At Drop Site News, Jeremy Scahill reports that, despite Trump’s repeated public claims that Iran was capitulating, Tehran was operating on an entirely different strategic logic. A senior Iranian official with direct knowledge of internal diplomatic deliberations told Scahill that Iran is moving forward on its own design and sees no reason to resume negotiations while the US naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz remains in place.

Iranian analyst Hassan Ahmadian told Drop Site that Tehran believes time is working in its favor for what he calls the three Ms — munitions, markets, and the midterms — and that Iran is keen to deny the United States the kind of victory Trump could campaign on.

The chaotic back-and-forth over whether US envoys would travel to Islamabad illustrates the wider dysfunction. The White House has suggested Iran was lying about the forthcoming talks, with spokesperson Karoline Leavitt insisting that Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner would be heading to Pakistan.

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Iran continues to reject any suggestion that talks will happen, and after Araghchi left Islamabad and flew to Oman, Trump scrambled to claim he had actually called off the negotiations himself.

During previous talks, Iran perceived deep divisions on the American side. Ahmadian said the Iranian team left the April 11 Islamabad talks with the impression that there are stark differences between Vance on the one hand and Witkoff and Kushner on the other. The Iranians view the latter two as representatives of Israel rather than the US.

Iran, the senior official said, has no interest in dealing with Witkoff and Kushner without Vance present.

The senior Iranian official said the country’s assessment is that Washington has essentially decided to keep the war going until regime change is achieved, which the official predicted would continue to fail.

If You Read One More Thing: Jim Hines Whips Votes for Warrantless Spying

At The American Prospect, James Baratta has reported on a significant contradiction at the heart of the House Democrats’ posture on surveillance reform.

• According to emails seen by the Prospect, Himes is whipping votes ahead of Speaker Mike Johnson’s push to reauthorize Section 702 of FISA without a meaningful warrant requirement, encouraging Democratic colleagues to vote yes on a version of the bill he would later publicly describe as unacceptable.

• The bill includes warrant language that would merely codify existing law and make it easier for Section 702 data to be used against US citizens in criminal proceedings.

• Daniel Schuman, executive director of the nonpartisan American Governance Institute, told the Prospect that Himes was engaging in “surveillance theater,” and noted that during the 2024 FISA fight, a real warrant reform amendment had failed in part because Himes voted against it.

• Congressional authority for Section 702 wiretaps is set to expire Thursday, though the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has extended the program through next year.

Agent Orange and the VA’s Double Standard

Patricia Kime reports for MilitaryTimes.com that a Vietnam veteran and his daughter have filed suit against the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), alleging the agency discriminated against children of male veterans by denying them benefits it provided to children of female veterans for birth defects linked to Agent Orange exposure.

• The VA denied Ronald Christoforo’s application for Agent Orange-related disability benefits for his daughter Michele in 2022. with the VA telling him that Michele’s mother would have had to serve in Vietnam or Korea to qualify, despite the fact that Michele’s condition was specifically covered for children of female Vietnam veterans.

• The suit notes that roughly 200 children were born with birth defects to female Vietnam veterans, while an estimated 350,000 children of fathers who served had birth defects.

• The Christoforo family, represented by Yale Law School’s Veterans Legal Services Clinic, has asked the courts to extend benefits to all qualifying children regardless of whether their mother or father has served.

Deep Dive: AI Is Reshaping Military Decision-Making on the Battlefield

A new study published in the Journal of Science Engineering Technology and Management Science proposes an AI-driven military decision support system designed to automate the classification of battlefield imagery and reduce the lag between data collection and actionable intelligence.

The researchers behind the article, named “AI-Driven Military Decision Support System Using Deep Learning and Tactical Image Intelligence,” argue that the sheer volume of visual data now generated by drones, satellites, and reconnaissance systems has outpaced the capacity of traditional manual analysis, creating a dangerous gap at precisely the moment when speed and accuracy matter most.

The problem the researchers set out to solve is not a marginal one. Modern military operations generate images at a scale that existing tools cannot process in time to be useful.

Traditional approaches relying on manual analysis and rule-based techniques are, as the paper puts it, “time-consuming, less scalable, and prone to inconsistencies in dynamic battlefield conditions.” Human analysts working under high-stress conditions have made more errors, processed data more slowly, and could not keep pace with the operational tempo that contemporary warfare demands. The researchers argue that artificial intelligence offers a path out of this bottleneck, not by removing human judgment from the loop entirely, but by automating the classification stage so that decision-makers receive faster, more reliable inputs.

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The system the team built integrates several machine-learning architectures of varying sophistication. At the simpler end, a basic Perceptron model and a Decision Tree Classifier are included as baselines. More advanced is a Deep Neural Network, and most ambitious of all is a hybrid model combining a Convolutional Neural Network with a Long Short-Term Memory architecture, known as CNN-LSTM.

The rationale for the hybrid approach is that battlefield images are not simply static pictures to be analyzed in isolation. They contain both spatial features, the physical arrangement of objects within a frame, and sequential patterns that emerge across a series of images over time.

Convolutional layers are well suited to extracting spatial information, while LSTM layers, borrowed from natural language processing, are designed to capture temporal dependencies. By combining the two, the researchers aimed to build a model that could understand not just what is in a given image, but how what it is seeing related to what came before.

The dataset used to train and test the system consisted of 7,747 images drawn from five military categories: tanks, assault helicopters, self-propelled artillery, transport airplanes, and transport helicopters. Images are resized to a uniform 128 by 128 pixel dimension, normalized, and split into a training set of 6,197 images and a testing set of 1,550.

The preprocessing stage was designed to ensure consistency across inputs and reduce the risk that variability in image quality would confuse the model during training.

The performance results are striking. The basic Perceptron model achieved an accuracy of just 32.9%, confirming what the researchers anticipated: that simple linear classifiers are wholly inadequate for high-dimensional image data.

The Decision Tree Classifier performed considerably better at 90.12%, and the Deep Neural Network reached 89.67%. The hybrid Convolutional recurrent model, however, significantly outperformed all of them, achieving what the paper described as “an exceptional 98.83% accuracy, along with near-perfect precision, recall, and F-score values.”

The confusion matrix for the hybrid model reveals where the remaining errors cluster. Misclassifications were minimal and occurred almost entirely between visually similar helicopter categories, a result the researchers consider understandable given that assault and transport helicopters share many structural features. Tanks, self-propelled artillery, and transport airplanes are classified with very high precision.

The researchers tested the model against images it had not seen during training, and it correctly identified a ground-based combat vehicle as self-propelled artillery and an aerial image as a transport airplane, overlaying the predicted label directly onto the image in real time.

The system was deployed through a graphical user interface that separated administrative and end-user functions. Administrators managed dataset uploading, preprocessing, and model training, while end-users could submit new images and receive immediate predictions with visual output. The researchers argue that this role-based design made the system usable in operational environments without requiring the end-user to have any technical knowledge of the underlying models.

The broader implications of the research extend beyond the specific classification task. The authors position the system as part of a wider shift in military thinking toward what they call “data-centric approaches to complement traditional methods, thereby transforming tactical decision-making into a faster, more reliable, and evidence-based process.”

As drone warfare and satellite surveillance continue to expand the volume of visual data flowing into military command structures, the question of how quickly and accurately that data could be interpreted is becoming central to operational outcomes.

The researchers conclude that deep learning driven visual intelligence, particularly hybrid convolutional recurrent architectures, represented a scalable and practical answer to that challenge, one suited to real-world surveillance, reconnaissance, and operational planning applications.

Show Us the Receipts

At Inkstick, Buster Emil Kirchner and Marco Simoncelli report on escalating attacks on healthcare facilities in Sudan’s Nuba Mountains as the country’s civil war enters its third year. The World Health Organization has recorded 214 attacks on healthcare facilities since the outbreak of the war, with 184 people dying in the first quarter of 2026 alone. At Mother of Mercy Hospital, one of the region’s only referral surgical facilities, patients sometimes walk up to three days to reach care, while drone strikes have emerged as the leading cause of death and displacement. ACLED has recorded 515 drone strikes in 2025 that have killed at least 2,670 people, a nearly 600% increase in drone strike fatalities compared to the previous year.

Also at Inkstick, Margaux Seigneur has documented a pattern of destruction across southern Lebanon’s border region. More than 140 medical structures and ambulances have been struck, at least 100 healthcare workers have been killed, and more than 233 have been injured. After six weeks of war, relentless bombardment has forced more than a million people, one fifth of Lebanon’s population, from their homes. Seigneur found that the displacement is not incidental but structured, with a prolonged Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon appearing increasingly inevitable. And the violence is increasingly directed at civilians. A doctor treating injuries said, “Before, the strikes were more targeted. … Now, the cases we see are those of a wider war and entire families are being killed.”

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At The World, Joshua Coe reports on how years of separatist and militant insurgency in northern Cameroon has devastated girls’ access to education. The UN has reported that the conflict has disrupted the education of some 250,000 children, and the International Rescue Committee warns that girls are especially impacted as hidden victims of the conflict. IRC country director Antoinette Chibi describes a triple threat facing displaced girls: physical danger such as kidnapping, economic pressure that leads families to pull daughters out of school, and invisible psychological trauma. Fuel shortages driven by global conflicts have spiked the cost of living, pushing some families to withdraw their children from school entirely.

Support Inkstick Today

If you want to support our nonprofit journalism, there are several ways. We accept one-time donations and recurring monthly support year-round. We also make a sum off any of the snazzy Inkstick swag you purchase from our merch store. As always, any support you can offer will go directly toward our reporting. And if financial support isn’t something you can swing, then we’d love it if you shared our articles anywhere you are on social media.

Critical State is written by Inkstick Media in collaboration with The World.

The World is a weekday public radio show and podcast on global issues, news, and insights from PRX and GBH.

With an online magazine and podcast featuring a diversity of expert voices, Inkstick Media is “foreign policy for the rest of us.”

Critical State is made possible in part by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

Alon Pinkas writes for The New Republic that US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu entered the Iran war expecting a quick victory that would cement their legacies and silence their critics. The opposite has happened.

In the United States, there has been no rally-around-the-president effect. Polls have shown Trump’s approval rating hitting new lows, with support for the war falling below 40% and midterm elections looming.

In Israel, Netanyahu faced broad criticism from all sides, with critics and even some of his own allies pointing to his inability to resist Trump’s pressure to end the war. A core part of Netanyahu’s political appeal has rested on his supposed strategic alignment with Trump. That argument has now become far less convincing.

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Pinkas argues that the two leaders fed each other’s worst instincts. Netanyahu accurately identified Trump’s megalomania as a vulnerability he could exploit, massaging his ego and promising him a huge win.

Trump, a willing and enthusiastic participant, joined what he thought was a quick video game in which the other side would surrender fast, according to Pinkas. But Iran discovered something more effective than nuclear capability or a network of terror proxies: its power to control the Strait of Hormuz. The Middle East is left less safe, the global economy less stable, and Israel more isolated.

Each leader’s base has settled on the same explanation for the failure: “It’s the other guy’s fault.”

MAGA voters have concluded Trump has been duped by an external actor. Netanyahu’s supporters accused Trump of not going the distance.

Israel was one of the few countries in the world where Trump remained popular. There, he has become a disappointment, Pinkas writes.

If You Read One More Thing: The Post-Orbán Moment

EU foreign ministers gathered in Luxembourg for the first time since Viktor Orbán’s electoral defeat, and the mood has shifted, Nicholas Vinocur and Ferdinand Knapp report for Politico EU.

• Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna told Politico that for “years and years” Orbán had wielded his foreign policy veto to block pro-Ukraine measures, making gatherings of the foreign council feel futile. “Now there is definitely a new feeling in the room,” he said.

• Orbán signaled that Budapest could remove its veto on the €90 billion loan to Ukraine as early as that week, following a visit by top European Commission officials including Ursula von der Leyen’s chief of staff.

• Ministers said they hope to unblock a 20th package of sanctions against Russia, new sanctions against violent West Bank settlers, and stalled EU enlargement talks, including opening membership negotiations with Ukraine.

• Tsahkna notes that as Orbán departed, countries that had been “hiding behind Hungary” and letting Budapest absorb public criticism over positions they quietly shared would now be forced to take more explicit stances.

• Familiar divisions over Israel and the Middle East show no sign of resolving. Spain, Belgium, and Slovenia pushed to suspend the EU-Israel Association Agreement over settler violence and Gaza, but Germany and Italy blocked the proposal even without Hungary at the table.

Drones and a Golden Dome

Tanya Noury reports for Military Times on the Department of Defense unveiling a $1.5 trillion budget proposal for fiscal 2027, a 42% year-over-year increase and the most expensive military outlay in modern history.

• Each branch of the military was set to receive a substantial funding increase, with appropriations rising by 33.6% for the Air Force, 24.3% for the Navy, and 23.9 % for the Army, alongside service member pay raises ranging from 5% to 7%, depending on rank.

• Key priorities include the “Golden Dome” missile defense shield, drone warfare, artificial intelligence, and a shipbuilding program representing the largest such request since 1962, with more than $65 billion allocated to procure 18 warships and 16 support ships.

• A coalition of 289 advocacy groups sent a letter to lawmakers urging them to reject what they called a “grossly irresponsible” request, arguing that funding “an unaccountable Pentagon by more than $1 trillion while underfunding human needs programs undermines our security.”

Deep Dive: Rights Rolled Back in the USA

Amnesty International has released its annual report on the state of the world’s human rights, and its findings on the US painted a sweeping portrait of rollback across nearly every rights category, from immigration enforcement to reproductive access to the use of lethal force.

The report devotes significant attention to the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement agenda. Nearly all federal law enforcement agencies have been deputized to engage in civil immigration enforcement. Masked agents have seized migrants and citizens, armored vehicles have patrolled streets, and operations have targeted areas near schools, faith centers, and hospitals that were previously off-limits.

New state-funded detention facilities have been built, including “Alligator Alcatraz,” and the mass detention system has been expanded to hold thousands in overcrowded, inhumane facilities with limited access to bail and a resumption of family separation.

The administration’s most dramatic immigration action has come through its invocation of the Alien Enemies Act to expel 252 Venezuelan men to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center, subjecting them to what the report called “enforced disappearance and torture.”

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After months in detention, they were sent to Venezuela, the country many had originally fled. The administration also ended the Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan and Venezuelan Parole Program and terminated Temporary Protected Status for nationals of 11 countries, putting thousands at risk of deportation while legal challenges remained ongoing.

The US Refugee Admissions Program was suspended entirely, and a complete travel ban has been imposed on nationals from 19 countries as well as individuals using travel documents issued by the Palestinian Authority.

On campuses, Amnesty points to the continuation and intensification of repression aimed at students protesting Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. The administration has targeted international students and faculty through social media monitoring, visa status tracking, and automated threat assessments.

Approximately 8,000 visas were revoked overall, and among those, 200 to 300 individuals were flagged specifically for “support for terrorism” or expressing “anti-US views” — purportedly for engaging in peaceful protest or posting against the ongoing violence. At least 11 foreign students and protesters were sought for detention and deportation explicitly because of their activism in support of Palestinian rights.

The report catalogs the rollback of LGBTQ+ protections at both the federal and state levels. Following a Trump executive order defining sex as “an immutable biological classification as either male or female,” agencies cut programs protecting LGBTQ+ people and erased mentions of LGBTI identity from official materials. The administration shut down the LGBTQ+ youth-specific option on the national suicide hotline in July.

The NGO GLAAD documented 932 anti-LGBTQ+ incidents across 49 states and the District of Columbia over a single year, the equivalent of 2.5 incidents every day, resulting in 84 injuries and 10 deaths. Across the country, 616 anti-LGBTQ+ bills were introduced, with 74 becoming law, restricting healthcare for transgender youth and censoring LGBTQ+ content in schools.

Reproductive rights have similarly undergone erosion. The administration has rescinded prior policies that had expanded access to reproductive care, cut funding for reproductive care facilities, and forced clinic closures that disproportionately impacted people living on lower incomes. Forty-one states had abortion bans of some kind, including 13 with total bans and seven with bans at or before 18 weeks of gestation.

Amnesty cites findings from the Gender Equity Policy Institute that pregnant people in states that banned abortion are “nearly two times as likely to die during pregnancy, childbirth or soon after giving birth” compared with those in states where abortion remains legal.

The rights group also documents the administration’s aggressive expansion of the death penalty, directing the attorney general to pursue capital sentences across eligible federal crimes, support states in obtaining lethal injection drugs, and evaluate whether individuals whose sentences were commuted by President Biden could face state-level capital charges.

States have moved in parallel: Louisiana executed a person using nitrogen hypoxia for the first time in 15 years, South Carolina carried out the first US execution by firing squad in 15 years, and Idaho passed legislation making the firing squad its primary method of execution.

On policing, the rights watchdog reports that police shot and killed 1,143 people in 2025. Black people comprised more than 23% of deaths from police use of firearms while representing just 13% of the population. A Trump executive order has further militarized local law enforcement, provided greater protections for officers accused of misconduct, and threatened federal prosecution of government officials who obstructed criminal law enforcement through their policies.

The Department of Justice has simultaneously halted federal oversight of agencies found to be engaged in patterns of rights-violating policing.

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The report also flags the administration’s drone strikes on 35 boats in the Caribbean and Pacific, which killed at least 123 individuals the US claimed were drug traffickers. AI found that those strikes “lacked legal justification and amounted to extrajudicial executions because the boats posed no immediate threat to the USA or to the life of any person.”

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At Inkstick, reviewer Moira Lavelle covers journalist Steven W. Thrasher’s forthcoming book, The Overseer Class: A Manifesto, which makes the case that diversity reforms do not dismantle unjust systems. Thrasher illustrates that the presence of a person from an oppressed group in a position of power does not magically make an unjust system more just. In fact, a weaponization of this presence is often one of the very gears keeping the apparatus running. The book calls for a politics of solidarity so broad and durable that the overseer class would be rendered powerless.

Historian Steve Fraser traces US imperialism from its origins through the present moment, arguing that the United States was conceived as an imperial project from the very beginning. Fraser argues that the United States was launched as an act of settler colonialism, dispossessing the New World’s indigenous inhabitants, and that by the turn of the 20th century, Washington had announced its “Open Door” policy to compete for access to the world’s markets. Fraser positions the Trump administration not as a break from tradition but as its most unabashed expression, one marked by war with Iran, threats against Cuba and Greenland, and the kidnapping of Venezuela’s president.

At The World, Joshua Coe has reported on how Pope Leo XIV used his 10-day tour of Africa to speak out forcefully against war. At a monument for Algerians who died in their war for independence, the pope declared that “violence, despite all appearances, will never have the last word,” during the first-ever papal visit to Muslim-majority Algeria. The trip sparked a sharp rebuke from Trump, who called the pope “weak on crime” after Leo described Trump’s threats to Iranian civilization as “truly unacceptable.” Religious studies professor Matthew Schmalz notes that Leo’s dual American and Peruvian citizenship and his deep experience in the Global South have made him a bridge figure whose words carry particular weight within an American context.

Support Inkstick Today

If you want to support our nonprofit journalism, there are several ways. We accept one-time donations and recurring monthly support year-round. We also make a sum off any of the snazzy Inkstick swag you purchase from our merch store. As always, any support you can offer will go directly toward our reporting. And if financial support isn’t something you can swing, then we’d love it if you shared our articles anywhere you are on social media.

Critical State is written by Inkstick Media in collaboration with The World.

The World is a weekday public radio show and podcast on global issues, news, and insights from PRX and GBH.

With an online magazine and podcast featuring a diversity of expert voices, Inkstick Media is “foreign policy for the rest of us.”

Critical State is made possible in part by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

Hungarian opposition leader Péter Magyar and his Tisza party defeated Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party in parliamentary elections on April 12, ending 16 years of Orbán’s self-styled “illiberal democracy” in a country of fewer than 10 million people whose political trajectory had reverberated far beyond Central Europe, Marianne Szegedy-Maszak writes for Mother Jones.

Magyar won a two-thirds parliamentary majority. Orbán peacefully conceded.

In the final stretch of the campaign, Vice President JD Vance traveled to Hungary to campaign alongside Orbán, insisting he was there to show support for a valuable partner rather than to interfere in the vote.

Polling suggests the visit may have backfired with Hungarian voters, who endured years of documented political corruption, a significant brain drain of young people, the lowest standard of living in the EU, and high unemployment.

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Orbán spent his years in power enriching allies and family members, gerrymandering voting districts, suppressing LGBTQ rights, blocking EU funding for Ukraine, and cultivating simultaneous relationships with both Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, becoming one of the most influential populist strongmen of the 21st century.

Hungary served as a blueprint for MAGA, from building a border wall and declaring a permanent state of emergency to dismantling civil society and weaponizing anti-LGBTQ messaging.

How the Fidesz machine was ultimately defeated, Szegedy-Maszak argued, could hold real lessons for those seeking to counter the broader authoritarian playbook it helped inspire.

If You Read One More Thing: Pentagon’s Women-in-Combat Review

The Pentagon’s independent review of women in ground combat roles has been reassigned to a new research institution and given a yearlong extension, according to a report by Hope Hodge Seck at MilitaryTimes.com.

• The six-month review, originally commissioned in December by Undersecretary of Defense Anthony Tata and assigned to the Institute for Defense Analyses, was handed off to the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in April after Pentagon officials decided the study needed to incorporate combat-relevant field tests.

• The assessment has been renamed the “Performance, Readiness, and Integrated Mission Effectiveness Assessment” and given 12 months to examine personnel and operational data and conduct field tests aimed at identifying “dominant drivers of combat performance variance in ground combat units.”

• Pentagon officials have framed the reassignment as routine, citing past reviews of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal and other major policy changes — though historically those reviews did not carry the possibility of reversal.

• The review change came after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who wrote in his 2024 book that women did not belong in combat units, announced that ground combat jobs would be reserved for those who met “the highest male standard.”

Journalist Has Spent Six Weeks in a Kuwaiti Prison for Social Media Posts

Prominent journalist Ahmed Shihab-Eldin was arrested in Kuwait City on March 3 and has remained in detention facing prosecution in a newly established special tribunal, Sharif Abdel Kouddous writes at Drop Site News.

• Shihab-Eldin, a 41-year-old American-born Kuwaiti citizen who had worked with PBS Frontline, Al Jazeera English, and others, faces charges that included spreading false information and harming national security, stemming from social media posts about the Iran war — including footage of a US fighter jet crash that had been publicly available.

• Kuwait’s Information Ministry published strict media guidelines after the war began, banning content that could “harm Kuwait’s foreign relations.”

• The specialized court prosecuting him was created by official decree on March 31 and is designed to “resolve cases with high speed.”

• The Committee to Protect Journalists has called his detention emblematic of escalating censorship across the Gulf, while the Gulf Center for Human Rights reports dozens of additional arbitrary arrests in Kuwait tied to social media posts about the war.

Deep Dive: The US Struck First. The Humanitarian Bill Is Coming Due.

Before the temporary ceasefire and failed negotiations between Washington and Tehran, the US-Israeli war in Iran had already created “cascading” crises that far exceeded early worst-case projections, according to a recent report by the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants.

As of April 7, 10 interlocking issues were already reshaping the humanitarian landscape across the Middle East and beyond, policy analyst Will Evans points out in that report. These problems fit into four thematic categories: displacement and protection; violations of international law; global cascading effects; and the collapse of the humanitarian response system itself.

The war began on Feb. 28, 2026. By the time USCRI released its update, the conflict had already produced what the organization described as the largest energy supply disruption in modern history, with consequences for food, fuel, and civilian protection that reached far outside the region.

The region was already home to an enormous displaced population before the first strike. USCRI reported that 24.3 million people were living in forced displacement across the Middle East when the war began, many of them in fragile conditions with limited legal protections. The Iran war has only added new layers of crisis on top of that foundation.

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In Lebanon alone, more than one million people have been displaced by airstrikes and military operations that extended across Beirut, South Lebanon, and the Bekaa Valley. Around 189,000 individuals, the majority Syrian nationals alongside Lebanese citizens, crossed into Syria to flee the violence. That movement created what USCRI called a “double displacement” dynamic: people already displaced by previous conflicts were being forced to move again, with their options narrowing rather than expanding.

