Tag: Politics

Oil prices surge above $102 as Saudi Arabia and UAE weigh joining Iran war
Global oil prices passed $102 a barrel on Tuesday morning after reports that U.S. allies in the Persian Gulf are inching toward joining the war against Iran.
Brent crude futures for May delivery were rising 2.8% to trade at $102.74 a barrel as of 8:40 a.m. Eastern time, while West Texas Intermediate contracts for May delivery were up 3.9%, to $91.56 a barrel.
Both oil benchmarks on Monday fell sharply after President Donald Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that the U.S. would be halting strikes on Iran’s power plants for five days “subject to the success of the ongoing meetings and discussions.” Both the Brent and WTI on Monday settled at their lowest levels since March 11, according to FactSet data.
Market optimism has faded since Iran refuted Trump’s claims that the U.S. has had “very good and productive” talks with Tehran, with Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Ghalibaf calling the announcement “fake news” used to “manipulate” markets.
“Obviously much now depends on the progress of any talks, and whether the more optimistic rhetoric is followed up by concrete action,” Jim Reid, head of global macro research at Deutsche Bank, wrote in a note on Tuesday, adding that “some nervousness” had crept back into markets, sending Brent crude back past the $100 threshold.
Investors’ concerns regarding the future of the war in Iran were also exacerbated by a Wall Street Journal report on Monday evening that U.S. allies in the Persian Gulf are edging closer to joining the conflict. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are mulling helping efforts as their economies continue to be disrupted by the strikes and the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
The report notes that neither has deployed its military openly yet, but pressure is increasing as Tehran continues to exert control across the region, with energy infrastructure targeted.
“Investors are still unclear about what happens next. The fog of war is thick,” said David Morrison, senior market analyst at Trade Nation. “The Strait of Hormuz remains closed to just about everything, and that should continue to support energy prices. This in turn plays into fears of higher inflation, adding to concerns that were building even before hostilities began.”
U.S. stock futures were edging lower after all three major benchmarks on Monday booked their biggest daily percentage gains since early February. The Dow Jones Industrial Average futures were off 0.5%, while the S&P 500 futures were falling 0.4% and the Nasdaq 100 futures were dropping 0.6%, according to FactSet data.
March 24, 2026
Trading surge hits markets minutes before Trump’s Iran announcement
S&P 500 futures and crude oil contracts on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) at approximately 6:50 a.m. ET Monday—mere minutes before President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social that the United States and Iran had held “very good and productive conversations” toward resolving hostilities in the Middle East.
The timing has raised eyebrows across trading desks and prompted quiet scrutiny from market participants, even as the White House forcefully denies any impropriety.
According to Bloomberg data reviewed by multiple outlets, roughly 6,200 Brent and West Texas Intermediate (WTI) futures contracts traded in a single minute around 6:50 a.m., representing a notional value of approximately $580 million.
At virtually the same instant, S&P 500 e-mini futures recorded an isolated burst of activity that stood out against an otherwise subdued pre-market session. Both oil and equity futures then moved dramatically once Trump’s post appeared at 7:05 a.m.

WTI crude plunged nearly 12% to around $83–$88 per barrel by the close, while Brent fell below $100 for the first time since early March. S&P 500 futures, by contrast, jumped more than 2.5% in the minutes following the announcement, reflecting investor relief that planned U.S. strikes on Iranian energy infrastructure had been postponed for five days.

The volume anomalies occurred during thin early-morning liquidity, when even modest order flow can create noticeable spikes. Still, veteran traders described the coordinated moves—aggressive selling or shorting of oil while buying equity futures—as unusually prescient.
“It’s hard to prove causality… but you have to wonder who would have been relatively aggressive at selling futures at that point, 15 minutes before Trump’s post,” one senior market strategist at a major U.S. broker told the Financial Times. Another hedge-fund portfolio manager with 25 years of experience called the pattern “really abnormal” for a quiet Monday morning with no scheduled data releases or Fed speakers.

The SEC and CME Group declined to comment. White House spokesperson Kush Desai rejected any suggestion of insider activity, stating: “The only focus of President Trump and Trump administration officials is doing what’s best for the American people… any implication that officials are engaged in such activity without evidence is baseless and irresponsible reporting.”
Markets React to De-Escalation — For Now
Trump’s Truth Social post described “productive conversations” with Iran and ordered the postponement of strikes on Iranian power plants and energy infrastructure for five days, subject to continued talks. Iran’s parliament speaker, Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, quickly denied that any negotiations were underway, calling the claim “fake news” designed to manipulate oil and financial markets.

