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Trump won’t blink on tariffs — because he can’t

Analysis by Stephen Collinson

No, President Donald Trump isn’t looking for a new “most beautiful word” in the dictionary to replace his beloved tariffs.

True to his philosophy of never accepting a defeat, he’s already battling back after the Supreme Court declared his exercise of emergency trade war powers unlawful.

Ahead of his State of the Union address on Tuesday, Trump is vowing to avenge the most damaging loss of his second term by promising even higher duties on imports. Many Republicans, however, would prefer a course correction as midterm elections loom.

The president’s defiance brings great political risks for him and his party, and new uncertainties for an uneven economy. It is also already opening a new lane for Democratic attacks.

But he’s still convinced tariffs will unlock booming prosperity, even if a likelier outcome is a heavier affordability burden on millions of American voters.

“What the Supreme Court said is that the president cannot use the IEEPA, the Emergency Economic Powers Act, to do this,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told CNN’s Dana Bash on Sunday. “The president does have other authorities.”

Bessent said on “State of the Union” that Trump will shore up his tariffs by using other laws as a five-month “bridge” to a more permanent regime.

But Democratic Sen. Andy Kim told CNN’s Manu Raju on “Inside Politics” that his party was already working on legislation to force Trump to repay consumers for higher costs inflicted by tariffs — the first of a string of likely measures aimed at embarrassing the president and making life difficult for Republican lawmakers.

Why Trump can’t quit tariffs

Trump will press on for two main reasons.

First, he believes in tariffs with evangelical intensity. His faith in them is so intense it blanks out any evidence they are a tax on consumers or that they don’t work. He regards globalization’s gutting of industrial heartlands where he won millions of votes as vindication of protectionist views he’s held since the 1980s.

“I have very effectively utilized tariffs over the past year to make America great again,” the president said Friday, ignoring new data that shows an unmoving annual trade deficit and declining manufacturing jobs.

The second reason for Trump’s refusal to bend is that tariffs are a means to his ultimate ends of unfettered presidential authority and rejection of a constitutional system that by design shares power across government.

This was highlighted by the most revealing comment from Trump’s fulminating press conference Friday following the court’s decision, when he was asked why he didn’t just work with Congress to pass new tariffs.

“I don’t have to. I have the right to do tariffs,” he said.

Trump has used tariffs more expansively than any modern president, in a way that stretches far beyond economic policy. If a foreign nation angers him, it’s punished — as with Brazil, which got a 50% tariff slap for investigating his friend former President Jair Bolsonaro over alleged election-meddling. If a world leader shows insufficient deference, their nation pays the price. Trump has explained, for example, that he hiked tariffs on Switzerland after taking exception to how its leader “talked to us” — apparently referring to former President Karin Keller-Sutter.

But showing such muscle will be harder going forward.

Alternative powers Trump now plans to use to maintain tariffs contain compliance requirements and more limited authorities that may mean he can’t use levies as a personal thermostat to crank up heat according to his whim.

Trump has a blunt, transactional worldview. He sees curbs on his tariff leverage as weakening the US against rivals he perceives as endlessly exploiting the world’s most powerful economy. The Supreme Court ruling may undermine his trade war ahead of expected summits with Chinese leader Xi Jinping this year.

“Foreign countries that have been ripping us off for years are ecstatic, they’re so happy, and they’re dancing in the streets, but they won’t be dancing for long — that, I can assure you,” the president said Friday.

A dark historic omen

Bessent explained on CNN that the administration would respond to the loss of emergency powers with other legal instruments. This includes duties justified by national security known as Section 232 tariffs and those that target foreign countries over unfair trade practices called Section 301 tariffs.

But Bessent dodged on whether the government should refund corporations and consumers hit by higher tariffs — which are effectively a tax. He said this was “not up to the administration, it is up to the lower court.”

This may be a legally tenable position for now. But it’s politically perilous.

“This administration took money out of the pockets of American families, upwards of $1,700 per family. They should give it back,” Kim told CNN. “We’re working on legislation that would be able to have this refund back to the American people.”

Trump wasted no time after the Supreme Court decision to impose a 10% global tariff on all goods, which he later raised to 15%, using Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974. But congressional approval would be required to prolong such action beyond 150 days. Few Republican lawmakers would relish a mid-July vote on an issue polls show is deeply unpopular.

One long-term option available to the administration is to use Smoot-Hawley legislation of 1930 to enact new tariffs. But this would invite legal legal challenges from parties who believe subsequent acts of Congress superseded such powers.

And it might not be politically smart to invoke a notorious law blamed for worsening the Great Depression when voters are already sour on Trump’s economy.

Already, Trump has faced several Republican revolts on tariffs. Now, each vote on the issue will matter even more. Once primary season ends, Trump will have less leverage to pressure Republican rebels. More lawmakers may follow the example of Colorado Rep. Jeff Hurd, who joined Democrats in voting against Canada tariffs, saying that they hurt voters and industry in his district.

Critics say the tariffs are doing a lot of damage and creating few benefits. But US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer told “Fox News Sunday” that Trump inherited an emergency and had already transformed global trade.

“Immediately, all of our trade partners around the world came to the table to negotiate market opening deals with us. And we protected our industries right away. So, it’s exactly the right thing to do,” Greer said.

Newsom: ‘He’s a punch-drunk boxer’

Democrats are relishing the president’s discomfort.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a potential 2028 presidential candidate, has a dual argument targeting voters’ economic concerns and Trump’s temperament.

“It’s a wrecking-ball presidency. He’s wrecking this economy. His entire economic paradigm is mass deportations, tax cuts for billionaires, and tariffs. And he’s been exposed. He’s a fraud,” Newsom said on “State of the Union.”

“I talk about petulance. It was 10% two days ago, maybe 20% tomorrow. I mean, this is madness. He’s flailing. He’s a punch-drunk boxer. He’s just trying to hit anything, a shadow. And he’s a shadow of himself. He’s lost a step or two.”

But Trump won’t change. He can’t. To do so would require him to reject everything he believes about power, the presidency and himself.

“Frankly, this should have been done by presidents many years ago. They allowed our country to be eaten alive,” Trump said Friday.

252 killed......

A killing a day: How a crime epidemic is spotlighting inequality in Israeli society

By Zeena Saifi,and Jeremy Diamond

A mother shot dead outside a supermarket. A man killed after leaving a mosque. A doctor gunned down while treating patients. These shocking cases are no longer anomalies: they are the toll of a violent crime epidemic sweeping across Israel.