The situation facing Afghan nationals proved especially acute. Over the past year, Iranian authorities had pressured nearly two million Afghans to return to Afghanistan. That mass deportation effort now collided directly with a new wave of regional instability, leaving a population with nowhere safe to go caught between the pressures of two crises at once.

The report places the US directly in its aim for not operating under the obligations of international law. USCRI cited calls from UN Human Rights Chief Volker Turk for the United States to conclude its investigation into the attack on the Shajareh Tayyebeh Girls’ School in Minab, which occurred on Feb. 28, the first day of the war.

Reporting from CNN, BBC Verify, the New York Times, and Amnesty International has each, independently, attributed responsibility for the strike to the US based on the available evidence. No investigation has yet been completed.

On the institutional side, the US State Department announced the formation of a new humanitarian bureau in March 2026. The report noted it has not yet become operational, leaving a gap at a moment when coordination capacity was most urgently needed.

USCRI has documented several categories of conduct it described as clear violations of international humanitarian law, including intentional attacks on desalination plants and healthcare workers.

The situation inside Iran itself has remained largely invisible to outside observers. The country operates under a near-total internet shutdown, cutting off the civilian population from information about the conflict and cutting off journalists and monitors from the ability to document conditions on the ground.

The energy disruption produced consequences that extended well beyond the region’s immediate conflict zones. Roughly one-third of the world’s fertilizers travel through the Strait of Hormuz, exported from Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Oman. Closed shipping routes had halted fertilizer movement, with cascading effects on global agricultural supply chains.

The World Food Program issued a warning in March that an additional 45 million people could be pushed into acute hunger worldwide. Sudan, South Sudan, Gaza, Yemen, and Mali were identified as countries at particular risk. The Dubai hub used by WFP to store high-density nutritious foods for children in Afghanistan, Gaza, Sudan, and other hunger-crisis countries is “severely constrained,” the report said.

Underlying all of the above was a structural problem that predated the war and has only worsened since it began.

The global humanitarian funding system was already underfunded before Feb. 28. The conflict has sharply increased the cost of response while simultaneously compressing the supply chains and logistics networks on which aid organizations depend. USCRI argues that policymakers should fund the humanitarian response, describing it as the fastest path toward shifting the engagement from active crisis management toward longer-term recovery. But first, the report says, the “most important action now is to deescalate the conflict before it spirals further out of control.”

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At Inkstick, Taylor Barnes reported that Northrop Grumman is telling its engineers to expect a “culture change” that prioritizes speed of production over cost or even performance, and internal slides obtained by Inkstick says the quiet part out loud. The company’s email to employees stated that the Pentagon’s “top need” has shifted from low cost to speed, and lays out plans to reduce oversight, streamline testing and evaluation, and use AI to cut labor costs. Julia Gledhill of the Stimson Center warned that “the clear winners of a faster, looser acquisition system are military contractors,” while defense budget analyst Travis Sharp cautioned that the true costs of new weapons systems is likely being significantly underestimated.

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Mat Nashed’s dispatch from southern Lebanon shows that Israel’s latest war has killed at least 88 medics and shuttered six hospitals, while Lebanon’s Ministry of Health has documented at least 114 attacks on emergency medical services since Israel expanded its offensive on March 2. In Nabatieh — a city reduced to near-abandonment — a 16-year-old paramedic volunteer named Joud Sleiman and his colleague Ali Jaber, 22, were killed by an Israeli airstrike while delivering food to families in clearly marked ambulance gear. Researchers and former Lebanese health officials have also said the attacks follow a pattern dating back decades and amount to a deliberate strategy to deprive residents of medical access and drive them from their homes.

At The World, Jamie Fullerton covers a growing movement in Kerala, South India, where PETA is donating lifelike mechanical elephants to Hindu temples as replacements for real ones used in religious ceremonies. Artists like Prasanth Prakashan, whose rural workshop employs about 25 people, build fiberglass-and-rubber pachyderms that can move their heads, ears, and trunks. Since 2023, at least 26 mechanical elephants have been placed in temples across South India, as captive elephant numbers in Kerala have fallen by nearly half since 2010. Not everyone is on board. Some temple traditionalists have threatened the artists, but one mechanical elephant maker predicts that even the holdouts will eventually come around once the real animals are simply gone.

Support Inkstick Today

If you want to support our nonprofit journalism, there are several ways. We accept one-time donations and recurring monthly support year-round. We also make a sum off any of the snazzy Inkstick swag you purchase from our merch store. As always, any support you can offer will go directly toward our reporting. And if financial support isn’t something you can swing, then we’d love it if you shared our articles anywhere you are on social media.

Critical State is written by Inkstick Media in collaboration with The World.

The World is a weekday public radio show and podcast on global issues, news, and insights from PRX and GBH.

With an online magazine and podcast featuring a diversity of expert voices, Inkstick Media is “foreign policy for the rest of us.”

Critical State is made possible in part by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

At The New Republic, Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling has reported on a revealing diplomatic embarrassment that unfolded in Budapest on Tuesday, when US Vice President JD Vance — who had been on standby for potential peace talks with Iran — was visibly caught off guard by his own president’s escalating threats.

While onstage alongside Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, a Washington Post reporter informed Vance that Trump had threatened to obliterate Iranian civilization by 8 pm and had already ordered strikes on Kharg Island, Iran’s primary oil export hub.

Vance fumbled for his phone in real time: “Wouldn’t you like to know the subject of this message? But no, uh, I need to read it first before I talk about it.”

The spectacle reflects the chaotic state of White House war planning, with the president’s threats outpacing his administration's ability to track them.

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Despite the confusion, Vance ultimately backed Trump’s position, framing the escalation as leverage.

“The president of the United States is a man who recognizes leverage,” he told the Budapest assembly, adding that the US has tools in its arsenal it has not yet chosen to use.

In spite of his apparent surprise at the threat, the vice president “was supposed to be on ‘standby’ and prepared to jump into peace talks with Iran should the moment arise,” the reporter noted.

If You Read One More Thing: NATO’s ‘Darwinian Moment’ for Defense Contractors

At Politico, Laura Kayali covers the upheaval shaking the Western defense industry finds that a wave of well-funded startups is increasingly competing with — and sometimes beating — legacy giants like Lockheed Martin and BAE Systems for military contracts.

• Last month, Anduril signed a US Army contract worth up to $20 billion, while Germany locked in a multibillion-euro drone deal with Stark and Helsing, companies founded in 2024 and 2021, respectively.

• Gulf countries seeking to counter Iranian drones are looking to buy Ukrainian systems instead, as they are cheaper and battle-tested. This has prompted Rheinmetall’s CEO to dismiss Ukraine’s drone industry as “how to play with Legos,” a comment that landed poorly given the reality on the ground.

• Europe’s lower appetite for risk puts its legacy firms at a disadvantage, while a French space defense startup shut down last year partly due to lack of government support.

• “Either the startups eventually get absorbed into the legacy world, which itself decides to accelerate. Or the clash turns more violent, with new entrants growing fast enough to think they can take down the big ones,” NATO’s supreme allied commander transformation, Adm. Pierre Vandier, told Politico. “That’s why we are in a Darwinian moment.”

Third Country Deportations and the Death of Due Process

For The Guardian, Rebecca Ratcliffe and Rachel Savage tell the tale of Pheap Rom’s deportation from the US to a “third country,” any nation where deportees have no ties and no warning of what awaits them.

• Rom, a Cambodian refugee who arrived in the US aged three in 1985, served a 15-year sentence for attempted murder and accepted that he would be deported.

• But US authorities sent him to Eswatini, where he has no connections. Not Cambodia. Rom was given no opportunity to speak to a lawyer before being told to “pack your shit and get the fuck out,” then shackled for a 21-hour flight with nine other men.

• At Matsapha maximum-security prison, the group received one roll of toilet paper and one bar of soap each per week; some had only the clothes they arrived in; a local lawyer was barred from visiting; and one detainee went on a 30-day hunger strike.

• “Even if you were a convicted felon, at the end of the day we still deserve due process. If our due process is taken away, anybody else’s due process can be taken away,” Rom said.

Deep Dive: AI Hegemony Comes with Heavy Spending and Military Integration

A new study concludes that the United States and China, despite pursuing radically different visions for how artificial intelligence should be developed and governed, have become leaders in the global AI race through one shared formula: heavy government spending and deep military integration.

The paper, entitled “Pathways to Technological Hegemony: A Comparative Study of the US and China in the AI Age,” was published in the Brazilian journal Revista de Estudos Internacionais. Amâncio Jorge de Oliveira, Janina Onuki, and Rodrigo Pedrosa Lyra, researchers from the University of São Paulo and the Federal University of Pernambuco, authored the paper.

They used a method called Qualitative Comparative Analysis to systematically compare the two countries across five factors thought to drive AI dominance: regulatory policy, government investment, private-sector dynamism, military integration, and semiconductor dependence. The researchers assigned each country a binary score for each condition and ran tests to determine which factors were truly necessary or sufficient to reach what they call the “technological frontier.”

The answer is unambiguous: “Our findings demonstrate that Government Investment (GI) and Military Integration (MI) are the most decisive factors for achieving leadership in the AI race,” the report said. Every other factor — including whether a country has a thriving private tech sector or depends on foreign chips — turned out to be neither essential nor independently decisive.

That conclusion cuts against a narrative popular in Washington, where policymakers and industry figures have pointed to Silicon Valley’s freewheeling innovation culture as the core engine of American AI leadership.

According to the study, companies like Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI matter, but their impact is limited without the backing of state resources and defense-oriented applications. The Pentagon’s investments in autonomous weapons systems, battlefield AI, and programs like Project Maven, the researchers argue, are not peripheral to American dominance; they are structurally central to it.

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The finding lands differently for China, where state control of the technology sector is a given rather than a debate. Beijing’s “New Generation AI Development Plan,” its Military-Civil Fusion strategy, and its direct funding of firms like Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent have drawn frequent criticism from Western observers as evidence of authoritarian overreach. The study frames those same features as the mechanism through which China has closed the gap with the United States faster than most analysts expected.

The researchers point to performance data from the LMSYS Chatbot Arena — a widely used benchmark for large language models — to illustrate just how quickly that gap has narrowed.

In early 2024, top American models outperformed their Chinese counterparts by roughly 9%. By early 2025, the margin had fallen to under 2%. The authors attribute that acceleration, in part, to China’s ability to use state coordination to work around US semiconductor export controls, which are designed to slow Chinese AI development by cutting off access to advanced chips.

On semiconductors, the study reaches a finding that complicates the current bipartisan consensus in Washington around the CHIPS Act and export restrictions. The United States, heavily reliant on Taiwan’s TSMC and South Korea’s Samsung for advanced chip manufacturing, scores as semiconductor-dependent. China, which has invested massively in domestic producers like SMIC and Yangtze Memory and is actively pursuing self-sufficiency, scores as less dependent. Yet both countries are leading the AI race. Semiconductor access, the researchers conclude, is a vulnerability and a constraint, but not the determining factor that American policy has often treated it as.

The paper carries obvious limitations. With only two cases, the analysis cannot claim broad generalizability, and the binary coding required by the methodology inevitably flattens complex realities. The authors acknowledge that future research should expand to other emerging AI powers, including the European Union, Japan, and India, and should examine AI leadership in commercial and scientific domains, not just military ones.

Still, the core argument has implications that reach well beyond academia. For countries watching the US-China competition and trying to chart their own AI strategies, the study suggests that betting on private sector momentum alone is not enough. Governments that want a seat at the frontier, the data implies, will need to spend heavily and integrate AI into their defense establishments regardless of their regulatory posture.

The authors frame the broader rivalry in historical terms, comparing it to the Space Race of the 20th century while noting a crucial difference: Unlike the original Cold War, the United States and China are deeply economically entangled even as they compete for technological supremacy. That interdependence, they argue, makes strategic decoupling a policy choice rather than an inevitability — and one whose consequences for global AI governance remain far from settled.

Show Us the Receipts

At TomDispatch, Eric Ross writes that the full costs of the US-Israeli war on Iran will not be visible for years. But that history offers a clear preview of what is coming. Tracing American military involvement in the Middle East from the 1953 CIA-backed coup against Iran’s democratically elected prime minister through the rise of al-Qaeda, the invasion of Iraq, and the emergence of the Islamic State, Ross argued that each intervention produced the conditions for the next one. The Iran war is neither authorized by Congress nor supported by the public, launched by a president who, “in true authoritarian fashion,” claims he alone embodied popular will.

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At Inkstick, Katy Fallon and Franziska Grillmeier report on the years-long Greek prosecution of 24 humanitarian workers — including celebrated swimmer Sarah Mardini — who conducted search-and-rescue operations after the 2015 refugee crisis on the island of Lesbos. The defendants were ultimately acquitted in January 2026, but the case dragged on for more than seven years, fundamentally reshaping the work of humanitarian organizations in the Aegean. Human Rights Watch called the trial “baseless” and said the defendants faced prison for simply “saving lives,” while the European Parliament cited it as the most significant instance of criminalizing solidarity in the EU.

At The World, Emily Cohen profiles Yagódy, a Ukrainian folk group bringing centuries-old polyphonic songs to American audiences this spring. Ukraine has more than 15,000 documented folk songs, many passed down orally over generations, and Yagódy has been reshaping them. The group adds rhythm, structure, and sometimes new lyrics, so modern listeners can connect with them. Their latest single centers on families waiting at home while loved ones fight in the war against Russia. “We work with Ukrainian culture, with the Ukrainian traditions, with our Ukrainian costumes. But we try to pass them on in modern images,” said founder Zoryana Dybovska.

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If you want to support our nonprofit journalism, there are several ways. We accept one-time donations and recurring monthly support year-round. We also make a sum off any of the snazzy Inkstick swag you purchase from our merch store. As always, any support you can offer will go directly toward our reporting. And if financial support isn’t something you can swing, then we’d love it if you shared our articles anywhere you are on social media.

Critical State is written by Inkstick Media in collaboration with The World.

The World is a weekday public radio show and podcast on global issues, news, and insights from PRX and GBH.

With an online magazine and podcast featuring a diversity of expert voices, Inkstick Media is “foreign policy for the rest of us.”

Critical State is made possible in part by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

Jordain Carney and Myah Ward at Politico look at the now record-breaking DHS shutdown and the possibility that Congress may have maneuvered itself into a deadlock with no clear exit.

The Senate passed a bipartisan bill early last Friday that would fund all of DHS except ICE and parts of Customs and Border Protection — but the House rejected it and passed its own measure to fund the full department through May 22, a bill that has no realistic path through the Senate.

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With both chambers having passed competing bills and then leaving for a two-week recess, negotiations are effectively frozen. Some Senate Republicans are now floating the idea of funding the entire department through the party-line budget reconciliation process. That would bypass Democrats entirely, but that path carries significant procedural complications and risks new divisions within the GOP.

Meanwhile, Trump’s executive order paying TSA screeners undermines the shutdown’s most visible pressure point.

“Remember in the last shutdown, it was airport chaos that forced the seven Democrats to switch sides and fund the government,” a DHS official told Politico. That lever no longer exists.

Despite the executive order, thousands of other workers, including FEMA employees, Coast Guard civilian workers, and cybersecurity staff, remain furloughed or working without pay.

If You Read One More Thing: ICE’s Minnesota Numbers Don’t Add Up

Meghnad Bose and Luke Lawson at The Intercept report that newly released government data directly contradicts the White House’s characterization of its winter immigration surge in Minnesota as targeting dangerous criminals.

• Of the 4,030 ICE arrests made in Minnesota between December 2025 and mid-March 2026, 63% were of people with no criminal convictions or pending charges.

• The proportion of arrests without a criminal record rose sharply during the surge itself — up from 44% in the pre-surge period to 64% once Operation Metro Surge was underway.

• Despite the administration’s public focus on the Somali community in the Twin Cities, only 112 of the Minnesota arrests were of people listed as having Somali citizenship.

• Following the killing of Renee Nicole Good by an ICE agent in January, the daily arrest rate in the state more than doubled, from roughly 32 arrests per day to 74.

• “The data confirms what the American people have overwhelmingly known, which is that Operation Metro Surge in Minneapolis was a complete failure,” said Elora Mukherjee of Columbia Law School’s Immigrants’ Rights Clinic.

China Is Feeding Iran US Troop Locations

Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling at The New Republic has covered China’s sharing military intelligence with Iran since roughly two weeks into the war, making it the second major US adversary after Russia to do so.

• The intelligence includes the locations of US troops and equipment, largely in the form of satellite imagery that amounts to targeting coordinates.

• The White House did not deny the intelligence relay when asked, saying only that nothing provided to Iran by another country is “affecting our operational success.”

• In exchange, China is gaining insight into how the US conducts military operations — information that could prove critical in any future conflict over Taiwan.

• The revelation is believed to be one reason Trump postponed his meeting with Xi Jinping, rescheduling it to May 16.

Deep Dive: How Dangerous is Attending World Cup Matches in the US?

With just weeks remaining before the opening match at Mexico City’s Estadio Azteca on June 11, Amnesty International has released a sweeping report warning that the 2026 FIFA World Cup risks becoming a platform for authoritarian repression rather than the global celebration of football its organizers have promised. The report, titled “Humanity Must Win,” documents a cascade of human rights risks across all three host countries — Canada, Mexico, and the United States — but reserves its most detailed and alarming findings for the US, which was set to host three-quarters of all matches.

The report argues that the US has undergone a fundamental transformation since it won the right to host the tournament in 2018. What FIFA once assessed as a “medium risk” hosting environment has, in Amnesty’s view, become something far more dangerous. On the first anniversary of President Trump’s inauguration, the rights watchdog described the country as facing a “human rights emergency,” characterized by what the organization has called a “recognizable pattern of authoritarian practices and erosion of human rights that Amnesty has documented for decades across countries worldwide.” The 2026 report builds on that foundation with granular detail, documenting evidence of how those patterns are likely to intersect with the tournament.

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The most extensive section of the report focuses on immigration enforcement. Amnesty describes ICE and Customs and Border Protection as having “transformed into a paramilitary-style operation,” with masked, armed agents conducting warrantless raids and breaking down doors in residential neighborhoods, schools, and places of worship. The scale of the crackdown is staggering: analysis of official government data estimates that ICE and CBP deported over 500,000 people in 2025 — more than six times the number of fans expected to attend the World Cup final at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey. ICE street arrests increased eleven-fold, and the number of children held in immigration detention rose six-fold. By March 2026, 43 people had died in ICE custody since January 2025. Two detention facilities within 50 miles of FIFA’s Miami headquarters — including the Everglades Detention Facility, widely known as “Alligator Alcatraz” — have been documented by Amnesty as sites of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, and in some cases torture.

The report underscores how these conditions pose direct risks to the tournament itself. Neither FIFA nor the US authorities have provided any public guarantees that immigration enforcement will not target World Cup venues, fan zones, or watch parties. The acting director of ICE has told Congress that the agency would be “a key part of the overall security apparatus for the World Cup.” Amnesty also documents a precedent from the FIFA Club World Cup in 2025, when Human Rights Watch found that a registered asylum seeker was arrested outside MetLife Stadium for a minor civil offense and subsequently detained for three months while ICE moved to deport him, ultimately forcing his family to purchase tickets for his “voluntary departure.”

Beyond enforcement, the report raises serious concerns about discriminatory travel bans. Four qualifying nations — Côte d’Ivoire, Haiti, Iran, and Senegal — are among 39 countries subject to severe US visa restrictions, effectively barring most fans of those teams from attending their matches in person. Visitors will also be subject to sweeping social media vetting requirements, with the government screening applicants for what it calls “anti-Americanism.” The report additionally documents that LGBTQI+ fan groups, including England’s “Three Lions with Pride” and a network of European LGBTQI+ fan clubs, have announced they will not have a visible presence at matches in the US, citing the Trump administration’s attacks on transgender rights and what they describe as “unsafe and unacceptable” conditions for gender non-conforming fans.

The report is equally pointed in its critique of FIFA, which awarded Trump its newly created “Peace Prize” in December 2025, a decision Amnesty says has “been so widely criticized.” It also notes that FIFA reportedly canceled its anti-discrimination communications during the 2025 FIFA Club World Cup, the tournament’s own dress rehearsal on American soil. Host city human rights plans are described as largely inadequate: None of the published drafts from Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Boston, or San Francisco include any provisions to protect fans or local communities from immigration enforcement operations.

Amnesty’s conclusion is unsparing. “There is still time to save the 2026 World Cup from becoming a stage for repression and a platform for authoritarian practices,” the report states, demanding that FIFA secure public guarantees from US authorities, that host cities refuse cooperation with immigration enforcement, and that discriminatory travel bans be lifted. It calls on FIFA, national football associations, and tournament sponsors to use their collective financial leverage — FIFA stands to earn $11 billion from the event — to press for compliance. “It is these people — not governments, FIFA or sponsors — to whom football belongs,” the report concludes, “and their rights must be at the centre of this tournament.”

Show Us the Receipts

At Inkstick, Marco Simoncelli and Maëlle Duhamel report from Tigray’s Hitsats displacement camp, where nearly half of families have at least one relative who has left for Libya or elsewhere in recent years — a direct consequence of a war that killed hundreds of thousands and never fully ended. The 2022 peace agreement left western Tigray contested, infrastructure destroyed, and unemployment affecting 81% of the region’s youth. The story features families waiting by their phones for ransom calls from traffickers holding their children captive in Libya, such as Abeba Berhane, whose daughter was trafficked in Libya three years ago as she made her way to Europe. After a year of abuse, the traffickers released her. But she remains in Libya, rather than returning to Ethiopia.

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Writing for TomDispatch, David Bromwich argues that the US war on Iran follows a calculated, escalating pattern designed to test public tolerance for aggression. He traces a sequence running from drone strikes on alleged narco-terrorists in the Caribbean, to the kidnapping of Venezuela’s president, to the seizure of oil tankers, before arriving at the Feb. 28 attack on Iran. Bromwich also turns a critical eye on Biden, arguing that diplomacy had already faded before Trump returned — Biden never spoke to Putin in the three years following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — suggesting the conditions for war were years in the making.

At The World, Joy Hackel covers a conversation with Harvard lecturer George Soroka on the striking shift in how American leaders now talk about war. Where past administrations framed military action around moral purpose, the current administration makes no pretense of a rules-based order, projecting what Soroka calls raw power. He argues the change goes beyond rhetorical style, shaping how the public and press understand conflict, and draws direct parallels between Trump’s language and Putin’s politics of nostalgia and grievance. Hegseth’s Pentagon prayer, declaring that America’s enemies do not deserve mercy, strikes Soroka as a particularly profound departure from prior administrations.

Support Inkstick Today

If you want to support our nonprofit journalism, there are several ways. We accept one-time donations and recurring monthly support year-round. We also make a sum off any of the snazzy Inkstick swag you purchase from our merch store. As always, any support you can offer will go directly toward our reporting. And if financial support isn’t something you can swing, then we’d love it if you shared our articles anywhere you are on social media.

Critical State is written by Inkstick Media in collaboration with The World.

The World is a weekday public radio show and podcast on global issues, news, and insights from PRX and GBH.

With an online magazine and podcast featuring a diversity of expert voices, Inkstick Media is “foreign policy for the rest of us.”

Critical State is made possible in part by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

At The New Republic, Edith Olmsted explains that Israel’s latest attacks on Tehran undercut President Donald Trump’s assertion that the United States and Iran have moved toward resolving the ongoing war.

On Monday, Trump claimed US officials had held “productive conversations” with Iranian counterparts and that he had ordered a five‑day pause on strikes against Iran’s power and energy infrastructure.

But less than 40 minutes later, the Israeli Air Force announced a new wave of attacks on Tehran, saying it was “targeting infrastructure of the Iranian terror regime.”

Reporters on the ground described the strikes as unprecedented, hitting dense residential and commercial districts.

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The Israeli government offered no clarification, a silence that suggested the bombardment itself served as a response to Trump’s announcement.

The escalation follows Trump’s own threat to “obliterate” Iran’s power plants if the Strait of Hormuz remains closed. Iran has warned it would “irreversibly destroy” critical infrastructure across the region if attacked.

Trump insisted the US was nearing a “complete and total resolution of our hostilities in the Middle East,” but Iran’s Foreign Ministry said there had been “no dialogue,” and analysts speculated that Trump’s timing may have been aimed at influencing markets rather than signaling genuine diplomatic progress.