Oil prices, which had climbed aggressively in recent sessions on fears of supply disruption through the Strait of Hormuz, reversed sharply. WTI settled down roughly 10–12% at $83–$88 per barrel, while Brent dropped 11–13% to just under $100. European natural gas (TTF) also fell sharply.
The moves provided temporary relief to risk assets but highlighted how fragile sentiment remains. Morgan Stanley analysts warned that a sustained rise to $120 per barrel oil could shave 20–30 basis points off Asian GDP growth and force rate hikes in several emerging economies later this year.
A Pattern of Well-Timed Trades?
This is not the first instance of unusually prescient trading ahead of major Trump administration announcements in recent months. Hedge funds and energy consultants have privately noted several large block trades that appeared well-timed relative to official statements on Iran and Venezuela.
While such patterns are difficult to prove as improper without concrete evidence, they have generated “a level of frustration” among institutional investors, according to one portfolio manager.
Algorithmic and macro strategies can produce rapid cross-asset flows, especially in thin pre-market hours, but the scale and precision of Monday’s moves—selling oil and buying equities just before a de-escalation announcement—left many questioning whether non-public information circulated.
Political and Market Context
The episode unfolds against a backdrop of heightened geopolitical tension and domestic political pressure on the Trump administration’s aggressive posture toward Iran. While Trump framed the postponement as a sign of progress, critics argue the administration’s brinkmanship has already inflicted economic pain through elevated energy prices and market volatility.
For now, the market appears to be pricing in cautious optimism that a wider conflict can be avoided. Yet with Iran denying talks and both sides continuing information operations, the “fog of war” remains thick.
Investors would be wise to treat headline-driven moves with skepticism—especially when large, well-timed trades precede them.
March 23, 2026
California GOP candidate seizes over 650,000 ballots, sparking election probe controversy
Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, a leading Republican candidate for governor, has seized more than 650,000 ballots from last November’s election to determine, he says, whether they were fraudulently counted.
“This investigation is simple: Physically count the ballots and compare that result with the total votes recorded,” Bianco said at a news conference Friday.
The unusual probe drew a sharp rebuke from California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, who said in a statement that it is “unprecedented in both scope and scale” and appears “not to be based on facts or evidence.”
Critics, meanwhile, said Bianco’s ballot seizure is a threat to democracy and another attempt by Republican election deniers to disenfranchise voters.
“There is no indication, anywhere in the United States, of widespread voter fraud,” Bonta said. “Counts, recounts, hand counts, audits, and court cases all support this.”
According to Bonta’s office, Bianco’s department on Feb. 26 seized about 1,000 boxes of ballot materials in Riverside County related to the November election for Proposition 50, which temporarily redrew the state’s congressional districts to favor Democrats in response to partisan redistricting in Republican states, including Texas.
In a March 4 letter to Bianco, Bonta said the seizure of the ballots “sets a dangerous precedent and will only sow distrust in our elections.” He threatened to seek legal recourse if Bianco does not halt his investigation.
Bonta also said he has “serious concerns” about whether Bianco had probable cause to obtain two warrants for the election materials and questioned whether Bianco had concealed important information from the magistrate judge who approved the warrants.
Bianco said his investigators are looking into allegations by a local citizens group that “did their own audit” and found that the county’s tally was falsely inflated by more than 45,000 votes — a claim that local election officials have rejected. He said that it’s his constitutional duty to investigate a potential crime and that he is not trying to change the election results.
Proposition 50 passed in Riverside County with 56% of the vote — a margin of more than 82,000 ballots. Statewide, it passed with about 64% of the vote and a margin of more than 3.3 million ballots.
Bianco’s investigation comes as President Trump, who remains fixated on his 2020 election loss, continues to amplify election conspiracy theories and has repeatedly called for the federal government to “nationalize” state-run elections to counter what he says is widespread fraud.
Bonta and California Secretary of State Shirley Weber, both Democrats, have vowed to fight federal interference that could affect voting in California, including efforts to seize election records, as the FBI recently did in Georgia.
Bianco is an outspoken Trump supporter who said in an endorsement video in 2024 that, after 30 years of putting criminals in jail, he figured it was “time to put a felon in the White House — Trump 2024, baby” — referencing Trump’s conviction by a New York jury for falsifying business records while paying hush money to a porn actor.
His investigation, which includes all the ballots cast in Riverside County in November, raises questions about how he would handle the election denialism movement if elected governor.
A poll released last week by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies and co-sponsored by The Times showed Bianco and conservative commentator Steve Hilton leading the crowded field of gubernatorial candidates by slim margins, with the Democratic vote split among multiple candidates in a left-leaning state.
Kim Nalder, a political science professor and director of the Project for an Informed Electorate at Sacramento State, said that Bianco’s ballot seizure is “the sort of thing that should not happen in a healthy democracy.”
The system has plenty of safeguards, she noted, including county registrars and the California Fair Political Practices Commission.
“It’s terrifying, honestly, that the jurisdiction over ballots and election processes and recounts should even be in question and that a sheriff should feel himself entitled to seize ballots,” she said.
On Saturday, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, a Democratic candidate for governor, said that Bianco appeared to be chasing “MAGA stardom” and called his investigation “a dangerous abuse of power and no different from what we’re seeing from Donald Trump and the extreme Republican efforts to disenfranchise voters nationally.”
A citizens group called the Riverside Election Integrity Team has said it performed an audit finding that 45,896 more ballots were counted than were cast.
In a lengthy February presentation to the Riverside County Board of Supervisors, Registrar of Voters Art Tinoco disputed that figure, saying it was based on a misunderstanding of raw data that had not been fully processed.
The actual discrepancy, Tinoco said, was 103 votes, a variance of 0.016%.
Bianco on Friday said that there “is no acceptable error, small or large, in our elections.”
The sheriff did not name the Riverside Election Integrity Team, but his description of the allegations brought to him by “a group of citizen volunteers” matched theirs.
Bianco said the investigation was “not a recount” for Proposition 50 and was “just as much to prove the election is accurate as it is to show otherwise — we will not know until the count is complete.”
Bonta said his office has “attempted to work cooperatively” with the Sheriff’s Department to understand the basis for the probe. The sheriff, Bonta said, “has delayed, stonewalled, and otherwise refused to work with us in good faith” and failed to provide most of the requested documents.
David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research and a former senior trial attorney overseeing voting enforcement for the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, said Bianco is spreading “false claims” about a fair election that was decided by a huge margin.
Becker questioned how warrants could have been issued for the ballots, “given that this likely implicates California laws requiring election officials to maintain chain of custody of all election materials for many months after an election.”
“For transparency, the Sheriff should share all affidavits and evidence offered in support of the warrant, as well as details about how/where the ballots are being stored,” he said in an email.
Bianco has said the warrants are now sealed.
In his March 4 letter, the attorney general criticized Bianco’s plan to use Sheriff’s Department staffers, “who are not trained and have no experience,” to count the ballots.
At his news conference Friday, Bianco fired back by calling Bonta “an embarrassment to law enforcement.”
Nalder, the Sacramento State professor, said vote counting is a more sophisticated, rigorous and regulated process than most people realize.
“That’s why any rando off the street can’t be asked to do something as delicate as counting ballots,” she said. “And law enforcement officers are trained in a very different way. It’s not their area of expertise.”
A Riverside County Superior Court judge, Bianco said, has ordered the appointment of a special master to oversee the ballot count.
In a statement Friday, Secretary of State Weber said “the Sheriff’s assertion that his deputies know how to count is admirable. The fact remains that he and his deputies are not elections officials and they do not have expertise in election administration.”
March 22, 2026
Iran threatens to target Middle East energy and water infrastructure amid U.S. escalation warning
Tehran has said it will “irreversibly destroy” essential infrastructure across the Middle East, including vital water systems, if the US follows through on Donald Trump’s threat to “obliterate” Iran’s power plants unless the strait of Hormuz is fully opened within two days.
As Iranian missiles struck two southern Israeli cities overnight, injuring dozens of people, and Tehran deployed long-range missiles for the first time, the developments signalled a dangerous potential escalation of the war, now in its fourth week, with both sides threatening facilities relied on by millions of people.