The victims are all Palestinian citizens of Israel. Homicides in their community have risen so dramatically that one person has been killed every day on average this year. Palestinian citizens make up 20% of the country’s population, and many say the Israeli government has not only failed to curb the crime wave, but that its inaction has helped spur a cycle of violence largely perpetrated by Arab organized crime groups.

The data bears out a stark inequality: Israel Police has solved just 15% of homicides in Israel’s Arab communities versus 65% among Jewish Israelis, according to data from Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, and Eilaf, the Center for Advancing Security in Arab Society.

Palestinian citizens of Israel are descendants of those who were not expelled or forced to flee their homes when Israel was established in 1948. They were given citizenship but lived under military rule until 1966, and many say they continue to face discrimination in Israeli society.

Last year was the deadliest on record for the community, with 252 killed – the vast majority by gunfire – according to a report published by Abraham Initiatives, a group that advances social inclusion and equal rights for Israel’s Palestinian citizens.

And 2026 is already off to a bloody start, with 46 killed so far, according to the group.

It is a deadly reality that has raised alarm bells, with tens of thousands of the country’s Palestinian citizens taking to the streets in recent weeks – joined by some Jewish Israelis – to demand government action.

“No to killing, no to death, we want to live in justice,” demonstrators chanted in Arabic at a January protest in Sakhnin, a majority Palestinian city in northern Israel, which drew tens of thousands of people.

Attendees told CNN it was the largest demonstration the Arab community has seen in years, culminating a multi-day general strike from shop owners.

What began there has since grown into a nationwide protest movement, with strikes and demonstrations taking place almost daily across Israel. Streets across the country were filled with a sea of black flags and water fountains were dyed red as citizens declared a “national day of disruption.”

A week after the Sakhnin strike, Israeli President Isaac Herzog made a rare visit to the city, where he met with local Arab authorities and protest organizers.

He said the fight against crime and violence in the Arab community “must be at the very top of the national priorities and be addressed with the utmost determination” calling it a “moral obligation.”

And on Thursday, Israel’s Police Commissioner Daniel Levi declared crime in the Arab community “a state of national emergency” and “an intolerable situation that must stop.”

He called on other government agencies to join the police in helping address the issue.

‘Let them kill each other’

For many Palestinian citizens of Israel, those declarations ring hollow. Qasem Awad has waited for more than a year for his son’s killer to be brought to justice.

His son, Abdullah, a doctor from Mazra’a in the western Galilee, was treating a mother and her two children at a clinic last February when a masked gunman walked in and fatally shot him at close range. He was 30 at the time.

Abdullah had been filling in for another doctor that day. His father believes he was mistaken for someone else.

“If you look at the Palestinian Arab community in Israel, how many are being killed daily and for no reason?” Awad said. “These people have nothing to do with the world of crime. They are collateral damage, and my son is one of them.”

In the days following Abdullah’s death, his parents say Israel Police visited and assured them they would investigate his death and identify the perpetrator.

More than a year later, the pledge remains unfulfilled, and the family says it hasn’t heard from law enforcement authorities.

If his son had been Jewish, Awad believes the killer would’ve been arrested “in an hour”.

Like many others in his community, Awad believes the Israeli government intentionally neglects crime perpetrated against Palestinian citizens.

“It is part of a policy to divide and conquer. ‘Let them kill each other while we sit back and relax,’” he said.

Awad points to the speed with which Palestinian perpetrators are brought to justice in crimes against Israelis.

“The technological tools and know-how are available for them to catch the killers. But when it is affecting the Arab demographic, they no longer have the tools or the know-how?” he asked.

According to the Eilaf report, Palestinian citizens of Israel face “selective enforcement” of the law.

“On the one hand, a tough approach towards political activity and freedom of expression, and on the other, a soft approach towards criminals and crime,” the report said.

In response to a query from CNN, the Israel Police said in a statement that a “thorough and complex investigation was launched” following the killing of Dr. Awad, where authorities have questioned “dozens of involved parties, with the aim of locating the suspects and uncovering the truth.”

Data compiled by Abraham Initiatives shows that homicide cases among Palestinian citizens of Israel more than doubled in 2023.

That was far-right Minister of National Security Itamar Ben Gvir’s first full year overseeing the police.

Ben Gvir, who was convicted for supporting terrorism and inciting anti-Arab racism, has rejected responsibility, instead blaming local Arab leaders for turning a “blind eye” to criminal activity. Last month, he said he had “allocated enormous resources to the fight against crime and criminal organizations.”

Critics say his actions speak louder than his words. Within months of entering office, Ben Gvir cut off key funding for an anti-Arab crime initiative called “Stop the Bleeding,” launched by the previous government. The next year, he dismissed the police official in charge of fighting crime in Arab society and put a lower-ranking official in his place.

On Sunday, Ben Gvir defended the job he’s done, saying on Kan Reshet Bet radio that there have been “great successes” during his tenure. “I don’t work for the Arabs, not just for the Arabs,” he said. “I work for everyone.”

“There is 20% less murder in the Jewish sector, let’s put that on the table … 60% fewer murders of Jewish women, and 20% fewer car thefts.” Ben Gvir said crime in the Arab sector is a “grave phenomenon” and he intends to “combat it.” But he blamed the Attorney General, with whom he has had an ongoing feud, and “40 years of neglect” from authorities for the surge, despite record killings during his tenure.

The concern is not only the surge in killings, but the increasing brazenness with which they are carried out.

According to Eilaf’s report, three out of four killings last year occurred in public spaces, indicating the “dangerous normalization of open crime… without any real fear of immediate intervention or effective deterrence.”

“In light of weak governance, limited police presence, and declining trust in institutions, organized crime in Arab towns found a fertile ground for expansion, gradually building its economic and social influence by exploiting the vacuum left by the state,” said Rawyah Handaqlu, the head of Eilaf.

She says the violence reflects the “exclusion and marginalization” of Palestinian citizens of Israel, arguing that the state has frequently relegated crime and violence to simply being a product of Arab society, which “holds society responsible for a reality imposed on it.”

Aida Touma-Suleiman, a Palestinian member of the Knesset who actively raises the crime issue in parliament, believes the first step to eradicate crime in the Arab community is to topple the right-wing government, which she describes as “racist, fascist and criminal.”

“When the government is not acting… not holding the criminals responsible and not prosecuting them, it’s like sponsoring them,” she told CNN at the Sakhnin protest. “We want them to do the work they are supposed to do, and we want to give our young people the security to develop and to feel that they are living.”

In December, the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office announced plans to redirect $70 million from a program designed to promote Arab economic development to the police to address “severe nationalistic crime” in the Arab community.