If You Read One More Thing: Hegseth’s Hair Inspections

Noah Hurowitz and Austin Campbell at The Intercept report that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has intensified his campaign against facial hair in the US military.

• On March 11, Hegseth issued a directive that sharply tightens requirements for religious beard exemptions. The memo requires service members — both new applicants and those previously approved — to submit sworn statements detailing their beliefs, explain how grooming rules conflict with their faith, and provide supporting evidence.

• Commanders must now assess the “sincerity” of each applicant’s religious convictions; a shift critics said risks discrimination and violates long‑standing legal protections.

• Sikh and Muslim service members, whose traditions mandate uncut hair or beards, have warned the policy could push them out of the ranks. The Sikh Coalition called the new process “completely unnecessary,” arguing that troops had already earned accommodations under earlier administrations.

• Four senators have also cautioned that Hegseth’s approach could undermine readiness by signaling that religious minorities are unwelcome. Federal courts have repeatedly limited the military’s ability to restrict religious grooming, forcing Hegseth to pursue stricter procedural hurdles rather than an outright ban.

European Far Right’s Loose Lips

Zoya Sheftalovich and Nette Nöstlinger at Politico have covered warnings from EU officials and German lawmakers of heightened security risks after members of Germany’s far‑right Alternative for Germany gained access to a Bundestag database containing thousands of restricted EU documents.

• Concerns stem from the AfD’s alleged ties to Russia and China, raising fears that sensitive deliberations on Ukraine funding and sanctions could be exposed to Moscow. Greens lawmaker Anton Hofreiter said there are “justified suspicions of information leaking to China or Russia.”

• Diplomats have also pointed to a broader pattern of vulnerability inside the EU, noting that Hungary has repeatedly been accused of passing confidential EU information to the Kremlin, deepening worries about internal security breaches.

• A diplomat told Politico they are “all careful about sharing sensitive information in a format with 27 EU member states … Whether because of [Hungarian leader Viktor] Orbán or because of the German system … we don’t freely share all information as you would among your closest confidants.”

Deep Dive: Strait of Hormuz Closure Will Impact Every Modern Economy

The United States and Israel’s war on Iran has transformed the Strait of Hormuz from a long-recognized geopolitical flashpoint into the epicenter of a global economic shock. Mühdan Sağlam and Günbey Korkmaz of The Economic Policy Research Foundation of Turkiye, one of Turkey’s largest non-partisan research organizations, make clear in a new report that this narrow waterway is not simply a transit route for oil tankers but a structural pillar of the world economy. “The Strait of Hormuz has once again emerged as one of the most critical chokepoints in the global energy system,” they wrote.

When Iran’s attacks on US bases and Gulf energy infrastructure triggered a de facto closure of the strait, insurers and shipping companies pulled back almost immediately, freezing the movement of roughly 20% of global oil supplies. The world has suddenly found itself confronting a supply gap that even the International Energy Agency’s release of 400 million barrels from strategic reserves could not meaningfully offset. The report notes that “market actors are prioritizing the fundamental uncertainty regarding the reopening of the Strait over the prospect of temporary supply injections,” a dynamic that has fueled extreme volatility, with oil prices swinging between $85 and $120 per barrel.

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But the crisis is not confined to crude oil. Hormuz is the artery through which the Middle East exports the petrochemicals, industrial gases, and refined products that underpin global manufacturing. The report describes it as a “multi-layered chemical supply artery,” and the data bear that out. The Middle East supplies nearly half of global polyethylene exports, and more than 80% of that volume depends on Hormuz. When tankers stopped moving, polypropylene prices in China jumped almost 6% in a single day, methanol futures surged more than 10%, and the shutdown of Qatar’s LNG and helium facilities removed one-third of the global helium supply. That disruption alone has rippled into semiconductor production and medical imaging, two sectors that rely heavily on stable helium flows. Meanwhile, refined products such as LPG, naphtha, condensate, diesel, and jet fuel have tightened sharply, pushing Asian airfares up by as much as $125 and driving global logistics costs higher.

The fertilizer market has been hit just as hard. Roughly one-third of global seaborne fertilizer trade passes through Hormuz, and the sudden blockage has pushed urea prices up 10% in a week, with major hubs like New Orleans seeing spikes from $516 to $683 per ton. S&P Global estimates that fertilizer prices rose 38% between February 28 and March 9. Because fertilizer shocks translate into food inflation with a lag, the report warns that the world may be on the cusp of a broader food price surge.

Turkey, which is not directly dependent on Gulf oil, is an example of how the crisis presents a complex mix of vulnerabilities. Turkey’s industrial and agricultural sectors rely heavily on Gulf-origin raw materials. Turkey imports up to a $1 billion worth of aluminum from Gulf states each year, $2 billion in plastic raw materials, a fifth of its helium from Qatar, and as much as 40% of its monoethylene glycol — an essential textile input — from Saudi Arabia and Qatar. These materials feed export-driven industries such as automotive components, packaging, and especially textiles, a sector worth $30 billion annually. Rising input costs threaten to erode Turkey’s competitiveness in European markets at a moment when global demand is already softening.

Agriculture faces similar pressures. Turkey consumes seven million tons of fertilizer annually and imports four to five million tons, with Gulf suppliers providing up to a quarter of nitrogen-based fertilizers. With Brent crude hovering near $90, fertilizer costs are rising quickly. The government has responded by suspending urea exports, reducing import tariffs to zero, and increasing stockpiles to protect domestic supply, but the report suggests these measures can only partially cushion the blow.

The logistics dimension is equally severe. War risk insurance premiums for ships transiting the Gulf have jumped from 0.25% to as high as 3% of vessel value. LNG tanker rates have surged 600%, and global container indices are climbing. These pressures raise Turkey’s import costs and squeeze export margins. Yet the crisis also underscores Turkey’s geographic advantage: its ability to reach European markets in three to seven days by road or short-sea shipping positions it as a potential nearshoring hub at a time when companies are reassessing supply chain risk.

Energy security, meanwhile, remains a looming concern. Turkey relies on Iran for 13% of its natural gas imports, and any prolonged disruption could strain domestic supply. The country’s LNG infrastructure and storage capacity offer some buffers, but the macroeconomic implications are stark. Every $10 increase in global energy prices adds roughly $5 billion to Turkey’s current account deficit. With oil stabilizing near $100, the fiscal pressure is mounting.

The report claims that the crisis exposes a deeper structural fragility in the global economy. As the authors write, “Defining the Strait of Hormuz merely as an energy route is an analytical oversight.”

Modern economies depend on a dense web of petrochemicals, fertilizers, industrial gases, and metals that all converge on this single chokepoint. Until supply chains diversify and redundancy is built into the system, the Strait of Hormuz will remain a single point of failure capable of sending shockwaves across continents.

Show Us the Receipts

At Inkstick, Hannah Bowlus reports that the Trump administration’s Justice Department has escalated efforts to suppress anti‑ICE protesters and leftist organizers, particularly in Los Angeles, where FBI agents conducted door‑knocks, surveillance, and joint operations with DHS and local police. Federal prosecutors have pursued sweeping felony charges, often rooted in century‑old statutes, to pressure activists into plea deals. Attorneys and experts argue that the strategy aims primarily to deter dissent. The piece details how NSPM‑7 has broadened domestic terrorism designations, enabling expansive investigations of political dissent nationwide. Former FBI agent Mike German said: “It’s less about winning convictions and more about suppressing protests.”

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Also at Inkstick, Chantal Flores has covered how Mexico’s disappearance crisis — now exceeding 132,000 missing people — is increasingly overshadowed by the Trump administration's prioritization of cartel crackdowns and fentanyl interdiction. Experts argued that enforced disappearances, often carried out with state acquiescence, remain central to cartel control. US pressure, including tariffs and terrorism designations, has reshaped Mexico’s response but has done little to improve safety. Analyst David Shirk noted that “it’s rather obvious that Trump is trying to use the war on drugs and his demands as a bargaining chip to pressure Mexico.” Families searching mass graves and confronting a backlog of more than 70,000 unidentified bodies say the security agenda sidelines justice and accountability.

At The World, Eda Uzunlar analyzes why many Istanbul residents remain largely unfazed by the possibility that Turkey could be drawn into Iran’s escalating conflict with the US and Israel. Despite Iranian missiles briefly entering Turkish airspace, locals cited NATO protection, Turkey’s strategic value, and a long history of regional crises as reasons for their composure. Some residents see the situation as political theater rather than imminent danger. A Turkish man dismissed the threat outright: “I don’t think Iran would dare attack Turkey.” The Turkish government has assured its citizens that it is handling missiles shot its way “decisively and without hesitation.”

Support Inkstick Today

If you want to support our nonprofit journalism, there are several ways. We accept one-time donations and recurring monthly support year-round. We also make a sum off any of the snazzy Inkstick swag you purchase from our merch store. As always, any support you can offer will go directly toward our reporting. And if financial support isn’t something you can swing, then we’d love it if you shared our articles anywhere you are on social media.

Critical State is written by Inkstick Media in collaboration with The World.

The World is a weekday public radio show and podcast on global issues, news, and insights from PRX and GBH.

With an online magazine and podcast featuring a diversity of expert voices, Inkstick Media is “foreign policy for the rest of us.”

Critical State is made possible in part by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

At The Nation, Eric Blanc examines why protests against President Donald Trump’s war on Iran have remained limited despite the conflict’s deep unpopularity. Pollster G. Elliot Morris noted it is “the most unpopular a US war has ever been when it started,” yet public mobilization has lagged.

Blanc outlines several factors: a pervasive sense of political powerlessness, the administration’s rapid escalation that left little time for organized dissent, and activist exhaustion as Trump advances simultaneous crises across immigration, policing, and foreign policy.

Digital mobilization has replaced the slower, relationship-building organizing that once sustained anti-war movements, weakening long-term capacity, according to Blanc. The absence of a military draft and the rise of remote, capital-intensive warfare have further distanced many Americans from the human costs of conflict.

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Internal divisions within left movements-particularly sectarian rhetoric and misdirected criticism have also blunted broader coalition-building. Blanc argues for renewed grassroots organizing, urging activists to use upcoming national protests to recruit and train new participants. He references campaigns like QuitGPT as examples of winnable, targeted pressure that can build momentum.

A former Al executive warned that the Pentagon’s new contract with OpenAl “was rushed without the guardrails defined,” underscoring the stakes of resisting militarized technology.

If You Read One More Thing: Leak Reveals DHS AI Surveillance Aims

A cache of hacked data from the Department of Homeland Security’s technology incubator reveals the agency’s sweeping push to expand AI‑driven surveillance across airports, public safety systems, and frontline enforcement, Jason Wilson has reported for The Guardian.

• The leak, obtained by Distributed Denial of Secrets, details more than 1,400 funded contracts and thousands of additional bids, exposing DHS interest in tools ranging from automated airport surveillance to phone‑based biometric scanners and a national AI platform that ingests 911 call data to generate predictive “geospatial heat maps.”

• The documents illuminate DHS’s ambitions following its unprecedented $165 billion budget increase and amid scrutiny over agents’ collection of visual and biometric data during protests. Civil liberties experts warn that the proposals echo dystopian policing models. As Jeramie Scott of EPIC puts it, “It very much feels like sometimes these people are watching dystopian science fiction movies and thinking, ‘Oh, that looks good!’”

• The leak also reveals the breadth of private‑sector appetite for homeland security surveillance work.

EU Has No Desire For an ‘Open-Ended War’

At Politico, Sebastian Starcevic and Victor Jack have covered that European leaders have firmly rejected President Donald Trump’s demand that EU states help the US reopen the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran has largely blocked amid the escalating war with the US and Israel.

• At a Brussels meeting, foreign ministers said the conflict was Washington’s responsibility, not Europe’s, and warned that joining a US-led naval mission risks entangling the EU in an open‑ended regional war.

• EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas stressed that “Europe has no interest in an open‑ended war,” while several governments have argued the US had neither consulted allies nor clarified its strategic aims.

• Despite Trump’s warnings that NATO’s future is at stake, member states have refused to expand the EU’s Aspides naval mission to the strait, underscoring Europe’s deep reluctance to be drawn into Trump’s Iran campaign.

Deep Dive: Cutting Off US-China Science Collaboration May Backfire

According to a new analysis, Washington’s effort to wall off American science from China is built on a flawed premise — and may be quietly dismantling one of the United States’ most powerful strategic assets. That is the central conclusion of a new paper from the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.

Written by Denis Simon, the paper, “Competition for US–China Talent Advantage and the US National Interest,” offers a sweeping assessment of how US-China scientific ties have deteriorated in recent years, why they matter, and what a more strategically coherent approach might look like. The report reframes the US-China “talent competition” not as a zero‑sum race for individual scientists but as a contest between systems. The American system’s historic edge, it argues, has been its ability to attract, integrate, retain, and productively deploy global talent at scale.

As the report puts it, the “American innovation ecosystem has demonstrated an exceptional ‘capture effect’: attracting high-performing foreign students, integrating them into US research networks, retaining many during their peak productive years, and converting their contributions into domestic scientific output and entrepreneurship.”

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This “capture effect” is not theoretical. Chinese students and scholars have been central to US research capacity since the 1980s, sustaining graduate programs, powering laboratories, and contributing disproportionately to patents, startups, and federally funded R&D. NSF data cited in the report show that 85% to 95% of Chinese STEM PhD recipients stayed in the US for at least five years after graduation through the 2010s — an extraordinary retention rate that effectively turned US universities into long-term talent pipelines for American industry and academia.

The report emphasizes that these gains were not accidental. They were the product of a system designed — intentionally or not — to convert global human capital into American advantage. Chinese students filled structural gaps in STEM graduate programs, enabling departments to maintain scale and productivity even as domestic interest fluctuated. They staffed labs, taught undergraduates, and expanded the research throughput that underpins US scientific leadership. Their presence also strengthened the US position in frontier fields such as AI, microelectronics, materials science, and biomedical engineering.

The economic benefits were equally significant. Chinese students contributed billions annually in tuition and local spending, stabilizing university budgets and supporting regional economies. More importantly, Chinese‑born, US-trained professionals have become core contributors to the skilled workforce — particularly in sectors facing chronic shortages. In 2023, Chinese nationals accounted for nearly a quarter of STEM OPT participants and 12% of approved H‑1B workers, with two‑thirds in computer-related occupations.

The report stresses that these contributions have not come at the expense of US workers. Instead, they amplified returns on federal R&D investments and strengthened the innovation ecosystem that drives national competitiveness. As the brief notes, “openness is not charity but a historically proven source of American strength.”

Yet this system is now under strain. Washington’s growing suspicion of educational exchange — fueled by concerns about IP theft, illicit technology transfer, and the legacy of the Justice Department’s “China Initiative” — has produced a climate of uncertainty that is already driving talent away. The report cites evidence that departures of China‑born scientists from US institutions rose sharply after 2018, with many returning to China or relocating to other countries with more predictable immigration and research environments.

The brief does not dismiss security risks. It acknowledges that certain research areas — advanced semiconductors, military‑relevant AI, and other dual‑use technologies — require tighter controls. But it argues that broad, nationality‑based restrictions are counterproductive, reducing US research capacity while accelerating China’s push for self‑reliance. Over‑restriction, the report warns, could shrink graduate programs, weaken labs, and push firms to move R&D abroad — eroding the structural advantages that have long underpinned US leadership.

Instead, the authors propose a strategy of “smart openness”: maintaining openness as the default for education and fundamental research while applying targeted safeguards to clearly defined sensitive domains. This approach would include predictable visa pathways for graduate students and postdocs, streamlined transitions from study to employment, and robust institutional compliance systems that manage risk without chilling legitimate collaboration.

The report’s policy test is simple: Does the United States remain the world’s most attractive place for top talent to study, research, and build? If the answer becomes no, the US risks losing a foundational pillar of its innovation ecosystem. The authors argue that America’s comparative advantage has never been its ability to exclude, but its ability to attract — and that preserving this advantage is essential in an era of intensifying global competition.

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Ultimately, the brief frames educational exchange not as a concession to China but as a strategic asset for the United States. Chinese students and scholars, it argues, have strengthened US research capacity, bolstered critical labor markets, seeded technological entrepreneurship, and reinforced the global networks that underpin American influence. The danger now is that Washington, in seeking to counter China, may inadvertently undermine the very system that has kept the US ahead.

If the United States abandons openness, the report concludes, it risks weakening itself more than it weakens China. Smart openness — governed intelligently, protected where necessary, and sustained where it strengthens American leadership — offers a path to secure both national security and national competitiveness.

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At Inkstick, Neil Shea spoke with Jon Letman about her two decades of reporting across the Arctic reveal a region transforming faster than scientists, policymakers, or residents can track. Melting ice, shifting animal migrations, and expanding industrial infrastructure are reshaping life for Inuit, Tłı̨chǫ, and other Indigenous communities whose cultures depend on predictable cold. Shea describes disrupted hunting routes, new geopolitical anxieties, and the erosion of traditional knowledge as elders pass away. He argues that climate change is altering not only landscapes but identities. As Inuit advocate Sheila Watt‑Cloutier warns, “What is happening today in the Arctic is the future of the rest of the world.”

At last month’s Munich Security Conference, Cathleen Jeanty reports for Inkstick an atmosphere of deep unease as world leaders questioned whether the United States remained a reliable partner. While officials offered technocratic reassurances, protests across Munich denounced rising militarism and the influence of the military‑industrial complex. Demonstrators told Jeanty that soaring defense spending and US unilateralism are destabilizing global security. Inside the conference, skepticism toward Washington persisted despite calls for a “reinvigorated alliance.” Outside, activists demanded diplomacy over force. Organizer Heinz Michael said he supported diplomacy, arguing that the “UN charter asks for peaceful solutions and dialogue between states.”

As Madrid debates two proposed mega‑statues — a bull taller than the Eiffel Tower and a 110‑foot Christ figure — a modest bronze dog named Paco has captured the city’s affection, Gerry Hadden reports for The World. The life‑size sculpture honors a 19th‑century stray whose antics in salons, theaters, and even bullrings became local legend. Historian Santiago Gomez said the statue works because “he’s where he belongs. This is his turf.” Residents interviewed could only half‑recall Paco’s story, but the small monument keeps his memory alive. The contrast has fueled criticism of grandiose projects and renewed appreciation for humble public art that preserves neighborhood history.

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For anyone who missed our annual fundraising campaign last year but would still like to support Inkstick, there are several ways. We accept one-time donations and recurring monthly support year-round. We also make a sum off any of the snazzy Inkstick swag you purchase from our merch store. As always, any support you can offer will go directly toward our reporting. And if financial support isn’t something you can swing, then we’d love it if you shared our articles anywhere you are on social media.

Critical State is written by Inkstick Media in collaboration with The World.

The World is a weekday public radio show and podcast on global issues, news, and insights from PRX and GBH.

With an online magazine and podcast featuring a diversity of expert voices, Inkstick Media is “foreign policy for the rest of us.”

Critical State is made possible in part by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

The Wall Street Journal recently reported that US President Donald Trump has signaled that he is seeking a rapid end to the war on Iran as advisers privately urge him to craft an exit strategy amid surging oil prices and fears of political fallout.

Speaking in Florida, Trump said the mission has (“way ahead of schedule”) achieved its goals and would conclude “very soon,” though he offered no timeline.

He expressed disappointment at the elevation of Mojtaba Khamenei as Iran’s new supreme leader but suggested he preferred to end the conflict quickly rather than pursue regime change.

Also on Monday, Trump said: “We could go further, and we’re going to go further.”

Inside the administration, officials have warned that continued Iranian attacks and Israeli pressure to strike additional targets make a clean withdrawal unlikely.

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Trump has oscillated between threatening escalation and downplaying ambitions, at one point denying he sought Iran’s “unconditional surrender” after previously invoking the phrase.

Advisers said he has remained surprised that Tehran has not capitulated despite the extensive US-Israeli campaign.

Rising oil prices and polling showing broad public opposition heightened concern among Trump’s allies.

Some advisers have pressed him to argue that US objectives have largely been met. The administration has considered lifting certain oil‑related sanctions on Russia and other countries and offering naval escorts to stabilize markets.

If You Read One More Thing: Noem No More

The New Republic recently covered Trump's removal of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem after a pair of disastrous congressional hearings exposed her mismanagement of the department.

• Noem’s role in a $220 million border‑security ad campaign that prominently featured herself likely played a role.

• Noem’s downfall accelerated after she struggled under questioning, offered seemingly false statements, and failed to explain why DHS awarded a major contract to an eight‑day‑old company tied to a former agency spokesperson.

• Trump announced that Senator Markwayne Mullin will replace her at the end of March, despite Mullin being ineligible under federal vacancy laws to serve as acting secretary. Trump praised Noem’s “spectacular results” and reassigned her to a newly invented diplomatic role, “special envoy for the Shield of the Americas.”

• Reports indicate Trump has already begun searching for replacements, with Mullin emerging as a top contender despite recent controversy over his defense of Trump’s war on Iran.

• The White House is expected to formally unveil the “Shield of the Americas” initiative at an upcoming summit in Miami.

NYPD Cop Dies in Kuwait

JD Simkins writes for the Military Times that the Pentagon has announced that Maj. Sorffly Davius, 46, a New York Army National Guard officer and NYPD policeman, died on March 6 at Camp Buehring, Kuwait, following a non‑combat incident that remains under investigation.

• The NYPD said he suffered a “medical episode” while deployed. Davius had been supporting Operation Spartan Shield, though the NYPD has stated he was assigned to Operation Epic Fury, the codename for the war on Iran.

• US Central Command also reported that a service member wounded in a March 1 Iranian attack in Saudi Arabia died Saturday, becoming the seventh US troop killed in action during the conflict.

• The other six — killed March 1 in an Iranian drone strike in Port Shuabia, Kuwait — were Sgt. Declan Coady, 20; Capt. Cody Khork, 35; Sgt. 1st Class Nicole Amor, 39; Sgt. 1st Class Noah Tietjens, 42; Maj. Jeffrey O’Brien, 45; and Chief Warrant Officer 3 Robert Marzan, 54. Eighteen additional troops have been announced as wounded.

Deep Dive: Missile Strike on Iranian School a Potential War Crime

Human Rights Watch (HRW) has called for an urgent, independent investigation into a Feb. 28, 2026 strike on the Shajareh Tayyebeh Primary School in Minab, southern Iran, arguing that the attack appears to constitute an unlawful strike on a civilian object and should be examined as a potential war crime. The attack occurred amid hundreds of US and Israeli strikes across Iran that morning, though neither government has acknowledged responsibility. Iranian authorities have blamed the US–Israeli coalition, while Israel told HRW it was “not aware of any [Israeli military] strikes in the area.”

The strike reportedly killed scores of civilians — many of them children — though the exact toll remains difficult to verify due to a near‑total internet shutdown imposed by Iranian authorities immediately after the attacks. Iranian state media reported 168 deaths as of March 4, while HRW was able to confirm at least 57 names released by local officials, 48 of whom appeared to be children. Additional names were identified through funerary materials, bringing the minimum confirmed child fatalities even higher. HRW emphasizes that the true toll may be larger, as researchers cannot safely contact witnesses or families.

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The school sits on the interior edge of an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Naval Forces compound but is physically separated by walls, has its own street entrance, and shows no evidence of military use. Satellite imagery reviewed by HRW shows that between 2016 and 2017, the school’s grounds were renovated, watchtowers removed, and a separate entrance created — further distinguishing it from the military facilities. The compound also contains a medical clinic and other structures, several of which were also struck.

HRW has verified 14 videos and photographs from immediately after the attack, along with 40 satellite images spanning 25 years. The pattern of damage — small circular roof penetrations, multiple distinct impact points, and the destruction of at least eight structures — indicates the use of highly accurate guided munitions rather than errant or malfunctioning weapons. The school itself suffered a direct hit that collapsed part of its roof, with videos showing smoke plumes, debris, and civilians screaming as they searched for survivors.

Satellite imagery shows at least eight direct impact sites across the compound, including the school and the IRGC‑affiliated clinic. HRW concludes that at least 10 structures were likely individually targeted, given the spacing and damage patterns. Nearly all buildings in the compound sustained some level of destruction or fire damage.