The speaker of the Iranian parliament, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, said on Sunday that vital infrastructure in the region – including energy and desalination facilities – would be considered a legitimate target and would be “irreversibly destroyed” if his country’s own infrastructure was attacked.
Amnesty International said this month there was a substantial risk that attacks on systems providing essential services such as electricity, heating and running water would violate international law and “in some cases could amount to war crimes” because of the potential for “vast, predictable, and devastating civilian harm”.
The Iranian military’s operational command headquarters, Khatam al-Anbiya, said Iran would strike “all energy, information technology and desalination infrastructure” belonging to the US and Israel in the region.
The statement also said that if Trump’s threat was carried out, the strait of Hormuz would be “completely closed, and will not be reopened until our destroyed power plants are rebuilt”.
Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, said “threats and terror” were “only strengthening Iranian unity”, while the “illusion of erasing Iran from the map” showed “desperation against the will of a history-making nation”.

Guardian graphic. Source: Global Water Intelligence, desaldata.com
The US president said on Saturday that he was giving Iran 48 hours – until shortly before midnight GMT on Monday – to open the strait of Hormuz, a vital pathway for the world’s oil flows, or the US would “hit and obliterate” Iranian power plants “starting with the biggest one first”.
The US ambassador to the UN, Mike Waltz, defended Trump’s threat on Sunday, insisting that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) controlled much of the country’s infrastructure and used it to power its war effort.
He said Trump would start by destroying one of Iran’s largest power plants, but did not identify it. “There are gas-fired thermal power plants and other type of plants,” and “the president is not messing around”, he said.
A No 10 spokesperson said Keir Starmer spoke to Trump on Sunday evening about the need to reopen the strait of Hormuz.
Iran’s representative to the International Maritime Organisation, Ali Mousavi, said on Sunday that the strait was open to all shipping except vessels linked to “Iran’s enemies”, with passage possible by coordinating security arrangements with Tehran.
Iranian attacks have in effect closed the narrow strait, which carries about a fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas supplies, causing the world’s worst oil crisis since the 1970s and sending European gas prices surging by as much as 35% last week.
Only a relatively small number of vessels, estimated at about 5% of the prewar volume, from countries that Tehran considers friendly – including China, India and Pakistan – have been allowed to pass.

A Tehran billboard featuring a portrait of the late supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. (AFP/Getty Images)
More than 2,000 people have been killed in Iran since 28 February, when the US and Israel began their attacks, and Tehran in turn has struck targets in Israel and the Gulf states. Lebanon was drawn in after Iran-backed Hezbollah attacked Israel.
Air raid sirens sounded across Israel from the early hours of Sunday morning, warning of incoming missiles from Iran after scores of people were injured overnight in two separate attacks on the southern towns of Arad and Dimona.
The Israeli army said on Sunday morning that it would strike Tehran in retaliation. The country’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said during a visit to Arad that senior IRGC commanders would be pursued.
“We’re going after the regime. We’re going after the IRGC, this criminal gang,” he said. “We’re going after them personally, their leaders, their installations, their economic assets.”
The Iranian health ministry spokesperson, Hossein Kermanpour, said patients had been evacuated from the Imam Ali hospital in the south-west city of Andimeshk on Sunday after an airstrike a day earlier.

Bomb damage in Arad, Israel. (Amir Levy/Getty Images)
Israel’s military said it had not been able to intercept the missiles that hit Dimona and Arad, the nearest large towns to the country’s nuclear centre in the Negev desert, which houses what is widely believed to be the Middle East’s only nuclear arsenal.
Israel has never admitted to possessing nuclear weapons, insisting that the site is for research. The strikes marked the first time that Iranian missiles had penetrated Israel’s air defence systems in the area.

The strikes wounded about 200 people, including a 12-year-old boy and a five-year-old girl, both reported to be in a serious condition. The Israeli broadcaster Channel 13 reported early indications of possible deaths but there was no official confirmation.

Iran said the attacks had been launched in response to a strike on its main nuclear enrichment facility at Natanz on Saturday. Israel denied responsibility for the attack and the Pentagon declined to comment.
In Tel Aviv, 15 more people were injured on Sunday morning in a separate incident involving a cluster bomb. The attacks are adding to mounting pressure on Israel’s air defence systems as Iranian strikes increasingly test their limits.
The World Health Organization said that the war was at a “perilous stage” and called for restraint. “Attacks targeting nuclear sites create an escalating threat to public health and environmental safety,” the WHO director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said.
Tehran also fired long-range missiles for the first time on Saturday, the Israeli military chief, Eyal Zamir, said. Two ballistic missiles with a range of 2,500 miles (4,000km) were fired at the US-British Indian Ocean military base at Diego Garcia, he said.

Guardian graphic
The British cabinet minister Steve Reed said one missile had fallen short and the other had been intercepted. There was no assessment backing claims that Iran was planning to strike Europe, he said.
The Israel Defense Forces had said Iran had missiles that could reach London, Paris or Berlin, but Reed said he was not aware of any assessment at all that Iran was even trying to target Europe, “let alone that they could if they tried”.
He said in a separate interview that Trump had been “speaking for himself” when he threatened to obliterate Iran’s power plants.
Analysts said Trump’s threat had placed “a 48-hour ticking timebomb of elevated uncertainty” over energy and financial markets, with a “black Monday” of plunging stock markets and surging energy prices looming unless it was rowed back.

