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2026-03-17 04:36:57

Donald Trump painted his military campaign in Iran with the same gold shine as his plans for the new Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in remarks on Monday—but despite his assured posturing, he is asking for help.

The president’s comments came at a press conference prior to a Monday vote among Kennedy Center board members on whether to close the institution temporarily for repairs. Trump previously insisted the building was in disrepair and that its programming was “woke,” pushing Congress to appropriate $257 million via the One Big Beautiful Bill Act to fund renovations. 

In Iran, the president has created more serious problems. In the same Monday remarks, despite claiming that the US military had bombed Iran’s mine-laying ships to the extent that vessels could safely transit the Strait of Hormuz, an essential passageway in the Persian Gulf where roughly 20 percent of global crude oil and natural gas flows, Trump reiterated calls on allies to help reopen the shipping lane.

“Every one of [the mine-laying ships] is gone, but it only takes one,” Trump stated. “It’s a little unfair [given] you win a war.”

“You need people to watch and people to see,” he added.

On Monday, Trump said that some nations were “enthusiastic” to help. But that appears to be an overstatement, as many NATO countries have refused Trump’s request for naval and other military support. And on receiving a tepid response, Trump warned allies on Sunday about a “very bad” future if they did not help, and complained at his Monday press conference that the US was not receiving reimbursement for providing protection.

“This war has nothing to do with NATO,” Stefan Kornelius, a spokesperson for German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, said on Monday. “NATO is a defensive alliance, an alliance for the defense of its territory.” 

As Trump’s military campaign in Iran enters its third week, US and Israeli strikes have killed over one thousand people in the country and led to bombings across the region. The White House seems to have no set goal—let alone a plan—despite costs now well into the tens of billions of dollars.

2026-03-17 04:18:58

For three years, Andrew Osborne helped his bosses promote the idea that good design could make imprisonment more humane. As a public relations specialist at DLR Group, one of the largest architecture firms in the world, he crafted campaigns for multimillion dollar projects, like the construction of a “youth campus for empowerment” in Nashville. Or the rebuild of San Quentin state prison—former home of California’s death row—into a “rehabilitation center.” It wasn’t about simply adding more windows, he argued in marketing material. Prisons could be revamped to prioritize education; jail space could be set aside to help people through mental health crises instead of booking them into the system.

“I was selling the shit out of it,” Osborne says. “I genuinely was a convert.” A 34-year-old creative type, he’d taken the job at DLR Group after earning master’s degrees in philosophy and English literature. He truly believed the design firm, which has over 30 offices and rakes in at least $500 million in annual revenue, was committed to the stated ethos of its Justice+Civic division: to pursue “healing, equity, and transformation for the individual and community” as “stewards of the built environment.”

So when he found out on February 4 that DLR Group held a current contract to turn an old private prison in Oklahoma into a new detention center used to hold the immigrants swept up in the Trump administration’s escalated, increasingly deadly ICE operations—the sense of betrayal was instant. “I think what ICE is doing is the worst thing America has probably done since the internment camps during World War II,” he tells me, comparing the agency’s use of racial profiling in arrests to the mandatory incarceration of Japanese Americans. “It’s horrific, they’re shooting people, and here I am hating that in my heart of hearts. And it turns out my company is involved in it.”

Osborne was working from home that day, and he felt “the maddest I’ve ever been in my life.” So he picked up the phone, called his supervisor, and said he intended to quit. He gave notice two days later.

His wasn’t a lone act of protest. That week, it had become widely known among DLR Group’s 1,800-some employees that the firm had connections to ICE through its deals involving the private prison company CoreCivic. The resulting outcry has thrown DLR Group into turmoil, according to interviews with three current employees—all of whom requested anonymity for fear of retaliation—as well as a review of posts on the firm’s internal message board and a recording of a mid-February call between executives and hundreds of workers, provided by an anonymous employee. In an emailed response to questions, senior principal and brand communications leader Andy Ernsting disputed that there has been “unrest” among DLR Group workers. “A small group of employees had questions and we had a firmwide, open dialogue about our justice work,” he wrote.

Yet amid the turmoil, on February 9, CEO Steven McKay wrote to employees that “moving forward, DLR Group will not do work—be it upgrades, modernization, or new construction—for ICE detainment or deportation facilities.” DLR Group wouldn’t walk away from its existing contract, or commit to ending its relationship with private prisons, executives communicated to employees. But it would donate the estimated $300,000 in profits from the Oklahoma job to immigration-related causes.

McKay might have been expecting the announcement to appease disgruntled workers and close the door on the controversy. But employees say the revelations about the firm’s business ties have caused them to lose faith in company leaders and thrust them into an ongoing crisis of conscience—and more are considering departing.