HRW stresses that even if a legitimate military target existed within the compound, the laws of war prohibit attacks in which expected civilian harm is disproportionate to anticipated military gain. Schools are protected civilian sites unless used for military purposes, and HRW found no evidence that the Shajareh Tayyebeh school was being used in that way. The attack occurred on a Saturday morning — the start of the Iranian school week — when children and teachers were present. The Coordinating Council of Iranian Teachers’ Trade Associations has reported that the school had attempted to close and send children home, but “the time between the announcement of the school’s closure and the moment of the explosion was extremely short.”

Sophia Jones, an HRW open‑source researcher, has called for a “prompt and thorough investigation … into this attack, including if those responsible should have known that a school was there and that it would be full of children and their teachers before midday.”

She added: “Those responsible for an unlawful attack should be held to account, including prosecutions of anyone responsible for war crimes.”

HRW notes that both the US and Israeli militaries possess advanced intelligence and targeting systems capable of identifying civilian structures. The organization has written to both militaries on March 2 and to Iranian authorities on March 3. Israel responded that it was not aware of strikes in the area and was examining the incident. The US did not respond formally, though Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters on March 4: “All I can say is that we’re investigating that … We, of course, never target civilian targets.”

President Donald Trump claimed on March 9 that Iran had Tomahawk cruise missiles, a US-produced missile suspected of hitting the school. The US is the primary user of the Tomahawk missile, and there is no evidence to support the claim.

Iran’s near‑complete internet shutdown — with traffic reportedly down 98% — has severely impeded documentation, evacuation, and communication. HRW warns that such shutdowns, a recurring tactic by Iranian authorities, obstruct independent verification and may conceal additional civilian harm.

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HRW has urged the US and Israel to publicly assess their roles, investigate potential operational failures, and prosecute any individuals responsible for war crimes.

Allies of all involved should insist on accountability “before more civilians, including children, are unlawfully killed,” HRW says.

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In a piece originally published at TomDispatch, Beverly Gologorsky argues that an aggressive, militarized vision of power permeates US domestic and foreign policy under Trump’s second term. The essay describes how widespread gun ownership, harsh immigration enforcement, and expanding police militarization fosters fear and instability, particularly among marginalized communities. The actions “involving the rounding up of immigrants, are all too much like the 1930s Gestapo in Nazi Germany rounding up Jews,” she writes. Despite these trends, the piece highlights grassroots resistance in places like Minnesota, where community groups have organized against ICE raids, asserting that collective action and public protest remain powerful tools against authoritarianism.

Tyler Hicks has recently reported that the Department of Homeland Security increasingly relies on local police to support federal immigration enforcement, often in ways that advocates say violate state sanctuary laws. The article describes incidents in Chicago and Minneapolis in which local officers assisted or stood alongside ICE and Border Patrol during arrests, protests, and violent encounters, despite legal limits on such cooperation. DHS has used financial incentives and 287(g) agreements, which “effectively deputize local police departments and sheriff’s offices, allowing them to work hand-in-glove with ICE for the arrest and detention of immigrants.” The agreements expand federal reach nationwide, but “advocates are pushing states and municipalities to limit the extent to which local law enforcement can work with federal agencies.”

At The World, Gisele Regatão has covered how seven new “medical totems” have brought virtual vital‑sign monitoring to Jordão, a remote Indigenous town in Brazil’s Acre state, which has the country’s lowest doctor‑patient ratio. Dr. Eduardo Bulisani traveled nearly 2,000 miles to train local health workers to use the devices, which measure nine vital signs and upload results to cloud‑based systems for remote physicians. He said the machines are simple to operate, noting: “It’s intuitive, it’s easy.” The article explains that the technology aims to expand telemedicine in the Amazon, though challenges such as poor infrastructure, limited digital literacy, and geographic isolation continue to hinder equitable access.

Support Independent Journalism

For anyone who missed our annual fundraising campaign last year but would still like to support Inkstick, there are several ways. We accept one-time donations and recurring monthly support year-round. We also make a sum off any of the snazzy Inkstick swag you purchase from our merch store. As always, any support you can offer will go directly toward our reporting. And if financial support isn’t something you can swing, then we’d love it if you shared our articles anywhere you are on social media.

Critical State is written by Inkstick Media in collaboration with The World.

The World is a weekday public radio show and podcast on global issues, news, and insights from PRX and GBH.

With an online magazine and podcast featuring a diversity of expert voices, Inkstick Media is “foreign policy for the rest of us.”

Critical State is made possible in part by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

A wave of complaints from US service members allege that military commanders have framed the new war with Iran as a divinely ordained conflict, according to a new report from independent journalist Jonathan Larsen.

One combat‑unit commander told non‑commissioned officers that President Donald Trump has been “anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth.”

According to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), which Larsen cites, more than 110 complaints from over 40 units across at least 30 installations were filed between Saturday morning and Monday night. Troops reported commanders citing the Book of Revelation, urging subordinates to view the fighting as part of God’s plan, and celebrating the war as a sign of the approaching “End Times.”

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MRFF President Mikey Weinstein said the group has been “inundated” since US and Israeli strikes began, describing widespread “euphoria” among some commanders who see the conflict as biblically sanctioned. He argued that such conduct violates constitutional limits and the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

The complaints have emerged amid Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s elevation of evangelical Christianity inside the Pentagon, including monthly prayer meetings and ties to a White House Bible study that preaches unwavering support for Israel.

With the Trump administration openly dismissive of long‑standing norms, it remains unclear whether Pentagon leadership will intervene to curb what complainants described as morale‑destroying religious coercion within the ranks.

If You Read One More Thing: Democrat Candidates Condemn Iran War Ahead of Primaries

Democratic candidates in primaries across the US are using candidates’ responses to the Iran conflict — and their ties to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) — as rallying cries, according to Matt Sledge’s report at The Intercept.

• Polling shows overwhelming Democratic disapproval of the attacks, yet congressional leaders such as Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer have emphasized constitutional concerns over the merits of the war itself.

• “As we plunge headlong into another catastrophic war, Sen. Schumer and Rep. Jeffries’s throat clearing and process critique only serves Trump and the war machine. Democrats should speak clearly and with one voice: no war,” said Claire Valdez, a New York candidate running with Mayor Zohran Mandani’s endorsement.

• In North Carolina, Representative Valerie Foushee faces a challenge from Nida Allam, who has centered her campaign on opposing the strikes and rejecting support from defense contractors and pro-Israel groups.

• Foushee, previously backed by an AIPAC‑aligned super PAC, now says she opposes the war but continues to benefit from outside spending.

• Progressive candidates in Illinois and Maine have taken stronger antiwar positions, arguing Democrats must clearly reject another “forever war” rather than limit criticism to Trump’s process for launching it.

US Far-Right Figures Find Friends in South Africa

At The Guardian, Jason Wilson has covered a Pretoria conference hosted by the Afrikaner nationalist group Lex Libertas that brought together US and European far‑right figures.

• Stefano Forte, president of the New York Young Republican Club and executive director of the 1776 Project PAC, appeared as a featured speaker alongside leaders of the Afrikaner Solidarity Movement, Belgium’s Vlaams Belang, and a political analyst from a think tank funded by Hungary’s Viktor Orbán.

• The event reflects a growing pattern of collaboration: Afrikaner nationalists have attended NYYRC galas, while NYYRC figures have traveled to right‑wing gatherings in Budapest and Brussels.

• Experts say such conferences help far‑right groups coordinate. As Oxford professor Rita Abrahamsen notes, “They are all trying to form networks, share ideas, and learn from each other.”

• Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, said: “This is just another example of how white nationalism is driving this administration’s policies and how this racist ideology is shared by many of its allies and staffers.”

Deep Dive: Are the Gulf States Reconsidering their US Alliance?

A surge of regional violence, shifting great‑power alignments, and growing doubts about Washington’s reliability have pushed Qatar and Saudi Arabia into the most consequential reassessment of their security strategies in decades, according to a new report from The Quincy Institute.

The report argues that both Qatar and Saudi Arabia — historically the two largest buyers of US defense technology — are recalibrating their dependence on the United States after a year in which American and Israeli actions have repeatedly destabilized the Gulf. The brief opens with a stark reminder of how dramatically regional perceptions have shifted: a 2026 Arab Opinion Index survey found that 77% “of respondents said US policies threaten regional security and stability” and 84% felt that Israeli policies endanger the region.

Qatar’s position is the most paradoxical. After Israel bombed a residential building in Doha on Sept. 9, 2025 — killing six people and marking the first Israeli strike on a GCC member — Qatar publicly reaffirmed its partnership with Washington even as officials privately questioned why the United States failed to stop the attack. Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al‑Thani condemned the strike as “a flagrant violation of sovereignty and security, and a clear violation of the rules and principles of international law.”

The attack was especially shocking because Qatar has long served as a mediator between Israel and Hamas at Washington’s request. Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al‑Thani underscored the unprecedented nature of the strike, telling the Doha Forum that “the concept of mediation is that it is a safe place for the two parties … To have the mediator hit by one of the parties is unprecedented.”

Despite its outrage, Doha avoided a public rupture with Trump, who responded by issuing an executive order pledging that “an attack on Qatar will be treated as an attack on the US.” Qatari officials welcomed the gesture but noted privately that an executive order lacks the permanence of a treaty. The episode reinforced Qatar’s long‑running strategy: maintain visible loyalty to Washington while quietly expanding ties with Turkey, the UK, France, and other partners.

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Saudi Arabia’s reassessment is more overt. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s Vision 2030 hinges on stability, foreign investment, and avoiding regional war — conditions gravely threatened by Trump’s threats to strike Iran and by Israel’s widening military campaign. Riyadh has grown increasingly skeptical of US reliability since Washington failed to respond forcefully to Iran’s 2019 attack on Saudi oil facilities.

Saudi analysts interviewed for the report describe deep frustration with US escalation. Researcher Aziz al‑Ghashian warns that Trump’s Iran policy was a short‑term measure where the Saudis inherit long‑term ramifications: “It’s actually counterproductive, now the Iranians are even more paranoid.”

Riyadh has responded by diversifying: repairing ties with Iran and Turkey, signing a defense pact with Pakistan, purchasing South Korean air‑defense systems, and exploring Chinese and Sino‑Pakistani weapons platforms. At the same time, Saudi leaders insist that normalization with Israel remains impossible without a Palestinian state — an immovable condition that has strained relations with Washington.

The report argues that neither Qatar nor Saudi Arabia sees a viable replacement for the US security umbrella, but both are preparing for a future in which Washington is less dependable. Efforts to build a collective GCC defense architecture have repeatedly stalled due to internal rivalries, from the 2017 Saudi‑UAE blockade of Qatar to ongoing Saudi‑Emirati competition in Yemen and Sudan.

Even as several GCC states quietly expanded security coordination with Israel and the US during the Gaza war, the cooperation failed to prevent Israel’s strike on Doha — reinforcing doubts about the system’s purpose and reliability. By early 2026, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, and the UAE had all signaled that they would not allow the US to use their airspace for a strike on Iran.

The report concludes that Gulf states are looking for greater autonomy and more partners. Some officials now openly argue that the Gulf must stop outsourcing its security and instead build an inclusive regional architecture involving Turkey, Iran, and — contingent on Palestinian statehood — Israel.

Yet the path forward remains uncertain. The US still provides unmatched military capabilities, and no alternative power offers comparable guarantees. For now, Qatar and Saudi Arabia are pursuing parallel strategies: maintaining strong ties with Washington while expanding partnerships that reduce their vulnerability to American unpredictability.

Show Us the Receipts

For Inkstick, Winthrop Rodgers has covered US Special Envoy for Syria Tom Barrack’s abrupt shift toward backing Damascus that made him, for many Kurds, the newest symbol of US betrayal. As the Trump administration’s Syria envoy, he announced earlier this year that the Kurdish-led SDF’s “original purpose … has largely expired,” effectively endorsing President Ahmed al‑Sharaa’s centralizing offensive. Kurdish activists say they have “not had a very good experience with Barrack,” calling him a threat to minorities. Protests erupted across the Kurdistan region, Europe, and the US, while artists like Khalid Raza turned to satire to express their anger. Many Kurds see the move as part of a decades‑long pattern of US betrayals that has time and again left them vulnerable to hostile states and shifting geopolitical priorities.

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Marius Loiseau looks at the sharp escalation in deportations for Haitians in the Dominican Republic, where President Luis Abinader’s quota of 10,000 removals per week produced more than 379,000 expulsions in 2025. Human rights groups say the campaign relies on racial profiling, arbitrary arrests, and mass sweeps in streets, workplaces, churches, and homes. Haitians and Black Dominicans have described abusive detentions at the Haina center, overcrowded “cage-like” transport trucks, and extortion by officials and smugglers. The crackdown has also swept up Dominicans of Haitian descent rendered stateless by the adoption of a new constitution in 2010. “[A]pproximately 500,000 Haitians were living in the Dominican Republic, playing a crucial role in the economy, where they work mainly in construction, agriculture, domestic services, and tourism,” according to the article.

At The World, host Carolyn Beeler speaks to Ibraheem Bahiss, a senior analyst in Kabul with the International Crisis Group, about the conflict between Afghanistan and Pakistan evolving into “open war.” Afghanistan and Pakistan have recently exchanged their deadliest cross‑border fire in years. Bahiss says that “this is the second time that Pakistan has carried out airstrikes, both in Kandahar and Kabul,” but this time the targets are clearly military. Pakistani officials say Taliban forces fired on military posts in Balochistan, killing several soldiers, while the Taliban has accused Pakistan of repeated airstrikes that hit civilian areas. The interview explains that the Pakistani Taliban, formed in 2007, has surged sharply since the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan, with Pakistan accusing the group of using Afghan sanctuaries for cross‑border attacks while Afghan authorities insist the TTP threat is a domestic Pakistani problem.

Back Independent Journalism Today

For anyone who missed our annual fundraising campaign last year but would still like to support Inkstick, there are several ways. We accept one-time donations and recurring monthly support year-round. We also make a sum off any of the snazzy Inkstick swag you purchase from our merch store. As always, any support you can offer will go directly toward our reporting. And if financial support isn’t something you can swing, then we’d love it if you shared our articles anywhere you are on social media.

Critical State is written by Inkstick Media in collaboration with The World.

The World is a weekday public radio show and podcast on global issues, news, and insights from PRX and GBH.

With an online magazine and podcast featuring a diversity of expert voices, Inkstick Media is “foreign policy for the rest of us.”

Critical State is made possible in part by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

Senior Trump administration officials have scrambled to reassure Arab governments after US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee claimed in a podcast interview with right-wing journalist Tucker Carlson that Israel has the right to control a vast swath of the Middle East, according to a report by Felicia Schwartz at Politico.

Huckabee told Tucker Carlson that “it would be fine if it took it all” when asked whether Israel could claim territory “from the Nile to the Euphrates,” later calling the comment “somewhat of a hyperbolic statement.”

According to the article, officials, including Deputy Secretary of State Chris Landau and Undersecretary Allison Hooker, have privately told regional counterparts that Huckabee’s remarks reflect his personal views rather than a policy shift.

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More than a dozen Arab governments and Muslim-majority governments have condemned the remarks as “dangerous and inflammatory,” warning that they contradict Trump’s assurances that he would not permit Israeli annexation of the occupied West Bank.

The controversy emerges as the administration has sought Arab support for its Gaza reconstruction plans and contingency efforts involving a possible war with Iran.

Diplomats fear Huckabee’s comments could undermine efforts to integrate Israel into the region.

The US Embassy in Jerusalem has insisted the remarks were taken out of context, while Huckabee has publicly criticized media coverage of the episode.

If You Read One More Thing: Top General Warns Against Iran War

In the days before his State of the Union address, President Donald Trump faces “roadblocks” to his grand plans, including a public warning about war with Iran, according to an essay at Slate by Fred Kapan.

• The Supreme Court recently ruled that Trump’s emergency tariffs are illegal, polls show his approval sinking to record lows, and reporting from the Washington Post and New York Times has revealed that General Dan Caine, his handpicked Joint Chiefs chair, has warned that a war with Iran would be risky and potentially protracted.

• Caine reportedly told Trump that US munitions are insufficient and that no regional allies would support an attack or even allow overflight. The leak of this exchange signals rising internal alarm about Trump’s escalating military ambitions.

• Trump has issued a nondenial denial, claiming Caine believes a war on Iran could be “easily won,” a characterization at odds with the general’s reputation.

• Trump appears buoyed by past rapid strikes in Iran and Venezuela, but advisers have cautioned that a broader Iran campaign would be far more complex. Kaplain argues that “Trump still has a moment to shift course,” though the president has shown little inclination to reconsider his approach, raising fears of looming consequences.

Surveillance on the Southern Border

Immigration agencies are placing US border communities in southern Arizona under an expanding web of visible and covert surveillance, according to records reviewed by the Arizona Mirror and Border Chronicle.

• Residents of the indigenous Tohono O’odham Nation have reported frequent stops by US Customs and Border Protection, with one agent telling a driver she was pulled over “because we can.”

• Federal agencies have deployed automated license plate readers disguised in cones, barrels, and highway signs, forming a network used by CBP, the DEA, and local police with little oversight.

• Some devices are more than 100 miles from the border. The system feeds into broader databases, including Flock Safety’s national network, raising concerns about misuse, data‑sharing, and AI‑driven monitoring.

• Advocates warn that the quiet expansion of surveillance — combined with aggressive federal enforcement — has left border residents feeling constantly watched and increasingly fearful.

Deep Dive: Four Years of the Russian Invasion of Ukraine

A series of new analyses from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) think tank commemorating four years of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine show how the war has reshaped global security, strained both countries’ economies, and destabilized food systems far beyond Eastern Europe.

While Russia initially weathered Western sanctions more effectively than expected, CSIS concludes that the country’s long‑term trajectory is deteriorating. As one report puts it, “Russia’s economy is increasingly showing signs of strain, and long-term productivity looks bleak.” The Kremlin has relied heavily on domestic borrowing and tax increases to finance the war, while devoting roughly half its federal budget to the armed forces, internal security, the military‑industrial complex, and debt servicing. Despite high industrial output driven by wartime demand, the report notes that the war has produced “few lasting assets or productivity gains,” leaving Russia further behind advanced economies in technology and innovation.

On the battlefield, Russia’s incremental advances underscore the grinding nature of the conflict. According to CSIS, Russian forces have been on the offensive in most sectors since early 2024 but have moved at historically slow rates. In one of the war’s most scrutinized campaigns, Russian troops advanced less than 50 kilometers (about 31 miles) from Avdiivka to Pokrovsk over nearly two years — an average of about 70 meters per day. “Russian forces moved forward on the battlefield at historically slow rates of advance,” the report explains.

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These marginal gains come at staggering human cost: CSIS estimates that Russia has suffered more than a million total battlefield casualties, while Ukraine’s losses have also reached several hundred thousand. Combined casualties could approach two million by spring 2026, making the conflict one of the deadliest in Europe since World War II.

Meanwhile, the war’s economic and humanitarian consequences have extended far beyond the front lines. Ukraine’s agricultural sector — long a cornerstone of global grain markets — has been devastated by occupation, landmines, destroyed irrigation systems, and repeated strikes on grain infrastructure. The cumulative impact of these disruptions, according to CSIS, has been widely misunderstood. According to the analysis, “Ukraine’s 2025 exports of corn, barley, wheat, and meslin … were 35% lower than 2020, the last year whose harvest was unaffected by Russia’s full-scale invasion.” The report explains that temporary spikes in exports during 2023 and 2024 were misinterpreted by some policymakers as signs of recovery, when in fact they reflect delayed shipments caused by Russia’s blockade of Black Sea ports. Numerous structural constraints — including mined farmland, labor shortages, damaged irrigation networks, and ongoing attacks on port facilities — have continued to suppress production and exports.

The destruction of the Kakhovka Reservoir in 2023 eliminated Ukraine’s largest irrigation system, leaving hundreds of thousands of hectares without water and crippling agricultural output in key regions. NASA Harvest estimates that roughly 40% of Ukraine’s agricultural production comes from land directly affected by the invasion. At the same time, Russian occupation authorities have seized and exported millions of tons of Ukrainian grain, distorting markets and financing military operations. Even as Ukraine expands alternative export routes through the European Union, political tensions over grain inflows have led to renewed trade restrictions in 2025, further complicating the country’s economic recovery.

Russia’s agricultural sector, by contrast, initially benefited from favorable weather and unimpeded access to its ports. Wheat exports reached record highs, giving Moscow significant leverage over global grain markets. But CSIS warns that Russia’s long‑term agricultural outlook is also vulnerable. Labor shortages — exacerbated by mobilization and demographic decline — are reducing the agricultural workforce by an estimated 150,000 people per year. Weather volatility and sanctions‑related financial constraints have added further uncertainty. Fertilizer exports, another major revenue source, have fluctuated sharply, though potash shipments rebounded in 2025.

Globally, the war has intensified food insecurity. The initial shock of Russia’s invasion pushed food prices to historic highs in 2022, compounding the lingering effects of the Covid‑19 pandemic. Although prices have moderated since then, CSIS estimates that 673 million people remain undernourished and more than 300 million face acute food insecurity — double the number in 2019. The analysts warn that Ukraine’s diminished agricultural capacity has weakened the world’s ability to absorb future supply shocks, underscoring the need for more resilient global food systems.

Russia’s GDP growth has slowed under the weight of sanctions, wartime spending, and limited access to foreign capital. The country receives little foreign investment and cannot borrow on international markets, forcing the Kremlin to rely on domestic financing. Despite high military spending, Russia’s nominal GDP remains comparable to mid‑sized economies such as Canada or Italy, far below the United States, China, Germany, or Japan. Adjusted for purchasing power parity, Russia’s economy is five and a half times smaller than that of the United States and four times smaller than China’s.

Ukraine faces immense reconstruction needs. The World Bank estimates that rebuilding the country’s housing, energy systems, transportation networks, and industrial base would require nearly $600 billion over the next decade — three times Ukraine’s 2024 GDP. Demining remains a prerequisite for agricultural recovery, but a full assessment of contamination remains impossible until the war ends. Energy infrastructure, repeatedly targeted by Russian strikes, requires a shift toward decentralized, Western‑integrated systems to reduce vulnerability.

International support patterns have also shifted. US assistance, which peaked in 2022 and 2023, largely halted in early 2025, leaving Europe as Ukraine’s primary long‑term security backer. European states have committed nearly $100 billion in aid and increasingly rely on a US–NATO mechanism that allows them to purchase American weapons for Ukraine. Air defense remains Ukraine’s most urgent military requirement.

Across both reports, CSIS concludes that the war has hardened into a prolonged struggle with global repercussions: a battered but resilient Ukraine, a militarized and economically strained Russia, and a world still grappling with the cascading effects on food security, energy systems, and geopolitical stability.

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At Inkstick, Sean Manning warns of the US government routinely transporting nuclear materials on interstate highways in unmarked semi‑trucks, placing unaware communities along those routes at risk. Manning’s essay explains that the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has restarted large‑scale plutonium pit production for the first time since the Cold War and plans to ship these cores between Los Alamos, the Savannah River Site, and the Pantex plant in Amarillo, Texas. Manning notes that expanding production sites dramatically widens transport corridors through major metro areas, “especially through crowded metro areas like Atlanta, Memphis, and Oklahoma City,” where “the risk of accidents or danger from malicious actors increases.” Manning argues that the NNSA should publish a map of routes for the restarted plutonium pit program.

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Anagha Subhash Nair and Cian Ward report that Syrian government forces and the Kurdish‑led SDF are struggling to implement a 2025 integration agreement that came after the Syrian military swept through SDF areas this year. The article explains that Damascus seized Kurdish neighborhoods in Aleppo in early January 2026, prompting tribal defections that rapidly collapsed SDF control in Deir Ezzor and Raqqa. The government has exploited the grievances of the tribesmen, allowing easier operations in SDF-controlled areas. A ceasefire announced on Jan. 20 has temporarily halted fighting. But residents in Kurdish areas fear the worst. Ahmad, a resident of Kurdish-controlled Kobani, said people “are terrified there will be massacres. … We hope for a deal, but honestly I don’t expect it. I think they want to come and kill us.”