Guardian graphic
At least six overnight attacks targeted a US diplomatic and logistics centre at Baghdad airport, Iraqi officials said, while Saudi Arabia said three missiles had been detected over Riyadh. The UAE said it had responded to Iranian missile and drone attacks.
In southern Lebanon, Israel said its military had raided Hezbollah sites on Sunday and killed 10 of the group’s fighters. It said it was expanding its ground campaign in Lebanon, warning of a lengthy operation. Hezbollah said it had attacked several border areas in northern Israel. One person was killed in an Israeli kibbutz, emergency services said.
At least 10 Palestinians were injured on Sunday night in attacks in the occupied West Bank by Israeli settlers who rampaged through nearby villages after holding a funeral for a settler killed in a car crash a night earlier.
Videos obtained by the Associated Press appeared to show cars and homes set ablaze as army flares lit up the sky near the village east of Nablus and next to the Israeli settlement of Elon Moreh.
Three Turkish nationals, including a soldier, and three Qatari service personnel were killed when a helicopter crashed in Qatar’s territorial waters, the country’s defence ministry said on Sunday.
According to an academic analysis seen by Reuters, an interceptor missile that injured dozens of civilians in Bahrain 10 days into the war was probably fired by a US-operated Patriot air defence battery.
Manama and Washington have blamed an Iranian drone attack for the explosion on 9 March, which Bahrain has said injured 32 people including children, some of them seriously.
March 22, 2026
China positions itself as ‘Harbour of Stability’ to global CEOs amid U.S.–Iran tensions
China sought to woo global chief executives including Apple’s Tim Cook, UBS’s Sergio Ermotti and HSBC’s Georges Elhedery in Beijing on Sunday, touting the country’s safety and reliability in stark contrast to a US bogged down in war with Iran.
Premier Li Qiang told more than 70 chief executives gathered in the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse for the government’s annual Davos-style forum that the world’s second-largest economy offered an unmatched supply chain and a predictable commercial environment.
The country was committed to being a “cornerstone of certainty” and a “harbour of stability” in the face of rising trade protectionism and upheaval in the rules-based international order, said Li.
“China will unswervingly promote high-level opening up to the outside, import more high-quality foreign goods and work with all parties to promote the optimised and balanced development of trade, jointly expanding the global economic and trade pie,” he told the audience.
The conference, the China Development Forum, is held every year in late March after the meeting of the country’s rubber-stamp parliament. It acts as the leadership’s vehicle for pressing its talking points on global CEOs.
This year, Beijing is selling its latest five-year economic plan to 2030 as an opportunity for foreign investment.

“Li didn’t name America . . . but the message is clear that China is now safer, more reliable and stable, and more focused on economic development rather than conflicts,” said George Chen, a partner at the Asia Group consultancy who was present at the meeting.

The conference comes amid widening concern over China’s huge trade surplus, which hit a record $1.2tn last year. In Europe, there are worries that low-cost Chinese imports are eliminating jobs.

The five-year plan largely doubles down on China’s manufacturing-oriented high-tech industrial policy, raising fears of an even greater shock to western factories.

People’s Bank of China governor Pan Gongsheng defended the country’s exports in a speech on Sunday about global economic “rebalancing”.

Pan rejected the claim that China’s competitiveness was a result of government subsidies, attributing it to economic reforms, the size of its domestic market and the strength of its supply chains and research.

Without naming the US, he described some countries’ persistent trade deficits as being the result of “an international monetary system dominated by a single sovereign currency”.

Jeanine Pirro takes aim at the ruling by James Boasberg on Friday. (Reuters)
Other business leaders on the invitee list this year include Siemens’ Roland Busch, Volkswagen’s Oliver Blume, SK Hynix’s Kwak Noh-jung, Nestlé’s Philipp Navratil, Mercedes-Benz’s Ola Källenius, KKR’s Joseph Bae, Cargill’s Brian Sikes, Standard Chartered’s Bill Winters and Boston Consulting Group’s Christoph Schweizer.

US executives were well represented this year, accounting for 45 per cent of invitees, according to an analysis by Han Shen Lin of the Asia Group. Europeans made up 36 per cent with the remainder from Asia, Australia and elsewhere.

Financial services dominated, accounting for about 22 per cent of invitees, while those from the energy sector were only about 4 per cent.

Apple chief executive Cook delivered a speech after Li on opportunities in education and other areas in China.
Unlike in the previous two forums, President Xi Jinping is not expected to meet top executives this year, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Asia Group’s Chen said Li’s speech was the most confident he had seen in recent years, though the premier refrained from directly criticising US President Donald Trump.

Trump, who recently postponed a meeting expected on April 1 with Xi in Beijing, is still widely expected to be planning a visit this year.

On Saturday evening, vice-premier He Lifeng, the economic tsar running trade negotiations with the US, held a dinner with a group of mostly European executives to tout the country’s five-year plan.

The executives mostly praised China and talked up their own companies, said one of the people present at the dinner, but there was some discussion of Chinese overcapacity and the risks for European industry.
March 21, 2026
Trump praises Japan’s support in Iran war during White House meeting with PM Sanae Takaichi
In an apparent awkward moment at the Oval Office on Thursday stateside, U.S. President Donald Trump referenced Pearl Harbor in his first meeting with Japan’s Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi after her landslide electoral victory.
When asked by a Japanese reporter on why the U.S. did not inform allies such as Japan before carrying out the attacks against Iran on Feb. 28, the U.S. president said it was to maintain the element of surprise.
“Who knows better about surprise than Japan … Why didn’t you tell me about Pearl Harbor?”
Trump was referencing the surprise Japanese attack on the U.S. Pacific Fleet in 1941, which saw the deaths of over 2,400 personnel and drew the U.S. into World War II.
Takaichi appeared to draw a deep breath and lean back in her seat with an uneasy expression.
“Who knows better about surprise than Japan … Why didn’t you tell me about Pearl Harbor?”
Donald Trump U.S. President
Trump said that the surprise attack on Iran had helped the U.S., adding that it “knocked out 50% of what we anticipated” in the country within the first two days.
During the meeting, Trump praised Japan for “stepping up” to assist in efforts to secure the Strait of Hormuz, “unlike NATO.“
Before the meeting, Japan, as well as Britain, France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands had released a joint statement expressing their readiness to “contribute to appropriate efforts to ensure safe passage through the Strait.”
Trump had called on Japan and other countries to help secure the Strait of Hormuz, but Takaichi had reportedly said Monday that there were no plans to dispatch naval vessels to escort boats in the Middle East.
Her office also said in a post on X that there was “no specific request from the United States to Japan for the dispatch of vessels.”
Japan’s prime minister on Tuesday said that the government was considering what could be done within the framework of the country’s law. Japan’s Self-Defense Forces are governed by its pacifist constitution, that renounces war and the threat or use of force for settling international disputes.
Trump had taken aim at NATO allies earlier this week, saying that the alliance was “making a very foolish mistake” by not getting involved in the war.
In response, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius reportedly said on Monday that “This is not our war, we have not started it,” a stance that was also adopted by French President Emmanuel Macron.
Subsequently, Germany’s Chancellor Friedrich Merz said on Thursday that “we have declared that as long as the war continues, we will not participate in ensuring freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz, for example, by military means,” according to Reuters.
March 19, 2026
Donald Trump White House tries to sell war and death as a game
The White House has found a new recruit to sell the US war on Iran to an increasingly sceptical American public: SpongeBob SquarePants.
In a video posted by the White House on X, a clip of the cartoon character says, “do you want to see me do it again?” as unclassified footage of US missiles blowing up Iranian jets and trucks appears. The caption reads: “Will not stop until the objectives are met. Unrelenting. Unapologetic.”
An unlikely warmonger, SpongeBob SquarePants is just one of the internet memes harnessed by US officials in a propaganda campaign that has drawn heavily on video games, action movies and cartoons to celebrate American military prowess in Iran.
Will not stop until the objectives are met.

