2026-03-01 03:36:17
As the death toll reportedly rises in Iran and violence spreads through the Middle East, people around the world are responding to the war launched Saturday by the United States and Israel. Confusion, fear, celebration, destruction, and protest have defined the last 12 hours.
Here are some of the scenes unfolding across the globe:
2026-03-01 02:09:47
In the wee hours of Saturday morning, President Donald Trump announced he had launched a war against Iran. He insisted that Iran posed a direct threat to the United States. He detailed its past acts of aggression. He claimed he had tried to reach a deal with Tehran to end its nuclear program. He warned the public that American soldiers might die as a result of this attack. He noted that the aim of this war was to end the Iranian regime and urged the people of Iran to rise up and “take over your government.”
What Trump did not say was that he had a plan.
It’s easy for an American president to bomb a country. It’s much tougher to figure out what to do in the aftermath. Trump, who initiated this attack with Israel without seeking congressional authorization (as the Constitution requires), clearly engaged in little, if any, preparation for what comes following this “massive” operation, as he termed it.
Trump appears to be winging it, letting loose the dogs of war and then seeing what the hell happens.
For years, Trump has demonstrated that he often sees no need for plans. He vowed repeatedly during the 2024 campaign that he could end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours. But he had no plan to do so. In his first term as president, he said he could deliver cheaper and better health care. But he proposed no plan for that. He also said he would rebuild American infrastructure and, again, put forward no plan. He tends to act impulsively, believing chaos and discord can be exploited by a masterful negotiator, as he sees himself.
Yet one of the most obvious lessons of the past 25 years is that warring requires planning—not just for the initial assault but for what occurs afterward. The best example is the Iraq War. George Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld had no idea what to do after the invasion and the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s tyrannical regime. In the violent chaos that ensued for years afterward, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians died, ISIS arose, regional instability reigned—and Iran consolidated power.
It’s not that the brighter bulbs of the Bush-Cheney administration did not see the need to prep for the post-invasion period. As Michael Isikoff and I reported in Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War, in the months prior to the war—when it was evident Bush was committed to attacking Iraq—there were several well-executed projects focused on what would need to be done after Saddam was forcibly removed from power.
A small Pentagon unit examined this question, assuming a high level of violence would continue after Saddam was deposed. Its analysts concluded that an enormous number of US troops would be required to provide security throughout the country—a greater amount than those being sent to Iraq for the invasion.
Separately, the Army deputy chief of staff for operations and plans asked the War College’s Strategic Studies Institute to examine post-war questions, and it produced a report identifying numerous challenges for any occupation. The paper tallied 135 post-invasion tasks that would have to be accomplished to reestablish an Iraqi state. This included securing the borders, setting up local governments, protecting religious sites, maintaining power systems, opening hospitals, and disarming militias. A big concern was what to do about the Iraqi Army. This paper recommended not disbanding it. (The Bush-Cheney crowd did dismantle the army, a move that fueled vicious sectarian violence.) “Massive resources need to be focused on this [post-occupation] effort,” the report said.
The State Department, too, tried to do the responsible thing. A year before the invasion, it established the Future of Iraq project. This operation had 17 working groups, full of Iraqi exiles (lawyers, engineers, academics, and businesspeople), that considered all the steps necessary to remake a post-Saddam Iraq: reorganizing the military and police, creating a new legal system, restructuring the economy, and repairing the nation’s water and electric power system, among many other tasks.
The Bush-Cheney White House wasn’t interested in any of these exercises. In one pre-invasion meeting of the National Security Council, Bush asked Gen. Tommy Franks, the CENTCOM commander in charge of the invasion, about security in Iraq after Saddam’s ouster. Who would maintain law and order? he inquired. Franks said he had that covered: The US would keep the peace, and each major Iraqi town and village would have a “lord mayor”—an appointed US military officer who would be in charge of preserving civic order and administering basic services.
That was an idiotic concept. Worse, there was not even a true plan to designate and install these “lord mayors.” This seemed to be just Franks’ own fanciful notion. No such exercise was even attempted following the invasion. The lack of a post-Saddam game plan led to a debacle.
The Iraq War case illustrates both how much work it took to devise post-war plans and the disastrous results that came from the Bush-Cheney gang eschewing these preparations for the aftermath.
