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.

I don't know how guilt helps mobilize masses of people to demand change. But, if we begin to assume personal responsibility for our world maybe that is a first step in building a movement for human liberation. 

I started thinking about all this when I saw a post on Face Book of an old Pete Seeger song, "Last Train to Nuremberg." He wrote the song to reflect on the chain of responsibility for the My Lai Massacre. I began to reflect on this chain and the US killings and war-making against Venezuela or the murder of Renee Good (and many more) by ICE agents. 

My cell phone rang at 3 a.m. I looked down to see that it was my wife’s Aunt Jan calling. She lives on the West Coast and is a bit of a night owl. I wondered if maybe she called by mistake, so I didn’t pick it up; I decided to wait and see if she left a message, which would signal intent. A minute or so later, sure enough, the little voicemail icon popped up. So I listened. I thought you’d want to know—the bombing has started. I called her back gratefully. Yes, I sure did want to know.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani and President Donald Trump in the Oval Office on Feb. 26, 2026. Photo by Mayor Zohran Mamdani via X.

A man known for his smile came with an iron face, while a man often scowling couldn’t help but beam.

A controversial bill targeting homeless Hoosiers who sleep in public failed twice last year. (Photo by Paul Bradbury/Getty Images)

A statewide prohibition on sleeping in public spaces is on the way to Indiana Gov. Mike Braun’s desk, after Senate lawmakers on Thursday narrowly agreed to House changes in a 28-22 vote.

The controversial idea — which critics have likened to a “criminalization of homelessness” — died twice during last year’s legislative session before crossing the finish line a year later.

For most of our lifetimes, we’ve been inculcated to perceive the Supreme Court as above the dirty, conniving, unprincipled dynamics of day-to-day politics. In this fairy-tale version of America, politicians are the nasty ideological street brawlers, while the justices are high-minded, apolitical referees who attempt to apply empiricism and ideals to the messy fights of the other governmental branches. 

If there’s one person onto whom establishment media have projected their anxieties about race, class and democracy, it’s the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who died this week at the age of 84.

More than a dozen leading scientists and experts from Midwestern U.S. and Canadian universities and research institutions released a report update highlighting the climate change impacts on the Great Lakes region.

Dear Trump Administration Official,

I’m writing to you not as a political opponent, but as a historian who’s spent a lifetime studying what happens when democracies flirt with strongmen and otherwise decent people convince themselves that loyalty to Dear Leader today will be rewarded by safety and protection tomorrow.

It almost never is.

A few stories about centibillionaires — men whose net worth exceeds $100 billion — and their role in our society:

H.R. 3565 is an historic bill that would prohibit the President from selling, transferring, or authorizing export licenses for seven types of weapons to Israel. This includes BLU-109 bunker busting bombs, MK80 series bomb variants, GBU-39 small-diameter bomb variants, Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) assemblies, SPICE gliding bomb assemblies, 120 mm tank ammunition, and 155 mm artillery ammunition, including white phosphorus.

Two children wave Palestinian flags in Gaza City on January 19, 2025.

(Ferial Abdu / Anadolu via Getty Images)

An investigation conducted by Al Jazeera based on evidence collected by the Civil Defense in the Gaza Strip has concluded that nearly 3,000 Palestinians have been “evaporated” by Israel through the use of thermal weapons—some of them supplied by the US.

Abu Ismail Hammad searches for the remains of his family using a flour sifter in the rubble of their home in the Sabra neighborhood of Gaza City on January 18, 2026. (Screenshot of footage provided by Abdel Qader Sabbah.)

GAZA CITY—For 200 days, Abu Ismail Hammad has been digging beneath his home in Gaza City, painstakingly collecting the remains of his wife and unborn child. He has been using a flour sifter to find their bone fragments hidden in the sand.

Key Findings

• The Trump administration is working with some of the world’s largest mining corporations — based in Australia, Canada, Chile and the United Kingdom — to ramp up mineral extraction on or near millions of acres of America’s public lands. This new gold and minerals rush gives away public lands, skirts environmental standards, overrides tribal interests, and confers massive benefits on Trump insiders and allied billionaires.