The uprising within DLR Group isn’t the only example of workers pushing back on their employers’ business dealings with ICE—but it may be one of the more successful ones. Since the surge of ICE enforcement in Minneapolis, more than two thousand tech workers at companies like Amazon and Microsoft have petitioned their White House-cozying CEOs to cancel ICE contracts, to no avail. A Minneapolis Hampton Inn refused to rent rooms to ICE agents, only for its parent company Hilton cut ties with the location. In March, hundreds of employees at the media and research company Thompson Reuters reportedly asked their employer to stop providing ICE with investigative software. (The company told the New York Times in a statement that it was committed to ensuring “our products and services are used in accordance with our contractual terms and applicable law.”)

But such organized pushback is rare in architecture, a “tight-knit profession” where “job security is a contradiction in terms,” says Joshua Barnett, a veteran construction project manager at the New York City Housing Authority and shop steward in his municipal union. “We’re taught to think of ourselves as arteests,” Barnett says, putting a flourish on the last syllable. “Collective action is very often anathema to how the profession is.”

But these are not typical times. The scale of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown has produced a proportionate boom in the ICE detention system, the nationwide network of lockups that hold people waiting to see a judge or to be deported. The number of people in ICE custody in a given night hit a record high of 73,000 in January, up from 40,000 a year earlier. (Three quarters of them had never been convicted of a crime.) The agency, in search of beds and photo ops, sent detainees to Guantanamo Bay, CECOT prison in El Salvador, and Alligator Alcatraz. But the headline-grabbing measures weren’t enough to meet ICE’s demand, says Silky Shah, executive director of the nonprofit Detention Watch Network, and last summer, Congress approved $45 billion for new immigration detention centers. So, in addition to setting up immigrant tent camps and warehouses, ICE has also pursued its traditional strategy: making deals with private prison companies and local jails to hold detainees in their existing lockups.

The empty Diamondback Correctional Facility in Watonga, Oklahoma, owned by the private prison company CoreCivic, was prime real estate. So, last September, ICE cut a deal with CoreCivic to hold detainees in the 2,160-bed prison, using the Oklahoma Department of Corrections as a middleman. Such deals have become a regular part of the business model for private prison companies, which are generally paid a nightly fee for each person they incarcerate. As state prison populations have fallen in recent years, these companies have looked to ICE detention to bolster their business. In 2025, CoreCivic received 35 percent of its $2.2 billion total revenue from the agency as it operated at least 19 immigration detention centers, including Diamondback, according to its annual report.

But the vacant, hulking prison needed some remodeling before it could reopen—$30 million worth of “upgrading the pumps, the security systems, the doors, the locks,” Oklahoma Department of Corrections executive director Justin Farris testified at a February budget hearing. To transform the building, CoreCivic turned to subcontractors including DLR Group, which formally signed on to the job in October. By late December, ICE was shipping detainees to Diamondback.

By early February, word of the detention center job had gotten out beyond DLR Group’s Justice+Civic division. Some workers started circulating a Google Form that gathered opinions on whether DLR Group should try to terminate the contract and avoid ICE work going forward.

In response, Justice+Civic leader Darrell Stelling posted on the company message board. “I need to address and clarify misunderstandings,” he wrote. For one thing, he emphasized, the primary contract for Diamondback was with the Oklahoma Department of Corrections, not ICE. Second, the firm had accepted the Diamondback job in August, he wrote, “well before anyone understood the aggressive approach ICE would take in cities across the nation.”

“To be crystal clear,” he added, “if a contract hit my desk today for direct ICE work, we would not sign it, as ICE’s current approach to facilities conflicts with our guidelines, DLR Group’s core values and Justice+Civic ethos.”

At first, company leaders responded to Stelling’s post with praise. But soon, other workers started raising questions: How did working on ICE detention ever align with the company’s code of ethics? What had really changed between October, when DLR Group signed the Diamondback contract, and February? “I think we’re not being fully honest about the situation,” Osborne wrote in a reply to Stelling’s post. “If there was any indication that ICE would be involved, how did we arrive at the decision to move forward?”

“I was shocked that we ever signed this project,” an engineer tells me. They assume that the evolution in the firm’s thinking between October and February was largely based on fears about a changing public perception—”how negative the public reaction has been toward ICE since everything that’s happened in Minneapolis.”

Within a week, more than 75 different employees had spoken out against the Diamondback project, work on ICE detention centers, or DLR Group’s relationship with CoreCivic on the company’s message board. Some of them had surfaced more examples of DLR Group’s connections to ICE: a past contract to expand Otay Mesa, a CoreCivic-owned ICE detention center in California; renovations at a Texas ICE detention center named after a CoreCivic founder.

Reading over these examples on the message board rattled the employees who spoke with me. “By the time I got to ‘This isn’t even our first detention center,’ that’s when the cold sweat hits,” says a second engineer. “One of my greatest fears in life—and this is going to sound dramatic—but I don’t want to be one of the people in the village who said they didn’t know. This has turned me into one of those people. I am now actively profiting off making people disappear.”