Unrelenting. Unapologetic. 🔁 pic.twitter.com/iM9fqjn1zc
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) March 5, 2026

Donald Trump’s White House has deployed a galaxy of pop-culture icons to hype up American martial virtues and divert attention from the growing human and economic devastation of the war.
“This is a memification and a gamification of war,” said Nick Cull, a historian of propaganda at USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. “It’s an appalling way to represent conflict.”
It is unclear how effective it’s been. An Ipsos poll this month found only 29 per cent of Americans approved of the US strikes in Iran and 43 per cent disapproved.
But Roger Stahl, professor of communications studies at the University of Georgia, said the purpose of the videos wasn’t necessarily to win over voters unconvinced about the wisdom of going to war against Iran.
“It’s to galvanise the Maga base with a kind of thrilling, easy-to-digest version of that conflict that appeals to the base instincts of gamers and people who think that war is just a series of one-liners from Hollywood,” he said. “But to probably 70 per cent of the population, a good majority at least, it’s just shocking.”
Perhaps the most striking video put out by the White House depicts the war as a Nintendo game, mixing footage of missile strikes with images from Wii Sports.
To a sprightly soundtrack, a cartoon player is shown scoring a bullseye, hitting a hole in one and bowling a strike, with each shot cutting to footage of missile strikes in Iran. An announcer bellows sporting clichés: “It’s Out of the Park!” “Slam Dunk!” and “Knockout!”
Another video along the same lines, entitled “JUSTICE THE AMERICAN WAY”, includes clips from Top Gun, Braveheart, Breaking Bad and the anime Dragon Ball Z, and ends with a voiceover saying “flawless victory”, lifted from the video game Mortal Kombat.
White House deputy communications director Kaelan Dorr reposted the clip with the caption “Wake up, Daddy’s Home”.
“They’re like ads for a knock-off Tom Cruise movie,” said Peter Loge, director of the School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University.
“It hides the gruesome realities of conflict and war,” he went on. “You don’t feel the grief, you never see the aftermath of the conflict or the violence.”
The Justice video has drawn angry responses from some in Hollywood. Director and actor Ben Stiller, whose film Tropic Thunder was featured in the montage, demanded the White House remove the clip.
“We never gave you permission and have no interest in being a part of your propaganda machine,” he wrote on X. “War is not a movie.”
Even former members of the military have expressed disgust. “Sorry to be Debbie downer,” Connor Crehan, an Iraq war veteran and BarStool Sports host, wrote on X. “War isn’t a video game. The consequences of war are final. I wish we didn’t treat it with such a cavalier approach.”
The White House denied that it was trying to reduce the war to a game. “The legacy media wants us to apologize for highlighting the United States Military’s incredible success,” said spokeswoman Anna Kelly.
“But the White House will continue showcasing the many examples of Iran’s ballistic missiles, production facilities, and dreams of owning a nuclear weapon being destroyed in real time.”
The videos mark a big departure from the high moral tone normally adopted by US administrations entering into a global conflict.
When President Woodrow Wilson took the US into the first world war, he famously argued that “the world must be made safe for democracy”. In framing Operation Desert Storm in 1990, George HW Bush hailed the prospect of a “new world order” emerging from “these troubled times”.
“Traditionally the US government has spoken about war as something regrettable and necessary for a carefully considered diplomatic objective,” said Cull.
“They’ve sought to carry the American public with them . . . and persuade the world that it is in the best interests of humanity. And I don’t think those sorts of priorities are detectable in [Trump’s] messaging here.”
On the contrary, the videos seem squarely aimed at the president’s core supporters, especially the young men who voted for him in huge numbers in the 2024 presidential election.
Posts by White House officials over the past three weeks have been sprinkled with gamer and streamer slang. “W’s in the chat boys,” wrote Steven Cheung, Trump’s director of communications, above a video mixing strikes in Iran with an animation from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.
“Based Department? Yes. I’ll hold,” wrote Kaelan Dorr as he reposted another propaganda video on X, using the Gen Z word that means “bold” or “unapologetic”.
The clips build on a tradition established by the Department of Homeland Security last year. One viral video with the caption “Gotta Catch ‘Em All” showed ICE agents blowing in doors, and handcuffing and leading away undocumented immigrants to a song from the Pokemon cartoon. The clip was viewed 75.5mn times.
Loge compares Trump’s messaging style to pro wrestling. “He’s embracing the spectacle [of war] more than any of his predecessors have,” he said. But he warned that there was a risk for the White House that public support could collapse when the reality of the conflict hits home.
“It’s like turning on the lights on an amusement ride,” he said. “You can only suspend disbelief for so long.”
March 19, 2026
US Intelligence chief avoids contradicting Trump on Iran war threat claims
Donald Trump’s top spy chief refused to say whether Iran had posed an imminent threat to the US as the president claimed at the outset of the war.
Director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard struggled to avoid contradicting Trump as she and other top national security officials testified to the Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday about the biggest security threats facing the country.
Pressed repeatedly on whether the intelligence community had assessed that Iran posed “an imminent nuclear threat” ahead of the start of the US-Israel attack on February 28 — one of the administration’s main justifications for the war — Gabbard said: “It is not the intelligence community’s responsibility to determine what is and is not an imminent threat. That is up to the president.”
Gabbard’s testimony at the intelligence committee’s annual global threats hearing came a day after another top intelligence official resigned over what he claimed were the administration’s “unfounded” justifications for the war, further amplifying doubts about a conflict that has killed 13 American service members so far.
In prepared opening remarks submitted to the committee ahead of her appearance, Gabbard said that Iran’s nuclear programme had been “obliterated” by US and Israeli strikes against the country’s nuclear sites last June.