There’s no sign that the Trump administration has spent months—or even days— working out what should be done after this military operation. Instead, his Pentagon spent the hours leading up to the attack feuding with an American AI company, various “woke” universities, and Scouting America. Trump appears to be winging it, letting loose the dogs of war and then seeing what the hell happens.
There’s another Bush-related episode that casts a shadow on Trump’s actions. In his statement, Trump egged on the Iranian people to rebel against the mullahs, declaring: “America is backing you with overwhelming strength and devastating force. Now is the time to seize control of your destiny and to unleash the prosperous and glorious future that is close within your reach.”
This sounded familiar. At the end of the Persian Gulf War that President George H.W. Bush launched in 1991 to drive Saddam’s forces out of Kuwait, the elder Bush called for “the Iraqi military and the Iraqi people to take matters into their own hands to force Saddam Hussein, the dictator, to step aside.” Many Iraqis took this as a signal that the United States would support them if they mounted a revolution, and they did so. Bush did nothing to assist these rebels, and to quell this uprising Saddam slaughtered tens of thousands of Iraqis.
Trump appears to be following the bad examples of both Bushes. There are no preparations for what to do if he succeeds in driving the ayatollahs out of power and no strategy for protecting the opposition should it heed Trump’s call and face a further violent crackdown.
Trump has no plan for Iran. Just blow shit up, kill some people, and hope for the best. Tehran, for all its horrific transgressions (including its recent killing of thousands of protesters), did not pose an immediate threat to the United States. Perhaps military action against this regime could be justified. But there was ample time to seek congressional authorization and an international alliance for a regime-change war. Instead, Trump proceeded with an unconstitutional action without readying for what is to follow. It is the war of a Mad King.
2026-03-01 01:03:49
The United States and Israel launched a massive military assault against Iran on Saturday—a steep and sudden escalation following negotiations between the US and Iran over the latter’s nuclear program. According to President Donald Trump and senior Israeli officials, Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other top officials have been killed in the attacks. Iran has retaliated, targeting American bases and US-allied countries across the region.
It’s unclear how many people have been killed so far. Iran’s state-run Islamic Republic News Agency, or IRNA, has reported significant casualties, including dozens killed at a girl’s school during a US-Israel strike; the New York Times said that it was unable to immediately verify that report. According to the United Arab Emirates, one person was killed by falling debris from an Iranian ballistic missile.
In an 8-minute video posted to Truth Social early Saturday, Trump confirmed the attacks, calling the Iranian regime a “vicious group of very hard, terrible people.” He described the operation as “major combat activities” and said his administration had taken steps to minimize risk to US forces in the region. But, he added, “the lives of courageous American heroes may be lost and we may have casualties. That often happens in war.”
Trump urged the Iranian people to “take over their government” following the attacks. Anti-government protests in the nation have been taking place for months, and the regime has responded with a brutal crackdown. According to the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency, Iranian forces had killed more than 7,000 people as of February 11; tens of thousands more have been arrested.
Trump referred to those atrocities in his video Saturday. He also blamed Iran for the failed nuclear negotiations, claiming, “They rejected every opportunity to renounce their nuclear ambitions, and we can’t take it anymore.”
Badr Albusaidi, the Omani foreign minister who was mediating negotiations before the attacks, said Saturday that he was “dismayed.”
“Active and serious negotiations have yet again been undermined. Neither the interests of the United States nor the cause of global peace are well served by this,” Albusaidi wrote on social media. “And I pray for the innocents who will suffer. I urge the United States not to get sucked in further. This is not your war.”
The response from global leaders allied with the US was mixed.
Canada and Australia backed the campaign against Iran. Britain, France, and Germany issued a joint statement, saying they were critical of Iran’s nuclear policies and “the appalling violence and repression against its own people.” But that trio of countries stopped short of explicitly supporting the strikes. “We did not participate in these strikes, but are in close contact with our international partners, including the United States, Israel, and partners in the region,” the statement said. “We reiterate our commitment to regional stability and to the protection of civilian life.”
As US and Israeli strikes continued and Iranian forces launched their own attacks, civilians around the region rushed to whatever safe space they could find. An engineer living in Tehran described the fear in a text message to the New York Times: “My children are crying and scared. We are huddling in the bathroom. We don’t know what to do. This is terrifying.”