As he read the posts, an architect says he couldn’t stop thinking about a picture taken during Trump’s first term, of a toddler sobbing at an ICE agent’s feet as her mother is detained at the border. “Picture how you were feeling, looking at that photo the first time you saw it, just having your heart ripped out through your chest,” he says. “It was like feeling that all over again.”

In his emailed statement, Ernsting emphasized that DLR Group’s Justice+Civic work is broader than ICE detention and private prisons, and focuses on rehabilitation and making conditions more humane. “We work to engage with a system that is not always equitable or just to improve conditions and outcomes,” he wrote. “This work would be abandoned, not improved, if responsible design firms walked away from the sector entirely.”

Part of the reason the revelations cut so deep, according to Osborne and the three current employees, is because DLR Group’s workers believed their company was genuinely committed to the idea that design could change the world for the better. “The major reason I pursued getting a job there aggressively is because they had a solid code of ethics,” one of the engineers tells me. Osborne says when he interviewed for his PR job, he was specifically told the company no longer worked on private prisons. (One of the engineers I spoke with said he was told the same thing.)

Other employees held the same belief—though information about DLR Group’s longstanding ties to CoreCivic wasn’t hard to find online. “I recognize that it was my responsibility to have done the research [but] it wasn’t in me to be suspicious about this,” the architect says. “I personally told myself that I have nothing morally against federal prison work, as long as it’s under the auspices of trying to improve conditions.” But for him, working for private prisons was a step too far. “I find CoreCivic to be a gigantic, insidiously evil corporation that profits off people’s misery.”

“Our detention facilities are purpose-built to ensure that our staff can care for each person respectfully and humanely while they receive the legal due process that they are entitled to,” CoreCivic senior director of public affairs Ryan Gustin said in a statement. “CoreCivic does not enforce immigration laws, arrest anyone who may be in violation of immigration laws, or have any say whatsoever in an individual’s deportation or release.”

About a week after the Google Form came to light, the firm held a pair of “fireside chats” with McKay, Stelling, and the firm’s diversity, equity, and belonging leader. During one of them, Stelling said the Justice+Civic division would be “discussing” its connection to CoreCivic. “We will be having those discussions to see how that relationship might transform,” he said. “That not an easy decision with somebody that you’ve worked with for over 30 years.”

According to Ernsting, DLR Group has made an “explicit, firmwide” commitment limiting its work for private prison companies, which are obligated to act in their shareholders’ interests by maximizing profits. “We will not do work to expand the portfolio of facilities that private providers own and operate with a fiduciary interest in promoting actions that increase the use of incarceration,” he wrote.

The field of architecture has long debated the morality of prison design. In 2020, the American Institute of Architects adopted new ethics rules banning members from designing execution rooms or solitary confinement cells. “There is a spectrum within the profession,” explains Rand Lemley, an architect on the administrative committee of the Architecture Lobby, a nonprofit that pushes for better working conditions in the field. Some firms specialize in public safety design and pursue jail and prison contracts without qualms. Other architects like Lemley—himself formerly incarcerated—reject the idea of building prisons entirely. “If we imagine and believe that prisons are part of a system that should be dismantled, we shouldn’t be constructing things that 50, 75, 100 years down the road are obsolete,” he says. In the middle are those who believe they can improve outcomes for prisoners. “They focus on bringing in natural light, warmer materials, more places for activities,” Lemley says. “It sounds great, but it doesn’t ultimately challenge the system that’s in place.”

DLR Group—recently ranked by a trade publication as the country’s top “justice facility” architecture firm—has tried to walk that middle road, at least publicly. “We’ve always been a detention firm,” McKay emphasized to employees during one of the fireside chats in February. “We’ve never tried to hide that. And in fact, what we’ve always tried to do is say we can make a difference.”

He apologized for the strain employees had gone through since the Diamondback contract came to light. But now, he said, the company had made its response. “Now every individual must make their own decision as to whether they’re committed to work that the firm holistically does,” he closed the call. “I’ll leave you to think about that.”

For Osborne, the choice is already made. He says he’s speaking out because he has lost faith that management will stick to its promises to no longer work on ICE detention, especially if the firm remains willing to work with private prison companies. “Even if this is the most progressive design in history, if you give it to CoreCivic, they have no problems re-contracting their space out to ICE,” he says. He and others also want the company to overhaul how it chooses Justice+Civic projects, with more oversight and input from employees.

“Something design people always try to say—and I think they’re right—is that every single thing that happens in the country needs a building,” Osborne says. “So every time you hear about a kid being removed from his parents, somebody had to make that choice, and somebody had to produce those plans and those blueprints.”

2026-03-16 23:27:32

In the opening days of his war against Iran, Donald Trump had a message for members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps: Surrender and get “total immunity”—or face “absolutely guaranteed death.”

An elite armed force that exists outside Iran’s normal military structure, the IRGC began as the ayatollah’s personal strike force. But during the country’s reconstruction in the 1980s after the Iran-Iraq War, it also became a major economic force. The construction companies that the Guard organized became spectacularly lucrative, expanding their work abroad.

