2026-03-29 07:30:22
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.”
2026-03-29 05:16:11
Polls show that the majority of Americans oppose President Donald Trump’s war in Iran. Those numbers go even higher when the prospect of boots on the ground is included. The war has even repelled some of Trump’s biggest supporters in the MAGA world, who thought he was serious when he promised during his 2024 campaign that he wouldn’t engage in foreign wars if elected.
But none of those schisms were on display Saturday at CPAC, the nation’s oldest conservative political convention, when Reza Pahlavi took the stage. The son of the last shah of Iran was given rock star treatment and greeted with roars of approval from an audience filled with Iranian-Americans who back Trump’s attack on Iran.
“Can you imagine Iran going from death to America to God bless America?” he asked the raucous crowd. “Well, I, too can.” He pitched Trump’s war as an opportunity for Iranians to finally throw off 47 years of oppressive theocratic rule, and offered up himself as the chosen one who would lead the country through its transition to freedom.
“Unlike the regime that worships death and destruction, the Iranian people celebrate life and liberty,” he said. “That’s why I can imagine an Iran that exports engineers instead of extremists, startups instead of suicide bombers, energy instead of hatred.” With echoes of Trump’s “Make America Great Again” motto, Pahlavi said, “I can imagine in the Middle East where Iran is no longer a source of chaos, but an anchor of stability that does not fear its people, doesn’t threaten its neighbors, doesn’t isolate itself from the world. Imagining this is not difficult, because this is exactly what Iran once was, and what it can be again.”
The moment was surprisingly moving. Hundreds of exiled Iranians, many with children in tow, were clearly longing for Pahlavi to deliver change for the good. Yet the crown prince’s future—as well as exiles who hope to return to Iran—rests almost entirely on Trump, which seems like risky business. After all, Trump has the attention span of a gnat, and already he’s facing a revolt from his own party over the war.
Media stars like Tucker Carlson and Joe Rogan have been openly breaking with Trump for betraying his campaign promises. At CPAC, where most speakers seemed largely supportive of the war, former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) sounded a discordant note, saying, “A ground invasion of Iran will make our country poorer and less safe. It will mean higher gas prices, higher food prices. And I’m not sure if we would end up killing more terrorists than we would create.”
Some Republicans in Congress like Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) have joined with Democrats to try to pass a war powers resolution that would limit the president’s ability to wage war in Iran. Gas prices are skyrocketing as Iran continues to strangle the critical Strait of Hormuz, an outcome that seems to have taken Trump by surprise.
Faced with increasing opposition at home to the war, Trump has suggested that “me and the Ayatollah” might jointly oversee the operation of the strait, a partnership that would seem anathema to Iranian exiles in the US.
At CPAC, Pahlavi seemed to recognize the limits of America’s support for regime change in Iran through military action. “What we ask of America now is simple: Stay the course,” he pleaded. “Pave the way for the Iranian people to finish the job.”
The crown prince framed himself as the leader of an Iranian MAGA movement, and his supporters openly pined for the restoration for the shah. In that sense, they seemed much like American conservatives imagining a better past that never was. After all, Iran wasn’t exactly a model of democracy before the 1979 Iranian revolution. While he may have been a modernizing force, Pahlavi’s father was an authoritarian monarch who oversaw a one-party state that also engaged in torture and human rights abuses. Many of the Iranians I met at CPAC were far too young to remember life under the shah, and they seemed to view pre-revolutionary Iran with sepia tones.
“Iran, as it was before 1979, you know, we had a great country,” Sara Paras told me. “We were progressing. But now with the Ayatollah and Islamic regime, they are just destroying our country.” Paras, 29, is an enthusiastic backer of Pahlavi. “He is the representative of the people of Iran. He wants the same thing that the Iranian people want, too. They want freedom.”
While Pahlavi seems to have a large following of Iranians inside the US, Trump and his aides have reportedly called him the “loser prince” because they don’t believe he has much support inside Iran, a country the suburban Maryland resident hasn’t visited in 50 years. At CPAC, however, Pahlavi pushed back on such criticism. “I have unified a broad coalition of dissidents, republicans, and monarchists, left and right,” he said. “Men and women of all ages, religions, and ethnicities. Even people who were former political opponents have joined the movement to free Iran under my leadership.”
One thing Pahlavi didn’t promise to deliver in Iran: immediate elections—though he has said that those will happen eventually.
“The Iran story is not yet finished,” he said, concluding his speech. “Great civilizations outlast even the most vicious occupiers. With your help and with the courage, sacrifice and heroism of Iran’s greatest youth, our best latest chapter is being written right now. When it is done, a free and democratic Iran will stand alongside the United States as a partner, ally, and a friend. President Trump is making America great again. I intend to make Iran great again.”
2026-03-29 01:37:32
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.
2026-03-28 23:43:00
Persians for Trump are here in force.
Steve Bannon was broadcasting his War Room show live from the CPAC exhibit hall on Friday morning. A small crowd had gathered around the sound stage, and one of Bannon’s minions passed the mike to an onlooker named Nima Poursohi, who was wearing a “Persians for Trump” T-shirt, a Trump-Vance hat, and mirrored sunglasses. Bannon asked him what his shirt was all about. “I’m proud to represent the Iranian–American community and their quest for freedom after 47 years of repression and tyranny under a repressive regime,” Poursohi yelled into the mike.