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
2026-02-28 20:30:00
This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
One day, you’ll appreciate drinking recycled toilet water.
Urban populations are growing as water supplies are dwindling, often due to worsening droughts. In response, some communities are treating wastewater, rendering it perfectly safe for consumption. It is so pure, in fact, that if a treatment facility doesn’t add enough of the minerals the filtering process strips out, it could do serious damage to the human body. And trust me—it tastes great, too.
Cities throughout the American West are already recycling water, easing pressures on dwindling supplies. Now here’s a thought experiment: How much would you pay on your utility bill for the privilege of reused water, if it meant avoiding shortages and rationing in the future?
A recent survey offers one answer. Residents of communities of fewer than 10,000 people said they’d be willing to drop an average of $49 to do so. That money would underwrite water reuse programs, including rain capture systems. “I do think it is a bipartisan issue,” said Todd Guilfoos, an economist at the University of Rhode Island and co-author of the new paper. “It’s often just cheaper than some of the other available solutions.”
Wastewater recycling is not some far-out, prohibitively complicated technology. Western states are already doing a lot of it: A study published last year found that Nevada reuses 85 percent of its water, and Arizona 52 percent. Water agencies do this with reverse osmosis, passing the liquid through fine membranes to filter out solids before blasting it with UV light, which destroys any microbes. On a smaller scale, apartment buildings can house their own treatment infrastructure, cycling water back into units for nonpotable use, like flushing toilets.
On the municipal level, though, it’s expensive to build such facilities and run them continuously—it takes a lot of energy, for instance, to force water through those membranes. For a small community, charging each household $49 per month wouldn’t be quite enough to get a system up and running. “While that might be enough for operating, that doesn’t include what it would cost to actually build whatever water reuse infrastructure that you would need,” Guilfoos said. That’s when a town can turn to federal or state grants, or maybe utilize municipal bonds, to break ground. “I think communities need a little bit of a bump, actually, to get there,” Guilfoos added. “I think usually it’s in the face of some crises that these things end up getting built.”
Those crises are piling up across the US. Droughts are forcing some rural areas to pump more and more H2O from aquifers, depleting them. Tapped unsustainably, these underground supplies can collapse like an empty water bottle, making the land above sink, a phenomenon known as subsidence. This is a particularly pernicious problem in agricultural regions—California’s San Joaquin Valley has sunk up to 28 feet in recent decades, to offer just one example.
$49 a month could fund bioswales—ditches full of vegetation that not only collect stormwater, but provide habitat for native plants and pollinators. “
If supplies dwindle, a small community would have no choice but to ration water. Getting more efficient about using what we have can help, like encouraging the adoption of thriftier toilets and spraying less on lawns, as Las Vegas has done. (Those thirsty patches of green are in general an environmental mess, beyond their use of water.) But to truly get more sustainable, a community will have to recycle the H2O it has no choice but to use.
What’s interesting about this study, says Michael Kiparsky, director of the Wheeler Water Institute at the University of California, Berkeley, is the apparent overcoming of the “yuck factor.” “There’s a visceral reaction to drinking reused water, particularly reused wastewater, that’s totally understandable,” said Kiparsky, who wasn’t involved in the research. “But over time, that has faded as the notion of reusing water to augment water supplies, including for drinking water, has become increasingly legitimized.”
At the same time, simple infrastructural improvements can capture heaps of another supply that’s readily wasted: rain. That $49 a month could fund bioswales, for instance—ditches full of vegetation that not only collect stormwater, but provide habitat for native plants and pollinators. Cities like Los Angeles are making themselves more “spongy” in this way, with roadside plots of land that collect runoff in subterranean tanks. Elsewhere, architects are building “agrihoods” around working farms that store precipitation to hydrate their crops through the summer.
In the American West, farmers are also having to contend with water whiplash, meaning years of plenty followed by years of desiccation. Generally speaking, rain is falling more heavily because a warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture, increasing the bounty. But so too does climate change exacerbate droughts, making wastewater reuse especially welcome on farms. “All of this makes the water supply less certain in any given year, and more volatile from year to year,” said Tom Corringham, a research economist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, who wasn’t involved in the new paper. “So any strategies that we can find that can smooth out the water cycle are beneficial.”
