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Today:
The Iranian Regime Doubles Down
NEWS | 11 March 2026
Less than two weeks into the American and Israeli bombardment of Iran, the war is both a success and a failure. Mojtaba Khamenei, 56, will succeed his father, making the Islamic Republic a hereditary dictatorship poised to double down on ideology and repression. Although the clergy and the IRGC are commonly understood as separate pillars of the Islamic Republic, Taeb, as both a cleric and an IRGC officer, serves as a bridge between the two power centers. Larjani is one of the few remaining regime loyalists with senior experience in both the domestic and the international realms. In Tehran, the only men who currently have the legitimacy to end the war are now doubly committed to the character of the Islamic Republic.

Top Stories:
Arizona Is Now at the Center of Election Investigations
NEWS | 11 March 2026
The HSI investigation in Arizona, which has not previously been reported, comes as the FBI has embarked on a separate election probe in the state. The Arizona investigations are part of the Trump administration’s escalating effort to vindicate the president’s claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. (HSI’s election work is not wholly without precedent; in 2020, HSI investigators charged 19 foreign nationals with illegally voting in the 2016 election.) ODNI is not directly involved in the HSI or FBI investigations in Arizona, a source familiar with the matter told us. Election officials and experts assailed the review, done by the security firm Cyber Ninjas—which made claims about the election process that were disputed by state and county election officials—as deeply flawed and partisan.

World:
Trump’s Assault on Higher Education Has Hit a Snag
NEWS | 11 March 2026
Contributing to this impression was the fact that most university leaders avoided speaking up for fear of incurring Trump’s wrath. Judges have ordered the Trump administration to release students detained for anti-Israel activism, including Mahmoud Khalil, Mohsen Mahdawi, and Rümeysa Öztürk. “If a foreign power did this to American higher education, it would be considered an act of war,” Arthur Levine, the president of Brandeis University, told me. The Trump administration still has a Department of Education led by people full of contempt for elite universities. If they manage to get organized, they might yet figure out how to weaken higher education in a way that no judge can block.

Current Events:
What to Make of the Gracie Mansion Incident
NEWS | 11 March 2026
On Saturday, a far-right group organized a sparsely attended anti-Muslim demonstration outside of Gracie Mansion, the home of New York City’s first Muslim mayor, Zohran Mamdani. Authorities say the suspects told police officers they were inspired by the Islamic State, an Islamist terrorist group. This case drives home some of the challenges of counterterrorism efforts today: The bold mission of international terrorist groups can motivate bad actors, even those who lack a clear link to the groups themselves. Fortunately, neither explosive device at Gracie Mansion actually detonated, and no one was hurt. The challenge of Islamic terrorism in America is that, just like the homegrown terrorism of white supremacists, the radicalism is often diffuse.

News Flash:
Trump Can’t Decide Whether the Iran War Is Still Going On
NEWS | 11 March 2026
The Trump administration can’t say why the United States went to war with Iran, and it can’t say what the goal of the war is. Now it can’t even decide whether the war is still going on. During an interview with CBS News yesterday afternoon, President Trump all but declared victory. Markets seek stability, and Trump can’t seem to decide on a talking point, much less a strategy or aim for the war itself. Yesterday, Trump claimed that Iran possesses Tomahawks.

Sponsored:
Remote Monitoring App
SPONSORED | 11 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:
Atlantic Trivia, March 10, 2026: It’s All Greek to Me (Unless It’s Arabic)
NEWS | 11 March 2026
Debut week for interactive Atlantic Trivia continues. I’ll keep the below instructions here until Friday:To play, type your response into the field below the question. Atlantic Trivia World Lit Bible Atmosphere From a story by Rhian Sasseen Among the novels by Naguib Mahfouz—the first writer in Arabic to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature—is Adrift on what 4,100-mile river? Submit Previous Question Next QuestionAnd by the way, did you know that the ionosphere thickens and thins on a daily basis? Find previous questions here, and to get Atlantic Trivia in your inbox every day, sign up for The Atlantic Daily.

Breaking:
Spain’s Wind-Farm Bargain
NEWS | 11 March 2026
Go looking for wind farms in Spain, and you might quickly end up in Castilla–La Mancha, a region southeast of Madrid. When the town’s wind farms were first built, more than 25 years ago, “this was seen as futuristic,” she told me. Opportunity often depends on money, and the windfall from wind energy delivered it. Without the wind farms, the town would not be able to have all of these services and facilities, the mayor told me. “We have a group of children,” the mayor told me, of her students at the elementary school, where she teaches.

