New: The White House is signaling that reopening the Strait of Hormuz is not a must-have to end the Iran War, potentially setting the stage for Iran to continue to flex its strategic position over one of the world's busiest oil shipping channels for the foreseeable future
Karoline Leavitt said reopening the Strait of Hormuz was not a "core objective" of winning the Iran War for President Trump.
Aman Batheja
Dhruv rules, follow him @dmehro.bsky.social
Breaking News: Investors in a deal to create a U.S.-controlled TikTok are set to pay a $10 billion transaction fee to the Trump administration.
New: FBI confirms pro-Iranian hackers targeted director Kash Patel's email, says "the information in question is historical in nature and involves no government information.” www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
Joe Kent, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, resigns over Iran war.
x.com/joekent16jan...
The “main goal” of the Iran War may have changed, reports Washington Post: “Israeli officials said securing the [Strait of Hormuz] for energy shipments could become the war’s main goal now that regime change and ending Iran’s ability to obtain a nuclear weapon seem out of reach.”
Huge price tag to all this. "Pentagon officials told lawmakers in a closed-door briefing on Capitol Hill that the estimated the cost of the war had exceeded $11.3 billion in the first six days, according to three people familiar with the briefing"
www.nytimes.com/live/2026/03...
The New York Times
Patrick Howell O’Neill
Patrick Howell O’Neill
The girls' school likely destroyed by an American missile had colorful murals *visible from space* as far back as 2018.
By @pearswick.press & Ryan McNeil:
www.reuters.com/investigatio...
Chris Geidner
Israelis said securing the strait for energy shipments could become the war’s main goal now that regime change and ending Iran’s ability to obtain a nuclear weapon seem out of reach.
new followers: I work for an independent, never-paywalled nonprofit newsroom covering all the NYC local news we can manage
if you can, donate: donorbox.org/nycdonate/
if you can't, subscribe to a newsletter! www.thecity.nyc/the-city-new...
everything helps, including sharing our stories 💌
A pro-Iran hacking group claimed to breach FBI Director Kash Patel’s personal email inbox and posted some of the contents online.
Adding headline writing to the list of things I admire about Propublica
Patrick Howell O’Neill
www.reuters.com
An Iranian girls school that took a direct hit on the first day of the war had a yearslong online presence, including dozens of photos of the children and their activities, before it was bombed along ...
I spoke to Dhruv Mehrotra, the journalist who tracked visitors to Epstein's island with location data, about how he got into that space, how he founds data in stories, and more
Watch/subscribe here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ut1n...
Local problems don’t get solved without local journalism. We cover New York's uncovered neighborhoods, hold the powerful to account, and make sense of the greatest city in the world. Your support toda...
Federal Cyber Experts Thought Microsoft’s Cloud Was “a Pile of Shit.” They Approved It Anyway. www.propublica.org/article/micr...
Tim Starks
A federal program created to protect the government against cyber threats authorized a sprawling Microsoft cloud product, despite the company’s inability to fully explain how it protects sensitive dat...