At The World, Tibisay Zea has recently covered Venezuelan colectivos, government-sponsored community groups whose leaders present as community educators and defenders of sovereignty, after the United States’ abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. The colectivos face renewed scrutiny as the country enters an uncertain political transition. Groups like Resistencia y Rebelión, which operates from offices adorned with revolutionary iconography, insist their work centers on political formation and social programs. But colectivos have been widely accused of intimidation and armed enforcement on behalf of the state. Under acting President Delcy Rodríguez, state support remains uncertain. Roberto Briceño, a criminologist at Venezuela’s Central University, said that if the state stops funding these groups, they may fade or turn to formal politics.

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For anyone who missed our annual fundraising campaign last year but would still like to support Inkstick, there are several ways. We accept one-time donations and recurring monthly support year-round. We also make a sum off any of the snazzy Inkstick swag you purchase from our merch store. As always, any support you can offer will go directly toward our reporting. And if financial support isn’t something you can swing, then we’d love it if you shared our articles anywhere you are on social media.

Critical State is written by Inkstick Media in collaboration with The World.

The World is a weekday public radio show and podcast on global issues, news, and insights from PRX and GBH.

With an online magazine and podcast featuring a diversity of expert voices, Inkstick Media is “foreign policy for the rest of us.”

Critical State is made possible in part by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

Hamas leader Basem Naim has rejected demands of full, unilateral disarmament in an interview with Drop Site’s Jawa Ahmad and Jeremy Scahill, saying the group would only negotiate disarmament as part of a long‑term ceasefire tied to political guarantees and Palestinian statehood.

The rejection comes as US President Donald Trump prepares to convene the first meeting of his newly created “Board of Peace.”

Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have intensified demands that Hamas and other Palestinian factions immediately disarm. Trump recently insisted on Truth Social that “Hamas must uphold its commitment to Full and Immediate Demilitarization,” casting disarmament as a prerequisite for reconstruction in Gaza.

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Israeli officials have signaled that Trump is considering a two‑month deadline for Palestinians to surrender weapons, while Netanyahu has warned that Israel will resume large‑scale military operations if Hamas refuses.

Naim argued that Israel has not honored the first phase of the October ceasefire and that conditions in Gaza remain dire.

Netanyahu has dismissed any phased approach, declaring, “What has to happen is that Hamas must first be disarmed and then Gaza must be demilitarized,” insisting that even small arms must be surrendered before any Israeli withdrawal.

“Naim said that Hamas’s position is that any proposals regarding weapons or disarmament must center around mutual security pacts, not unilateral demands put before the Palestinian side,” The Drop Site article explains.

“Israel must be restrained from continuing the aggression, and it must be ensured that a multi-year ceasefire — three, five, or seven years — runs parallel to the political process,” Naim said.

If You Read One More Thing: Trump Official Allies with Europe’s Far Right

Sarah B. Rogers, a senior State Department official under Trump, has emerged as a prominent figure in the administration’s escalating confrontation with European liberal democracies, according to Jason Wilson’s latest report at The Guardian.

• Since taking office in October, she has met with far‑right politicians across Europe, amplified attacks on hate‑speech laws, and used her official social‑media accounts to promote hard‑right narratives about migration.

• Rogers has described migrants in Germany as “barbarian rapist hordes,” a remark that intensified criticism from European officials and human‑rights advocates.

• Her interventions coincide with Trump’s apparent offensive against the EU and NATO, deepening concerns that Washington is aligning itself with Europe’s far‑right movements.

• Rogers serves as undersecretary of state for public diplomacy, a role traditionally focused on strengthening ties with foreign publics

• But Rogers’s actions appear “to be concerned with winning over a particular slice of foreign public opinion,” the article says.

US Pilots Wounded in Maduro Kidnapping

Tanya Noury at MilitaryTimes.com reports that Trump has unexpectedly revealed that two US helicopter pilots were wounded during a January special operations raid in Venezuela aimed at capturing President Nicolás Maduro.

• Until Trump’s disclosure at a campaign event, defense officials had not publicly acknowledged any American casualties.

• The mission, conducted by Army special operations forces, escalated into a firefight with Venezuelan troops after the US team came under fire. The operation involved “more than 200 forces and 150 aircraft,” according to the report.

• Trump said the pilots encountered a “couple of machine gunners” that survived a “thicket of bombs.” The president said US snipers then killed the machine gunner.

• The helicopter pilots will receive the Medal of Honor, Trump told reporters on Air Force One after the event.

Deep Dive: The Air Force’s Costly ‘Box Cutters’

Air Force maintenance units have spent nearly a decade quietly purchasing thousands of high‑end combat knives and other luxury blades with taxpayer money, according to a new investigation by Austin Campbell at The Intercept.

The investigation reveals that maintainers across multiple bases and major commands have routinely ordered knives marketed for combat use — not aircraft repair — and have distributed them informally as perks, despite chronic shortages of essential maintenance supplies.

Procurement records, or documents that show purchases by government agencies, form the backbone of the investigation. The Intercept obtained these records through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. These FOIA‑released documents detail years of knife purchases across Air Force maintenance units and enabled The Intercept to map the scale, duration, and distribution of the spending.

The records, combined with interviews and previous reporting across nine bases and multiple commands, paint a picture of a procurement system in which convenience and loopholes often outweigh operational need.

The knives, often referred to euphemistically as “box cutters,” are anything but ordinary utility tools. As the article explains, “the blades slide out at the push of a button, revealing high-end knives made and marketed for active combat.” These items, including the Benchmade Infidel and Mini Infidel, typically cost the government hundreds of dollars each. Over the years, maintenance units have spent more than $1.79 million on 5,166 knives and similar luxury items, even as they have struggled to obtain basic materials like safety wire, hydraulic fluids, and calibrated test equipment.

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The purchases span at least from 2017 through June 2025, cutting across multiple major commands. Maintainers interviewed by The Intercept say the knives have no legitimate maintenance purpose and are often banned on the flightline. One former noncommissioned officer, recently discharged from Hill Air Force Base, told the outlet, “Everyone knew we didn’t need them.” He added, “There was literally zero justification in any maintenance field.”

The article places the knife‑buying spree in the context of a military budget approaching $1 trillion, with roughly $300 billion allocated to the Air Force.

While the total spent on knives represents a tiny fraction of that budget, the article argues that the purchases illustrate how frivolous spending can persist inside a massive bureaucracy with limited oversight. Maintainers describe a culture in which nonessential items flow easily through the supply system, while critical tools are delayed or unavailable. A procurement expert interviewed by The Intercept suggested that misclassification within the supply system has likely enabled the knives to be ordered without scrutiny.

The knives’ popularity among maintainers appears to stem from a mix of convenience, novelty, and an informal workplace culture. Some maintainers say the ability to order a high‑end knife for free feels like one of the few perks available in an otherwise understaffed and overworked environment.

Others described a system of favors and informal relationships with supply personnel that makes it easy to obtain luxury items. Maintainers emphasize that the knives have no practical use in aircraft repair and, in some cases, pose safety concerns.

The investigation focuses on the broader strain on Air Force maintenance units. Accounting for roughly a quarter of all Air Force personnel, maintainers are responsible for the upkeep of about 5,000 aircraft.

Many told The Intercept they are chronically understaffed and forced to work long hours to keep aircraft flying. One active‑duty senior airman from the 57th Maintenance Wing at Nellis Air Force Base said, “It always felt like we were just putting duct tape on these jets to keep them flying.” He noted that while essential tools are often scarce, “there would be brand-new computers or unit flags to make the unit look better.”

The knife purchases reflect deeper structural issues within the Air Force’s procurement system. Essential maintenance supplies require justification, oversight, and sometimes lengthy approval processes. By contrast, the knives — misclassified as routine tools — can be ordered quickly and with minimal scrutiny.

This discrepancy, maintainers say, has created perverse incentives: it is easier to obtain a $300 combat knife than a spool of safety wire.

The investigation also highlights the lack of centralized oversight. Because procurement is handled at the unit level, and because the knives are spread across multiple commands and bases, no single authority appears to track or question the purchases.

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At Inkstick, Kris Parker looks at the case of anarchist scholar Casey Goonan, who was sentenced to nearly 20 years after pleading guilty to arson tied to pro‑Palestine campus protests. Prosecutors applied a terrorism enhancement to his arson plea, transforming a protest‑linked crime with no injuries into a nearly 20‑year sentence. The piece situates this within a broader federal effort to redefine activism — particularly pro‑Palestine organizing — as extremism. Officials have described Goonan’s act as “the height of political violence.” His attorney, Jeff Wozniak, said “what was clear here” is that “we’re seeing now is a much broader application of the idea that some people are domestic terrorists, and the import of this is that it carries severe, severe consequences in terms of amount of jail time and placement in certain custodial settings.”

Meanwhile, Eric Ross warns that the expiration of New START on Feb. 5 has left the world without the last remaining US–Russia arms‑control treaty, heightening the risk of a renewed nuclear arms race. Ross argues that the crisis is decades in the making, rooted in political complacency and the failure to abolish nuclear weapons after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Ross, a historian, writes that nuclear‑armed states have become “the true rogue states,” citing US, Russian, and Israeli actions. The piece emphasizes that scientists have long cautioned against relying on deterrence and have insisted that dismantling nuclear arsenals remains the only viable path to prevent catastrophe.

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At The World, Natalie Skowlund reports that Indigenous Wayuu communities in Colombia’s La Guajira region have turned to the historic Guajiro bean to confront worsening drought, food insecurity, and climate‑driven agricultural challenges. At the Ishashimana school, new programs have revived traditional crops, with students eating meals supported by the hardy legume. The bean’s deep roots, fast growth cycle, and high nutritional value make it a resilient staple in extreme desert conditions. Liliana Vargas, a Latin America and Caribbean regional project manager at the nonprofit Slow Food, said the bean “represented an easily accessible solution at hand for a community that faced an imminent food crisis.”

Support Inkstick Today

For anyone who missed our annual fundraising campaign last year but would still like to support Inkstick, there are several ways. We accept one-time donations and recurring monthly support year-round. We also make a sum off any of the snazzy Inkstick swag you purchase from our merch store. As always, any support you can offer will go directly toward our reporting. And if financial support isn’t something you can swing, then we’d love it if you shared our articles anywhere you are on social media.

Critical State is written by Inkstick Media in collaboration with The World.

The World is a weekday public radio show and podcast on global issues, news, and insights from PRX and GBH.

With an online magazine and podcast featuring a diversity of expert voices, Inkstick Media is “foreign policy for the rest of us.”

Critical State is made possible in part by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

United States President Donald Trump’s “hasty climbdown” from threats to seize Greenland has “not done much to improve the fraying transatlantic relationship,” according to and European resentment has deepened as the administration continues to “poke politicians and entire populations in the proverbial eye,” according to a new report from Eli Stokols and Clea Caulcutt at Politico.

“A high‑level European official similarly described a ‘change in mindset,’” the report notes, adding that EU leaders are “forced to adopt a violent approach in our relationship with the US administration.”

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NATO allies were left “disgusted” after Trump dismissed their sacrifices in Afghanistan, and the US embassy in Denmark removed 44 small Danish flags that honored the Danish who died in Afghanistan. The move fueled protests.

Now, the EU and US are “in a power struggle,” according to the official.

A second official said, “The message, the lack of respect for Europe, that’s been sent.”

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has also warned, “Allies should respect each other, not lecture each other.” Meanwhile, a French diplomat said, “Europeans are going through the fifth stage of grief.”

A fourth European official noted “the swell of opposition to the US,” while Finland’s President Alex Stubb said the US “is changing” and that current foreign policy “is underpinned by an ideology that conflicts with our own values.”

If You Read One More Thing: Trump’s Board of Profit

Trump’s “Board of Peace” has been presented as the vehicle to rebuild Gaza, but reporting shows it functions largely as a conduit for corporate interests and Trump‑aligned financiers, according to Ellen Iaones’s latest at The American Prospect.

• The board, chaired by Trump and heavily shaped by Jared Kushner, has been structured to give private companies and wealthy donors extraordinary influence over Gaza’s reconstruction.

• Firms with direct financial stakes in Middle East real estate, energy, and security contracts are positioned to benefit from billions in anticipated development deals. Palestinian representation is effectively absent, while US and Israeli business elites dominate planning.

• The arrangement has raised concerns that Gaza’s postwar future will be driven not by humanitarian priorities but by investors seeking profit from land, infrastructure, and resource concessions. The board’s opaque governance has further deepened skepticism among regional diplomats and aid organizations.

• Hugh Lovatt, senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said he thinks “it is nonetheless pretty much unprecedented to have such explicit power exerted by private individuals who are there by virtue of their business interests.”

Epstein Fallout Hits US Commerce Secretary

The Guardian has covered the calls for Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to resign under intensifying pressure after newly unsealed documents related to convicted child sexual offender Jeffery Epstein showed he visited Epstein’s private island in 2012, contradicting his long‑standing claim that he severed ties with the now-deceased pedophile in 2005.

• Senators say his testimony “strained credulity,” especially as emails show Epstein telling him, “It was nice seeing you.”

• Lutnick, Trump’s longtime friend who has played a pivotal role in tariff policy, has insisted he “barely had anything to do with that person,” but bipartisan critics argue his shifting explanations undermine his credibility at a moment when he oversees the administration’s sweeping tariff program.

• Lawmakers have warned that a Commerce Secretary implicated in undisclosed meetings with Epstein could not credibly manage trade policy.

• The revelations have fueled calls for him to step down as scrutiny mounts over his conduct. “Really, he should make life easier on the president, frankly, and just resign,” US Representative Thomas Massie said.

Deep Dive: US Democratic Erosion Imperils Global Human Rights Order

In the Human Rights Watch (HRW) 2026 World Report, a section on the United States portrays Trump’s second administration as a period of sweeping democratic erosion and systematic rights violations across nearly every major policy domain. From its opening days, the administration has dismantled civil rights protections, intensified immigration crackdowns, weakened democratic institutions, and withdrawn the US from global human rights leadership. The report argues that these actions collectively represent a historic regression in US rights protections and a decisive turn toward authoritarian governance.

The HRW report, which annually tracks human rights across the globe, opens by stating that Trump’s second term has been marked by “blatant disregard for human rights and egregious violations.” On his first day in office, Trump eliminated all federal diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs, triggering a cascade of executive actions that have dismantled civil rights enforcement across federal agencies. The administration has also restructured refugee resettlement to overwhelmingly benefit white South Africans, while simultaneously erasing or downplaying the history of racial injustice in the US. At the same time, it has removed civil rights mechanisms, undermined efforts to address the legacy of slavery, and attempted to suppress the teaching of Black history.

Immigration enforcement has intensified dramatically. ICE and other federal agencies have carried out hundreds of violent raids in homes, workplaces, schools, hospitals, and places of worship. The report describes these operations as “unnecessarily violent and abusive,” noting that many are conducted by masked agents. The administration has revoked protections for “sensitive locations,” allowing authorities to carry out arrests in places previously considered off‑limits. It also used the Alien Enemies Act to secretly expel 252 Venezuelans to a Salvadoran maximum‑security prison, where they were tortured before being transferred to Venezuela. Courts have intervened in some cases, blocking the deportation of unaccompanied children and challenging transfers that violate due process and non‑refoulement obligations.

The administration has also deployed National Guard troops to cities led by Democratic mayors, despite falling crime rates. These deployments, framed as responses to “insurrection,” are widely viewed as political shows of force. Protests in Los Angeles, Chicago, and other cities were met with violent crackdowns by federal agents and local police. The report argues that these actions, combined with racial scapegoating and retaliation against critics, reflect a broader effort to “expand the coercive powers of the executive and neuter democratic checks and balances.”

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Voting rights have similarly come under sustained attack. The administration has attempted to impose proof‑of‑citizenship requirements, shorten mail‑in ballot deadlines, and restrict ballot‑error corrections. House Republicans have advanced the SAVE Act, which includes mandatory documentary proof of citizenship for voter registration. Although courts have blocked some measures, the report warns that similar efforts are expected to return ahead of the 2026 midterms.

Civil society and oversight institutions are also in the crosshairs. The administration has cut university research funding over ideological disputes, restricted government access to certain law firms, threatened the tax‑exempt status of NGOs, and politicized federal agencies by purging independent officials. These moves have weakened the institutional checks that traditionally constrain executive power.

The criminal legal system has seen intensified punitive measures. The administration has sought to increase pretrial incarceration, expand the death penalty in Washington, DC, and drop prosecutions of political allies while targeting perceived opponents. Around the country, police killed an estimated 1,301 people in 2025. Youth incarceration remains high, and the United States continues to be “the only country in the world that sentences children to die in prison.”

Reproductive rights have also deteriorated sharply. States have banned or restricted abortion, and prosecutors have brought hundreds of cases against pregnant people. The administration blocked Planned Parenthood from Medicaid reimbursement, causing more than a million people to lose health‑care coverage. It has frozen funds for family planning and dismantled research into racial inequities in maternal and newborn health.

LGBT rights have also been rolled back through executive actions that redefine sex as assigned at birth, restrict gender‑affirming care, and remove protections for transgender students. Twenty‑seven states have banned gender‑affirming care for youth, and the Supreme Court has upheld these bans.

Environmental protections have been gutted. The United States withdrew from the Paris Agreement, and the EPA has moved to revoke its finding that greenhouse gases endanger public health. The administration has closed environmental justice offices and slashed budgets, limiting the government’s ability to address pollution disproportionately affecting poor communities and communities of color.

Meanwhile, privacy and technology rights have eroded as the administration centralized sensitive personal data within the new “Department of Government Efficiency,” a move the report says has created opportunities for “mass privacy violations.” ICE has acquired phone‑hacking tools and spyware, and federal agencies now monitor social media to flag people for deportation, particularly for “speech on Palestine issues.”

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Foreign policy has witnessed a dramatic retreat from human rights. The administration has terminated nearly all US foreign aid, dismantled USAID, and hollowed out the State Department’s human rights functions. It has expanded sanctions against the International Criminal Court, targeting judges and NGOs. The annual human rights report was “politicized and badly distorted,” omitting key violations and whitewashing abuses by allied governments. The US withdrew from the UN Human Rights Council, the World Health Organization, and the Paris Climate Accords, and withheld UN dues. It has also carried out lethal strikes in the Caribbean that constitute unlawful extrajudicial killings.

HRW concludes that these actions “posed a significant threat to the global human rights framework,” signaling that the United States can no longer be relied upon to uphold international human rights law.

Show Us the Receipts

At Inkstick, Tyler Hicks has looked at Vice President JD Vance’s intent behind repeatedly defending ICE after federal agents killed two people in Minneapolis. Vance has amplified misleading claims and accused protesters of “classic terrorism.” He has argued that local officials, not federal officers, were responsible for “mistakes,” insisting Minneapolis leaders have hindered enforcement. The vice president frames protesters as part of a shadowy left‑wing “network,” a narrative driving federal investigations of Minnesota officials and sweeping terrorism charges against Texas protesters. César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández, a law professor and civil liberties expert at Ohio State University, argues that immigration enforcement is not just a policy priority but the defining issue of the administration, with Vance playing a key role in advancing and normalizing its harshest tactics.

Inkstick fellow Hannah Bowlus has reported on the Air Force’s approval for SpaceX’s plan to launch 100 rockets a year from the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. Marcy Winograd, a member of the Central Coast Anti-War Coalition, said that “instead of retracting and moving in the direction of a peace economy, we are expanding into the surveillance and war industries for billionaires to profit.” SpaceX has secured billions in government contracts and has deployed thousands of satellites, raising concerns about debris, environmental harm, and unchecked intelligence capabilities. Local officials have largely backed the expansion despite economic stagnation in nearby communities. Workers have also alleged dangerous conditions and harassment at SpaceX, prompting lawsuits and federal scrutiny.

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At The World, Jamie Fullerton has interviewed the people involved in Albania’s major project to restore and digitize thousands of films produced under Enver Hoxha’s communist government, sparking debate over whether the effort preserves history or risks reviving propaganda. Archivists, funded by the EU, have painstakingly converted 35mm reels and screened newly digitized works to sold‑out audiences in Tirana. Chemical engineer Erma Troqe, who is working to restore the films, says the footage offers a “window” into how “history changed.” Critics warn that broadcasting them could fuel nostalgia for Hoxha’s era.

Support Inkstick Today

For anyone who missed our annual fundraising campaign last year but would still like to support Inkstick, there are several ways. We accept one-time donations and recurring monthly support year-round. We also make a sum off any of the snazzy Inkstick swag you purchase from our merch store. As always, any support you can offer will go directly toward our reporting. And if financial support isn’t something you can swing, then we’d love it if you shared our articles anywhere you are on social media.

Critical State is written by Inkstick Media in collaboration with The World.

The World is a weekday public radio show and podcast on global issues, news, and insights from PRX and GBH.

With an online magazine and podcast featuring a diversity of expert voices, Inkstick Media is “foreign policy for the rest of us.”

Critical State is made possible in part by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

In a joint article published by The Guardian and Jewish Currents, Alex Kane has revealed that the international watchdog Human Rights Watch blocked a report on the Palestinian right of return, leading many researchers to quit the organization.

According to the analysis of the report in question, the researchers found that Israel’s denial of the right of return — allowing Palestinian refugees and their ancestors to return to their homelands — amounted to crimes against humanity.

After the report was blocked, The Guardian and JD Forward note, two researchers who make up HRW’s entire Israel and Palestine team resigned. Those resignations come as Philippe Bolopion, the rights group’s new executive director, starts the job.

“I have lost my faith in the integrity of how we do our work and our commitment to principled reporting on the facts and application of the law,” Omar Shakir, one of the researchers, said in his resignation letter.

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Leading up to, during, and after the war that led to Israel’s 1948 establishment, several hundred thousand Palestinians became refugees across the Middle East and beyond. The 1967 Middle East war displaced between 280,000 and 350,000 more.

In response to the resignations and the subsequent media attention, HRW said in a statement: “In our review process, we concluded that aspects of the research and the factual basis for our legal conclusions needed to be strengthened to meet Human Rights Watch’s high standards. For that reason, the publication of the report was paused pending further analysis and research. This process is ongoing.”

If You Read One More Thing: Trump’s Silence on Surveillance Powers

The Trump administration has maintained an unusual public silence as Congress approaches an April 20 deadline to renew Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the warrantless surveillance authority at the center of Edward Snowden’s disclosures, Matt Sledge at The Intercept reports.

• At consecutive Senate hearings, no administration officials have appeared, and Trump’s nominee to lead the NSA, Lt. Gen. Joshua Rudd, has declined to endorse reforms requiring warrants for “backdoor” searches of Americans’ communications.

• Lawmakers from both parties have criticized the absence, with Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley noting: “If the administration would like to brief us in an open or closed setting, I will help work to set it up.”

• The White House has insisted it is working privately, but its lack of a public stance has frustrated Democrats and civil liberties advocates, who argue that recent FBI violations strengthen the case for reform.

• Sledge also notes shifting political incentives, with Republicans potentially favoring broad surveillance powers now that Trump is back in office.

Trouble for Springfield’s Haitian Population

Michael Tomasky at The New Republic writes that Springfield, Ohio, is bracing for aggressive immigration enforcement after the Trump administration moved to end Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for thousands of Haitian residents.

• The article says the community has already endured racist falsehoods amplified by Donald Trump and JD Vance during the 2024 campaign, including fabricated claims that Haitians were eating locals’ pets.

• As TPS approached its Feb. 3 expiration, local officials warned that Immigration and Customs Enforcement could launch a 30-day surge targeting individuals with removal orders and others lacking legal status. Springfield school leaders prepared for potential family separations, while residents stayed indoors out of fear.

• Pastor Carl Ruby described Haitian parents granting power of attorney to protect their children. “They are making preparations to stay inside, not to come out of their homes. They are afraid for their children.”

• Ohio Governor Mike DeWine has criticized the policy shift, arguing that Haitian workers contributed significantly to the state’s economy.

Deep Dive: Why Do People Join the Military?

A new comparative study published in Armed Forces & Society examines how citizens in five democracies understand why soldiers and officers joined the military, revealing striking cross‑national differences rooted in national citizenship traditions and military operational tempo. The authors report that their surveys in France, Germany, Israel, the United Kingdom, and the United States show that “beliefs about motivations for military service vary significantly by nation,” with some publics emphasizing patriotism and civic duty and others focusing on pay, benefits, or desperation.