But he was only getting started.
“I cannot tell you how grateful the people of Iran, and the Iranian–American diaspora is for President Trump, because no other president had the courage to stand up to the Islamic regime,” he continued. “There is not a single Iranian- American who does not like Trump. President Trump, you hear me loud and clear: We love you, we’ll forever be grateful. You are the next King Cyrus the Great,” he said, invoking the founder of the Persian Empire, who is credited with liberating the Jews from captivity.
Bannon, who opposes deploying American ground troops to the Middle East, asked him if the Iranians finally overthrew radical Islam, “would they be a great ally to America?” Poursohi was unequivocal. “You have no idea, brother,” he replied. “The Persians would be the greatest ally ever.”
Poursohi seemed to speak for the remarkably large contingent of Iranians who have come this week to Grapevine, Texas, to attend the nation’s oldest conservative convention. President Donald Trump’s traditional MAGA base may be torn between their opposition to the foreign wars he had campaigned against and his latest foray into a messy Middle East conflict. But the Iranians at CPAC had no such reservations.
Ray Rezaeifar, an Iranian who has been in the US for 15 years and works as an engineer in Houston, told me that Iranians have always attended CPAC, but that this year at least five times more of them showed up. “I support President Trump. I love him—his ideology,” he told me. “We truly appreciate President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu. They really support Iran.”
At first glance, the Iranians might seem an unusual pocket of support for Trump and the larger conservative movement. After all, the MAGA faithful are inclined to see anyone from the Middle East as a potential terrorist threat rather than an ally in the fight against woke liberals. Indeed, Iranians have not been exempt from the mass deportation efforts of the Trump administration. Hundreds have been swept up in the effort and many have been Christian converts and political dissidents.
But the Persians at CPAC are staunch Republicans who supported Trump long before the war started. And many of them have been finding common cause with MAGA’s Islamophobes, who have seen a resurgence in the past year since the election of New York City Mayor Zohran Mandami, a Shia Muslim.
In early March, Poursohi attended the anti-Islam protest in front of Gracie Mansion organized by January 6 rioter Jake Lang, where two teenagers allegedly inspired by ISIS, threw explosive devices into the crowd.
Some of the Iranians I met at CPAC said they may have been raised Muslim, but no longer practiced. Others were Baha’i, part of a religious minority that’s persecuted in Iran. One man told me that he is first an Iranian, but if pressed on his religious affiliation, he considers himself a Zoroaster, following the ancient Persian belief in the ethical tenets of “three good things.”
Iranians have been carrying signs around the convention center that say, “Don’t Sharia My Dog.” They’re put out by a Texas group trying to pass an anti-Sharia state ballot measure by focusing on conservative Islam’s restrictions on dog ownership. The signs dovetail with legislation introduced in February by Rep. Randy Fine (R-Fla.), called the “Protecting Puppies from Sharia Act” that would block federal funds from any state that bans dog ownership. (None has.) “In America, we will not allow anyone to tell us that we cannot have dogs,” Fine said when he introduced the bill. “There are 57 countries that are Sharia compliant; the United States will not be the 58th.”
What also unites many of the Iranians at CPAC, aside from their dislike of the Islamic Republic of Iran, is their nostalgia for the days of the shah, whom they hope Trump will return to power. They have set their sights specifically on “King” Reza Pahlavi, the son of the last shah who was deposed in the 1979 revolution because of his corrupt and repressive governance. Pahlavi was scheduled to speak at CPAC on Saturday.
On Friday morning, Akbar Ravari, from Katy, Texas, was watching the War Room broadcast with his wife. He came to the US two years before the Iranian revolution, but his wife only arrived two years ago. They were both wearing new T-shirts with the image of Trump and Pahlavi emblazoned across the pre-revolutionary Iranian flag. Ravari loves Trump and had been hoping to see him at the conference. He was deflated when I told him that the president was probably going to be in Florida golfing on Saturday. Nonetheless, Ravari told me he “100 percent supports the war” in Iran, and believes that restoring the shah’s son will return democracy and women’s rights to his native country.
But Trump seems likely to disappoint his Persian supporters. According to the New Yorker, Trump and his aides refer to Pahlavi as the “loser prince,” because they don’t believe he has sufficient support within Iran to lead an uprising against the existing regime. (Pahlavi, a longtime resident of suburban Maryland, hasn’t visited Iran in at least 50 years.) And recently, Trump has suggested that “me and the Ayatollah” might jointly oversee the operation of the critical Strait of Hormuz, a partnership that would seem anathema to Iranian exiles in the US.
But thus far, those comments didn’t seem to have dimmed Trump’s support among the Iranians at CPAC. When I asked about Trump’s comments regarding his potential cooperation with “the Ayatollah,” Ray Rezaeifar told me the president is “very good and talented with playing with the media.” He thinks Trump was just joking. “He’s looking for peace. President Trump is a smart guy. He’s protecting America.”