In addition to recycling wastewater, farmers are recharging the aquifers beneath their feet: When rains fall heavily, and there’s a surplus of water, channels divert fluid into “spreading grounds”—basically big dirt bowls built into the landscape. That allows precipitation to percolate back into the ground, reducing loss from evaporation, replacing what’s been drawn out, and helping avoid land subsidence. Then, when needed, a farm can pump the water back out of the ground, in which case it doesn’t need to draw from, say, a dam, leaving more water for others to use.
Together with wastewater reuse, aquifer recharge can help bolster the water system for the climatically perilous years ahead. As metropolises like Mexico City and Cape Town run the risk of running out of water, drinking recycled wastewater will be a whole lot more appealing than losing hydration entirely.
2026-02-28 16:01:00
The schools in Steubenville, Ohio, are doing something unusual—in fact, it’s almost unheard of. In a country where nearly 40 percent of fourth graders struggle to read at even a basic level, Steubenville has succeeded in teaching virtually all of its students to read well.
According to data from the Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford University, Steubenville has routinely scored in the top 10 percent or better of schools nationwide for third-grade reading, sometimes scoring as high as the top 1 percent.
Subscribe to Mother Jones podcasts on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app.In study after study for decades, researchers have found that districts serving low-income families almost always have lower test scores than districts in more affluent places. Yet Steubenville bucks that trend.
“It was astonishing to me how amazing that elementary school was,” said Karin Chenoweth, who wrote about Steubenville in her book How It’s Being Done: Urgent Lessons From Unexpected Schools.
This week on Reveal, reporter Emily Hanford shares the latest from the hit APM Reports podcast Sold a Story. We’ll learn how Steubenville became a model of reading success—and how a new law in Ohio put it all at risk.
This is an update of an episode that originally aired in April 2025.
2026-02-28 04:51:09
Avery Rowland starts almost all of her days by posting a TikTok video beginning with “good morning” and, often, explaining the latest anti-transgender action from her state’s Republican supermajority.
“Today is a rough day here in Kansas,” Rowland, who grew up in the state and is now running for a state representative seat, began her TikTok on Thursday. “My license got invalidated.”
Rowland is one of the hundreds of transgender Kansans now tasked with replacing their driver’s licenses after a new state law went into effect this week that invalidates preexisting IDs with gender markers that do not match someone’s sex assigned at birth. The law applies to new IDs moving forward, too. It also invalidates the birth certificates of people who changed the document’s gender marker. If a driver is caught on the road with an old ID, they’ll be required to surrender it. In Kansas, driving without a license could result in fines and, in specific cases, end in jail time.
The new law, known as SB 244, also mandates people entering government-owned buildings to use the restrooms, showers, and locker rooms that correspond with sex assigned at birth. In an escalation from some other state laws, it deputizes people to accuse others, allowing anyone to claim someone used the restroom not allowed under the law and sue for damages of $1,000. Two transgender Kansans sued to strike down the law and pause the state’s enforcement on Friday.
“The persecution is the point,” Rep. Abi Boatman, a Wichita Democrat and the only transgender member of the legislature, told The Kansas City Star. Boatman, like other Kansans who had changed a gender marker on their identification, received a letter in the mail this week noting that their license would be invalid. The law doesn’t include a grace period for changing IDs and also doesn’t provide funding, forcing individuals to pay the cost of the new driver’s license.
The law was rushed. Republicans used a “gut and go” maneuver. Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly vetoed the bill, but the legislature quickly overrode the decision.
“They want me to hide or leave or disappear, not to be visible and active in public society,” Rowland told me. She’s running in this year’s midterm for the Kansas House of Representatives to represent District 2 as a Democrat.
I spoke with Rowland about the law and going toe-to-toe with the state’s Republican lawmakers.
Could you walk me through this morning?
My work is a 25 mile commute, so I didn’t feel comfortable driving without a valid license. I went to the county courthouse because it was only a mile drive, and I felt I could do that safely.
I went in and I pulled some shenanigans. I looked up yesterday what is needed for a lost driver’s license, which was two proofs of ID and proof of residency. I talked to the clerk, a very kind, nice young lady, and I said, ‘I lost my license. I misplaced it, I need to replace it.’ And she did the whole thing, took a picture, and handed me a brand new paper printout license and it said female. And I thought, ‘hmm interesting.’ Then I pulled out the letter from my purse that says, ‘Avery Rowland, your valid license has been invalidated.’ I played kind of dumb, saying, ‘I don’t quite know what it means. What do I need to do?’