The Guard is now both the spine of Iran’s military and a driving force in its economy. And this isn’t the first time Trump has crossed paths with people with alleged IRGC connections.

Back in 2012, long before he ever was the GOP’s dark-horse presidential candidate, Donald Trump signed a deal to put his name on a sail-shaped tower in Baku, Azerbaijan—a notoriously corrupt, oil-rich city on the shores of the Caspian Sea. His partners in the deal were suspect: the family of then-transportation minister Ziya Mammadov, a man with a $12,000 annual salary but an estimated net worth in the billions.

Under the terms of the deal, Trump was set to make millions of dollars, renting his name to be used to market an already built building that had been constructed by the Mammadovs. Trump’s company would then continue to manage hotel operations at the newly christened Trump Tower Baku. The hotel never opened. (A fire later at least partially gutted the building, and it now operates as a Ritz-Carlton.) Nevertheless, according to financial disclosures, Trump earned at least $2.5 million from the deal.

As I wrote in 2015, the optics were very bad for anyone, but especially a leading presidential candidate. The Mammadovs were problematic:

In an article titled “The Corleones of the Caspian,” Foreign Policy reported that the “profit margins” of [Anar] Mammadov’s Garant [corporation] “appear inextricably linked to a number of sweetheart contracts signed with his father’s Transport Ministry.” One of Mammadov’s other companies has received over $1 billion in highway construction contracts, and the firm owns many of Baku’s buses and taxis. Until 2013, Mammadov owned a majority stake in the bank that processed all of the taxi cab fares and the company that provided insurance to all the cabs. According to Foreign Policy, the company that Trump is working with also secured the contract to construct the Baku bus station, which Mammadov’s uncle owns. A leaked diplomatic cable on Azerbaijan’s “most powerful families,” drafted in 2010 by the charge d’affairs at the US embassy in Baku, noted: “With so much of the nation’s oil wealth being poured into road construction, the Mammadovs also control a significant source of rent-seeking.”

But it wasn’t just the Mammadovs who were problematic—they themselves are alleged to have had ties to some particularly shady business partners at the same time Trump was working the Mammadovs: associates of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

According to reporting by the New Yorker in 2018, those ties included some unusually profitable highway construction deals in Azerbaijan, with the approval of Ziya Mammadov. Leaked US State Department cables detailed just how close Mammadov’s relationship to the Darvish family, prominent IRGC associates, was:

At least three Darvishis—the brothers Habil, Kamal, and Keyumars—appear to be associates of the Guard. In Farsi press accounts, Habil, who runs the Tehran Metro Company, is referred to as a sardar, a term for a senior officer in the Revolutionary Guard. A cable sent on March 6, 2009, from the U.S. Embassy in Baku described Kamal as having formerly run “an alleged Revolutionary Guard-controlled business in Iran.” The company, called Nasr, developed and acquired instruments, guidance systems, and specialty metals needed to build ballistic missiles. In 2007, Nasr was sanctioned by the U.S. for its role in Iran’s effort to develop nuclear missiles.

The cable said that Kamal and Keyumars were frequent visitors to Azerbaijan; Kamal had recently established “a close business relationship/friendship” with Ziya Mammadov, and, with Mammadov’s assistance, had been awarded “at least eight major road construction and rehabilitation contracts, including contracts for construction of the Baku-Iranian Astara highway.” (Keyumars also seems to have been involved in these deals.) The cable added, “We assume Mammedov [sic] is a silent partner in these contracts.”

The Trumps have always denied knowing anything about the IRGC’s relationship to the Mammadovs, and for that matter, they also denied knowing there was anything untoward about the Mammadovs themselves. The New Yorker noted that under a US law called the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, US companies are required to do due diligence to ensure they are not getting involved with corruption when they invest in foreign countries. A lawyer for the Trump Organization told the New Yorker that the Trumps never had any in-depth dealings or substantial say in the tower project, that it was only a licensing deal, and that the Trumps never saw any warning signs about the Mammadovs. There’s no evidence that IRGC-related companies worked directly on the Trump project.

Jessica Tillipman, a law professor and associate dean at George Washington University, told the New Yorker that not knowing about a partner’s alleged corruption isn’t a good excuse:

“Nor can you escape liability by looking the other way. The entire Baku deal is a giant red flag—the direct involvement of foreign government officials and their relatives in Azerbaijan with ties to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Corruption warning signs are rarely more obvious.”

Shortly after taking office for his second term, Trump paused enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. When he brought it back last June, his administration announced it would enforce the law less vigorously.

Neither the Trump Organization nor the White House responded to requests for comment.

2026-03-16 21:29:07

A version of the below article first appeared in David Corn’s newsletter, Our Land. The newsletter comes out twice a week (most of the time) and provides behind-the-scenes stories and articles about politics, media, and culture. Subscribing costs just $5 a month—but you can sign up for a free 30-day trial.