The researchers behind the study, entitled “Citizenship Traditions and Cultures of Military Service: Patriotism and Paychecks in Five Democracies,” begin by situating their work in the long arc of democratic military recruitment. They noted that over the past six decades, “many countries — and especially the world’s wealthy countries — gradually abandoned the military draft,” shifting toward volunteer forces recruited on the open labor market. Critics have long feared that the end of conscription would “kill off ‘the mythic tradition of the citizen-soldier,’” weakening civic duty and elevating individualism. The authors argue that Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine revived these debates, especially in Europe, where concerns about recruitment shortfalls had led some states to reintroduce or expand selective conscription.

The study builds on earlier US-focused research showing that Americans often resist viewing military service as ordinary employment. As the authors summarize, prior work found that “a majority of Americans resist thinking of military service as a ‘job’ and of soldiers as ‘employees.’” But the new study extends this inquiry across four additional democracies to determine whether the “citizen‑soldier” ideal persisted elsewhere.

The team fielded nationally representative surveys between 2018 and 2021, asking respondents to choose among four motivations for military service: patriotism, good citizenship, pay and benefits, or the need to escape adverse circumstances. In Israel, where enlisted soldiers are overwhelmingly conscripts, the survey instead asked about officers and omitted the “no other options” category because respondents found it implausible. The authors emphasize that these differences “complicate efforts to compare the data,” but the overall pattern remains clear.

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The results show sharp national contrasts. In Germany, “‘pay and benefits’ was by far the most common response … accounting for more than half of respondents (53.6%),” followed by “no other options.” In the United Kingdom, half of respondents (49.7%) also chose “pay and benefits,” nearly double those who selected patriotism. The United States displayed a more even split: “43.1%” chose pay and benefits, while “33.3%” chose patriotism.

France and Israel, however, stand apart. In France, a plurality (32.9%) cited service to patriotism, with substantial numbers also selecting good citizenship and pay and benefits. In Israel, “46.4% said that officers signed up primarily out of patriotism,” with another 38% citing pay and benefits. When motivations were grouped into intrinsic versus extrinsic categories, the divide sharpened: “[L]arge majorities of respondents in Germany and Britain attribute extrinsic motivations,” while “significant majorities of respondents in France and Israel credit soldiers … with being chiefly intrinsically motivated.”

The authors then tested three possible explanations for these differences: military size, recruitment format, and operational tempo. None proved sufficient. Military size, for instance, failed to predict public beliefs. They write that “the size of the military cannot explain the cross-national pattern,” since France and the United Kingdom have similarly sized forces but very different public attitudes, and Israel’s exceptionally large reserve force did not produce extrinsic narratives.

Likewise, having a family member in the military did not consistently shape beliefs. The authors report that “respondent-level data … do not support” the idea that military families idealize or demystify service motivations. In France and the United Kingdom, household military service “was not associated with any particular account,” and even segmenting French respondents by whether relatives served before or after the end of conscription revealed “no significant differences.”

Finding the standard explanations inadequate, the authors advance a new framework centered on national citizenship traditions and military operational tempo. They argue that “the more a political culture embraces republican citizenship ideals, the more citizens see soldiers as intrinsically motivated.” But in republican states with low operational tempo, citizens might temper this idealism. Conversely, in liberal citizenship cultures, people tend to view soldiers as extrinsically motivated — unless high operational tempo compels them to valorize service and “venerate soldiers’ patriotism and sacrifice.”

This combined framework, they contend, best explains why France and Israel lean intrinsic, why the United States is evenly split, and why the United Kingdom and Germany lean extrinsic. The authors conclude that these findings have broad implications for democratic civil‑military relations, noting that assumptions about soldier motivations “affect public support for military operations,” shape attitudes toward veterans’ benefits, and influence beliefs about “the appropriate roles of military officers and civilians in policymaking.”

The study ultimately suggests that national cultures of citizenship remain deeply rooted despite surface-level convergence among democracies. As the authors write, their findings “provide further evidence… that national citizenship traditions are enduring,” and that public beliefs about why soldiers serve continue to reflect those traditions in consequential ways.

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At Inkstick, Managing Editor Patrick Strickland has reviewed Christopher Mathias’s book To Catch a Fascist, which chronicles anti-fascist activists infiltrating, surveilling, and documenting far‑right groups. Strickland describes how these volunteers gathered intelligence to expose white nationalists, and disrupted planned actions. It emphasizes that anti-fascists are operating quietly, often risking retaliation, and are continuing a lineage of US anti‑fascist organizing dating back to the 1930s. Though there are often claims that Antifa does not exist, “Antifa does exist, though, and Mathias gets it right by pointing out that the movement is ‘largely a reflection of America itself,’” Strickland observes.

Also at Inkstick, Rebecca Rottenberg writes about UN peacekeeping in Africa winding down as governments in Mali and the Democratic Republic of the Congo push for withdrawals, arguing that the missions failed to protect civilians. The drawdowns are creating a fragmented security landscape dominated by regional forces, state‑backed contractors, and private militias with little oversight, according to Rottenberg. Analysts have warned that civilians are becoming more vulnerable as mercenary groups such as Wagner are committing abuses with impunity. Human Rights Watch has documented killings, disappearances, and burned homes.

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At The World, Sara Hassan covers immigrant neighborhoods in Minneapolis and how they remain on alert after ICE agents’ arrival in December. Immigration agents have been detaining residents and alarming Somali Americans. Hassan reports that Karmel Mall, normally crowded, has seen shuttered stalls as shop owners stay home out of fear. Younger and older Somali Americans alike are avoiding public spaces, worried they could be targeted despite citizenship. As one boutique owner says, “People are afraid to come here.” Meanwhile, community members have described heavy‑handed tactics, alleged constitutional violations, and the shock and fear that has taken root in the wake of the shooting deaths of two US citizens, Renée Goode and Alex Pretti.

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For anyone who missed our annual fundraising campaign last year but would still like to support Inkstick, there are several ways. We accept one-time donations and recurring monthly support year-round. We also make a sum off any of the snazzy Inkstick swag you purchase from our merch store. As always, any support you can offer will go directly toward our reporting. And if financial support isn’t something you can swing, then we’d love it if you shared our articles anywhere you are on social media.

Critical State is written by Inkstick Media in collaboration with The World.

The World is a weekday public radio show and podcast on global issues, news, and insights from PRX and GBH.

With an online magazine and podcast featuring a diversity of expert voices, Inkstick Media is “foreign policy for the rest of us.”

Critical State is made possible in part by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

US lawmakers recently unveiled a compromise $839 billion fiscal 2026 defense spending bill that significantly boosts funding for next‑generation aircraft, according to a report from Stephen Losey at Military Times. The compromise came after months of negotiation between the House and Senate, setting key Pentagon priorities and largely averting a budget stalemate in Congress.

The conferenced legislation reflects broad, bipartisan support for increased Pentagon spending. It boosts procurement for advanced weapons systems, including nearly $3 billion for the Air Force’s next-generation F-47 fighter and nearly $1 billion for the Navy’s F/A-XX aircraft, far above original Pentagon requests.

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The bill preserves the Air Force’s E-7 Wedgetail airborne battle management program after Pentagon leaders had proposed its cancellation. It also funds 47 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters with spare parts and upgrades and tens of billions for Navy shipbuilding.

Additional allocations included two EA-37B Compass Call aircraft, nearly $2 billion for the B-21 Raider stealth bomber, full funding for the LGM-35A Sentinel ICBM program, showing Congress supports nuclear modernization efforts.

The package was part of must-pass legislation to keep federal funding on track before a looming deadline.

If You Read One More Thing: Right-wing City’s Benevolent Immigration Policy

Felipe De La Hoz at The New Republic has a new feature on Salt Lake City’s immigration approach, which is an unusual anomaly in a deeply conservative state. By 2025, immigrants and refugees were acknowledged as significant economic contributors, and city initiatives helped newcomers navigate daily life.

• Utah has also developed its own refugee resettlement efforts and civic collaborations that stood in contrast with broader GOP support for stricter enforcement.

• Salt Lake City’s stance is rooted in history. In 1998, the city council narrowly rejected joining the federal 287(g) program that would have deputized local police to check immigration status.

• That resistance, rooted in a mix of Mormon-inspired sympathy for refugees and a local ethos of minding one’s own business, shaped a more welcoming stance toward immigrants even as national sentiment hardened.

• Yet rising federal crackdowns and state deportation laws under the Trump administration threatened to strain this distinct “Utah Way.”

Far-right Influencer’s Ties to Trump Administration

At The Guardian, Jason Wilson covered right-wing influencer Nick Sortor, who appeared to admit driving his truck at protesters in Minneapolis and had for years cooperated closely with the Trump administration.

• Sortor, 27, a MAGA-aligned video influencer with 1.2 million followers on X, has received public backing from Trump officials after arrests and altercations in Portland and elsewhere, and attended a White House influencer roundtable, despite a history of arrests and accusations of provoking violence for online content.

• Experts argue his inflammatory portrayals of protesters and immigrants feeds into aggressive federal enforcement actions, particularly in Minnesota.

• In Minneapolis, Sortor has posted videos cheering on ICE agents’ use of force and amplifying disputed accounts of confrontations, while others have shared footage contradicting his claims.

• Arne Holverscheid, a PhD candidate in political science at Northwestern University, described a “symbiotic” relationship between such influencers and the administration, which benefited from their content while maintaining plausible deniability.

Deep Dive: Greenland’s Store of Rare Earth Minerals

In early 2026, Greenland has emerged as one of the world’s most geologically promising yet commercially dormant sources of rare earth minerals (REEs) — strategic elements critical to modern technology, clean energy systems, and national defense, according to a new report from The World Data. The report comes amid US President Donald Trump’s push for sovereignty over the island, which is an autonomous region of Denmark, an important NATO ally.

According to up-to-date statistics, the Arctic territory’s proven REE reserves were estimated at approximately 1.5 million metric tons as of 2025, positioning Greenland eighth globally by documented reserve size. This placed it ahead of many countries but well behind major producers like China, Brazil, India, and Australia.

Crucially, the territory’s rare earth riches were concentrated in the Gardar geological province in southern Greenland, where ancient alkaline intrusions have fostered high concentrations of these elements over millions of years. The region’s geology created conditions favorable for economic REE accumulation — specifically in two world-class prospective deposits: Kvanefjeld and Tanbreez.

Kvanefjeld, located near the town of Narsaq, was already recognized as one of the largest known land-based REE accumulations worldwide, with resource estimates exceeding 11 million metric tons of rare earths. Within that total sat roughly 370,000 metric tons of heavy rare earth elements (HREEs) — the rarer, higher-value subset critical to advanced technologies, such as permanent magnets in electric vehicles and military systems. Its proven and probable ore reserve alone comprises 108 million tonnes averaging about 1.43% total rare earth oxide (TREO).

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Tanbreez, a relatively newer target for development, offers even more dramatic statistics. Because of varying methodologies in drilling and surveying, estimates for Tanbreez’s REE resource ranged broadly from four million to over 28 million metric tons. What sets Tanbreez apart was its high proportion of heavy rare earths — more than 27% of total REE content compared with global averages of 5–10%. That characteristic elevates its potential value and makes it one of the most strategically advantageous undeveloped deposits in the world.

In addition to these flagship deposits, geological extrapolation suggests that sub-ice reserves — minerals concealed under Greenland’s ice sheet, which covers about 81% of the territory — could substantially increase total resource estimates. Some analysts have projected that when inferred and undiscovered reserves are considered alongside documented ones, Greenland might hold 36–42 million metric tons of rare earth oxides. That figure potentially rivals China’s supply — the world’s dominant producer — and represents up to 25% of future global demand for key elements like neodymium and dysprosium, important magnets.

Despite these promising figures, no commercial rare earth mining has taken place in Greenland by January 2026. Multiple barriers remained in the way of full-scale development. Greenland’s harsh Arctic climate — with temperatures plunging below −40 °F and a short window for outdoor industrial operations — greatly constrains construction and extraction activities. The territory’s remote location and lack of transportation infrastructure, including the absence of inter-town road networks, further amplify operational risks and costs.

One of the most consequential impediments is political. In 2021, Greenland’s parliament passed a law setting strict limits on uranium content for mining projects, a policy that effectively blocks the Kvanefjeld project because its ore also contains a significant uranium deposit. This decision triggered an ongoing international arbitration under which the Australian developer Energy Transition Minerals has sought $11.5 billion in compensation for what it views as expropriation of its investment.

Environmental concerns have played a central role in shaping policy and local sentiment. Greenland’s residents, particularly in communities near prospective mine sites and indigenous populations, raised fears about radioactive contamination, disruption of traditional fishing and hunting livelihoods, and broader ecological damage. This tension complicates efforts to balance sustainable economic development with environmental stewardship.

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Regulatory complexity has also hampered progress. Greenland’s status as a self-governing territory within the Kingdom of Denmark means that mining projects must navigate overlapping jurisdictions and approval processes, adding time and uncertainty to exploration and permitting. Combined with the lack of infrastructure and the high capital requirements — often running into billions of dollars over prolonged timeframes — these factors have discouraged many potential investors.

Beyond rare earths, Greenland’s broader mineral portfolio is equally extensive. The territory hosts 25 of 34 critical minerals identified by the European Commission and 43 of 50 considered strategic for US national security, including graphite, copper, zinc, and gallium. However, like REEs, these resources have largely remained undeveloped due to similar logistical and political barriers.

The report underscores the geopolitical backdrop of its untapped mineral wealth. With global demand for rare earths rising — driven in part by defense technologies that the US produces — access to diversified supply sources has gained strategic importance. Greenland’s potential role in that landscape, and Washington’s aggressive stance towards acquiring these REEs, highlights the geopolitical importance of these resources.

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At Inkstick, Lital Khaikin reports on how Afghanistan faces overlapping humanitarian, economic, and political crises. More than 2.8 million Afghans have returned from neighboring countries amid earthquakes, border clashes, and historic levels of food insecurity “They have left everything … They just came with their clothes. They don’t have enough,” Gul Mohammed Aryan, head of the Sustainable Goals Organization, told Inkstick. International sanctions, frozen central bank assets, and donor uncertainty have deepened economic paralysis, limiting cash access and stalling development projects. Aid as a result of the Taliban’s renewed rule has caused flows to fluctuate, while recent funding cuts threaten essential services. The Taliban has pursued regional partnerships and infrastructure projects but has struggled to deliver governance reforms. For their part, ordinary Afghans bear the consequences of this prolonged international disengagement.

Thandiwe Birchwood covered Venezuelan women in Trinidad and Tobago facing prolonged legal uncertainty, discrimination, and heightened violence as restrictive immigration policies leave many without lawful status. The article explains that the expiration of temporary registration programs and limited asylum options have forced women into informal and precarious work. This has resulted in labor exploitation, sexual abuse, and trafficking. A xenophobic public discourse and aggressive policing further marginalizes migrants, discouraging them from reporting crimes or accessing healthcare. While local NGOs have attempted to provide legal aid and protection, resources remain insufficient. Venezuela’s crisis continues to drive migration, exposing more women to these abuses.

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The World has covered the situation for Venezuelans in Caracas, who have had mixed reactions to opposition leader María Corina Machado’s recent political strategy. Many credit Machado with reviving democratic participation during the 2024 election and mobilizing citizens to defend the vote. Others have questioned her close alignment with Trump and her silence after US military strikes. “I don’t like her tone toward Donald Trump,” journalist Alejandra Otero said. “We shouldn’t look for another savior for our democracy.” Critics say Machado appears distant while in exile and sidelined from transition talks. Despite unease, polls show she remains Venezuela’s most popular opposition figure and a symbol of democratic hope.

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For anyone who missed our annual fundraising campaign last year but would still like to support Inkstick, there are several ways. We accept one-time donations and recurring monthly support year round. We also make a sum off any of the snazzy Inkstick swag you purchase from our merch store. As always, any support you can offer will go directly toward our reporting. And if financial support isn’t something you can swing, then we’d love it if you shared our articles anywhere you are on social media.

Critical State is written by Inkstick Media in collaboration with The World.

The World is a weekday public radio show and podcast on global issues, news, and insights from PRX and GBH.

With an online magazine and podcast featuring a diversity of expert voices, Inkstick Media is “foreign policy for the rest of us.”

Critical State is made possible in part by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

At Politico, Marion Solletty reports that French far‑right leader Jordan Bardella used a high‑profile Paris speech to warn that US President Donald Trump’s renewed interest in acquiring foreign territory — including past actions involving Venezuela and the administration’s rhetoric on Greenland — reflects what he calls “imperial ambitions” that threaten global stability.

Bardella, who sought to position himself as a statesman ahead of France’s 2027 presidential race, framed Trump’s territorial ideas as reckless, arguing that Europe needs stronger strategic autonomy to avoid being pulled into US geopolitical gambits.

Solletty notes that Bardella’s remarks also serve a domestic political purpose: distancing himself from Trump while maintaining nationalist credentials.

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French officials, she explains, view Trump’s past overtures toward Greenland and Venezuela as unserious but potentially disruptive, especially amid broader concerns about US unpredictability in global affairs.

Regarding Greenland, a territory of Denmark which Trump has said the US intends to acquire — and some members of his administration have floated military options to do so — Bardella said it is “a direct challenge to the sovereignty of a European country.”

Bardella has ultimately used the episode to argue that France must prepare for a world shaped by great‑power competition, particularly between Russia and the US, rather than rely on American leadership.

If You Read One More Thing: Data Centers in Space

Sam Biddle writes for The Intercept that tech leaders, major cloud providers, and space‑industry investors are aggressively promoting the idea of building data centers in orbit, pitching the concept as a revolutionary fix for Earth’s energy demands and cooling limitations.

• Companies such as Blue Origin, SpaceX, and the startup Starcloud have framed space‑based computing as both inevitable and essential for sustaining AI growth, arguing that limitless solar power and the thermal environment of space would unlock unprecedented efficiency.

• Experts, however, told The Intercept that these claims ignore basic physics: GPUs would overheat in a vacuum, radiators would need to be extraordinarily large, and orbital debris posed catastrophic risks to any facility.

• “You’re going to have to spend incredible amounts of money to keep them from melting. And you could solve that problem much easier by not launching them into space,” Matthew Buckley, a theoretical physicist at Rutgers University, said.

• Critics view the push as hype‑driven, fueled by investor pressure and AI‑market speculation, and question why firms would spend vast sums when terrestrial data centers remain cheaper, more reliable, easier to repair, and far less vulnerable to existential failure modes.

Iran Prepares for War Amid Protests

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi declared that Iran is “prepared” for war with the United States while simultaneously signaling openness to diplomacy, Nick Mordowanec reports at Military.com.

• Araghchi’s remarks come amid nationwide protests in Iran, where rights groups estimate there have been at least 544 deaths and more than 10,700 arrests, figures Military.com could not independently verify.

• Iranian state media has also reported over 109 security personnel killed. Mordowanec noted that Araghchi has framed military readiness as a deterrent against US “miscalculation.”

• The Pentagon responded that it stood ready to follow presidential orders, while Trump said the US is considering “strong options.”

• Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly backed the protesters, and both governments maintained indirect communication channels.

Deep Dive: F-35 Program Faces Criticism in Pentagon Audit

A Pentagon Inspector General audit has delivered a sharp critique of the F‑35 Joint Strike Fighter program, concluding that persistent management failures, weak oversight, and unresolved sustainment problems continued to undermine the aircraft’s readiness and long‑term affordability despite years of corrective promises. The report portrays a program still struggling to translate massive investment into reliable operational capability.

The audit examines how the Department of Defense has managed key aspects of the F‑35 program, managed by Lockheed Martin, and found that longstanding deficiencies remained largely unresolved. Inspectors say the program office and senior defense officials have failed to adequately address chronic sustainment challenges, including aircraft availability, maintenance delays, and escalating costs.

Those shortcomings, the report warns, threaten the Pentagon’s ability to meet combat readiness goals while placing growing strain on service budgets.

Central to the audit’s criticism is the F‑35’s sustainment model, which inspectors describe as overly complex, poorly governed, and insufficiently transparent. The report found that the Department has continued to rely heavily on contractor‑controlled logistics systems without establishing effective mechanisms to validate cost data or performance claims. As a result, the Pentagon lacks a clear understanding of what it actually cost to keep the aircraft mission‑ready and has limited leverage to drive improvements.

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Inspectors have also highlighted the F‑35’s persistently low mission‑capable rates as evidence of systemic failure.

The F-35 averaged a 50% readiness rate in fiscal year 2024. This means half of the Pentagon’s fleet was not ready to take to the skies. The audit said this “is 17% lower than the average minimum performance requirement.”

Despite repeated commitments to improve readiness, the audit found that availability targets are routinely missed and that corrective actions are either delayed or inadequately implemented. Maintenance backlogs, spare‑parts shortages, and software reliability issues have continued to ground aircraft across the services, limiting training and operational flexibility.

The audit has also criticized the Department’s handling of the F‑35’s global supply chain, noting that the program’s sprawling network of domestic and international suppliers complicated oversight and accountability.

“F-35 squadrons are also cannibalizing parts to keep aircraft flying instead of being able to rely on receiving parts from Lockheed Martin’s supply chain,” the audit notes. “F-35 squadron officials indicated that they cannibalized parts from other aircraft because of part shortages or supply chain issues with Lockheed Martin.”

Inspectors say the Pentagon has not fully assessed the risks associated with this structure, including vulnerabilities tied to foreign sourcing and contractor performance. Those weaknesses, the report suggests, have left the program exposed to disruptions that could further degrade readiness.

Cost control is another major area of concern. The Inspector General found that sustainment costs have remained significantly higher than projected and that the Department lacks a credible plan to bring them down to affordable levels. The report says officials have relied on optimistic assumptions and incomplete data when forecasting long‑term costs, obscuring the true financial burden of the program. Inspectors warn that without more rigorous cost analysis and enforcement mechanisms, the F‑35 risks crowding out funding for other priorities.

The audit takes particular aim at the Pentagon’s oversight of contractor performance. Inspectors say the Department has not consistently enforced contractual requirements or used available tools to hold contractors accountable for missed targets. In several cases, the report found that performance shortfalls were documented but not followed by meaningful corrective action. This pattern, auditors argue, weakens incentives for improvement and perpetuates a cycle of underperformance.

While acknowledging incremental progress in some areas, the Inspector General concludes that the Department’s overall approach to managing the F‑35 remains reactive rather than strategic. The report says leadership attention tends to focus on near‑term fixes rather than structural reforms needed to stabilize the program. As a result, many of the same issues identified in earlier audits have continued to resurface.

The audit issues a series of recommendations aimed at strengthening oversight, improving cost transparency, and accelerating sustainment reforms. Inspectors urge the Department to establish clearer accountability for readiness outcomes, enhance data validation processes, and develop a realistic plan to reduce long‑term operating costs. They have also called for more aggressive use of contractual remedies to address persistent performance problems.

Defense Department management has concurred with some recommendations but has pushed back on others, arguing that ongoing initiatives would address many of the concerns raised. The Inspector General, however, cautions that similar assurances have been offered in the past without producing lasting results. Auditors say they will continue to monitor the program and assess whether promised reforms translate into measurable improvements.

The F‑35 program is still struggling to escape the consequences of its early design and acquisition decisions, according to the audit. Despite its central role in US and allied airpower, the aircraft remains burdened by sustainment challenges that inspectors say are neither fully understood nor effectively controlled. Without sustained leadership attention and structural change, the F‑35 risks remaining a costly and fragile cornerstone of US military aviation rather than the reliable, affordable platform it was originally intended to be.

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At Inkstick, Issam Adwan reports on Palestinians in Gaza entering 2026 without a sense of future, enduring winter storms, displacement, and ongoing Israeli attacks. Families in tents face flooding, cold, illness, and scarce medicine, while others in cramped apartments have struggled with rent, fuel shortages, and collapsing education systems. Interviewees describe New Year’s Eve as a night of fear rather than celebration. “This year arrived while filled with sadness,” Sabreen Abu Jriban said. Adwan shows how the ceasefire has failed to bring relief, leaving residents focused on survival and doubtful that reconstruction or peace would come.