She looked at it, and she had no clue what to do. So she had to go call the state office, and then they changed it on their side in the computer from female to male, and then reprinted it. She was confused when I handed her the letter, because my passport says female, I very much look like a female, because I am a woman. It’s confusing.
Have legislators done a good enough job at informing their constituents that their IDs have been invalidated?
We are a Republican supermajority. So unless you live in a Democrat district, what do they give a shit about telling you that your license is invalidated? They obviously didn’t care enough to stop this legislation. I don’t expect a single peep out of it, other than ‘We’re keeping men out of the women’s restroom!’ from the Republicans. ‘Yay! We won! We kept the men out!’ I don’t expect a single word of ‘Hey, this is what you need to do.’
You’re not expecting a ‘Know Your Rights’ infographic.
Hell no.
This law also includes imposing these new limits on bathroom access.
The bathroom bounties. That’s a huge one that scares a lot of people. It’s not just the ideas. This is the fact that you can get a fine and be arrested for using the restroom, and people can sue. Nobody in Kansas knows how it’s going to be enforced.
Do you expect to see, as we’ve seen elsewhere, situations where people are asked to ‘prove’ which bathroom they can go to?
I think a lot of people will not comply with the law. If you pass, you’re going to use the restroom you’re going to use. But, there will be malicious compliance. And Kansas is a right to carry state. Kansas is a stand your ground state. So who knows what’s going to happen.
Are you scared?
Am I scared for myself? No.
Are you scared for others?
I’m scared for the gender nonconforming college kids, the teenagers and the adults who will never pass as cis without lots and lots of surgery, the folks who are obviously trans. Because trans is beautiful and you should have the right to live openly and authentically. And those people are being denied that. I’m being denied that as well, but we all are.
How much of your decision to run for office was based in this increasingly hostile environment for trans people in your state?
Essentially all of it. I’ve known since I was a little kid that I wanted to be a legislator of some sort. I got to visit Washington, DC, as a kid and I thought ‘Oh, this would be so cool to speak for people.’ It’s not just running for me, it’s for marginalized Kansans. Right now, I work for the state. I do food stamp processing. I work with the poorest of the poor. It’s about helping everybody. Kansas came into the Union as a free state 165 years ago and we should be a free state for everybody, not just cishet white Republican men.
This law doesn’t just impact IDs going forward, as some other states have done, but reverses validity of current documentation. What do you make of this escalation?
They have nothing. The Republicans have nothing. They cannot legislate, they cannot lead, they cannot govern. All they have are societal issues that they think are a wedge and that’s what they go after because they have nothing of substance. Because transgender folks are approximately 1 percent of the population, who’s going to miss us?
The Kansas GOP is just running roughshod: move fast and break stuff. They’re going just as fast as they can and ramming terrible bills through the state. And a lot of it’s performative, and this feels very much performative, because I imagine most of them don’t really care.
I don’t expect more transgender legislation this session. I do expect other states to go. ‘Hey, look what Kansas did.’ Now, there’ll be lawsuits. There’ll be lawsuits out the wazoo in Kansas and all the way up to the federal level.
There’s a general sense of confusion. It’s enacted; it’s rolled back; it’s going to this court. Maybe for a little bit, it’ll be allowed, but then who knows. What impact does this confusion have on Kansans?
It causes so much stress and anxiety of not knowing what’s going to happen—the turmoil of being in a whirlwind, in a Kansas tornado. Really, none of it matters. We’re trying to sort the fly shit from the pepper. It just blends in. You got to keep your eye on the prize and a bigger goal of freedom for everybody.
Can you tell me about choosing to stay?
The morning after Trump got elected the second time, we looked at all our options. We have enough privilege that we could leave if we wanted to. It wouldn’t be nice or fun, but we could get out. I said, ‘No.’ My wife desperately wanted to leave, still does. She’s not happy with me. But no, I want to fight for Kansas. I want to fight for the rights of queer people. If I weren’t staying to fight for that, I would go somewhere safe.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