For a year, the Trump Justice Department has been on an odd mission: to assist a mysterious former FBI informant with ties to Russian intelligence who ended up in prison for passing disinformation about Joe Biden to the bureau. His crime deeply affected American politics. The false claim he slipped to the FBI—that Biden and his son Hunter each were paid a $5 million bribe by a Ukrainian energy company—became the main evidence in the House Republicans’ reckless and ill-fated impeachment drive against the 46th president.

For pushing this phony tale, Alexander Smirnov, who pleaded guilty of lying to the FBI, was sentenced a year ago to six years of incarceration. (The punishment also covered failing to pay taxes on more than $2 million in income.) But for some strange reason, Trump’s DOJ has been helping him to get out of prison. On March 4, in a move that has drawn no media attention, the department quietly filed an unusual brief—submitted by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche—supporting Smirnov’s attempt to throw out his sentence and withdraw his guilty plea.

This was not the first time the Trump Justice Department sided with Smirnov in his ongoing legal battle. It has forged a curious alliance with this convicted Russia-connected fabricator whose lies were embraced by Trump, MAGA Republicans, and right-wing media and cited as smoking-gun evidence for Biden’s impeachment.

The Smirnov saga has the feel of a spy thriller. A fortysomething Israeli American businessman who grew up in Ukraine, he was a longtime confidential informant for the FBI. Court filings do not reveal the details of his work for the bureau, but they note he participated in operations in which he was authorized to engage in illegal activity as part of FBI criminal investigations. He apparently shared information about oligarchs and the business contacts he made around the world, possibly including some shady characters. He made millions of dollars through activity federal prosecutors could not identify.

During the 2020 campaign, Republicans—most notably, Rudy Giuliani—were promoting the debunked allegation that Biden, when he was vice president, had threatened to withhold a $1 billion loan guarantee to Ukraine unless its government quashed an investigation of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company that had recruited his son Hunter to be a well-paid board member. As that conspiracy theory was being hyped by the right, Smirnov told his FBI handler that in late 2015 or 2016 the CEO of Burisma had said to him that Hunter, through his father, could end an investigation of Burisma if the two Bidens each were paid a $5 million bribe.

The FBI handler dutifully recorded Smirnov’s account in what the bureau calls an FD-1023 form. The FBI reviewed this information—which was much at odds with previous statements Smirnov had made to his handler about Burisma—and decided there was nothing to it. (There was no active probe of Burisma at the time of the supposed bribe.) And that was that.

Yet three years later, someone in the FBI passed the FD-1023 to congressional Republicans, and they went to town, claiming this was the proof President Biden had pocketed a huge bribe and was leading a crime family.

The document clearly stated there was no confirmation of the hearsay information Smirnov had provided. But for months, through that summer and fall and into 2024, House Republicans—led by Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, who chaired the House oversight committee—hailed the FD-1023 (which redacted Smirnov’s name) as Exhibit A for their baseless impeachment inquiry targeting Biden. Fox News aired scores of segments about it. Kash Patel and other MAGA stalwarts cited it as evidence of Biden criminality.

With Republicans raising a fuss about this once-confidential report, the FBI brought Smirnov in for questioning. He stuck to his story. He even added new allegations about Hunter Biden that he said he had received from four Russian officials, including two associated with Russian intelligence, telling the bureau the Russians had made incriminating recordings of the president’s son.

The bureau dug into all of this—reviewing Smirnov’s travel records and other information—and concluded that he was lying and that he had never even had those conversations with the Burisma CEO outlined in the FD-1023. His new allegations about the younger Biden were also false. It appeared he had been trying to plant anti-Biden information within the bureau.

On February 14, 2024, as Smirnov arrived from an overseas trip at Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas, FBI agents arrested him. The next day, David Weiss, a Justice Department special counsel who had been appointed to investigate Hunter Biden, announced that Smirnov had been indicted for making false statements to the FBI. His indictment was later expanded to cover the tax charges. Smirnov’s arrest outed him as the confidential informant cited in the FD-1023—and essentially ended the GOP impeachment crusade. The Republicans had been duped.

In subsequent legal filings, federal prosecutors stated that Smirnov professed to have contacts with multiple foreign intelligence agencies, including the Russian spy services. The feds characterized Smirnov’s interactions with Russians as “extensive.”

One filing revealed he had numerous contacts with a Russian official “who has been described by Smirnov in a number of ways, including as the son of a former high-ranking Russian government official” and someone “who purportedly controls two groups of individuals tasked with carrying out assassination efforts in a third-party country,” a reference to Ukraine. “Smirnov’s contacts with Russian officials who are affiliated with Russian intelligence services are not benign,” the prosecutors said—a suggestion that Smirnov had actively been in cahoots with the Russians.

The Justice Department’s filings in the case depicted Smirnov as having “spread misinformation” about Biden, adding “the misinformation he is spreading is not confined to 2020. He is actively peddling new lies that could impact U.S. elections after meeting with Russian intelligence officials in November [2024].” It looked as if Smirnov had been part of a Russian operation to tarnish Biden in both 2020 and 2024.

