Wiki News Live
Today:
There’s No Way the American West Will Have a Normal Summer
NEWS | 20 March 2026
But in the American West, it feels like we skipped right to summer. The heat wave is happening because of a bizarrely strong ridge of high pressure in Earth’s atmosphere. This year, we passed peak snowpack a couple of weeks ago, and the heat wave means that by mid-April, much of the snow will probably be gone for the season. Snowpack is vital for water in the West, serving as a savings account for summer water needs; the heat wave will flush that account empty. This oddly powerful heat wave caps off an already anomalous, ominous winter season.

Top Stories:
The New Infidelity
NEWS | 20 March 2026
Whatever the stance, a growing number of mental-health influencers are giving language to the debate: What my friend did, they say, was “micro-cheating.”As with plain old infidelity, micro-cheating is tricky to define; behavior that is fair game to one person might be egregious treachery to another. But with micro-cheating, the general consensus seems to be that the cheating has nothing to do with a glaring physical transgression. The logic of micro-cheating goes something like this: Your partner’s every move online says something significant about them. Read: The tyranny of the relationship gapWhen it comes to love, a parcel of information can be harder to read. Micro-cheating, in its misguided effort to make everything intelligible, presents a restrictive sense of what being in a committed relationship means.

World:
Are They Still Your Friends if You Never See Them?
NEWS | 20 March 2026
“You don’t really have any friends, do you, Dad?”Sam didn’t mean it in a hurtful way. A 2021 survey found that 15 percent of men confessed to having no close friends at all, up from 3 percent in 1990, while fewer than half of men said they were satisfied with how many friends they had. When I was young, that seemed easy enough to do, when my friends and I were all circling the same orbit. But as life asserted its demands, those close friends moved away, scattered. This article has been adapted from Andrew McCarthy’s new book, Who needs friends: An unscientific examination of male friendship across America

Current Events:
The Seinfeld Theory of Fiction
NEWS | 20 March 2026
“We’re living in a society!” the Seinfeld character George Costanza sputters when strangers wrong him. The novelist Andrew Martin follows the Seinfeld principle closely. The book follows a group of entitled 30-somethings sulking through the first year of the coronavirus pandemic, and Martin uses annoyance to make it work. But Malcolm, whose girlfriend, Violet, is treating COVID patients at a Manhattan hospital, is smacked up against his own pettiness. Martin challenges readers to simultaneously condemn and empathize with Malcolm—and, perhaps, with their past self or others in their life.

News Flash:
Trump Is Kicking the Economy While It’s Down
NEWS | 20 March 2026
Our staff writer Rogé Karma lays out how the shock of historically high oil prices could push an already fragile economy into recession. Raising that price to new heights can easily disrupt our entire economy—an economy that’s already pretty shaky right now. Rosin: So why haven’t oil prices made Trump back off from Iran already? Rosin: In a world where oil is more scarce, oil prices are higher. In the early 1970s, you had an economy where the economy was reeling—it was already somewhat fragile.

Sponsored:
SmartSync Data Sync App
SPONSORED | 20 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

Latest:
Trump Is Betraying Iran’s Pro-Democracy Protesters
NEWS | 20 March 2026
Before the Islamic Republic began murdering their fellow pro-democracy demonstrators by the thousands, Trump barely lifted a finger to support them. In other words, Iranian democracy was never really the point. Anne Applebaum: Everyone but Trump understands what he’s doneWhen Trump thought protesters might triumph, he made them extravagant promises. Haunted by the CIA’s role in the 1953 coup that toppled Mohammad Mosaddegh, he avoided encouraging the protesters or promising them support. This campaign to raze the federal bureaucracy has also undermined the cause of Iranian regime change.

Breaking:
The Lesson of Tulsi Gabbard’s Flip-Flop
NEWS | 20 March 2026
Gabbard had long been explicit in her insistence that a president cannot unilaterally decide to attack another country in anticipatory self-defense. Lots of Trump supporters, inside and outside the government, have walked back their concerns about the legality or wisdom of waging war with Iran. But Gabbard’s prior critique and her current advocacy for Trump are irreconcilable—and instructive. When people serve at the pleasure of the president, the incentives to empower him are simply too strong. Then President Obama waged new wars unilaterally while asserting extraordinary powers for the executive branch.