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In a piece originally published by TomDispatch Michael T. Klare writes that the February 2026 expiration of New START will mark the first time in 54 years that the United States and Russia will not be bound by any nuclear‑arms limits. Klare explains that both governments have already been modernizing their arsenals and will soon be legally free to deploy far more warheads, raising the risk of a new arms race that could involve China. Upgraded missiles, submarines, and bombers on both sides make first‑strike scenarios more plausible. Klare notes that some officials have urged voluntary limits, but political pressures make an uncontrolled buildup increasingly likely.

At The World, Jenna Gadbois reports on National Geographic explorer Paul Salopek, now 13 years into his 24,000‑mile Out of Eden Walk, and his observation of a global hardening of borders as he retraced ancient human migration routes. Salopek describes crossing frontiers as increasingly fraught compared to 2013, with heightened scrutiny and shifting geopolitical attitudes diminishing the privilege once attached to an American passport. Gadbois notes that Salopek links modern anti‑immigrant politics to a long historical pattern of walls — from the Holy Land to the Great Wall of China — questioning whether they protect or isolate societies. He argues that maintaining a “nomadic mindset” remains essential for human resilience.

Pitch Call

Miranda Bryant at The Guardian reports on President Donald Trump’s deputy chief of staff for policy, Stephen Miller, intensifying US pressure on Denmark by questioning its sovereignty over Greenland and dismissing the need for military force.

The calls to take control of Greenland after a US operation in Venezuela that saw special forces abduct Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro to New York for a trial under US law on drug charges.

In a CNN interview, Miller said there was “no need to even think or talk about” military action because “nobody is going to fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland.” He challenged Denmark’s claim, asking, “What right does Denmark have to assert control over Greenland?” and argued that “obviously Greenland should be part of the US” to secure NATO interests in the Arctic.

The talk alarmed European leaders. Greenland’s prime minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, said “[e]nough is enough” and told Trump to give up his “fantasies about annexation.” Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen warned that a US attack would mean the end of NATO.

France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, and the UK publicly backed Denmark, stating, “Greenland belongs to its people.”

If You Read One More Thing: Yesterday’s Enemy

For The American Prospect, Robert Kuttner examines the implications of the US removing Maduro from power and signaling openness to working with Maduro’s vice president, Delcy Rodríguez.

• Although the US has supported potential successors in the past, including Juan Guaidó and, most recently, opposition leader María Corina Machado, Trump has sidelined Machado and complimented Rodríguez, the daughter of a Marxist guerrilla and a longtime critic of the US.

• Kuttner writes that a likely proposed deal could offer recognition, sanctions relief, drug cooperation, elections, oil investment restoring production, and plans enabling Venezuelan émigrés’ return home.

• Such a deal could give Rodríguez and Trump a victory. He could “claim that the military exfiltration operated like clockwork; that he rid Venezuela of a widely detested dictator who ran the economy into the ground; and that he brought greater stability, a modicum of greater liberty, and an economic revival.”

The View from Moscow

Eva Hartog at Politico writes that Donald Trump’s capture of Maduro exposes the weakness of Vladimir Putin’s claimed “multipolar” alliance system, adding that Trump’s action shows Putin is “not a dependable ally when the chips are down,” echoing failures in Nagorno‑Karabakh, Syria, and Iran.

• Political analyst Abbas Gallyamov says that “Putin must be unbearably jealous,” adding, “What Putin promised to do in Ukraine, Trump did in half an hour.” Russian nationalist Igor Girkin wrote, “We’ve suffered another blow to our image.”

• The Russian Foreign Ministry condemned the raid as “an unacceptable violation of the sovereignty of an independent state,” while pro‑Kremlin voices admitted envy.

• Some Russians have argued Trump’s Caracas actions discarded international law, justifying Moscow’s conduct, while others believe he followed Monroe Doctrine regional dominance.

• Gallyamov concludes that “Putin himself created a world where the only thing that matters is success,” and now “Putin’s humiliation is obvious for everyone to see.”

Deep Dive: Neo-Nazis and White Nationalists Turning a Buck with Crypto

In a recent report, the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) has documented a new trend of extremist actors increasingly exploiting cryptocurrency markets to spread hate, launder ideology, and generate significant personal profit.

The report, “The Trump Administration Embraces Cryptocurrency, ‘Meme Coins’ Spread Hate and Enrich Their Creators,” finds that so‑called “meme coins” — cryptocurrencies created as jokes or viral stunts — have become a lucrative vehicle for far‑right propaganda, Nazi symbolism, and racist messaging, particularly as the Trump administration embraces crypto‑friendly policies.

Those engaged in illegal activity have long used cryptocurrencies for transactions, and extremists have used them for fundraising. But now, with the spread of meme coins, they’re also using them for messaging.

GPAHE documents how creators launched meme coins featuring explicit neo‑Nazi imagery, including the Black Sun symbol, antisemitic slogans, and references to far‑right figures such as Nick Fuentes and his Groyper movement. These coins have circulated openly on major platforms like Binance, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, which processes billions of dollars in daily trading volume. Major cryptocurrency platforms continue to profit from extremist content despite having policies that prohibit hate.

“These rules are clear, but the availability of extremist content on Binance demonstrates a serious lack of policy enforcement,” the report explains.

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The investigation shows that meme coin creators have capitalized on viral political moments, including racist or inflammatory posts by US government agencies such as the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Extremist developers have rapidly minted coins tied to these moments, driving speculative trading and social media engagement. In one case, a coin called $FRANKLIN used AI‑generated violent and bigoted imagery surrounding the Trump administration’s targeting of boats off the coast of Venezuela to attract attention, briefly reaching a market capitalization exceeding $24 million before collapsing.

GPAHE explains that meme coin platforms such as pump.fun have incentivized this behavior through revenue‑sharing schemes. Creators earn cryptocurrency payouts based on trading volume, receiving hundreds or thousands of dollars once their coins cross specific thresholds. The report has also found that some extremist coin creators have earned hundreds of thousands of dollars by exploiting these systems, even when their projects were short‑lived or overtly hateful.

The report highlights Binance’s use of artificial intelligence to generate automated summaries of listed coins. GPAHE found that these AI summaries often sanitized or misrepresented extremist content, describing neo‑Nazi tokens as “innovation” while omitting references to hate symbols embedded in their branding. Binance continued to profit from these trades by collecting transaction fees, effectively monetizing extremist activity, according to the report.

GPAHE places the rise of extremist meme coins within a broader crypto culture that has long tolerated misogyny, racism, and conspiracy theories. Binance permits users to buy and sell coins that reference neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes. One such coin is called “The Groyper” coin, a reference to his fanbase and followers.

The report cites research linking the male‑dominated tech and finance sectors to “rampant bigotry,” noting that crypto spaces have frequently normalized extremist language under the guise of free speech or decentralization.

In May 2025, investigators found that dozens of attendees at a Trump‑branded meme coin dinner held crypto assets featuring swastikas, antisemitic references, and racial slurs.

The investigation emphasized that cryptocurrency’s largely unregulated nature allowed extremist actors to operate with minimal oversight. Unlike traditional financial systems, crypto platforms lacked consistent enforcement mechanisms, enabling hate‑based projects to proliferate rapidly before disappearing or rebranding.

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One popular meme coin platform, Pump.fun, “has no safeguards against extremism and hateful ideologies” in its user agreements that govern conduct on its platform. Pump.fun “prohibits the ‘glorification of or encouragement of acts which would cause harm to others or significant harm to property’ along with ‘any content or activity supporting or promoting terrorism or violent extremism’” in its Livestream Moderation Policy, but these do not apply to their meme coins, according to the report.

GPAHE warns that this volatility does not reduce harm, as creators have often cashed out early while leaving investors and communities exposed.

Ultimately, GPAHE concluded that the crypto ecosystem had become a profitable pipeline for extremist radicalization.

Meme coins functioned not only as financial instruments but also as recruitment tools, embedding hate symbols into viral online culture and exposing younger users to extremist ideology, the report concluded.

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At Inkstick, Taylor Barnes and Sophie Hurwitz have interviewed arms industry researcher William D. Hartung about the United States entering its first year of a trillion‑dollar military budget despite public pressure to address domestic affordability crises. President Donald Trump’s second‑term defense spending contradicted campaign promises to end “forever wars” and rein in the military‑industrial complex. The budget exceeded Cold War peaks and comes close to post‑9/11 heights, even without large‑scale ground wars. Hartung explained how contractors, missile defense programs — like the functionally impossible Golden Dome — and emerging tech firms stand to benefit. And “even the hawks didn’t believe they could hit a trillion, but now they view this as a floor,” according to Hartung.

In an excerpt from his new book, Julian Hattem explores how refugees fleeing armed conflict increasingly faced compounding threats from climate‑driven disasters. Three‑quarters of the world’s forcibly displaced people live in countries highly vulnerable to climate change, leaving refugee settlements exposed to floods, cyclones, and extreme heat — aside from the violence they fled and continue to face. Hattem illustrated this dynamic through the experience of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, who escaped genocidal violence in Myanmar only to endure deadly storms in fragile camps. He also takes a look at Syria, where prolonged drought intensified social pressures that preceded the country’s 14-year civil war. The piece argues that climate change has magnified conflict drivers, strained host communities, and tested governments’ capacity to protect displaced populations.

At The World, Joshua Coe reports on Swedish tobacco companies promoting snus and nicotine pouches as safer alternatives to smoking while young people increasingly drive sales. The article describes how products like Zyn have gained popularity through social media, particularly TikTok, where influencers have normalized their use. Coe explains that companies have framed Sweden’s low smoking rates as proof of harm reduction, calling it the “Swedish Experience.” However, public health experts have challenged that narrative, arguing traditional tobacco control policies play a larger role.

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Now that we are in the new year, we have wrapped up our annual NewsMatch fundraising campaign. We want to thank everyone who chipped in to support Inkstick’s nonprofit newsroom. Every buck goes a long way toward helping us keep our reporting going.

For anyone who missed the NewsMatch cutoff but would still like to support Inkstick, there are several ways. We accept one-time donations and recurring monthly support year round. We also make a sum off any of the snazzy Inkstick swag you purchase from our merch store. As always, any support you can offer will go directly toward our reporting. And if financial support isn’t something you can swing, then we’d love it if you shared our articles anywhere you are on social media.

Critical State is written by Inkstick Media in collaboration with The World.

The World is a weekday public radio show and podcast on global issues, news, and insights from PRX and GBH.

With an online magazine and podcast featuring a diversity of expert voices, Inkstick Media is “foreign policy for the rest of us.”

Critical State is made possible in part by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

As a nonprofit newsroom, Inkstick Media depends on donations and reader support to do its work. Between now and the end of the year, Inkstick is participating in the NewsMatch fundraising campaign, which means any and all donations will count as double without costing you any extra. Will you support Inkstick today?

Ecosystems on the Chopping Block

At The Border Chronicle, Myles Traphagen reports that escalating border enforcement efforts have transformed fragile desert landscapes into militarized zones, with lasting consequences for both ecosystems and nearby communities.

Traphagen is the Borderlands Program Coordinator for the nonprofit Wildlands Network based in Tucson, Arizona. In the piece, he describes how US border wall construction has relied on repeated dynamite explosions to carve through protected lands in southern Arizona, including wildlife refuges and sacred Indigenous sites.

Traphagen poses the questions: “They are literally blowing up part of a national park. How can this be possible? Aren’t these protected lands?”

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Not entirely, he explains. “Congress inserted a provision into the Real ID Act of 2005 granting the secretary of Homeland Security — a nonelected, politically appointed official — the authority to waive virtually all laws for border wall construction.”

He details how the blasts destroyed habitats, disrupted migration corridors, and permanently altered desert hydrology.

“Building this wall will waste millions of gallons of groundwater, permanently altering the lives of every being that depends on this land,” Traphagen says.

The piece also examines how federal agencies have bypassed environmental laws under national security waivers, leaving little recourse for local residents or conservationists.

If You Read One More Thing: Affordability in US-North-South Diplomacy

Megan Messerly reports at Politico that concerns over inflation are likely to constrain Donald Trump’s threats to withdraw from the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) as the pact approaches a high-stakes review.

• The article explains that affordability pressures heading into the 2026 midterm elections shaped White House calculations. Officials in Mexico and Canada have expressed cautious optimism that Trump might avoid actions that could raise consumer prices.

• Messerly details how the agreement governed roughly $1.5 trillion in annual trade and included a “sunset review” requiring renewal.

• The USMCA has helped keep costs down by allowing most compliant goods to flow duty-free, even amid recent tariff threats.

• “Frankly, I don’t see [the US pulling out of USMCA] as that realistic because it would be a disaster for all three countries,” Canadian Senator Peter Boehm, told Politico. “As you get close to the midterms, I think there will be some moderation in what the Trump administration is doing.”

Do We Need ICBMs?

Robert Rudney asks what reason The US has for replacing its intercontinental ballistic missiles at The American Prospect.

• Rudney questions whether modernization makes strategic or moral sense. He argues that the Minuteman III replacement program, now known as the Sentinel, imposes enormous financial, environmental, and safety costs while offering questionable deterrent value.

• ICBMs were originally designed for Cold War conditions that no longer exists, he explains, noting that their vulnerability to first strikes increases the risk of accidental nuclear war.

• There has been bipartisan skepticism, including past remarks by Donald Trump, about the logic of expanding land-based nuclear forces. The article contrasts ICBMs with submarines and bombers, which Rudney describes as more stable deterrents.

Deep Dive: The 2025 National Security Strategy Risks Weakening NATO and Indo‑Pacific Deterrence

Brookings scholars have collectively assessed the Trump administration’s 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS) and conclude that it represents a marked departure from recent US strategic orthodoxy, reorienting priorities toward the Western Hemisphere and economic instruments while downplaying the centrality of great‑power military competition. The new NSS, according to the report, “does not expressly reference major power competition once.”

Contributors — including Scott R. Anderson, Aslı Aydıntaşbaş, Pavel K. Baev, Vanda Felbab‑Brown, Mara Karlin, Patricia M. Kim, Michael E. O’Hanlon, and others — each parse different regional and thematic implications, producing a mosaic of critique and cautious endorsement.

The commentators argue that the NSS de‑emphasizes major‑power competition, notably by omitting explicit framing of China and Russia as primary strategic rivals; instead, the document privileges hemispheric concerns such as migration, trade, and economic rebalancing. “Mass migration is deemed to be the major external threat to the United States,” the report notes.

The analysts observe that this rhetorical shift signals a willingness to tolerate regional balances of power and to “rebalance” economic ties rather than pursue sustained ideological or military containment strategies, a change that many saw as potentially inviting strategic risk in Europe and the Indo‑Pacific.

Several authors focused on Europe and Russia. Pavel K. Baev and Steven Pifer warn that the NSS’s treatment of Europe and Russia effectively reduces the perceived threat from Moscow and risks signaling ambivalence about NATO commitments, a posture that Moscow could exploit to press nuclear and strategic advantages. Commentators also note that the strategy’s language on Europe — framing European political trajectories as a problem to be cultivated against — have the potential to deepen transatlantic rifts and to embolden populist, illiberal forces across the continent.

On the Western Hemisphere, Vanda Felbab‑Brown and others described the NSS as advancing a “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine, elevating migration, drugs, and China’s regional influence as primary threats and endorsing a more interventionist posture against criminal networks and foreign economic footholds. Felbab-Brown argues that the “Trump Corollary” could turn the US into a “neo-imperialist presence in the region.”

“Notably, China is never named directly in the discussion of the Western Hemisphere, but there is little doubt that Beijing is the intended target when the document refers to ‘non-Hemispheric competitors’ to be pushed out of the region,” the report says. “How this demand will be balanced against the stated priority of trade negotiations remains an open question.”

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Critics argue this approach risked perpetuating long‑standing resentments in Latin America and could produce open‑ended security commitments.

In Asia, Patricia M. Kim and Lynn Kuok find continuity in specific policy lines — support for Taiwan’s status quo, freedom of navigation, and regional partnerships — yet they emphasize that these positions are embedded within a far narrower global vision that deprioritizes the Indo‑Pacific relative to the Western Hemisphere. Analysts warn that sidelining the rules‑based international order and international law could undermine US leverage and complicate alliance diplomacy in Asia.

Economic and resilience themes have drawn mixed reactions. Kari Heerman and Michael O’Hanlon praised the NSS’s emphasis on economic vitality and technological strength as foundations of deterrence, while cautioning that heavy‑handed economic tools (notably tariffs) could erode long‑term leverage and alienate partners. Stephanie K. Pell highlights cyber and communications resilience as central to the strategy’s infrastructure priorities, noting the administration’s preference for industry partnerships and deregulation.

Across the essays, Brookings experts repeatedly stress that the NSS functions more as an ideological statement than an operational blueprint: It reflects internal political priorities, lacks budgetary alignment, and offers limited guidance for implementation. Several contributors conclude that the document has clarified the administration’s worldview — America First, transactional alliances, and hemispheric focus — even as it raises profound questions about alliance cohesion, international law, and the future shape of US global leadership.

Show Us the Receipts

Inkstick Managing Editor Patrick Strickland examines how Donald Trump’s repeated use of “invasion” rhetoric to describe immigration draws on a long-held, often violent conspiracy theory that has led to deadly consequences since the early 19^th century. The essay traces how Trump popularized the framing during the 2018 migrant caravan, portraying asylum seekers as hostile forces rather than civilians fleeing violence. Strickland writes: “By latching onto the invasion trope, Trump and his allies were tapping into a grim American tradition whose history predates and inspires modern iterations of both the white genocide myth and the great replacement theory.”

Also at Inkstick, Nicholas Lokker argues that the global order faced cannot be preserved without meaningful punishment for Moscow over Russia’s war against Ukraine. “Forcing Kyiv into a lopsided agreement would not only suppress its future sovereignty — it would imperil the broader principles underpinning global order,” Lokker writes. The article examines the post–World War II norm against territorial conquest, enshrined in international law, which has helped reduce interstate war but is now under severe strain. He warns that Russia’s failure to face decisive consequences emboldens other states to use force. Safeguarding the global order requires denying Russia the benefits of its invasion, Lokker wrote.

At The World, Namrata Kolachalam has reported that India’s mango farmers are scrambling to adapt as climate change and global market disruptions upend a cornerstone of the country’s agricultural economy. The article focuses on Chittoor, Andhra Pradesh, where roughly 75,000 farmers depend on mango production and pulp exports. Kolachalam describes how erratic rainfall damages crops while wars and shipping disruptions, including Red Sea blockades, have stalled exports and driven prices down. Pulp manufacturers accumulate unsold stock, while farmers face falling incomes. The piece highlights efforts to stabilize supply chains and innovate farming practices, underscoring how climate stress and geopolitics increasingly shaped rural livelihoods.

NewsMatch Season: Support Independent Journalism

Between now and Dec. 31, you can help Inkstick expand its reporting, better compensate its contributors, and continue digging into the stories you won’t find at corporate media outlets. By donating through our annual NewsMatch campaign, your contribution will count double for us. If you send $50 today, Inkstick will get $100.

Nonprofit newsrooms are entirely dependent on donations and reader support to continue doing their work. At Inkstick, your money will go directly toward our reporting. Click here to learn more about how you can help us keep exposing the war profiteers, would-be authoritarians, and defense companies who would rather see an independent press silenced.

Critical State is written by Inkstick Media in collaboration with The World.

The World is a weekday public radio show and podcast on global issues, news, and insights from PRX and GBH.

With an online magazine and podcast featuring a diversity of expert voices, Inkstick Media is “foreign policy for the rest of us.”

Critical State is made possible in part by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

As a nonprofit newsroom, Inkstick Media depends on donations and reader support to do its work. Between now and the end of the year, Inkstick is participating in the NewsMatch fundraising campaign, which means any and all donations will count as double without costing you any extra. Will you support Inkstick today?

‘We Want Europe to Remain European’

President Donald Trump’s newly released National Security Strategy framed US foreign policy “rooted in white Christian nationalism,” according to an analysis from The American Prospect’s Harold Meyerson, marking a stark departure from traditional diplomatic language.

The document’s section on Europe warned of “the real and more stark prospect of civilizational erasure,” citing migration, declining birthrates, and EU regulations as threats to national identity. “We want Europe to remain European, to regain its civilizational self-confidence, and to abandon its failed focus on regulatory suffocation.”

The document says that “America encourages its political allies in Europe to promote this revival of spirit, and the growing influence of patriotic European parties indeed gives cause for great optimism.”

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Trump has taken a harsh anti-immigrant stance since returning to the Oval Office. He recently dismissed Somali immigrants as “garbage,” according to the analysis. The strategy reflected a broader normalization of white Christian nationalism.

The administration has openly aligned with far-right parties such as Germany’s Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) and Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, framing them as allies in resisting immigration from Asia and Africa, according to Meyerson. Vice President JD Vance has also pledged his support to AfD, whose leaders have flirted with Nazi rhetoric and whose youth organization has been certified as an extremist organization by a German intelligence service.

For Meyerson, this type of foreign policy “remains the foremost negation of our foundational creed.”

If You Read One More Thing: No Money for Hungary?

Seb Starcevic reports for Politico that Trump denied offering a financial rescue to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, contradicting Orbán’s claim that Washington had agreed to provide Budapest with a “financial shield.”

• In an interview with POLITICO’s Dasha Burns, Trump said, “No, I didn’t promise him, but he certainly asked for it,” while praising Orbán for doing “a very good job” on immigration.

• Orbán previously told Hungarian media, “I have agreed with the [US] president, and we shook hands on this,” sparking criticism from opposition leader Péter Magyar, who asked, “Why did Orbán secretly negotiate a huge bailout package?”

• The dispute has unfolded as Orbán faces economic stagnation and an election challenge, while Trump’s administration bolstered far-right allies, namely Argentina’s President Javier Milei, and exempted Hungary from sanctions on Russian energy due to its landlocked geography.

Air Force Chief Says Nukes Need ‘Recapitalization’

At The Intercept, Austin Campbell has covered Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach’s first memo in his new role, which calls for the “recapitalization” of nuclear weapons, signaling a shift from decades of deterrence-focused doctrine.

• In a Nov. 3 memo, Wilsbach wrote, “We will advocate relentlessly for programs like the F-47, Collaborative Combat Aircraft as well as nuclear force recapitalization through the Sentinel program and the B-21.”

• Critics have warned the language reflects partisan priorities and ignores morale and retention crises. Retired Lt. Col. William Astore argued, “You don’t ‘recapitalize’ genocidal weaponry,” citing costs of up to $500 billion.

• Other analysts say Wilsbach overlooked the Air Force’s deterrent role, while veterans have condemned his emphasis on “warrior culture” over addressing suicides and aging aircraft. His rhetoric echoes Trump-era calls for strength and lethality.

Deep Dive: ‘Enforced Disappearances’ and ‘Torture’ at Alligator Alcatraz

Amnesty International’s new report, “Torture and Enforced Disappearances in the Sunshine State,” documents severe human rights violations at Florida’s “Alligator Alcatraz” and Miami’s Krome detention centers. The report concludes that conditions “amount to torture” and describes enforced disappearances, unsanitary facilities, and punitive confinement practices.

Amnesty’s 61‑page report comes on the heels of the organization’s September 2025 research mission to Florida. The organization focuses on the Everglades Detention Facility, nicknamed “Alligator Alcatraz,” and the Krome North Service Processing Center in Miami. According to the report, the findings show a “deliberate strategy that dehumanizes and punishes migrants and people seeking safety” on the part of federal and Florida authorities.

Krome sits on the edge of the Everglades. “In 2025, the facility has faced heightened scrutiny after reports of severe overcrowding and several deaths.” Amnesty found delays in intake procedures, “overcrowding in temporary processing areas, inadequate and inaccessible medical care, alarming disciplinary practices including the use of prolonged solitary confinement, and challenges in access to legal representation and due process” at the detention center.

Alligator Alcatraz opened in 2025 and can detain roughly 3,000 people. Amnesty’s investigators describe conditions at Alligator Alcatraz as profoundly unsanitary. Detainees reported “overflowing toilets with fecal matter seeping into where people are sleeping,” constant lighting, and cameras installed above toilets. Amnesty has concluded that the facility operated without the basic tracking systems used in ICE facilities, which led to “incommunicado detention” and “constitutes enforced disappearances when the whereabouts of a person being detained there is denied to their family.”