On January 8, 2025, after Smirnov accepted a plea agreement, federal Judge Otis Wright of the Central District of California sentenced him to six years. “In committing his crimes he betrayed the United States,” Weiss stated in court papers. 

A scamster tied to Russian intelligence who had promoted disinformation to the FBI to harm Biden in two elections was behind bars. A win for the Justice Department. Case closed.

Not quite. Shortly after his conviction, Smirnov requested he be released on bail from prison pending an appeal he had filed. The Justice Department, now tightly controlled by Trump, joined Smirnov in supporting this request. Smirnov and the feds filed a joint stipulation asking he be freed while his appeal was underway.

This was weird. The Justice Department had just locked him up. But with Trump in the White House, it was under new management.

During Smirnov’s criminal case, Justice Department lawyers had argued that because he had access to $6 million in funds (the origins of which he hadn’t been able to explain), was an Israeli citizen who could easily obtain an Israeli passport, and claimed to have contacts with multiple foreign intelligence services, he was a flight risk. They requested he be kept in prison prior to his trial. Smirnov’s lawyers contended at that time that he ought to be released on bail because he had a serious medical condition related to his eyes that required continuing care. The court didn’t buy that and imprisoned him while he awaited trial.

Following his conviction, Smirnov made the same argument: Due to his eye condition, he should be let out on bail while his appeal proceeded. What was different now—and peculiar—was that that the Justice Department had flipped and was supporting the request of a man who had tried to deceive the FBI and who, as Weiss said, betrayed the United States.

The government had once said Smirnov was a flight risk; now it argued the opposite. During a hearing last April, a department prosecutor pointed out that Smirnov had “the lowest incentive that he would ever have to flee the country…when he has a receptive ear to people who are willing to look anew” at his case. A “receptive ear”? That was a surprising statement, indicating that the Trump Justice Department was considering reviewing the case of this suspected Russian agent. The Trump administration was advocating for him.

On April 30, 2025, Judge Wright turned down the joint Smirnov–United States request for his release, noting that nothing significant had changed since Smirnov was determined a flight risk and “the fact remains that Smirnov has been convicted and sentenced to seventy-two months in prison, providing ample incentive to flee.”

That was not the end of the Trump Justice Department’s cooperation with Smirnov. And the former informant did catch a break after losing the fight for bail.

In November, independent journalist Jacqueline Sweet discovered that Smirnov had been released from FCI Terminal Island, a low-security prison in Los Angeles, where he had been fulfilling his sentence. A process server who had been trying to serve Smirnov with papers related to a civil lawsuit had been informed that Smirnov was “furloughed.” David Chesnoff, Smirnov’s lawyer, told the New York Post that his client had been released on a “medical furlough” due to his eye condition, which required surgery. A health-related furlough from a federal facility can last up to 30 months. Chesnoff said at the time he expected to request multiple furloughs for Smirnov.

With Chesnoff, Smirnov had a high-powered and widely connected lawyer who was part of the Trump administration. A well-known celebrity attorney based in Las Vegas, he was appointed in June to serve on an advisory council for the Department of Homeland Security.

Several years ago, Chesnoff represented Republican political operative Corey Lewandowski, when Lewandowski was accused of harassing and inappropriately touching a Trump donor at a fundraising event. Chesnoff obtained a plea agreement in which Lewandowski admitted no wrongdoing but agreed to impulse control counseling and 50 hours of community service. When Chesnoff was named to the DHS council, Lewandowski was serving as the chief adviser to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. Other members of this advisory board include Giuliani, venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, right-wing commentator Mark Levin, Bikers for Trump founder Chris Cox, and Lewandowski.

It’s unclear how long Smirnov was out of prison for the medical furlough. Chesnoff did not respond to an inquiry. On Friday, a spokesperson for the Bureau of Prisons confirmed Smirnov was currently in custody at Terminal Island.

This month, the Justice Department continued to go all-out for Smirnov. On March 4, with no fanfare, it submitted a filing supporting Smirnov’s appeal of his conviction.

Smirnov had agreed to a plea deal in which he acknowledged lying to the FBI and committing tax evasion. But following his conviction, he filed an appeal that hinged on a technical point. He claimed Judge Wright had not stuck to the deal’s provision regarding a reduction in Smirnov’s sentence to match his pretrial detention.

The plea agreement between the Justice Department and Smirnov stated that Smirnov was “entitled” to a credit for time served. But at sentencing, Judge Wright said he would not “get involved” in the calculation of the credit and would leave that to the Bureau of Prisons.

In the appeal, Smirnov’s lawyers argued that even though Smirnov ended up being credited by BOP with time served, Wright, by not directly recommending the time off to BOP, had not adhered to the plea agreement. Consequently, they contended, the sentence should be revoked and Smirnov permitted to withdraw his guilty pleas and return the case to the pre-agreement stage. The Justice Department filing supports Smirnov’s argument and his requests. 