2026-03-28 20:00:00
This story was originally published by Inside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
Beneath the neon lights of a laser-scanning microscope, newly classified species glow in vivid greens and oranges—a far cry from the pitch-black abyss of their natural ocean floor.
Researchers have identified 24 new deep-sea creatures and a whole new evolutionary branch in the Clarion Clipperton Zone (CCZ), a wide swath of ocean between Hawaii and Mexico. The findings surface as the Trump administration, via a January mandate from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, has fast-tracked permits for deep sea mining in that zone, one of the planet’s richest rare-earth metal regions.
The identification of a new branch of life underscores the stakes of an international regulatory vacuum: Mining might be allowed to occur before scientists even have the chance to name species that call the seabed home.
Tammy Horton, co-author and researcher at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton, explained the significance of a new evolutionary branch this way: “If you imagine that on planet Earth, we know about carnivorous mammals, we know that bears exist and we know that the families of cats exist, it would be like finding dogs.”
That superfamily of amphipods that researchers described dwell 13,000 feet down. Compared to their shallow-water relatives—like common sand fleas tucked under seaweed on beaches—these deep-sea species have evolved in darkness for millions of years. The shrimp-like creatures with a unique conical mouth mostly measure around one centimeter.
NOAA is reviewing an application from The Metals Co. to target more than 25,000 square miles of the zone where the new species live for deep-sea mining.
“It was, and it still is, the most exciting thing I’ve had in my career,” said Horton, highlighting how discovering new species in the deep sea is relatively common, but only very rarely a new superfamily. “It just shows you how little we know about what’s in the deep sea.”
The breakthrough was the result of immense scientific collaboration. Horton and co-author Anna Jażdżewska each individually worked on their collections before realizing they’d reached the same conclusions. Merging datasets and bringing together a team of more than a dozen experts accelerated the often years-long taxonomic process into a single week’s workshop.
Researchers immortalized their finds by naming them. Byblis hortonae and Byblisoides jazdzewskae took inspiration from Horton and Jażdżewska, respectively, while Horton bestowed her daughter’s name on the new superfamily: Mirabestia maisie. The names serve a deeper purpose than mere tribute.
Naming species affords them a “passport for living,” said Jażdżewska, professor at the University of Łódź. It allows people and policymakers to think about a species like the living entity it is.
“Until they are properly named for science in this official way, they are not communicable about,” said Horton. “It absolutely gives them a passport to be discussed, to be talked about, to be conserved.”
However, with over 90 percent of species in the CCZ still unnamed, it will likely be difficult for policymakers to know the true impacts of proposed deep-sea mining projects on fauna.
Spanning 1.7 million square miles of the eastern Pacific seabed, the CCZ teems with significant stores of manganese nodules. These potato-sized deposits contain high concentrations of battery-grade metals such as nickel, cobalt and copper.
In January, NOAA finalized changes to the Deep Seabed Hard Mineral Resources Act that fast-track deep-sea mining projects by allowing companies to apply for a commercial recovery permit at the same time as an exploration license. Previously, companies were required to undertake extensive scientific research prior to receiving an extraction permit.
“This consolidation modernizes the law and supports the America First agenda,” said Neil Jacobs, NOAA’s administrator, in a statement. Earlier this month, NOAA accepted for review an application from The Metals Co. to target over 25,000 square miles of the same zone where the new species live.
Mining exacts an environmental cost. Just two months after commercial machinery plowed the CCZ’s silty seabed in large-scale tests in 2022, species abundance dropped 37 percent and biodiversity fell by almost a third, according to sediment analysis by the UK’s Natural History Museum.
Horton and Jażdżewska plan to keep uncovering the wonders of the deep sea as part of the International Seabed Authority’s Sustainable Seabed Knowledge Initiative to identify 1,000 new species by the end of the decade.
Indeed, while the description of two dozen new species and the discovery of a new superfamily is a monumental leap, researchers know much further identification work lies ahead. Understanding how the animals live, how they reproduce and what they feed on is completely unknown beyond basic inference, said Jażdżewska.
“We’ve just done 24 and that is a drop in the ocean, literally, of how many more we have to describe,” said Horton.
2026-03-28 15:01:00
Last year, arts organizations and cultural institutions across the US received an alarming message: Their federal grants had been canceled.
The letters said their projects no longer aligned with new federal priorities and that money was being redirected toward the Trump administration’s agenda. The grants had funded museum exhibits, public art programs, historical research, and community arts initiatives.
Subscribe to Mother Jones podcasts on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app.Angela Sutton and a team of archaeologists were in the middle of excavating a long-forgotten Black neighborhood in Nashville when she got the news: “Just got an email out of the blue saying, ‘Please stop. You’re done.’”
This week on Reveal, reporter Jonathan Jones travels to Nashville and beyond one year after the cancellations to meet the people living with the fallout. From musicians to visual artists, historians, and arts administrators, they’re confronting a new reality: Federal support now depends on the shifting political priorities in Washington. Some organizations are scaling back their work. Others worry artists will censor themselves just to survive. But many are fighting back.