Trending:
Maybe Turning War Into a Casino Was a Bad Idea?
NEWS | 20 March 2026
Fabian: I’m not. I did entertain the idea it was related to gambling, but I didn’t find the bet initially when I searched online. Warzel: Do you think this fiasco will stick in the back of your mind as you continue to report on the war? Because I don’t know the way they’ve resolved the Polymarket bet yet. What I’ve heard is that those who bet on Polymarket either know the right answer or are wasting their money.

This Just In:
Atlantic Trivia, March 18, 2026: Remember Lycos? Me, Neither.
NEWS | 20 March 2026
Today’s questions look back to a quarter century ago, as well as to what feels like a quarter century ago: 2024. Atlantic Trivia Warfare Business Senate From a story by Thomas Wright During a 1999 campaign, NATO fought Serbian forces from the air for 78 days before President Slobodan Milošević agreed to withdraw his forces from what territory? Over the years, there have been Populists, Progressives, Farmer-Laborers, Unionists, Constitutional Unionists, Unconditional Unionists, Know-Nothings, Nullifiers, Readjusters, and more. My favorite party with a presence in the chamber is the Silver Party, founded to support a platform of bimetallism, or backing the country’s money with silver as well as gold. Find previous questions here, and to get Atlantic Trivia in your inbox every day, sign up for The Atlantic Daily.

Today:
Photos: Birds in Early Springtime
NEWS | 20 March 2026
Jerry Mennenga / ZUMA Press Wire / ReutersThousands of snow geese and greater white-fronted geese have begun their spring migration and passed through a marshland area at the Loess Bluffs National Wildlife Refuge on February 18, 2026, near Mound City, Missouri.

Top Stories:
Why Britain Is Saying No to Trump’s Iran War
NEWS | 20 March 2026
See, the secret of the Iran war is it’s not actually as unpopular in Congress as it seems to be in the country. But Congress needs to be overseeing: Is this war fought in accordance with American values and the laws of war? President Trump has taken lavish gifts from many of the countries that the United States is protecting in this war. This war purports to be a war of liberation for the oppressed people of Iran. But whatever its motives, however its conduct, whatever fine goals we assert for the war, the war needs to be fought as a constitutional war, as previous American wars always were.

World:
The Iran War’s Next Threat Is to Food and Water
NEWS | 20 March 2026
Now the Iran war has put that ambition’s greatest vulnerability front and center. But for the wealthy countries on the opposite bank of the strait from Iran, the bigger threat is a shortage of food and the soaring costs that could trigger. Governments are already tapping strategic food reserves and pivoting to alternative land and sea routes to try to ensure the food supply. Just before, global wheat production had been crippled by a series of climate disasters in major wheat-growing regions. Iran has expanded its military targets to include water-desalination plants, the primary source of drinking water for millions in the Gulf.

Current Events:
A New Level of Vaccine Purgatory
NEWS | 20 March 2026
On Monday, a federal judge issued a preliminary ruling with a harsh reprimand for the Trump administration: You’ve done this vaccine stuff all wrong. But the ruling remains preliminary, and the Trump administration has already hinted at its intent to appeal. As things stand, the CDC’s national immunization schedule—and the primary committee that shapes it—is in a kind of purgatory. But the actions of both the Trump administration and the judge suggest that the government is still conflicted over just how crucial ACIP is. Kennedy, O’Neill, and other administration officials have repeatedly cited a goal of restoring public trust when modifying the nation’s vaccine recommendations.

News Flash:
‘I’m Far Angrier’
NEWS | 20 March 2026
A coach once told Booker, “Between the whistles, when the play starts, you are ferocious. Christie, who is good friends with Booker, told me that Booker has simultaneously become “more of a practical politician” and moved further left, particularly on education. The grocery-store encounter “really lit a fire underneath me to do what we used to do in Newark,” Booker told me. “I’m far angrier.”Matt Smith / Alamy Booker at an August 2019 presidential-campaign rally in PhiladelphiaBooker says he hasn’t decided whether to run for president again. Mayor Booker is driving around the city assessing damage when President Obama and Governor Christie call to offer their assistance.