Trending:
The Highly Exclusive Way That Everybody Shops Now
NEWS | 11 March 2026
Generally speaking, a drop is just a slightly different way of releasing products. Figs periodically drops limited-edition colors of its scrubs. Skims, Kim Kardashian’s lingerie brand, got huge operating primarily on a drop model—a never-ending carousel of novel products, available first come, first served. Websites such as StockX capitalize on the booming market for resold limited-edition products. Within days of selling out at Starbucks, the Bearista cup was available knocked off on Amazon.

This Just In:
Why Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Is Still Useful
NEWS | 11 March 2026
On the first day of the Iran war, the assassination of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei overshadowed news of a strike near the home of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s president from 2005 to 2013. “All my friends have got nuclear weapons—even Ahmadinejad,” Sacha Baron Cohen’s character complained in the 2012 movie The Dictator. Their description of the chaotic sequence of events that began before the war suggests that Ahmadinejad has friends on the outside. It is possible that Israel or the United States wanted to kill Ahmadinejad, but aimed poorly. If it does not, the United States might need someone with intimate (if outdated) knowledge of the Iranian state to be involved with what comes next.

Today:
I Recognize the Look on Liam Ramos’s Face
NEWS | 11 March 2026
His mother told reporters that Liam had a fever, was vomiting, and refused to eat. With his move to Dilley, Liam became part of an ongoing national experiment in detaining immigrant families. Like Liam Ramos, whose family came from Ecuador in 2024 and requested asylum, some detainees have pending applications for legal immigration status. Wolozin said that basic childhood illnesses such as ear infections can become dangerous in Dilley because children are often sleep-deprived and malnourished. But he told me that seeing Liam Ramos and so many other sick and miserable children—the constant crying and vomiting—got to be too much.

Top Stories:
Winners of the British Wildlife Photography Awards 2026
NEWS | 11 March 2026
© Julian Terreros-Martin / British Wildlife Photography AwardsNew Life. Terreros-Martin: “During 2020, many of us around the world were isolating at home due to various lockdowns brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. My dad and I decided to build a reflection pool in our back garden as a way to continue photographing the wildlife around our house, which mainly consisted of birds and hedgehogs at night. Fast forward four years, and the reflection pool remains unused and unloved, at least by us. Using the Laowa 24mm probe lens, I was able to partially submerge the lens into the pool and photograph what was happening underwater.

World:
Six Books That Simply Must Be Talked About
NEWS | 11 March 2026
But to properly commune over literature, you need the right book—something that excites you and makes you think. If you’re looking for a pick that will encourage deep contemplation with a pal, a date, or fellow guests at a dinner party, the following books will give you ample opportunities to talk. Clutch, by Emily NemensThe five women at the center of Nemens’s second novel—Carson, Gregg, Hillary, Bella, and Reba—have just turned 40. The answer is not much—Fennell makes explicit, via sadomasochism, the power differentials and emotional degradations that are so often ambiguous in the original. The book’s clear-eyed dissections of the atmosphere of overwork, anxiety, and panic allow Coulter to question at what point ambition tips over into masochism.

Current Events:
Just Don’t Say the W-Word
NEWS | 11 March 2026
Whoever called this a war?” Colin Jost said on this weekend’s show, playing Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in full testosterone-rage mode. Why don’t Republicans call this war what it is? First, there is a solid legal reason to avoid the W-word. So, the logic goes, if we don’t call it a “war,” there’s no reason to declare war. I don’t mean to equate any abstracted sense of “war” with fascism.

News Flash:
Imagine Losing Your Job to the Mere Possibility of AI
NEWS | 11 March 2026
A new generation of AI agents are more capable than traditional chatbots of assisting with sophisticated computer work. Although other companies have also blamed AI for job cuts, Block’s layoffs were unusually drastic. Like many other tech companies, Block became bloated during the pandemic—its workforce more than tripled from 2019 to 2022. Read: America isn’t ready for what AI will do to jobsAlthough the market might immediately reward companies for making AI cuts, in the long run, experts told me, premature AI layoffs could backfire. At one company she works with, she told me, an engineer codified his knowledge about company operations into an AI agent.