“There has been no efforts since then to try to rebuild their enrichment capability,” she wrote in her statement.
But she veered from her prepared remarks when she addressed the Senate panel, saying that US intelligence believed that Iran had been “trying to recover” from the “severe damage” to its nuclear infrastructure before the renewed US-Israel strikes against the country.
When Mark Warner, the intelligence committee’s top Democrat, asked Gabbard why she had strayed from her written testimony, she responded that she had skipped the relevant section because her testimony “was running long”.
US officials have offered contradictory justifications for the war and the status of Iran’s nuclear programme, saying that Tehran was both “weeks” away from obtaining a nuclear bomb, and that its nuclear facilities had been “obliterated” by last year’s war.
At the start of her testimony Gabbard stressed she was presenting “the intelligence community’s assessment of the threats facing US citizens, our homeland and our interests” and not her personal views or opinions.
A combat veteran who has long opposed US military intervention overseas, Gabbard remained silent on the conflict until Tuesday when she posted a statement on X that repeated Trump’s justification for the war, but did not say whether she supported it.
Joe Kent, a close ally of Gabbard who was director of the National Counterterrorism Center, on Tuesday became the first senior US official to resign in protest at the war, saying that Tehran posed “no imminent threat to our nation”.
Kent’s resignation has raised questions about Gabbard’s future in the Trump administration and splits within his Maga movement which has long been opposed to US wars of regime change.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Wednesday she had no “knowledge” of whether Trump was considering firing Gabbard, but said it was “a question for him”.
Democrats expressed frustration during the hearing with the unwillingness of Gabbard and CIA director John Ratcliffe to answer questions about the information presented to the president ahead of his decision to go to war. FBI director Kash Patel and the leaders of the US defence and signals intelligence agencies also testified.
Gabbard told the committee that US intelligence had “long” assessed that Iran would likely use the Strait of Hormuz as leverage in the event of a crisis.
But both she and Ratcliffe declined to say whether they had given that assessment directly to the president ahead of the war. Gabbard did say that her agency assessed that Iran’s regime remained largely “intact” and would seek to reconstitute its military capabilities if they remained.
Trump said this week that his administration had been surprised by Iran’s retaliatory strikes against US allies in the Middle East. There appears to have been little preparation for the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a critical waterway through which 20 per cent of the world’s oil flows.
“We’re trying to figure out if the president knew what the downside was of the Strait of Hormuz being closed, and I’m having a hard time finding out whether the White House asked, or whether there was a brief, whether the president knew,” said Democratic senator Mark Kelly.
March 18, 2026
Trump Ally Warns U.S. Economy Too Weak to Withstand Iran War Shock
Donald Trump’s one-time pick to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics has said the US economy is too weak to handle oil at $100 per barrel as he warned of rising consumer prices triggered by the war in Iran.
“I don’t think this is an economy that is going to be able to handle $100 a barrel for oil, it’s just not,” EJ Antoni told the Financial Times.
“The economy is weaker than we thought it was, and inflation is worse than we thought it was,” he added in a call on Wednesday, shortly before the Federal Reserve’s March rate-setting meeting.
“The lower energy prices that we saw in 2025 helped put downward pressure on prices throughout the economy. Now . . . we’re going to see higher energy prices have exactly the opposite effect and put upward pressure on prices throughout the economy.”
Trump picked Antoni, the conservative Heritage Foundation’s chief economist, to lead the US labour statistics agency in August, shortly after firing the former commissioner for a gloomy jobs report the president claimed was “rigged”.
He abruptly withdrew Antoni’s nomination a month later and ultimately settled on government economist Brett Matsumoto, whose confirmation is subject to Senate approval.
Antoni’s remarks on the health of the world’s largest economy come a day after the director of the US National Counterterrorism Center resigned in protest at the Iran war, marking the first significant defection from the Trump administration since the conflict began.
Republicans are meanwhile growing increasingly worried that high oil prices — Brent crude jumped 5 per cent to almost $110 a barrel on Wednesday — will dent their chances in the midterm elections. Petrol prices at the pump have surged to $3.84 a gallon from $2.92 a month ago, while diesel has exceeded $5 — exerting a heavy toll on US consumers and businesses.
Economic data collected before the US and Israel launched their attack on Iran has done little to ease those concerns.
US GDP in the fourth quarter of 2025 was last week revised to 0.7 per cent from an initial estimate of 1.4 per cent, while data released on Wednesday showed US wholesale prices rose at a faster clip than expected in February, even before the war began. The US economy last month shed 92,000 jobs, in a sharp slide that eroded most of January’s gains.
Antoni highlighted “a lack of job growth” in the US, some of which he attributed to last year’s cuts to the federal workforce, and renewed his attacks on the BLS, which he likened to “a random number generator” in a post on X last May.
“You need a complete and total top-down review of everything from the data collection to the data processing and even the data dissemination, because there have been a few issues with leaks,” he said. In January, Trump posted some of December’s US jobs figures hours before their official release.
Antoni refused to be drawn on how Trump told him he was no longer his pick to lead the BLS, saying he would “rather keep those conversations confidential”.
March 18, 2026
US judge blocks DOJ subpoenas to federal reserve, citing ‘Thin’ evidence in Powell probe
A US judge has blocked subpoenas issued by Donald Trump’s Department of Justice to the Federal Reserve, in a major blow to prosecutors’ criminal investigation into chair Jay Powell and a victory for the central bank.
James Boasberg, a US federal judge in the District of Columbia, wrote in an opinion unsealed on Friday that prosecutors were using their probe into renovations of the Fed’s headquarters to force Powell to “knuckle under” and bend to Trump’s relentless calls to slash borrowing costs.
“There is abundant evidence that the subpoenas’ dominant (if not sole) purpose is to harass and pressure Powell either to yield to the president or to resign and make way for a Fed chair who will,” Boasberg wrote.
The judge said the Trump administration had “produced essentially zero evidence” to suspect Powell of a crime, adding: “Its justifications are so thin and unsubstantiated that the court can only conclude that they are pretextual.”
Boasberg’s ruling will stymie the criminal investigation into Powell related to cost overruns on the Fed’s $2.5bn headquarters renovation project.