The Mosawa Center, a group advocating equal rights for Palestinian citizens, called it a “dangerous political step” that would do nothing to combat crime.

“While the ministry fails to use the budgets already at its disposal, it is pushing to cut budgets allocated to other areas such as education and housing and transfer them to its own coffers,” it said in a statement. “This can only be interpreted as a deliberate policy of further impoverishing Arab society and plunging it deeper into crises, including the scourge of crime.”

Back at his home in Mazra’a, Awad’s wait for justice continues. He finds comfort only in the photographs of his late son.

Asked if he has any hope that there will be justice for his death, he sighs and points to the ceiling.

“Justice only exists up there, with God.”

32%

Trump’s approval rating with independents hits a new low ahead of the State of the Union

By Driel Edwards-Levy, Jennifer Agiesta

When President Donald Trump gives his State of the Union address Tuesday, he will face a public that increasingly questions his priorities and expresses broad doubts about whether his proposed policies are helping the nation, according to a new CNN poll conducted by SSRS.

Adding to the pile of alarming indicators for the president’s party heading into this year’s midterms, Trump’s approval rating among political independents has dipped to a new low in CNN polling.

Just 32% of Americans now say that Trump has had the right priorities, while 68% say he hasn’t paid enough attention to the country’s most important problems. That’s the president’s most negative reading on that question to date during either of his terms in office. At the same time, Americans say, 61% to 38%, that Trump’s policies will move the country in the wrong direction rather than the right one. And Trump’s job approval rating among all adults remains mired at 36%.

The poll’s findings suggest the scale of the task ahead of the president.

When Trump addressed Congress last year for the first time since returning to the White House, his approval rating stood at a career-high 48% in CNN’s pre-speech polling. Since then, he has lost ground across all major demographic groups, with Republicans, conservatives and White Americans without college degrees among the few groups to hold a net-positive view of Trump.

Some of the steepest declines include a 19-point drop in approval among Latino Americans and an 18-point drop among Americans younger than 45. Among political independents, Trump’s approval rating has dropped 15 points over the past year to 26%, the lowest it’s been in either of his terms.

Americans want to hear about the economy and cost of living

State of the Union addresses typically draw disproportionately friendly audiences, with supporters of the president more likely to tune in. That could give Trump an opportunity to rally his own partisans, whose support for the president has also softened over the past year.

Strong approval among Republicans stands at 49% in the poll, down from 64% just after his address to Congress last year and the first time in this term it’s dipped below the 50% mark. Nearly three in 10 Republicans say Trump hasn’t paid enough attention to the most important problems, and 16% say his policies will move the country in the wrong direction.

Asked to choose the issue they’d most like Trump to address in his State of the Union speech, 57% pick the economy and cost of living, more than quadrupling the share who want to hear him focus on any other individual topic, including immigration, the state of democracy, health care policy, crime or foreign policy. Half of Democrats say they want Trump’s speech to touch on economic issues, rising to 56% among independents and 65% of Republicans.

“Part of the reason why I think people elected Trump was because they were hurting under Biden. … I think people were expecting Trump to provide a little bit of relief to their suffering,” wrote one poll respondent, a Republican from New Mexico. “Grocery prices are just through the roof. Everything is so expensive. … So I think he needs to talk about the economy, and he needs to talk about what kind of things he’s already done.”

Trump’s job approval rating, which has hovered below the 40% mark since last autumn, stands at 36%, with 63% disapproving. Nearly half strongly disapprove of his job performance, while 19% strongly approve.

Those who approve only moderately of Trump’s performance are more likely to take issue with his priorities than with his policies. While just 6% in this group think Trump’s proposals will move the country in the wrong direction, 34% say the president hasn’t paid enough attention to the country’s most important issues.

The poll finds sharp differences among Republicans by age. While 63% of Republicans who are 65 or older say they strongly approve of the president’s job performance, that stands at just 31% among Republicans younger than 35. Younger Republicans are about twice as likely as those age 65 or older to say Trump’s policies will move the country in the wrong direction (24% among 18- to 34-year-old Republicans vs. 11% among those 65 or older), and to say that he hasn’t had the right priorities (42% among 18- to 34-year-old Republicans vs. 20% among those 65 or older).

One thing unites the GOP across age lines: More than 6 in 10 say Trump should focus on economic issues in his address Tuesday.

The CNN poll was conducted by SSRS online from February 17-20 among a random national sample of 2,496 adults. Results for the full sample have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points.

Killing of Mexico's most-wanted cartel boss

 The killing of Mexico's most-wanted cartel boss has sparked mass unrest. Here's the latest

Catherine Nicholls

Mexico’s most-wanted drug leader, Nemesio “El Mencho” Oseguera Cervantes, died following a Mexican military operation in the western state of Jalisco yesterday.

The death of Osegeura, who led the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, or CJNG, quickly sparked waves of violence across the country, as suspected members of organized crime groups set buses on fire, blocked roads in the area, and clashed with authorities.

Here’s what you need to know about what’s happened so far:

• Osegeura was seriously injured during the Mexican military’s operation and died while he was being transported via aircraft to Mexico City, the country’s defense ministry said. CJNG members traded fire with the government forces during the raid, resulting in the death of four gang members, according to the ministry. Two others died alongside Osegeura while being transported to Mexico City, it added.

• The military operation triggered a violent response across Jalisco state, which quickly spread to other states across the country. Video obtained by CNN showed multiple fires burning and plumes of smoke rising across Puerto Vallarta, a resort city popular with US tourists on Mexico’s west coast. Pharmacies and convenience stores were also set alight.

• The US provided intelligence to assist in the operation that killed Osegeura, the White House said yesterday. A US defense official also told CNN that an interagency US task force “played a role” in the operation.

• The US embassy urged Americans to shelter in place amid the unrest. A host of countries issued warnings to their citizens inside Mexico after the violence broke out, urging them to stay vigilant and follow the advice of local authorities.

• Several airlines suspended flights to and from Puerto Vallarta and Guadalajara yesterday, with footage captured at major airports showing distant smoke and panicked travelers. An American woman from California told CNN: “I’ve been coming to Mexico all my life, ever since I was a little girl, and I’ve never encountered something like this.”

• The Mexican football association postponed four games scheduled to take place yesterday because of the violence. Jalisco’s state capital Guadalajara is set to host multiple FIFA World Cup matches this summer. FIFA has not yet commented on the violence that flared after the death of Oseguera.