The Trump administration appears to be bending over backward to help him escape his sentence and win another trial—or perhaps avoid one. There’s no guarantee the Justice Department would continue the prosecution if Smirnov succeeds with his appeal. One government official who has followed this case tells me he wonders if the ultimate plan of the Trump administration is to let Smirnov go free.

Judge Wright has challenged this argument advanced by Smirnov and the DOJ. In a ruling last year, he said that Smirnov’s claim that he had not followed “all of the stipulations” of the plea agreement was “factually and legally incorrect.” Wright cited the exact language of the agreement: “The parties also agree that the defendant is entitled to credit…for the period of his pretrial detention…and that credits that the Bureau of Prisons may allow…may be credited against this stipulated sentence.”

Wright pointed out the agreement did not “provide that the Court would order that Smirnov receive credit for time served…This provision regarding credit requires nothing of the Court.”

Smirnov’s case does not seem a strong one, turning on the question of whether the provision that he was “entitled” to credit for time served compelled Wright to make an explicit recommendation to the BOP. It certainly doesn’t come across as a matter that would call for the participation of the deputy attorney general. Yet Blanche signed this filing. Deputy attorneys general usually don’t get involved in such matters.

I asked the Justice Department why it decided to back Smirnov’s appeal. A spokesperson replied, “We have no comment.” I also asked if the DOJ would renew its prosecution of Smirnov if he wins his appeal. I received the same response.

Trump’s Justice Department has shown an unusual amount of consideration for Smirnov, a confessed criminal tied to Russian intelligence who betrayed the FBI and who perpetuated a fraud that roiled American politics. But he did make trouble for Biden and the Democrats. This case warrants scrutiny as Smirnov’s appeal proceeds.

2026-03-16 19:30:00

This story was originally published by Inside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Recent attacks in the Middle East on desalination plants, facilities that remove salt from seawater, raise the potential for a humanitarian crisis if the region’s freshwater production facilities are subjected to more widespread destruction. The attacks also underscore the region’s heavy reliance on an energy-intensive method of producing drinking water that is powered almost entirely by fossil fuels.

On Saturday, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi accused the United States of striking a desalination plant in southern Iran. The US has since denied any role in the attack. The next day, Bahrain accused Iran of damaging a desalination plant in a drone attack. The targeting of freshwater production facilities follows attacks on schools, airports, hotels and refineries since Operation Epic Fury began in February. Attacking desalination plants is a violation of the Geneva Conventions, which established humanitarian laws for the treatment of non-combatants in war.

“It has erased previous red lines about attacking energy infrastructure, civilian infrastructure, and then the final red line of attacking desalination infrastructure,” Michael Christopher Low, director of the Middle East Center at the University of Utah, said of the Iran War. “It’s the most grievous kind of war crime that you can dream up.”

Of the world’s nearly 18,000 desalination plants, nearly one-third are located in the Middle East, with 2,382 facilities in Saudi Arabia alone, according to a recent study published in the journal npj Clean Water. 

In the Middle East and North Africa, 83 percent of the population already faces severe water scarcity, a figure projected to rise to 100 percent by 2050, according to the World Resources Institute’s Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas. The Middle East is home to 6 percent of the world’s population and holds less than 2 percent of the world’s renewable freshwater. The rapid growth of the region’s cities has increased reliance on desalination.

“All of these great Gulf cities, Riyadh, Doha, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, they’re not possible without man-made, fossil fuel water,” Low said.  

However, desalination, which typically uses a process called reverse osmosis to push seawater through ultra-fine membranes to remove salt and other contaminants, is a costly and energy-intensive process powered, and indirectly funded, by the region’s oil and gas wealth.   

“You can’t step away from fossil fuels and fossil fuel production, because your water production is so closely linked,” said Low, who is currently writing a book titled “Saltwater Kingdoms: Fossil-Fueled Water and Climate Change in Arabia.”

The connection between desalination and fossil fuels has long-term implications beyond the immediate attacks. “It’s not just the vulnerability of desalination to military campaigns or sabotage, but it’s also the embedded risk that is climate change,” Low said.

Such heavy reliance on desalination facilities makes cities in the Middle East particularly vulnerable. As early as 1983, the CIA warned that widespread disruption of desalination plants through sabotage or military action could lead to a “national crisis” in countries such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Bahrain.  

During the 1991 Gulf War, Iraq intentionally destroyed much of Kuwait’s desalination capacity. In 2016 and 2017 a Saudi-led coalition bombed desalination plants in Yemen. In 2019, Houthi rebels claimed responsibility for attacking a desalination plant in Saudi Arabia. Israel destroyed or otherwise shut down much of Gaza’s desalination capacity following Hamas’ attack on Israel in October 2023.