Global central bankers and lawmakers, including some members of Trump’s Republican Party, have expressed grave concern over the investigation, which they view as an unprecedented attempt at eroding the independence of the world’s most important central bank.
Powell in January called the move an “unprecedented action” from the DoJ, saying it was an attempt to rein in the Fed’s independence.
Trump has relentlessly criticised Powell of being a “moron” and a “stubborn mule” for declining to sharply reduce rates. Trump has also sought to sack Fed governor Lisa Cook, in a move that was blocked by a lower court judge and later argued before the US Supreme Court, which is expected to rule in the coming months.

Jeanine Pirro takes aim at the ruling by James Boasberg on Friday. (Reuters)
The president has denied any involvement in the DoJ probe, and the White House did not respond to a request for comment on Friday. The Fed declined to comment.
In a fiery press conference shortly after the opinion was published, Jeanine Pirro, US attorney for the District of Columbia, tore into Boasberg, who she described as an “activist judge”. Pirro vowed to appeal against the ruling, which she said had “neutered the grand jury’s ability to investigate crime.”
“Jerome Powell today is now bathed in immunity, preventing my office from investigating the Federal Reserve,” Pirro said. “That is wrong, and it is without legal authority.”
The DoJ investigation, which was launched in January, has already had far-reaching consequences for Trump, prompting Republican Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina to hold up the process to confirm Powell’s successor. Tillis has said he will block any Trump appointee to the Fed until the DoJ probe into Powell is “resolved”.
Trump in late January nominated former Fed governor Kevin Warsh to succeed Powell as chair when his term ends in May. Warsh needs to be confirmed by the Senate in order to take up his post.
Tillis on Friday said Boasberg’s ruling confirmed “just how weak and frivolous” the criminal investigation into Powell was, adding: “It is nothing more than a failed attack on Fed independence.
“We all know how this is going to end,” Tillis said, adding Pirro’s office should “save itself further embarrassment and move on”.
March 13, 2026
Trump Blames Iran for Deadly Strike on Girls’ School
President Donald Trump openly accused Iran of carrying out the Feb. 28 airstrike that destroyed the Shajareh Tayyebeh elementary school in Minab and killed at least 175 civilians — the vast majority of them young girls aged 7 to 12 — even though U.S. military investigators have already concluded it is “likely” that American forces were responsible.
The president’s remarks represent a sharp pivot from the White House’s earlier insistence that “the United States does not target civilians.” They came just hours after Trump attended the solemn dignified transfer ceremony at Dover Air Force Base for six U.S. servicemembers killed in an Iranian drone attack during the opening weekend of the war — a moment of national mourning that the president immediately used to deflect blame onto the very country his administration and Israel have been bombing for nine straight days.
“In my opinion, based on what I’ve seen, that was done by Iran,” Trump told reporters. “They have no accuracy whatsoever. It was done by Iran.”

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, the former Fox News host turned Pentagon chief who has repeatedly pushed for aggressive escalation against Tehran, doubled down on the claim. “The only side that targets civilians is Iran,” Hegseth declared, while acknowledging that a U.S. investigation remains ongoing.
The coordinated attempt to pin the atrocity on Tehran comes as multiple American outlets report the opposite. Reuters and The Wall Street Journal, citing unnamed U.S. officials with direct knowledge of the probe, revealed that military investigators believe U.S. forces almost certainly carried out the strike. The school sits in southern Iran — the exact zone where the U.S. Navy’s Abraham Lincoln strike group and American aircraft have focused their attacks since Feb. 28, while Israeli forces concentrated on northern targets.
During a March 4 Pentagon briefing, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine used a laser pointer on a map to highlight U.S. operations along Iran’s southern coast and into the Arabian Gulf, explicitly noting the Abraham Lincoln’s role in “attriting naval capability” in that sector. An independent analysis by the International Institute for Strategic Studies confirmed the geographic division of labor: U.S. strikes in the south and center, Israeli strikes in the north.
Iranian officials, including UN Ambassador Amir Saeid Iravani, have consistently blamed the United States and Israel for the bombing. The Iranian news agency IRNA reported that 175 people died, including dozens of girls between the ages of 7 and 12. Images of the mass funeral — small white coffins draped in Iranian flags passed hand-to-hand through grieving crowds — aired on state television and shocked viewers worldwide.

Despite the mounting evidence, the White House has clung to denial. Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly responded to the Reuters reporting by calling it “irresponsible and false,” insisting “there are no conclusions at this time” and repeating the mantra that “unlike the terrorist Iranian regime, the United States does not target civilians.” The Pentagon has offered only the blandest of statements: “We are aware of reports concerning civilian harm… and are looking into them,” said Capt. Tim Hawkins of U.S. Central Command.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, when asked directly, referred all questions to the Pentagon and insisted the U.S. would never deliberately target a school. Hegseth himself, appearing before cameras on Wednesday, offered the same scripted line: “We, of course, never target civilian targets. But we’re taking a look.”
The pattern is now familiar. From the moment the first bombs fell, the Trump administration and its Israeli partners have insisted this is a “precision” campaign against military targets only. Yet the first major civilian catastrophe of the war — a girls’ elementary school reduced to rubble on day one — has forced repeated rhetorical contortions. First came blanket denials. Then came the quiet internal assessment that U.S. munitions were probably responsible. Now comes the public blame-shifting onto Iran itself.
The United Nations human rights office has demanded a full investigation, stating bluntly that “the onus is on the forces that carried out the attack.” Deliberately or recklessly striking a school is considered a potential war crime under international humanitarian law. If American responsibility is confirmed — as investigators already privately believe — it would rank among the deadliest single incidents of civilian casualties in decades of U.S. military operations in the Middle East.