Eight cartel members killed

Eight cartel members killed in military operation, Mexico's defense secretary says

Catherine Nicholls and Gerardo Lemos

Eight members of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel were killed in the Mexican military operation to capture the head of the organized crime group yesterday, the country’s defense secretary General Ricardo Trevilla Trejo said a short while ago.

The military began a ground operation to arrest cartel boss Nemesio “El Mencho” Oseguera Cervantes, Trevilla said, after which a “very violent clash” between cartel members and Mexican special forces ensued.

“It was truly a very violent attack by the organized crime personnel,” Trevilla told reporters.

Ammunition and missile launchers were seized during the operation, Trevilla added.

In May 2015, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel shot down a military helicopter.

Hand a rare rebuke.....

Supreme Court Strikes Down Trump’s Tariff Regime

The justices hand a rare rebuke to a president they’ve enabled.

Pema Levy

The Supreme Court ruled Friday that most of President Donald Trump’s world-wide tariffs are illegal, dealing a setback to one of the president’s top priorities. Since his second month in office, Trump has set about to impose drastic, varying, and haphazard tariffs on countries across the globe. Trump claimed that most of these tariffs were authorized under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act. But in a 6-3 decision, the justices ruled that IEEPA did not give the president power to impose tariffs. Trump will now have to turn to other, more limited statutes to impose his unilateral tariffs.

IEEPA authorizes the president to respond to “any unusual and extraordinary threat” from abroad, including through the power to “regulate… importation or exportation.” The Trump administration argued that the word “regulate” encompassed “tariff regulation,” which Solicitor General John Sauer described during oral arguments as “the quintessential, most historically-tested method of regulating imports.” But the justices disagreed, finding the words “regulate” and “importation” are not enough to give the president uninhibited tariff power.

“Based on two words separated by 16 others in Section 1702(a)(1)(B) of IEEPA—’regulate’ and ‘importation’—the President asserts the independent power to impose tariffs on imports from any country, of any product, at any rate, for any amount of time,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in his majority opinion. “Those words cannot bear such weight.”  

To use IEEPA, Trump had taken a capacious view of the meaning of “unusual or extraordinary threat.” For tariffs on Canada and Mexico, he said it was because they were letting fentanyl across the border. For dozens of other countries, he seized on decades-old trade deficits that most economists agree are not a big deal. For Canada (a second time), he pointed to a World Series TV ad that offended him. For Brazil, it was the gall to prosecute a former president for trying to overturn the results of an election. Trump argued that it was his power alone to declare such emergencies, and that these declarations were unreviewable, even by the courts.

Roberts dispatched with this argument by saying that Congress could not have handed the president such broad powers over matters generally reserved for itself—the power to impose tariffs—without more explicit language: This view “would replace the longstanding executive-legislative collaboration over trade policy with unchecked Presidential policymaking,” Roberts wrote. “Congress seldom effects such sea changes through ‘vague language.'”

Roberts’ decision is short, leaving some important things out and raising questions for the future of other Trump policies. First, Roberts relies, along with Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett, on the major questions doctrine, the conservatives’ purported principle that if executive agencies are to take a major action, Congress must first clearly assign that authority. This doctrine is a recent invention of the Roberts Court, used until now to strike down only Democratic policies, including student loan forgiveness. It’s infinitely malleable because “major” is not an objective standard. As such, the three Democratic appointees rejected its application and instead found regular tools of statutory interpretation sufficient to dispose of Trump’s power-hungry reading of IEEPA.

By relying on the major questions doctrine, Roberts side-steps actual major questions that are likely to arise in future cases, including the court’s ability to second-guess other presidential declarations of emergency. The decision offers no remedy for the billions of dollars already collected under Trump’s illegal tariffs; it will likely be up to the Court of International Trade to sort out that morass.

After the Roberts majority opinion came another half-dozen concurring and dissenting opinions, largely dedicated to the justices’ internal debates over the meaning of the major questions doctrine. Justice Brett Kavanaugh argues in his dissent, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, that the major questions doctrine should not be used to assess foreign-facing statutes, because authority over foreign affairs is generally a presidential prerogative. Kavanaugh claims that Roberts has vastly expanded the major questions doctrine into the realm of foreign affairs. But Roberts’ ruling holds tariffs up not as a presidential tool for foreign policy, but as a taxing power assigned to Congress. Despite Kavanaugh’s worries, it’s not clear that Roberts has actually decided to apply the major questions doctrine to powers that Roberts would himself deem part of the president’s foreign policy arsenal.

In waving off the major questions doctrine, the conservative dissenters demonstrate how the doctrine is malleable enough to allow them to pursue their preferred ends. In addition to their new idea that the major questions doctrine cannot be wielded against anything touching foreign affairs, Thomas used his own dissent to put forward an additional carveout: there’s no problem with Congress vaguely delegating “powers of the Crown”—authorities that the Constitution bequeaths to Congress, but which Thomas discovered in old books actually once belonged to English kings. It’s a bit too on the nose: After fighting a revolution against a monarchy and then reassigning executive power to the legislative branch in the creation of a democracy, Thomas wants to hand those powers right back to a president who fancies himself a king.

Although the outcome is a clear loss for Trump, the court is likely doing him a favor. Trump’s sweeping and erratic tariffs are a drag on the economy. They increase uncertainty and stymie investment. They raise prices and decrease employment. The result is a weaker economy heading into this year’s midterms—a downward trend that is likely to continue throughthe 2028 elections.

The Republican-appointed 6-3 court majority depends on Republicans winning at the ballot box, as does the pro-business, pro-Christian nationalist, anti-democratic agenda the conservative justices are enacting. They surely understand that this project could be undermined by a tariff-fueled recession, even if Trump himself doesn’t seem to get it. To bring the point home, the case was argued the day after Democrats overperformed in November elections in New Jersey, New York City, and Virginia, winning voters worried about high prices.

The best way to understand this case was not as a tricky task of legal or constitutional interpretation, but rather as an attempt to mediate between two competing factions of the Republican firmament. On one side is Trump, who has used tariffs to dole out rewards and punishments on businesses, individuals, and other countries. On the other side were some of the biggest GOP funders, including the Koch network, who are generally committed to a pro-corporate, libertarian capitalism. These longtime GOP funders prefer Trump to a Democratic president, but they don’t want him to completely take over the levers of the economy. Groups funded by the Kochs and likeminded tycoons funded some of the libertarian legal nonprofits that launched lawsuits challenging the tariffs. These same funders also poured millions into the Federalist Society and other outside groups that helped ensure each of the six Republican appointees made it to the high court.