The most disturbing revelations involved punitive confinement. AI documented use of “the box,” described as a “2x2 foot cage‑like structure people are put in as punishment — sometimes for hours at a time exposed to the elements with hardly any water — with their hands and feet attached to restraints on the ground.”

At Krome, Amnesty has corroborated accounts of overcrowding, medical neglect, and prolonged solitary confinement. One detainee held in isolation pushed a note through the metal flap, reading: “Help Me. I’m on Hunger Strike.” He showed investigators his “bruised and mangled hand” and said he had waited 37 days for medical care. According to the report, an ICE official “repeatedly and violently slammed the metal flap against the injured man’s hands and forced [Amnesty] out of the solitary confinement area.”

The organization says the “use of prolonged solitary confinement at Krome and the use of the ‘box’ at ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ amount to torture or other ill‑treatment in violation of international law.”

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Amnesty notes that of the 25 people who have died in ICE custody during the 2025 fiscal year, six died while detained in Florida, including four at Krome.

At Alligator Alcatraz, Amnesty alleges detainees were effectively “disappeared.” The report states: “The absence of registration or tracking mechanisms for those detained at Alligator Alcatraz facilitates incommunicado detention and constitutes enforced disappearances when the whereabouts of a person being detained there is denied to their family, and they are not allowed to contact their lawyer.”

The budget for Alligator Alcatraz has already topped $360 million and “is projected to require approximately $450 million USD annually to operate once it is fully functional,” according to the report.

Federal officials have rejected previous criticism about Alligator Alcatraz. DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said: “Nearly every single day, my office responds to media questions on FALSE allegations about Alligator Alcatraz. The media is clearly desperate for these allegations of inhumane conditions at this facility to be true … Here are the facts: Alligator Alcatraz does meet federal detention standards,” according to the Miami Herald.

Amnesty compares the punitive practices at Alligator Alcatraz to torture methods used at Guantánamo Bay and Abu Ghraib. One detainee told investigators, “It’s a copy of Guantánamo. The conditions are inhuman.” Another said, “Any time that anyone demanded that our rights be respected, they were punished.”

The report concludes that “the detention of asylum seekers and migrants is the norm, not the exception” under international humanitarian law. And the conditions which these detainees face at Alligator Alcatraz and Krome “fall far below international human rights standards.”

In Amnesty’s words, Florida’s detention centers violated international law. As the report states, “Immigration enforcement cannot operate outside the rule of law or exempt itself from human rights standards. What we are seeing in Florida should alarm the entire region.”

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At Inkstick, Jon Letman reports on Hawai‘i communities’ opposition to the US Army’s bid to renew its lease of the Pōhakuloa Training Area, citing desecration of sacred lands and environmental damage. Healani Sonoda-Pale, a community organizer from the O‘ahu Water Protectors, said the Army has “done so much damage environmentally to Hawai‘i and also to our communities” through the site. Established during World War II, the site spanned 132,000 acres, much of it leased for just $1 in 1964. As the 2029 expiration date nears, residents and Native Hawaiians are challenging the Army’s final environmental impact statement, which the state’s Board of Land and Natural Resources rejected for inadequate cultural and ecological review.

A joint investigation by Inkstick, Solomon, Taz, and SWI Swiss Info has revealed how American defense firms deployed AI surveillance technologies along Europe’s borders. Shield AI tested autonomous drones in Bulgaria under a Frontex pilot, claiming reduced crossings without disclosing data. Meanwhile, Anduril Industries has supplied “Sentry Towers” to the UK, and other US companies have trialed facial age estimation tools on asylum seekers despite accuracy and bias issues. “When used for age estimation, facial scanning is often inaccurate. It’s in the name: age estimation,” Molly Buckley from the Electronic Frontier Foundation said. Critics warn that these systems endanger vulnerable migrants and erode accountability.

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At The World, Manuel Rueda covers traditional fishermen along Colombia’s Caribbean coast who are curtailing their deep-sea voyages after US airstrikes targeting suspected drug traffickers raised fears of mistaken attacks. In Santa Marta, veteran fisherman Manuel Yepes and others have abandoned larger boats used for tuna and marlin, opting instead for smaller vessels near shore where catches were less profitable. “The US bombings are keeping us from fishing in the open seas,” Yepes said. The Trump administration has shot down more than 20 small boats in recent months, some resembling those used by local fishermen. As a result, livelihoods have suffered while anxiety grows over potential misidentification at sea.

NewsMatch Season: Support Independent Journalism

Between now and Dec. 31, you can help Inkstick expand its reporting, better compensate its contributors, and continue digging into the stories you won’t find at corporate media outlets. By donating through our annual NewsMatch campaign, your contribution will count double for us. If you send $50 today, Inkstick will get $100.

Nonprofit newsrooms are entirely dependent on donations and reader support to continue doing their work. At Inkstick, your money will go directly toward our reporting. Click here to learn more about how you can help us keep exposing the war profiteers, would-be authoritarians, and defense companies who would rather see an independent press silenced.

Critical State is written by Inkstick Media in collaboration with The World.

The World is a weekday public radio show and podcast on global issues, news, and insights from PRX and GBH.

With an online magazine and podcast featuring a diversity of expert voices, Inkstick Media is “foreign policy for the rest of us.”

Critical State is made possible in part by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

As a nonprofit newsroom, Inkstick Media depends on donations and reader support to do its work. Between now and the end of the year, Inkstick is participating in the NewsMatch fundraising campaign, which means any and all donations will count as double without costing you any extra. Will you support Inkstick today?

Hegseth in the Spotlight

At The Guardian, Jason Wilson has reported that US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made an alarming admission in his memoir, The War on Warriors. While serving in Iraq, Hegseth wrote, he told soldiers to disregard legal advice on the rules of engagement.

Wilson explains that a military judge advocate general had instructed Hegseth’s platoon not to fire unless an enemy aimed a rocket-propelled grenade directly at them. Hegseth recounts rejecting that guidance, telling his troops, “I will not allow that nonsense to filter into your brains.”

The article notes that this revelation has reignited concerns about Hegseth’s apparent disregard for international law and military ethics. Critics argue that his stance undermines the Defense Department’s “Law of War Manual,” which requires strict adherence to legal standards in combat.

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The article emphasizes that these comments have resurfaced as Hegseth assumed leadership of the Pentagon, raising questions about how his past defiance of rules might shape future US military policy.

The controversy highlights broader anxieties about accountability, civilian oversight, and the potential consequences of placing a figure with such views at the helm of the Defense Department.

Hegseth’s past disregard for rules of engagement in Iraq directly relates to current debates over US military action near Venezuela, where Hegseth, in his current role as defense secretary, has been accused of authorizing strikes that may have violated international law.

If You Read One More Thing: A Local Fight Against Christian Nationalism

At the Texas Observer, Edward Brown reports on a local fight brewing in North Texas, with a grassroots coalition pushing back against Christian nationalists in Tarrant County.

• Every third Sunday, a group of progressives gathers at a co-working space in Fort Worth, Texas, for what has become “a hub for collective action to combat the influence of right-wing extremism,” Brown writes.

• These gatherings come amid a right-wing effort to do precinct-level redistricting that could solidify the GOP’s control over the county and “consolidate power.”

• Activists have remained defiant in the face of this redistricting drive. Chris Tackett, founder of a group to fight right-wing extremism, told Brown: “There are enough voters out there who can absolutely turn an election and blow up what they are trying to do.”

NATO Allies Lag in Arms Purchases for Ukraine

At Politico, Victor Jack and Hanne Cokelaere report that NATO allies face mounting pressure to contribute more evenly to the Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List (PURL), a scheme created in July 2025 to sustain US weapons deliveries to Ukraine.

• The report says that “11 out of 32 NATO allies formally contributed to five separate packages worth a total of $2.5 billion,” while others lag behind.

• The article highlights frustration within the alliance, with one diplomat saying, “Our patience is wearing a bit thin.”

• Australia and New Zealand are expected to join upcoming packages, while countries like Italy have yet to commit.

• Kyiv has praised the program, stressing that at least $12 billion in future contributions would strengthen its negotiating position during ongoing peace talks with Russia.

Deep Dive: Japan and Australia Under Pressure in US-China Competition

A recent major audit of US alliances underscores how Washington’s partners in the Indo‑Pacific have adapted to the intensifying rivalry with Beijing. The report, “Legacy or Liability? Auditing US Alliances for Competition with China,” describes Japan as “the United States’ most important Indo‑Pacific ally” and Australia as “a capable partner across a range of issues,” each playing distinct roles in the contest with China.

The report opens with a blunt description of Japan as indispensable: “Japan is the United States’ most important Indo-Pacific ally, a core player in the semiconductors sector, a technological giant, the world’s fourth-largest economy whose military capabilities are expanding, host to critical US bases in the region, and a key partner to the Global South.”

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Tokyo’s defense transformation, the way the report puts it, comes as a direct response to Beijing’s assertiveness. The report notes that Japan has “embarked on a major transformation of its security policy that involves increasing defense spending to 2% of GDP, investing in key capabilities such as cyber, and developing a long-range counterstrike capability that will allow it to strike targets in China and North Korea.”

Nonetheless, public opinion reveals a potential fragility behind US-Japan ties. After US tariffs came into effect earlier in 2025, “77% of Japanese respondents did not believe the United States would come to Japan’s defense in a crisis.” This skepticism underscores the risk that economic disputes could erode trust even as military cooperation deepens.

Japan’s semiconductor dominance is another pillar, and the report details how Japanese firms produced “88% of coaters/developers, 57% of wafer-cleaning systems, 53% of silicon wafers, and potentially up to 90% of photoresists.” Such capabilities make Japan vital to US efforts to diversify supply chains away from China.

Still, Tokyo has balanced deterrence with diplomacy. Its 2022 National Security Strategy labeled China the “greatest strategic challenge,” but leaders continued to seek a “constructive and stable” relationship with Beijing. This dual track reflects both economic interdependence and strategic caution.

Meanwhile, Australia’s role is less resource‑rich than Japan’s but strategically significant. The report states: “The US-Australia alliance has received growing attention from experts as Australia’s once warm relations with China have run aground.”

Canberra’s importance largely stems from minerals and military basing. The report emphasizes that Australia “possesses large scale deposits across many of the critical minerals and rare earths essential for US strategic applications. It is the world’s largest miner of lithium and rutile titanium and the fourth-largest miner of rare earth elements for magnets.” This positions Australia as a linchpin in US efforts to reduce dependence on Chinese refining.

The 2021 launch of AUKUS marked a turning point, the report explains. Through the pact, “the United States will share advanced nuclear-propulsion and sonar technologies to co-develop nuclear-powered submarines.” By 2027, US and UK submarines are scheduled for rotational deployment from Perth, with Australia set to receive Virginia‑class submarines in the 2030s.

Australia’s bases, the authors write, are “unsinkable aircraft carriers” projecting US power into the Pacific. Tindal Air Base was upgraded for B‑52 bombers, while Pine Gap has continued to provide “high-value intelligence” as part of the Five Eyes network.

Public opinion, however, remains divided. A 2023 poll found “42% of respondents said they supported Australia getting militarily involved if China invaded Taiwan… while 56 percent said they were opposed.” This strategic ambiguity mirrors Washington’s own stance, leaving Canberra’s role in a Taiwan contingency uncertain.

Both allies have faced dilemmas of trust and entanglement. Japan’s doubts about US reliability and Australia’s declining public confidence in Washington reveal vulnerabilities. The report warns that tariffs and domestic politics could “slow the cooperative momentum that has built up around China in recent years.”

At the same time, both countries were indispensable in supply chain resilience. Japan’s semiconductor leadership and Australia’s mineral wealth remain critical to US friendshoring strategies. Together, they offer alternatives to China’s dominance in advanced technology and resource processing.

The audit concludes that alliances are America’s greatest advantage but not automatic. Japan and Australia illustrate both promise and peril: robust capabilities, deep integration, but fragile public trust and economic dependencies. As the report puts it, “Given the volatility of Sino-Japanese relations, Japan has strong incentives to diversify and secure its semiconductors and critical-minerals supply chains by collaborating with the United States,” while Australia “remains largely aligned with the United States on China and foreign policy in general” despite domestic doubts.

In the contest with China, the report makes clear, Washington’s future depends not only on its own strength but on the resilience of allies whose cooperation could tip the balance of power in the Indo‑Pacific.

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In a new essay at Inkstick, Sukhada Tatke writes about the unraveling of Scotland’s long‑held reputation as a nation immune to racism amid rising anti‑immigrant protests and far‑right activity. Tatke describes demonstrations in Falkirk targeting asylum seekers housed in hotels, revealing how xenophobia and nativism had entered mainstream politics. Scotland once prided itself on civic nationalism and inclusivity, but recent events have exposed deep fractures, with race‑related hate crimes increasing and anti‑immigration parties gaining traction. Danny Phillips, a Scottish trade union worker, said “[w]hat we are seeing today is part of the wider story of whiteness, of defense of ‘civilization,’ like in many parts of the world, including the US.”

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In her latest report, Inkstick fellow Hannah Bowlus describes how Vandenberg Air Force Base became a focal point for peace activists challenging US military expansion and nuclear weapons testing. Activists have long gathered outside the base, turning it into a “one‑stop shop” for organizing protests, vigils, and campaigns against militarization. The site’s visibility and symbolic role in America’s nuclear arsenal drew diverse groups, from local residents to national organizations, who coordinated efforts to pressure policymakers. MacGregor Eddy said that “[p]eople have forgotten what ICBMs stand for … a ‘rehearsal for our world ending.’”

At The World, Valerie Hamilton reports that Germany, facing a severe shortage of skilled labor, has turned to young foreign apprentices to fill its workforce gaps. The piece describes how traditional apprenticeship programs, once dominated by German youth, have increasingly relied on recruits from countries such as Ecuador, Azerbaijan, Ukraine, and Vietnam. Hamilton notes that “in the 2025–2026 academic year, one in three first-year apprenticeships went unfilled,” leaving a deficit of 130,000 future workers. Businesses have responded by casting a wider net abroad, offering migrants and refugees the chance to train and earn wages, while sustaining Germany’s long-standing model of vocational education.

NewsMatch Season: Support Independent Journalism

Between now and Dec. 31, you can help Inkstick expand its reporting, better compensate its contributors, and continue digging into the stories you won’t find at corporate media outlets. By donating through our annual NewsMatch campaign, your contribution will count double for us. If you send $50 today, Inkstick will get $100.

Nonprofit newsrooms are entirely dependent on donations and reader support to continue doing their work. At Inkstick, your money will go directly toward our reporting. Click here to learn more about how you can help us keep exposing the war profiteers, would-be authoritarians, and defense companies who would rather see an independent press silenced.

Critical State is written by Inkstick Media in collaboration with The World.

The World is a weekday public radio show and podcast on global issues, news, and insights from PRX and GBH.

With an online magazine and podcast featuring a diversity of expert voices, Inkstick Media is “foreign policy for the rest of us.”

Critical State is made possible in part by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

As a nonprofit newsroom, Inkstick Media depends on donations and reader support to do its work. Between now and the end of the year, Inkstick is participating in the NewsMatch fundraising campaign, which means any and all donations will count as double without costing you any extra. Will you support Inkstick today?

Jersey City Warehouse Fueled Israel’s War on Gaza

At Drop Site News, Jose Olivares and Alex Colston report that researchers from the Palestinian Youth Movement and Progressive International have documented a single private warehouse in Jersey City that processed more than a thousand tons of military cargo bound for Israel each week during the first eight months of 2025.

The authors described how three New Jersey logistics firms — Interglobal Forwarding Services, G&B Packing Company, and G&G Services — have repeatedly appeared on bills of lading and contracting documents, and how the warehouse had functioned as a consolidation point for tank parts, F‑16 components, ammunition, armored and unarmored vehicles, and other military gear.

“The PYM and PI’s report documented that 91% of all Israel-bound sea exports of military gear that did not go through a US military base passed through the IFS and the G&B warehouse,” according to the article.

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Olivares and Colston explain that cargo typically moved from the facility to Port Newark–Elizabeth and then on Maersk vessels through Mediterranean transshipment points before reaching Haifa, and they quantified average weekly tonnages for both sea and air shipments.

The reporting raises questions about end‑use transparency, the role of private freight forwarders in export chains, and potential regulatory blind spots that allowed large volumes of sensitive materiel to transit commercial facilities with limited public visibility.

If You Read One More Thing: Wikipedia But Racist

At The Guardian, Jason Wilson reports that Elon Musk’s new AI‑generated encyclopedia, Grokipedia, had published entries that promoted white‑nationalist talking points, praised far‑right figures, and recycled racist pseudo‑science.

• Wilson documents multiple examples in which Grokipedia’s articles amplified extremist narratives, cited banned or unreliable sources, and framed historical and scientific claims in ways that echoed white‑supremacist rhetoric.

• The platform’s editorial model — AI‑generated content with limited human moderation — has allowed problematic material to proliferate quickly.

• Wilson traces the broader implications for public knowledge ecosystems, arguing that an AI‑first encyclopedia could magnify disinformation and normalize extremist frames if left unchecked.

• The reporting underscores concerns about platform accountability and the limits of automated content curation.

The Low-Grade War on Venezuela

In an analysis at The New Republic, Perry Bacon writes that the Trump administration has pursued a series of aggressive measures toward Venezuela that together amounted to a low‑grade campaign risking escalation into open conflict.

• Bacon documents nearly two dozen strikes on small vessels, aircraft maneuvers near Venezuelan waters, and public signaling that has included a formal designation of Nicolás Maduro’s inner circle as terrorists — moves that expand the administration’s options for force.

• He writes that the White House has authorized covert CIA operations inside Venezuela and that many actions proceeded with limited congressional debate or international buy‑in, raising legal and strategic concerns.

• Bacon argues the pattern resembled a run‑up to larger military intervention, warning that the combination of covert operations, public intimidation, and weak oversight increase the danger of miscalculation and unintended war.

Deep Dive: Venezuelans Deported by the US Face ‘Hell’ in El Salvador

In a new report, Human Rights Watch and Cristosal have documented a pattern of severe abuse and procedural failures surrounding the transfer and detention of Venezuelan migrants who were removed by US authorities to El Salvador in early 2025.

Their joint report, “’You Have Arrived in Hell’: Torture and Other Abuses Against Venezuelans in El Salvador’s Mega Prison,” describes how people who were apprehended or processed by US agencies were sent to El Salvador and placed in the maximum‑security Center for Terrorism Confinement (CECOT), where survivors and witnesses reported systematic mistreatment, prolonged isolation, and conditions that the researchers concluded amounted to torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment.

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The report explains that many of the transferred individuals had not been convicted of violent crimes and that the criteria used to identify alleged gang affiliation were unreliable and arbitrary. The report explains that an “Alien Enemy Validation Guide” and other screening tools have been applied in ways that assign guilt by association — counting tattoos, clothing, gestures, or social‑media connections as indicia of membership — measures that experts and family members described as deeply flawed. Human Rights Watch and Cristosal argue that these procedures produce wrongful classifications and expose people to foreseeable risks when they are handed over to Salvadoran authorities.

Inside CECOT, the report recounted repeated accounts of physical violence, humiliating treatment, and severe deprivation. Survivors told researchers that guards beat detainees on arrival and throughout their confinement; one detainee said, “They beat us almost every day.” Others describe forced head shavings, prolonged solitary confinement in a segregated area known to detainees as “the Island,” and incidents of sexual violence and threats. The report quotes detainees who said that, upon being brought into the facility, officials told them, “You have arrived in hell.”

Human Rights Watch and Cristosal identify patterns of enforced disappearance and incommunicado detention. Families report that they were denied information about relatives’ whereabouts for extended periods; some relatives say they received no official confirmation of detention until months later. The organizations describe cases in which detainees were held without meaningful access to counsel, without consistent medical care, and with severely restricted contact with the outside world. The report emphasizes that secrecy and lack of transparency compound the risk of abuse and make independent monitoring difficult.

The report examines the bilateral and programmatic context for the transfers. It describes US funding and cooperation with Salvadoran security agencies, noting a grant letter and other assistance that the authors say facilitates the operations. Human Rights Watch and Cristosal have also raised legal concerns about the transfers, arguing that sending people to El Salvador in circumstances where they faced a real risk of torture or ill‑treatment violated the principle of non‑refoulement under international law. The organizations have called for the suspension of any arrangements enabling transfers until independent safeguards and monitoring are in place.

Researchers also scrutinize the legal authorities and administrative mechanisms used to justify the removals. The report points out that a mix of immigration procedures and emergency proclamations have been invoked, and it questions whether adequate legal review and oversight has occurred. The authors argue that the use of expedited or exceptional authorities without transparent safeguards has increased the risk that people could be wrongly designated as security threats and transferred without meaningful procedural protections.

Human Rights Watch and Cristosal document the human consequences of those policies through detailed interviews with survivors, family members, lawyers, and medical professionals. The report describes physical injuries consistent with beatings, psychological trauma from prolonged isolation and threats, and the long‑term health impacts of inadequate medical care. It recounts the anguish of families who have been unable to locate loved ones and the frustration of lawyers who have faced obstacles in obtaining records or access to clients.

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The organizations conclude that the pattern of transfers and the conditions of detention require urgent remedial action. They recommend that the United States immediately halt transfers of third‑country nationals to El Salvador due to the risk of torture or ill‑treatment; disclose any agreements or understandings governing transfers; condition assistance on verifiable human‑rights safeguards; and rescind emergency proclamations or other measures that circumvented normal legal protections. They urge El Salvador to investigate allegations of abuse, ensure independent oversight of detention facilities, provide adequate medical care and legal access to detainees, and hold perpetrators of abuse to account.

Show Us the Receipts

For Inkstick, KC Cheng takes a look at Rwanda’s high‑profile entry into global cycling, examining the ways the move has become part of a carefully staged effort to recast the country’s image by using sport, spectacle, and curated narratives to attract investment and tourism. State actors, private sponsors, and international partners choreograph events, control access, and amplify favorable coverage while sidelining dissenting voices and human‑rights concerns. The piece traces media strategies and the local costs of image management, highlighting how the veneer of progress can obscure ongoing repression and the uneven distribution of economic benefits.

Tyler Hicks reports on local activists and experts documenting the rapid expansion of surveillance technologies across US towns, focusing on automated license‑plate readers (ALPRs) and private vendors like Flock Safety. He describes how municipalities have purchased solar‑powered cameras that collect billions of plate scans, which outside agencies, including ICE, have accessed, often without clear legal safeguards. The story chronicles community pushback — mapping projects, council hearings, lawsuits — and highlights civil‑rights warnings about racial bias and opaque data‑sharing. Technology has outpaced regulation, leaving activists to mount local defenses while federal oversight lags and surveillance networks proliferate across everyday public spaces.

At The World, Heidi Shin covers the educators and mental‑health professionals piloting a culturally tailored program to help Asian American teens manage college‑admissions stress. The program includes workshops that combine peer support and counseling techniques adapted to community norms, aiming to reduce stigma around seeking help and to reframe success beyond test scores. The program has “teen ambassadors” who “launch their own ideas” to improve mental health among peers. As they support their peers, they learn to take better care of themselves, too.

It’s NewsMatch Time. Can You Scare Up a Couple Bucks?

Between now and Dec. 31, you can help Inkstick expand its reporting, better compensate its contributors, and continue digging into the stories you won’t find at corporate media outlets. By donating through our annual NewsMatch campaign, your contribution will count double for us. If you send $50 today, Inkstick will get $100.

Nonprofit newsrooms are entirely dependent on donations and reader support to continue doing their work. At Inkstick, your money will go directly toward our reporting. Click here to learn more about how you can help us keep exposing the war profiteers, would-be authoritarians, and defense companies who would rather see an independent press silenced.

Critical State is written by Inkstick Media in collaboration with The World.

The World is a weekday public radio show and podcast on global issues, news, and insights from PRX and GBH.

With an online magazine and podcast featuring a diversity of expert voices, Inkstick Media is “foreign policy for the rest of us.”

Critical State is made possible in part by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.