Erika Weinthal, chair of the Environmental Social Systems Division at Duke University’s School of the Environment, monitors attacks on desalination plants and other infrastructure in the Middle East and North Africa. The Targeting of Infrastructure in the Middle East project, a database maintained by Weinthal and colleagues, focuses on water, sanitation, energy, health and transportation infrastructure in conflict zones throughout the region since 2011.

Weinthal said the initiative is an attempt to provide a more complete understanding of warfare’s impacts by moving beyond immediate casualties.

“You are also harming civilians and the environment over the long term in ways that can’t be counted immediately,” Weinthal said. “If people don’t have access to clean drinking water, you will see more waterborne illnesses and infectious disease among the population.”

Weinthal said the frequent coupling of large desalination facilities and the power plants that feed them makes such facilities particularly vulnerable. “You don’t even have to destroy a desalination plant or a water treatment plant if you take out a power plant,” Weinthal said.

As the planet warms, the region will likely become increasingly dependent on desalination. Precipitation across the Middle East and North Africa is anticipated to decrease by 10 to 30 percent over the next century. By 2050, the region is projected to incur economic losses equal to 6 to 14 percent of its gross domestic product due to climate-induced water scarcity, according to the World Bank.

Climate change will also increase coastal water temperatures and salinity, reducing the efficiency of desalination plants, concluded a 2022 report by the Regional Organization for the Protection of the Marine Environment, an intergovernmental organization of eight Persian Gulf states.

Currently, almost all the Middle East’s desalination plants are powered by fossil fuels, with 93 percent of the required electricity coming from burning natural gas and 6 percent from burning oil. Some countries, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, have begun to develop renewable energy or nuclear power to drive desalination. However, only about one-third of Middle Eastern countries employ renewable energy for that purpose or have immediate plans to integrate it with freshwater production.

Globally, reverse osmosis desalination uses an estimated 100 terrawatt hours of energy per year, equivalent to approximately 0.4 percent of global electricity consumption. Emissions associated with that energy use were approximately 76 million tons of carbon dioxide in 2014, a figure projected to increase to 400 million tons of CO2 by 2050, according to a recent report by TRENDS Research & Advisory, an independent think tank based in Abu Dhabi. That 2050 figure is equal to the annual greenhouse gas emissions of 93 million automobiles, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency.

“Unless you go to solar or a nuclear solution, you’re most likely contributing to more fossil-fuel use [and] more carbon forcing,” Low said. “It’s kind of a vicious cycle.”

2026-03-16 02:36:48

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s Pentagon has come up with a plan to limit the independence of Stars and Stripes, the news publication for members of the US military that has been published continuously since World War II.  

Under the new policy, Stars and Stripes, which has historically operated with a large degree of editorial freedom, reports that it will generally be blocked from carrying news stories from wire services like the Associated Press, as well as from publishing comics. It is also being directed to publish material from the Defense Department’s own public affairs offices.

The memo is part of a broader pattern of the Pentagon under Hegseth trying to shape and limit the amount of information the public receives about US military operations. It comes as the Trump administration wages an unpopular war in Iran that has sent oil prices soaring.

The “interim” requirements for Stars and Stripes are included in an eight-page memo that is dated March 9. The news outlet was not notified about the memo. Instead, a staff member at the publication found the memo on DoD’s website. Stars and Stripes reported on Friday that the document was written without any input from the publication. 

The memo follows a January post on X from Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell announcing that DoD was planning to “refocus” the content of Stars and Stripes “away from woke distractions that syphon morale.” The newspaper, which receives much of its funding from the Pentagon, would also shift to being a digital-only outlet, which would bring to an end to its more than 80 years in print. (The paper was first published by Union soldiers during the Civil War and later revived.)

Stars and Stripes editor-in-chief Erik Slavin told NPR that he was especially concerned about a requirement in the memo that the publication’s articles “must be consistent with good order and discipline.” That phrase comes from the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the foundation of US military law.

“If they were to complete a story that the Defense Department did not like, and did not find ‘consistent with good order and discipline,’ would they be in legal jeopardy?” Slavin said in the interview with NPR. “We don’t know the answer to that.”

The paper’s ombudsman Jacqueline Smith, who is tasked by Congress with protecting Stars and Stripes’ editorial independence, said in an interview with the Washington Post that the memo “threatens Stars and Stripes’ continued editorial independence, and it does so at the detriment of the troops who rely on the newspaper for complete coverage and continued accurate coverage that is not propaganda.”

The memo also states that Stars and Stripes “should” republish content from the DoD’s public affairs offices, which would be labeled as coming from the Pentagon rather than Stars and Stripes‘ own reporters. Slavin, the editor-in-chief, said he has “no plans to commingle military public relations offerings with our independent reporting.”

In a further effort to kneecap the paper’s reporting, the memo bars reporters at Stars and Stripes from submitting Freedom of Information Act requests on behalf of the publication. Stars and Stripes reporters are also prohibited from publishing “controlled unclassified information.” A related push to restrict the work of reporters at other outlets led to dozens of members of the Pentagon press corps turning in their press badges last year.