The result is that the court’s GOP-appointees were mediating a disagreement between two parents who maintain a sometimes rocky marriage—the funders who enabled their majority, and the president who will protect it and who personally appointed three of them. The justices had to pick a parent in this fight, and enough of the conservative wing picked the billionaires and big business over Trump.

1,000 Measles Cases This Year

Measles Cases This Year Near 1,000. That We Know Of.

Many of the current cases stem from the outbreak in South Carolina, which the administration told Mother Jones they weren’t especially concerned about in December.

Katie Herchenroeder

There have been nearly 1,000 confirmed measles cases in the US in 2026 so far, according to new data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That’s more than four times the amount of cases as this time last year. 

It’s unclear how much larger the spread could be, as the CDC’s number refers to reported and confirmed cases. 

Many of the current cases stem from an outbreak in South Carolina, with the state nearly reporting around 800 cases since January. Twenty-six states have reported cases this year, spanning the entire country—from California to Maine and from Texas to Wisconsin. 

During 2025, there were 2,281 confirmed cases of measles. The country is now at risk of, if not on track to, losing its measles elimination status that it’s held since 2000. Two doses of the measles, mumps, and rubella, or MMR, vaccine, usually administered in children, provides 97 percent protection, though distrust of vaccinations, fueled by mis- and disinformation, has risen in the past few years. 

The surging 2026 numbers come after more than a year of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. serving as the head of the US Department of Health and Human Services. He, along with key allies, has led the agency toward an unprecedented reshaping of the nation’s vaccination system for children—a mission he began prior to becoming secretary. 

There are no current death reports from 2026, though at least three people died from measles in 2025. As more Americans are at risk of becoming sick from the illness, Kennedy has continued to spread false information about alternative remedies like cod liver oil. 

Despite the record numbers and quick spread in 2025, HHS told Mother Jones back in December that they weren’t especially worried about the brewing South Carolina outbreak. The CDC was “not currently concerned that this will develop into a large, long-running outbreak,” HHS press secretary Emily Hilliard wrote. 

To date, that outbreak has led to at least 20 hospitalizations. Though, according to reporting from ProPublica, that number is likely much higher as hospitals in South Carolina aren’t required to report when they admit patients with measles-related illnesses.

Dr. Leigh Bragg, a pediatrician in South Carolina who is board certified in pediatric infectious disease, told ProPublica that she didn’t even know that anyone had been hospitalized due to the illness in her state until she saw it on social media. 

 “It’s a very big disservice to the public not reporting complications we are seeing in hospitals or even ERs,” Bragg said. “Measles isn’t just a cold.”

Even if reports of measles were required, the chaos the Trump administration has rained down on the federal workforce could make it hard to understand and address the scope of the issue.

In October, more than 1,000 CDC employees were laid off, only for some 700 to be rehired the next day. As Americans face another widespread public health crisis, the pinned post on Kennedy’s X account isn’t about how to protect yourself or your children from measles. Instead, it’s a video of himself working out in a sauna, shirtless, with Kid Rock.

Sparked an Energy Revolution

Putin Tried to Freeze Ukraine. Instead, He Sparked an Energy Revolution.

Russia is bombing fossil-fueled power plants, so the country is building solar and wind.

Paul Hockenos

When Russian air strikes knocked out Ukrainian power plants earlier this winter, much of the Black Sea port city of Mykolaiv went dark, and indoor temperatures plummeted. Just 60 kilometers from the front, Tornado rockets, cruise and ballistic missiles, and attack drones have been raining down on the city of 450,000 for the last four years. Now, during the coldest winter in more than a decade, most of Mykolaiv’s citizens are once again enduring bitterly cold homes and, when electric water pumps fail, dry taps. 

But there are new glimmers of hope in Mykolaiv. Last November, 26 newly installed photovoltaic roof panels, paired with 100 kilowatt-hours of lithium battery storage, began to power heat pumps and generators to keep the city’s Urban Rehabilitation Center for Children and Persons with Disabilities up and running. Thanks to the Danish Refugee Council and Denmark’s foreign ministry, the project’s donors, the center continued operating even during a 32-hour stretch of shelling in mid-December. In addition to treating 70 patients a day, the center has opened its doors to at-risk Mykolaivians who lack heat. Several other institutions in Mykolaiv have also jettisoned their exclusive reliance on the national grid, which is mostly powered by large natural gas, coal-fired, and nuclear plants, and now draw energy from small-scale distributed systems that produce electricity at or near the point of use. 

Since the war’s onset, Russia has targeted Ukraine’s energy infrastructure—its old-school fossil-fueled power plants, substations, and transmission lines—in an effort to advance its offensive and beat down the Ukrainian people. Before this winter even set in, half of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure lay in ruins. Economists estimate that total damage to the nation’s energy sector now exceeds $56 billion.

This winter is the most devastating yet: Attacks have left giant swaths of the country with irregular electricity and heat as temperatures have plummeted to minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit. The bitter conditions have left many schools and other public services closed since Christmas. In Kyiv, as well as in Kharkiv, Poltava, and Dnipro, more than 1,000 public heating tents, powered by diesel generators and wood-burning stoves, offer residents warmth and a place to charge their phones. But these improvisations aren’t enough. On January 14, President Volodymyr Zelensky declared a state of emergency in the energy sector. 

While Ukraine’s energy system, which had a pre-war generation capacity of 60 gigawatts, scrambles to keep the lights on, grid operators are also looking past the next drone swarm, pushing to diversify the country’s energy sources, says Lars Handrich, a German energy expert who works closely with Ukraine. The plan is to replace the bulky thermal plants and centralized grid, which are vulnerable to drone and other attacks, with distributed renewables and modestly sized gas-fired plants that make less attractive targets for incoming fire. According to estimates from the Solar Energy Association of Ukraine, the nation installed at least 1.5 gigawatts of new solar generation in 2025—enough to power roughly 1.1 million homes—and grid operators intend to almost double the country’s renewable energy production over the next four years.

Ukraine is revamping its power sector as rapidly as it can, not for climate protection but for energy security. “Ukraine’s energy transition is not a slogan,” says Ievgeniia Kopytsia, a Ukrainian energy analyst at the Institute for Climate Protection, Energy and Mobility. “Since the full-scale invasion, Ukraine has added over 3 gigawatts of new renewable energy capacity. It’s a security-driven transformation, unfolding under extreme constraints, that prioritizes decentralization, flexibility, and speed of recovery.”

