The US government’s decades-long economic blockade against Cuba is in many ways not a complicated issue. The policy of restricting trade with the country’s Communist government was put into full force under the Kennedy administration, with the explicit goal of causing enough economic hardship, hunger and desperation to spur regime change.

A man wearing the logo of the Hezbollah-linked Islamic Health Organisation stands in the remains of a health centre in Bourj Qalaway, following an Israeli attack. Photo by Sally Hayden/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images.

BEIRUT, LEBANON—In early October 2025, Lebanese paramedic Haj Qassem Sultan stood outside Marjayoun Government Hospital in southern Lebanon and addressed Lebanese TV.

This time, the danger isn’t financial engineering. It’s that our financial system has attached itself to the vulnerabilities of our physical world — power grids, water, land, supply chains — and created hazards that markets have no framework to analyze. Our models for detecting risk look at prices, volatility and correlations. They have no instruments for reading a grid failure, a drought or a severed supply chain. By the time warning signs show up in market data, the damage will already have been done.

As the Iran war entered its third week, six people were wounded and several buildings were damaged after Iran fired two cluster missiles at central Israel on Sunday afternoon, with emergency services reporting impact sites in multiple cities. Of those wounded, one is in moderate condition and the other five suffered light injuries.

There are several clear winners from Trump’s attack on Iran:

Pedro Sanchez in May 2025. Photo by Carlos Lujan/Europa Press via Getty Images

Welcome to Solidarity Saturday, your weekly highlight reel and your shortcut to staying plugged in.

First things first: no matter what you hear from anyone, don't buy Starbucks, delete the app, and don't cave to the Spring menu. Tell everyone you know. Baristas are demanding fair pay, hours, staffing, and protections and Starbucks could make it happen for less than one day's sales. Keep pushing! See the full breakdown here. And take a scroll for good news and receipts.

Over the last few years, China has transitioned the world’s largest automobile market from gas-powered cars to electric vehicles faster than any other major global economy. China sold more electric vehicles in 2025 than the rest of the world combined.

Half of the new cars sold in China are electric vehicles or hybrids that run on both electricity and gas. Around one-third of all new heavy-duty trucks are purely electric, according to the latest available data from the China Passenger Car Association.

A federal judge on Friday temporarily blocked the Trump administration from demanding detailed student admissions data from colleges, a mandate that a group of 17 Democratic state attorneys general have argued is unlawful.

The order, from Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV of the Federal District Court in Boston, was a victory for universities, at least for the moment. Schools were facing potential financial penalties if they missed a March 18 deadline to hand over the data.

The United States and Israel are, for the second time in less than a year, committing “the supreme international crime” against Iran (FAIR.org, 7/3/25). Editorials in three of the United States’ most prominent newspapers, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post, offered varying degrees of support for the aggression.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) recently published two meticulous reports that further expose Israel’s violent repression of journalism, in its ongoing genocide in Gaza and elsewhere.

We got more lies this morning from the Pentagon press briefing. They’re now up to 17 different rationalizations for the attack on Iran, none of which makes sense.

To paraphrase Rod Serling, consider what happened in Minab, Iran.

At some point, early Wednesday morning, the cost of the Iran war will top $10 billion. The Center for Strategic and International Studies released a paper last week pegging the cost of this latest misadventure at $891 million a day. I’ve seen higher estimates, but CSIS is a respected nonpartisan outfit, so let’s go with its number for now. The report states that the vast majority of this money had not been previously budgeted, especially the spending on munitions.

Donald Trump has now ordered military attacks on more countries than any prior president. These assaults do not merely betray his campaign promises.

President Donald J. Trump is behaving more and more erratically these days, seeming to think he can dictate to other countries.

This morning, Trump told Barak Ravid and Zachary Basu of Axios that he needs to be involved personally in choosing the next leader of Iran. Speaking of Iranian politicians who are preparing to announce a new leader, Trump told the reporters: “They are wasting their time. Khamenei’s son is a lightweight. I have to be involved in the appointment, like with Delcy [Rodríguez] in Venezuela.”

On Tuesday in Texas, Democratic voters in Dallas and Williamson Counties, Texas, had their work cut out for them if they wanted to vote. They had to figure out, on the day of, where their polling places were. That’s because the local Republican parties backed out of the years-long tradition of holding joint primaries, and that information wasn’t communicated widely. One voter reported showing up at his polling place and being sent somewhere else, a 15-minute drive away, only to be told to return to the original location.

(Photo by Jaque Silva/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Anthropic took a stand against the Pentagon in February, giving up a $200 million contract rather than loosening the safety guardrails on its artificial intelligence model, Claude. The decision was on brand for a company that has gone on the offensive with a surge in lobbying and political spending in support of AI regulation. 

The U.S. and Israel have now killed more than 1,000 Iranian people. CENTCOM reports hitting 2,000 targets, and War Secretary Pete Hegseth announces sinking an Iranian submarine. Israel says it struck the Assembly of Experts, though Iran says the building was not being used at the time.

The following is a lightly edited transcript of the March 4 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.

Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.

Today, the Trump administration delivered a loss in court to itself. It abandoned its defense of Trump’s executive orders sanctioning several law firms. You likely remember these executive orders, which we discussed in March of 2025, in “Big Law Fights Back.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth knows that playing a decisive tough guy on television is the way to keep Donald Trump happy, so he did just that while addressing reporters Monday about the U.S. bombing of Iran. He hailed Trump’s supposed decisiveness. He strutted and preened about the bombing death of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei.

Let us speak plainly about Trump v. Barbara, the Supreme Court’s upcoming case on birthright citizenship. Many of the high court’s cases are about arcane legal doctrines or complex federal statutes. Real-world effects can sometimes be difficult to discern through the time-consuming labyrinth of appellate review. Rarely does the court decide anything that immediately changes everything.

Smoke rises from a reported Iranian strike in the area where the U.S. Embassy is located in Kuwait City, on March 2.

The State Department has urged all Americans  in the Middle East to leave immediately, but U.S. embassies in the region are telling people trying to flee that they are on their own. 

An image of a girls’ elementary school hit by an airstrike on Saturday in Minab, Iran posted by Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi on X.