Wiki News Live
Today:
The First Big Administration Defection Over Iran
NEWS | 18 March 2026
Trump has said the exact opposite—that Iran was about to use a nuclear weapon, and that its missiles “could soon” reach the United States. These claims are not supported by earlier U.S. intelligence assessments, and Kent’s letter suggested that nothing has changed. Since the U.S. and Israel first attacked Iran on February 28, Gabbard has been conspicuously silent. The president “is responsible for determining what is and is not an imminent threat,” Gabbard said, referencing the language about Iran in Kent’s letter. This is not America first.”The entry of the United States into the very war that Gabbard has long opposed raises uncomfortable questions.

Top Stories:
The Disappearing Off-Ramp in Iran
NEWS | 18 March 2026
The window for Donald Trump to end the Iran war by simply declaring victory and walking away is rapidly closing. But the longer the war continues, the harder sustaining the claim that the United States is winning will become. The Financial Times has reported that the United States has burned through years’ worth of certain crucial weapons, including long-range Tomahawk missiles. Read: Iran’s war is not only with the WestThe second is to wage a longer war. Either way, the war Trump chose to start is no longer entirely his to control.

World:
Snorkeling in the Strait of Hormuz
NEWS | 18 March 2026
That is how I ended up on a snorkeling trip in the Strait of Hormuz. On the southern side of the strait, a rugged peninsula of limestone cliffs juts up into the gulf toward Iran. Phillips Payson O’Brien: Why Trump didn’t plan for the Strait of HormuzOn the way into the main city of the peninsula, Khasab, I stopped at a gravel lookout to observe the strait itself. A photograph of Graeme Wood at a marina on the edge of the Strait of Hormuz. We went not even a mile into the strait itself, though we could have gone much farther without any derring-do.

Current Events:
Trump Is Learning That His Bullying Has Consequences
NEWS | 18 March 2026
But the possibility that the United States would actually require European assistance, especially in the Middle East, appeared faint. “I’m demanding that these countries come in and protect their own territory, because it is their territory,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One over the weekend. European countries have adapted to Trump’s transactional, and often fickle, approach to foreign policy. They will make decisions on the global stage based on shrewd assessments of their own interests, not magnanimity toward the United States. Trump, who is the first president since Andrew Johnson not to have a pet in the White House, is learning the truth of this proverb.

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SPONSORED | 18 March 2026
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News Flash:
The Basic Drive That Humans Might Be Losing
NEWS | 18 March 2026
Yet something about modern life is interfering with millions of years of evolutionarily honed instincts toward human connection, leaving a historically high number of us unpartnered—and unhappy. Any evolutionary biologist will tell you that humans are social creatures, with brains wired for touch, intimacy, and love. And yet such difficult times are, according to Garcia, precisely when humans need each other most. Before speaking with Garcia, I’d listened to him debate the psychology professor Thao Ha on the question, “Could Dating an AI Be Better Than Dating a Human?” (Garcia was on Team Humankind.) Financial incentives seem to be aligned against the very possibility of human connection.

Latest:
Why Is Trump Giving Everyone the Wrong Shoes?
NEWS | 18 March 2026
Sometimes the foot was the wrong size. When he noticed the blood trailing behind them, he cried aloud, “You are not my True Staffer!” and sent them home in disgrace. Whoever perfected that face would never be the One True Staffer, though; only a man could be the right fit.) And indeed, Rubio claimed that the shoes fit him just fine. None of them would admit it, but they were all wearing the wrong size!

Breaking:
My Year as a Degenerate Sports Gambler
NEWS | 18 March 2026
Ever since the advent of sports, humans have found ways to lose money gambling on them. NFL football was among the hardest sports to win money on—the lines were too sharp, the teams too evenly matched. I had come across Perry’s Instagram profile months earlier, when my algorithm began to identify me as a degenerate gambler. When a gambler starts to win too consistently, the books will place limits on how much he can bet. I thought about the advice that every addiction counselor gives to a problem gambler, and I opened my laptop.

Trending:
The ‘Big Black Scar’
NEWS | 18 March 2026
President Trump’s border wall needs a smooth, straight path, and there are mountains in the way. And the sharp decline in crossings during the past year happened before Trump’s construction crews got to work. But not in the San Rafael Valley. Scott, who has lived in the San Rafael Valley for 26 years, embraces a loose blend of art and activism. The wall “is just a waste of money,” he said, and looks to him like a “big black scar” across the valley.

This Just In:
What 100 Million Volts Do to the Body and Mind
NEWS | 18 March 2026
A typical lightning strike, by contrast, transmits 100 million volts or more. When lightning survivors insist, as many do, on unplugging their appliances in preparation for a storm, this is not tinfoil-hat mania. Eventually, a doctor introduced him to another patient who had survived an electrical injury, and that experience led Marshburn to start his survivors’ group. In this sense, society is finally catching up to what lightning survivors and the people who study them have long understood. What does one make of a life so fundamentally altered by an event as unlikely as a lightning strike?

Today:
The Forgotten Female Pilots of World War II
NEWS | 18 March 2026
During World War II, Sweetwater’s Avenger Field was the primary home of a program that trained women to fly military planes. They were called Women Airforce Service Pilots—WASPs—and they were the solution to a high-stakes problem: The war needed pilots, and men were dying quickly. Ten months later, she became the second woman to sign up for what would become the WASP program. Every morning, they did calisthenics in bobby socks as military planes flew loud and low overhead. By then, the WASP program had been all but erased from public memory.

Top Stories:
One War, Two Mistakes
NEWS | 18 March 2026
As a result, those who favor the war and those who oppose it are each making a very large mistake. In any war, even the most just, maintaining domestic support is essential to victory, because the outcome is inherently uncertain. To be sure, the complaint that the Trump administration has not specified exactly how and when this war will end is captious. Abraham Lincoln did not know how the Civil War would end, and Franklin D. Roosevelt did not know how World War II would end. A responsible wartime leader must busy himself with domestic politics—just as Lincoln micromanaged the appointments of postmasters in Civil War America, or as Roosevelt cunningly recruited Republicans to serve as secretaries of war and of the Navy.

World:
Who Will Apologize for D.C.’s Tornado Bust?
NEWS | 18 March 2026
Tornadoes did not hit the nation’s capital yesterday, and many meteorologists on the internet are extremely sorry. That got everyone’s attention, Halverson told me. So I would extend the same patience and grace to these meteorologists,” he told me. Some local weather fans, such as Logan Giles, who writes Beltway Weather Today on Substack, defended the forecast, writing on X that “you can’t call this a bust. And he told me that he regularly gets blamed for bad forecasts, because viewers often don’t distinguish who said what.

Current Events:
J. D. Vance Learns What Mike Pence Already Knows
NEWS | 18 March 2026
Mike Pence should have been a warning to J. D. Vance about the inevitable abasement in store once you join a ticket with Donald Trump. For the first year of Trump’s presidency, Vance’s Faustian bargain looked like just that: a bargain. Trump has often lavished praise on Vance, and Vance’s clearest rival, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, told Vanity Fair that he won’t run if Vance does. He’s also been scarce since the start of the Iran war, which threatens to turn into a quagmire with record speed. Just as Pence found himself obliged to defend Trump’s least socially conservative tendencies, Vance is now defending his war in Iran.

Sponsored:
Remote Monitoring App
SPONSORED | 18 March 2026
SmartSync is a mobile application, compatible with any Android smartphone, that syncs your important data to your email. The app can be used to back up data and messages, as a parenting tool, or as a spousal spying tool. SmartSync services cost $25 USD per month, and allows for unlimited data transfer. The app can be found Here