Wind and solar arrays with independent transmission lines are scattered over the landscape, which makes them harder to hit and easier to repair. “A coal power station [is] a large single target that a single missile could take out,” says Jeff Oatham of DTEK, Ukraine’s largest energy company and its largest private energy investor. “You would need around 40 missiles to do the equivalent amount of capacity damage at a wind farm.” 

Solar, too, makes an unattractive target. “Attacking decentralized solar power installations is not economically rational,” says Ukrainian energy expert Olena Kondratiuk. “Missiles and drones are expensive, and significantly disrupting such systems would require a large number of strikes, while the overall impact on the energy system would remain limited.” Both solar and wind parks can function even when parts of them are out of operation.

Ukraine’s shift away from fossil fuels began before Russia’s full-scale invasion: To join the European Union, the nation must adopt the bloc’s climate criteria, and in 2021, Ukraine pledged to be coal-free by 2035. The war interrupted this phaseout, but it also accelerated Ukraine’s adoption of renewables, despite its strapped budget.  

European countries are bankrolling most of Ukraine’s energy makeover, including all of the Mykolaiv solar installations. West of Kyiv, the city of Zhytomyr plans to run entirely on renewables by 2050 with the help of the Rebuild Ukraine initiative, which is largely European-funded. And in the Kyiv region and beyond, solar systems supported by the Solar Supports Ukraine program are keeping schools open during blackouts. A self-financed exception: Before the war began, the Sunny City cooperative in Slavutych, a town near the Belarus border, crowdfunded to create a solar power plant on the roofs of three municipal buildings.

According to the International Energy Agency, Ukraine made “strong strides” in rebuilding and bolstering its system’s resilience this past summer. The renewables rollout was—and still is—dominated by rooftop solar, small photovoltaic arrays, wind, local storage, and biomass combustion. 

Some self-sustaining energy zones combine renewables with conventional energy. The central Ukrainian city of Vinnytsia, for example, boasts five microgridst that combine local generation, including solar, gas, and hydroelectric power, with energy storage systems. Five major wind farms will join the energy mix in the next two years. In Khmelnytskyi, the national university’s 4,400-kilowatt microgrid includes a natural gas-fired cogeneration unit (it produces both electricity and heat), a 264-kilowatt solar array, a diesel-powered plant, and a gas-fired boiler house, which generates heat. 

Before Russia seized territory that hosted more than half of Ukraine’s wind power capacity in 2014 and 2022, including major wind farms on the Sea of Azov coast, Ukraine had 34 wind parks, comprised of nearly 700 turbines. Since wind generation is so central to its decentralized energy strategy, Ukraine has sought to increase wind generation even in the midst of Russian attacks. 

Just 65 miles from the front, DTEK is installing the 500-megawatt Tyligulska Wind Power Plant, the first wind park ever built in a war zone. It is a crucial source of electricity in southern Ukraine and will supply 900,000 households when it’s finished. The country currently has 7 gigawatts of wind power in the pipeline that could be installed this year, according to Andriy Konechenkov, of the Ukrainian Wind Energy Association, should conditions on the ground allow it. The new turbines would more than triple the country’s current wind-power capacity. 

While the war has sidelined the rollout of utility-scale wind farms, solar installations atop households, businesses, and public institutions have continued at an unprecedented rate. Ukraine’s YASNO utility, which supplies electricity and gas to millions of Ukrainians, says its customers are snapping up the solar and storage packages that it offers. On sunny days, Ukraine even boasts energy surpluses.

The German-Ukrainian Energy Partnership, a platform for intergovernmental dialogue on energy matters, estimates that Ukraine’s long-term technical solar potential exceeds 80 gigawatts, on par with the output of 80 medium-sized nuclear reactors. “The sector is emerging as one of the fastest-developing renewable markets in Eastern Europe,” according to its website. A University of Technology Sydney study suggests Ukraine could meet 91 percent of its energy needs from a combination of solar and onshore wind using 1 percent of its land.

“Individual consumers want to get off the grid any way that they can,” explains Andriy Martynyuk of Ecoclub, a Ukraine-based NGO that helps communities develop renewables. “It’s largely a grassroots phenomenon and a bit chaotic now,” he says. But Martynyuk expects the demand for renewables will further surge when state subsidies for fossil energy, which have priced Ukrainian energy significantly below market rates, are eventually phased out. 

This boom, of course, begs for storage options, and there, too, Ukraine has moved quickly. In 2024 and 2025,  the country’s national grid operator invested in half a gigawatt of storage capacity—an impressive amount according to experts, who note that it is just under a quarter of Germany’s total storage supply. The battery projects that in Europe take two years to roll out, the Financial Times reports, take just six months in Ukraine. 

In terms of a new, cutting-edge distributed energy system, Ukraine may be racing forward with the zeal of a new convert, but even the planned rollout of renewables in 2026 won’t keep most of the Ukrainian population safe from Russia’s depredations next winter. Wartime Ukraine has the will but not the financial resources to revamp its energy production on its own. The nation’s largest donor, the E.U., is already contributing nearly $200 billion to Ukraine’s budget for military expenditures and humanitarian aid, including energy. The speed with which Ukraine blankets its territory with distributed energy systems could make the difference between surviving another punishing winter—or succumbing to its cruelty. 

Derailed a Clean Energy Future

How Trump Appointees Derailed a Clean Energy Future at the Nation’s Largest Public Utility

The Tennessee Valley Authority dropped renewables, and now coal is back.

Katie Myers and Rebecca Egan McCarthy

The Tennessee Valley Authority’s quarterly meeting in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, opened with a triumphant video homage to its work during Winter Storm Fern. Yet again, energy had come through to defeat extreme cold. The montage credited this to the utility’s “coal workhorses,” then noted that nuclear provided “uninterrupted power” and “hydro responded instantly.” The list ended there, despite years of promises that the agency would bolster renewables and battery storage. The message was clear: Solar had been unceremoniously dropped from the mix, and coal, which the agency had been phasing out, was back. 

What the video hinted at, the board made official. Its seven members unanimously dropped renewable energy as a priority, ended diversity programs, and granted two of the agency’s four remaining coal plants a reprieve. The decision followed the seating of four members selected by President Donald Trump, breaking months of paralysis that followed the termination of three Biden appointees.

The changes, made during the February 11 board meeting, signal more than a routine policy reset for the nation’s largest public power provider. They will slow the TVA’s shift away from fossil fuels just as electricity demand is spiking, raising questions about future costs, pollution, and the role of federally-owned utilities in the country’s energy transition.

