA man has been arrested for recently shooting a gun at prominent Muslim leader Imam Shuaib Din in Utah, the police department in the city of Sandy said Saturday.Din's suspected attacker was identified as Abdul Raouf Afridi. Police said the man was arrested on 12 counts of aggravated assault, including felony discharge of a firearm, possession of a controlled substance, dangerous discharge of a weapon from a vehicle and possession of a dangerous weapon as a prohibited person. Continue reading...

The US president upended half a century of US foreign policy in an eight-minute video with another attempt at Middle Eastern regime changeIt was another date that would live in infamy. But whereas Franklin Roosevelt declared war in sombre tones to a joint session of Congress, Donald Trump did it his way.The US president wore a white USA" cap, dark jacket and white shirt open at the collar. He stood at a blue lectern bearing the US presidential seal and a black microphone, with the Stars and Stripes behind him, presumably at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida. He released a video on his own social media network, Truth Social, at 2.30am on Saturday - a time when most Americans are asleep but Trump is often found rage-tweeting into the night. Continue reading...

In a televised statement, Sir Keir Starmer has said British planes 'are in the sky today' in the Middle East 'as part of coordinated regional defensive operations to protect our people, our interests and our allies'. This came after the US and Israel launched a joint military operation against Iran, prompting Tehran to fire retaliatory strikes against Israel and US bases across the Middle East Continue reading...

After Zohran Mamdani's upset, a new wave of challengers targets incumbents, driven by fury at Donald TrumpThey are impatient, unafraid and hungry for change. Inspired by Zohran Mamdani's shock victory in last year's New York mayoral race, a wave of insurgents is mounting primary challenges against Democratic incumbents ahead of November's midterm elections.The emboldened lineup of primary challengers - often, but not always, from the party's progressive wing - has been fuelled by anger over the party's tepid response to Donald Trump's authoritarianism, complicity in the war in Gaza and a crushing affordability crisis. Continue reading...

Members of Congress swiftly denounced the president's military action against the Islamic Republic alongside Israel

Nomma Zarubina, convicted of lying to the FBI, is the latest Russian woman accused of using her sexual wiles for spyingNomma Zarubina, 35, now sits in a New York jail awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty last week to charges that she lied to the FBI about her contacts with the FSB, Russia's biggest domestic intelligence service.But, in a playbook that comes straight from the cold war, the striking-looking Zarubina - known as Alyssa" to her Russian handlers - was tasked with meeting prominent Americans in order to lure them into the orbit of Moscow intelligence. Continue reading...