Wiki News Live
Today:
The Lesson of Tulsi Gabbard’s Flip-Flop
NEWS | 19 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.

Top Stories:
Maybe Turning War Into a Casino Was a Bad Idea?
NEWS | 19 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.

World:
Atlantic Trivia, March 18, 2026: Remember Lycos? Me, Neither.
NEWS | 19 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.

Current Events:
Photos: Birds in Early Springtime
NEWS | 19 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.

News Flash:
Why Britain Is Saying No to Trump’s Iran War
NEWS | 19 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.

Sponsored:
Remote Monitoring App
SPONSORED | 19 March 2026
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Latest:
A New Level of Vaccine Purgatory
NEWS | 19 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.

Breaking:
‘I’m Far Angrier’
NEWS | 19 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.

Trending:
Friendship, on Demand
NEWS | 19 March 2026
Yet in some ways, AI companionship is a logical destination for the current direction of human friendship. AI friendship promises that you can receive the benefits of friends without needing other people. The extreme ways in which some people talk about friendship these days imply that you should ask not what you can do for your friendship, but rather what your friendship can do for you. AI friendship “may be better than nothing,” Alexander Nehamas, a philosopher at Princeton University who has written about friendship, told me. Real, human relationships bring joys that digital companionship cannot replicate, and much is lost in the pursuit of the ultimate individualistic friendship.

This Just In:
Washington’s Sewage Apocalypse
NEWS | 19 March 2026
On January 19, a six-foot-wide sewer pipe broke beneath the land alongside the Potomac River, nine miles northwest of the Lincoln Memorial. The Potomac interceptor is so old that that joke could have been about a trolley. But they have made no secret of what they think of the boulder pile that sat above the interceptor pipe. As a squadron of pumps lifted sewage up and over the bottleneck, DC Water dispatched crews for emergency inspections of 22 high-priority sites—places where changes in the pipe’s elevation, little sewage waterfalls, would produce higher concentrations of concrete-eating gas. Candice Miller, the Macomb County Public Works commissioner, who supervised the recovery from the 2016 Detroit-area pipe collapse, told me a pipe that shallow should not take so long to bypass.

Today:
Trashing American Allies Turns Out to Be Bad for National Security
NEWS | 19 March 2026
Those allies aren’t exactly jumping at the chance to join Trump’s war on Iran—not a single one has taken the offer. Iran’s leverage over the global economy is increasing as oil prices rise and the strait remains closed to the U.S. and its allies. Now, basically anyone could have told Trump that spending the past few years antagonizing allies with aggressive tariffs, belligerent arm-twisting, and imperial dismissiveness would hurt him when the time came to ask those same allies for help. American war planners seem to have not factored in that, despite being adversaries, the U.S. and Iran are interconnected in vital ways that waging war on Iran would disrupt. “My attitude is we don’t need anybody,” Trump announced after none of America’s allies offered to help open the strait.

Top Stories:
The Same War, on a Loop
NEWS | 19 March 2026
It is the same war on a loop of exhaustion, adrenaline, and worry for your children. Such callousness is the leitmotif of two and a half years of war under Netanyahu. Read: The Iran war has four stages. To distract myself, not very well, I turn from my screen to a book: The Art of War, by the fifth-century B.C.E. In this repetitive war, Netanyahu is aiming only for second best.

World:
Trump May Not Be Able to End This War
NEWS | 19 March 2026
Neither scenario is likely to end this war, because neither reflects any real understanding of the adversary. The Islamic Republic was born in upheaval and has governed through confrontation for much of its existence. At the end of last week, the United States struck Kharg Island, which houses much of Iran’s oil infrastructure. Read: The Iran war has four stages. And so Trump may soon decide to cut his losses by saying that the United States has achieved its objectives and the war is finished.

Current Events:
The Myspace Dilemma Facing ChatGPT
NEWS | 19 March 2026
Will the AI market be any different? Reversals of early success turn out to be far more common than first-to-market entrenchment. Just as the online-services market differed from the electronics market that preceded it, so too does the market for AI services differ from what came just before. Read: Even Silicon Valley says that AI is a bubbleAt work, AI is not a choice but a tool—welcome or not—to which employers subscribe that becomes a default. Initially, ChatGPT did the hard work of educating users on what large language models are and how they can be used.

News Flash:
Democrats Learned the Wrong Lesson From 2024
NEWS | 19 March 2026
Senators Cory Booker and Chris Van Hollen recently unveiled bills that would exempt most middle-class households from paying any federal income taxes. Affordability is everyone’s favorite buzzword right now, and lowering taxes lets voters keep more of their paycheck to spend. Trump’s policies to cut taxes on tips, overtime pay, and Social Security benefits proved so popular that congressional Democrats are fighting to expand them. If Democrats learned any lessons from these mistakes, they’re not acting like it. It would be naive to suggest that Democrats should aggressively campaign on painful tax hikes and spending cuts.