For years, TVA planners had mapped out a future without coal. That is now on hold. The Kingston Fossil Plant in Roane County, Tennessee, was scheduled for retirement in 2027, with all nine of its units slated for demolition and replacement with an “energy complex” of gas generation and battery storage. All of them will remain online alongside the gas plant, but renewables are no longer part of the picture. The board also shelved plans to scuttle the Cumberland Fossil Plant in Stewart County, Tennessee, in 2028.

These moves come despite the agency’s 2025 Integrated Resource Plan, which called for retiring the two facilities because of Kingston’s “high cost and challenged condition” and Cumberland’s “lack of flexibility.” The Kingston coal plant was also the site of a devastating 2010 coal ash disaster, the largest industrial spill in U.S. history.

The board defended its decision by citing energy affordability for the Tennessee Valley. 

“As power demand grows, TVA is looking at every option to bolster our generating fleet to continue providing affordable, reliable electricity to our 10 million customers, create jobs, and help communities thrive,” agency spokesperson Scott Brooks said in a statement.

Left unsaid was the fact that a coal-fired power generation unit at the Cumberland Fossil Plant failed during last month’s storm.

Much of TVA’s load growth comes from the rise of artificial intelligence, said CEO Don Moul, and data centers account for 18 percent of its industrial load. During the same meeting, the board allowed the company xAI, owned by Elon Musk, to double the amount of power it draws from the grid. 

For former board member Michelle Moore, one of the Biden-era appointees President Trump fired in March, the shift aligns squarely with the administration’s priorities. It also signals, she said, that the utility is no longer fulfilling its mission to provide affordable power, economic development, and environmental stewardship across the seven-state Tennessee Valley. “The politics in Washington may change,” she said.  “But the TVA’s mission does not.”

That independence has at times put the Tennessee Valley Authority at odds with presidents of both parties. The utility resisted Trump administration pressure to keep coal plants open, continuing to retire facilities based on economic reasons. But it also fell short of President Biden’s decarbonization goals.

Moore worries ordinary ratepayers are no longer an active part of TVA’s decision-making. Typically, a shift as monumental as turning away from renewable energy would have been subject to a lengthy review with input from communities throughout the region, something that simply will not occur now. “This is one more indicator that the public power model is being eroded and is at risk,” Moore said.

Last month, the TVA said it would streamline how it reviews the ecological impacts of its projects, allowing some to move ahead with far less, if any, scrutiny. The move follows a broader rollback of the National Environmental Policy Act under President Trump that grants greater discretion over such considerations to entities like the TVA. For nearly 60 years, the law required an assessment of the environmental impacts of federal projects. “Over the past several years, the TVA board has faced pressure to make decisions based on stringent environmental regulations,” said board member Wade White.

The TVA’s willingness to join the Trump administration’s push to revive the coal industry has rankled locals and environmentalists. In the first year of his second term, President Trump lifted Environmental Protection Agency restrictions on the industry, used emergency executive orders to keep aging coal plants open, expanded mining, and ordered the Pentagon to buy electricity from power plants that use coal. The president has since received an award from industry executives, dubbing him the “Undisputed Champion of Clean, Beautiful Coal.” 

From a public health standpoint, it’s a nightmare. “Coal is one of the worst things you can imagine for the environment,” said Avner Vengosh, a professor of environmental quality at Duke University who leads a coal and coal ash research group. Mining destroys ecosystems and poisons groundwater, polluting rivers and streams with sulfuric acid. Burning the fossil fuel releases fine particulate matter, impacting the health of nearby residents. A 2023 study in the journal Science found that coal plants caused nearly half a million excess deaths between 1999 and 2020, and a Sierra Club report notes that TVA coal-fired plants were the nation’s deadliest. 

“People are upset, they feel like we’re going backwards,” said Amy Kelly, a Sierra Club campaign manager. “The fact that these plants are from the 50s and 60s, and we’re just going to prop them up with Band-Aid solutions to appease the current administration is going to cost people.” 

Even some coal plant operators agree. A Colorado utility is suing to close a facility, calling a federal emergency order to keep it online “unconstitutional.” For those who live near the two plants the TVA just saved, the decision is, in Joe Schiller’s words, “a betrayal.” Schiller, a retired college professor, has lived near the Cumberland plant for 30 years. “It contradicts everything they’ve told us about the plants in the past,” he said. Even so, he added, it’s a beautiful area. Moments before, his wife had called him outside to admire the sandhill cranes flying by.

“It’s not like you look around every day and say, ‘Yep, that Cumberland plant is slowly killing me,’” Schiller said with a laugh. “Although it probably is.”

News.....

The Latest: Trump says he’ll raise tariffs to 15% after Supreme Court ruling

By The Associated Press

President Donald Trump on Monday threatened countries around the world to abide by any tariff deals they agreed to despite the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that struck down many of his far-reaching taxes on imports. And he said he wants a global tariff of 15%, up from 10% he had announced immediately after the ruling.

The court’s Friday decision struck down tariffs Trump had imposed on nearly every country using an emergency powers law. But the Republican president won’t let go of his favorite tool for rewriting the rules of global commerce and applying international pressure.

“Any Country that wants to “play games” with the ridiculous supreme court decision, especially those that have “Ripped Off” the U.S.A. for years, and even decades, will be met with a much higher Tariff, and worse, than that which they just recently agreed to,” Trump posted Monday on Truth Social.

One of Trump's executive orders says he can bypass Congress and impose a 10% tax on imports from around the world starting Tuesday, the same day as his State of the Union speech.

The Latest:

Trump claims people killed by individuals in the US illegally would still be alive if he’d won the 2020 election

There is no way Trump or anyone can know that. But the Republican president has received high marks in his second term for practically cutting off the flow of illegal immigration into the U.S. from Mexico, and says he would have done the same thing back then had he not lost the 2020 election to Democrat Joe Biden.

Trump is using the event to repeat false claims that he only lost because the election was rigged. But there is no evidence to support his allegations.

Trump lost dozens of court challenges, his own attorney general found no evidence of widespread fraud, and reviews, audits and recounts in the battleground states where he contested his loss all affirmed Biden’s victory.

Laken Riley’s mother thanks Trump

Allyson Phillips, the mother of Laken Riley, thanked Trump for the work he’s done to honor her daughter and others who have been killed by people in the U.S. illegally. She said public perception of the president is different than the man she has come to know.

“You have fought a fight that most people wouldn’t want to have to fight,” she said. “There are just not enough words to say, because if you’ve lived the nightmare that we have lived you understand the importance of the job he is doing.”