This satellite photo shows the area of a school and base of Iran’s IRGC in Minab, Iran, on Wednesday. (PBC/AP)
The timing of Trump’s accusation is particularly cynical. He delivered it immediately after honoring American dead, as if the deaths of U.S. troops somehow justified rewriting the facts about Iranian children. Hegseth, who has spent months on cable news cheerleading for maximum force against Iran, now finds himself in the awkward position of simultaneously running the investigation and publicly exonerating the U.S. before it is complete.
This is not the first time the administration has moved the goalposts. Trump began the war promising a quick, clean operation to “clean out” Iran’s leadership. When that failed, he demanded “unconditional surrender.” When civilian casualties mounted, the White House blamed Iran’s own inaccuracy. Now, facing credible evidence of a catastrophic U.S. mistake, the president and his war secretary are simply pointing the finger at the enemy — classic projection from an administration that has shown zero tolerance for accountability since day one.
The Iranian regime is brutal and repressive; no serious observer disputes that. But the American people were told this war would be surgical, professional, and morally superior to the enemy. Instead, nine days in, we have a girls’ school in ruins, 175 small bodies in flag-draped coffins, and the president of the United States blaming the victims’ own government for a strike American investigators believe their own forces carried out.
The investigation continues. But the White House’s public messaging has already rendered its verdict — and it is one that insults both the facts and the families mourning in Minab. As the bombs keep falling and the body count rises, the pattern is becoming impossible to ignore: when precision fails, this administration’s response is not reflection or restraint, but deflection and denial.
March 8, 2026
Trump Mourns with Families at Dover as 6 Soldiers Killed in Iran War Return Home
President Donald Trump on Saturday joined grieving families at Dover Air Force Base at the dignified transfer for the six U.S. soldiers killed in the war in the Middle East.
The dignified transfer, a ritual that returns the remains of U.S. service members killed in action, is considered one of the most somber duties of any commander in chief. During his first term, Trump said bearing witness to the transfer was “the toughest thing I have to do” as president.
Trump, speaking at a summit of Latin American leaders in Miami before his trip to Delaware, said the fallen service members were heroes “coming home in a different manner than they thought they’d be coming home.” He said it was “a very sad situation” and he pledged to keep American war deaths “to a minimum.”

Both Trump and Vice President JD Vance were present for the transfer, as were their spouses. A host of top administration officials were in attendance, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who wrote in a social media post Friday of “an unbreakable spirit to honor their memory and the resolve they embodied”; Attorney General Pam Bondi, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, special envoy Steve Witkoff and Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence.
Also present for the solemn event were governors and senators from Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska and Florida.
Those killed in action were Maj. Jeffrey O’Brien, 45, of Indianola, Iowa; Capt. Cody Khork, 35, of Winter Haven, Florida; Chief Warrant Officer 3 Robert Marzan, 54, of Sacramento, California; Sgt. 1st Class Nicole Amor, 39, of White Bear Lake, Minnesota; Sgt. 1st Class Noah Tietjens, 42, of Bellevue, Nebraska; and Sgt. Declan Coady, 20, of West Des Moines, lowa, who was posthumously promoted from specialist.
As is protocol, Trump — wearing a blue suit, red tie and a white USA hat — did not speak during the transfer. The president saluted as each flag-draped transfer case was carried from the military aircraft to awaiting transfer vehicles, which would take them to a mortuary facility to prepare them for their final resting place. The families were largely silent as they observed the ritual, which lasted about a half hour.
The six members of the Army Reserve, who were killed by a drone strike at a command center in Kuwait, were all from the 103rd Sustainment Command based in Des Moines, Iowa, which provides food, fuel, water and ammunition, transport equipment and supplies. They died just one day after the U.S. and Israel launched its military campaign against Iran.
“These soldiers engaged in the most noble mission: protecting their fellow Americans and keeping our homeland secure,” Republican Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa, a combat veteran, said earlier this week after the six were identified. “Our nation owes them an incredible debt of gratitude that can never be repaid.”
During the ritual, transfer cases draped with the American flag and holding the remains of the fallen soldiers are carried from the military aircraft that transported them to an awaiting vehicle to take them to the mortuary facility at the base. There, the service members are prepared for their final resting place.
Amor’s husband, Joey Amor, said earlier this week that she had been scheduled to return home to him and their two children within days.
“You don’t go to Kuwait thinking something’s going to happen, and for her to be one of the first – it hurts,” Joey Amor said.
O’Brien had served in the Army Reserve for nearly 15 years, according to his LinkedIn account, and his aunt said in a post on Facebook that O’Brien “was the sweetest blue-eyed, blonde farm kid you’d ever know. He is so missed already.”
Marzan’s sister described him in a Facebook post as a “strong leader” and loving husband, father and brother.

A combination image of undated photos shows U.S. Army Reserve Captain Cody A. Khork, 35, of Winter Haven, Florida, U.S. Army Reserve Sgt. 1st Class Noah Tietjens, 42, of Bellevue, Nebraska, U.S. Army Reserve Sgt. 1st Class Nicole Amor, 39, of White Bear Lake, Minnesota, and U.S. Army Reserve Sgt. Declan Coady, 20, of West Des Moines, Iowa, who were killed March 1, 2026, at the Port of Shuaiba, Kuwait during a drone attack. (U.S. Army Reserve/Handout via Reuters)
“My baby brother, you are loved and I will hold onto all our memories and cherish them always in my heart,” Elizabeth Marzan wrote.
Coady was among the youngest people in his class, trained to troubleshoot military computer systems, but he impressed his instructors, his father, Andrew Coady, told The Associated Press.
“He trained hard, he worked hard, his physical fitness was important to him. He loved being a soldier,” Coady said. “He was also one of the most kindest people you would ever meet, and he would do anything and everything for anyone.”
Khork’s family described him as “the life of the party” who was known for his “infectious spirit” and “generous heart” and who had wanted to serve in the military since childhood.
“That commitment helped shape the course of his life and reflected the deep sense of duty that was always at the core of who he was,” according to a statement from his mother, Donna Burhans, his father, James Khork, and his stepmother, Stacey Khork.
Tietjens, who came from a military family, previously served alongside his father in Kuwait. When he returned home in February 2010, he reunited with his overjoyed wife in a local church’s gym.
Tietjens’ cousin Kaylyn Golike asked for prayers, especially for Tietjens’ 12-year-old son, wife and parents, as they navigate “unimaginable loss.”
Trump most recently traveled to Dover in December to honor two Iowa National Guard members and a U.S. civilian interpreter who were killed in an ambush attack in the Syrian desert. He attended dignified transfers several times during his first term, including for a Navy SEAL killed during a raid in Yemen, for two Army officers whose helicopter crashed in Afghanistan and for two Army soldiers killed in Afghanistan when a person dressed in an Afghan army uniform opened fire.
March 8, 2026