Phillips remembered her daughter as “the most responsible, hardworking, kind, selfless, beautiful Christian.” She added: “She didn’t make bad choices. She was just a good girl. She just wanted to go for a run that morning.”

Trump is speaking at a White House event to designate ‘Angel Family Day’

“Angel families” is a term the Trump administration is using to refer to relatives of people killed by someone who was illegally in the U.S.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a social media post on Sunday night that Trump was signing a proclamation designating “Angel Family Day.”

The event is meant to recognize Laken Riley and families like hers. The 22-year-old Georgia nursing student was killed in February 2024 while out jogging. Jose Antonio Ibarra, a Venezuelan man, is now serving a life term for her murder. Ibarra had been arrested for illegally entering the U.S. and released to pursue his case in immigration court.

Riley’s case became a flashpoint in the debate over immigration, and the first bill Trump signed into law in his second term was named for Riley. Trump says today is a “truly solemn occasion.”

Media organizations could keep pushing for release of Trump classified documents report

Judge Cannon’s ruling blocking the release of a special counsel report on Trump’s hoarding of classified documents might not be the end of the fight.

Though both the Justice Department and Trump had pushed for the report to be permanently shelved, media organizations had been pushing for the document’s release and had argued that it was in the public interest for it to come out.

They could presumably move to appeal Cannon’s ruling to a higher court.

Smith and his team produced a two-volume report on investigations into Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election and his retention of classified documents at his Florida estate following his first term. Both indictments were abandoned by Smith’s team after Trump’s November 2024 election win, in light of longstanding Justice Department legal opinions that sitting presidents cannot face federal prosecution.

Supreme Court agrees to hear from oil and gas companies trying to block climate change lawsuits

The Supreme Court will hear from oil and gas companies trying to block lawsuits seeking to hold the industry liable for billions of dollars in damage linked to climate change.

The case out of Boulder, Colorado is one of series of lawsuits alleging the companies deceived the public about how fossil fuels contribute to climate change.

It’s part of a wave of legal actions around the country and world trying to leverage action on climate change through the courts.

Backed by the Trump administration, the companies say the lawsuits wrongly threaten the industry.

The case is expected to be heard in the fall.

Stocks waver on Wall Street after Trump imposes more tariffs

Stocks are treading water on Wall Street after Trump ramped up his newest tariffs, pegging them at 15% on Saturday after saying they would be 10% just the day before. Trump is reacting to the Supreme Court ruling striking down his sweeping taxes on imports from around the world. Trump’s quick shift toward even more aggressive tariffs shows how much uncertainty still hangs over the global economy.

Despite Friday’s ruling, tariffs aren’t going away, and Trump said Monday he expects other countries to abide by trade agreements based on the tariffs that have been overturned.

“Any Country that wants to “play games” with the ridiculous supreme court decision, especially those that have “Ripped Off” the U.S.A. for years, and even decades, will be met with a much higher Tariff, and worse, than that which they just recently agreed to,” Trump posted on Truth Social.

The order to draw down US personnel in Lebanon comes as US pressures Iran

The Islamic Republic of Iran faces both the threat of a U.S. military strike and new protests at home as the United States and Iran prepare to hold their next round of nuclear talks Thursday in Geneva.

Oman’s foreign minister, Badr al-Busaidi, confirmed the talks after Iran’s top diplomat, Abbas Araghchi, told CBS in an interview that he expected to meet U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff in Geneva on Thursday. Araghchi said a “good chance” remained for a diplomatic solution on the nuclear issue.

The Trump administration has built up the largest U.S. military presence in the Middle East in decades as it pushes its longtime adversary for concessions on its nuclear program and more.

Trump warned on Friday that limited strikes against Iran are possible, and both Iran and the U.S. have signaled they are prepared for war if the talks on Tehran’s nuclear program fail.

Judge blocks release of special counsel Smith’s report on Trump classified documents case

A federal judge on Monday permanently barred the release of a report by special counsel Jack Smith’s report on his investigation into Trump’s hoarding of classified documents.

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who was nominated to the bench by Trump, granted a request from the Republican president to keep under wraps the report detailing Smith’s findings in the probe that resulted in criminal charges in 2023.

Cannon, who in 2024 dismissed the case after concluding that Smith was unlawfully appointed, said the release of the report would present a “manifest injustice” to Trump and his two co-defendants.

“Special Counsel Smith, acting without lawful authority, obtained an indictment in this action and initiated proceedings that resulted in a final order of dismissal of all charges,” she wrote.

State Department orders nonessential US diplomats to leave Lebanon as tensions with Iran soar

A State Department official says the U.S. has ordered nonessential diplomats and family members to leave Lebanon as tensions over Iran rise with the threat of a potentially imminent military strike.

The official said a continuous assessment of the regional security environment determined it was “prudent” to draw down the U.S. Embassy’s footprint so that only essential personnel remained at their posts.

The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the move had not yet been formally announced, said that it is a temporary measure and that the embassy remained operational Monday.

A second department official, also speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss plans that had not been formally announced, said Secretary of State Marco Rubio may delay his intended visits to Israel this weekend.

Trump’s big speech will be delivered to a changed nation and a Congress he's sidelined

President Trump will stand before Congress on Tuesday to deliver the annual State of the Union address to a transformed nation.

One year back in office, Trump has emerged as a president defying conventional expectations. He’s executed a head-spinning agenda, upending priorities at home, shattering alliances abroad and challenging the nation’s foundational system of checks and balances. Two Americans were killed by federal agents while protesting the Trump administration’s immigration raids and mass deportations.

As the lawmakers sit in the House chamber listening to Trump’s agenda for the year ahead, the moment is an existential one for the Congress, which has essentially become sidelined by his expansive reach, the Republican president bypassing his slim GOP majority to amass enormous power for himself.

Rubio heads to Caribbean to reassert US interests after Venezuela strikes

Secretary of State Marco Rubio travels to the Caribbean island of St. Kitts and Nevis this week to reassert the Trump administration’s interests in the Western Hemisphere just a month after the U.S. military operation that removed former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

With the eyes of much of the world on the U.S military buildup in the Middle East and President Donald Trump’s threats to attack Iran, Rubio will make a one-day visit to St. Kitts on Wednesday to participate in a summit of leaders from the Caribbean Community, the State Department said.

Trump’s action against Maduro coupled with an increasingly aggressive posture aimed at eliminating drug trafficking and illegal migration have proven a concern for many in the region although they’ve also won support from many smaller states.

In numerous group and bilateral meetings, Rubio intends to discuss ways to promote regional security and stability, trade and economic growth.