Axios

The United States has an extensive history of interventionism, but President Trump has grown especially frank about his intentions abroad in recent months.

The big picture: Trump told Axios this week that he must be involved in picking Iran's next leader, which — alongside his recent moves in Cuba and Venezuela — demonstrate that aggressive military force has become part and parcel of his foreign policy.

• It wouldn't be the first time, however, that the U.S. has pushed for specific leaders to fill the vacancies it helped create.

President Trump said Saturday "we've knocked out 42 navy ships" in three days, adding that the US is doing "very well" in Iran.

Why it matters: Trump bragged about dominance in Iran and hinted at possible action in Cuba at the first Shield of the Americas Summit, which has outgoing Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem at the helm.

President Trump threatened early Saturday morning to step up the bombing campaign in Iran, saying it may expand to people and regions that hadn't been targeted previously.

Why it matters: The war is entering its second week, with no let-up in sight.

President Trump is mired in risk:

• Risk his Iran war of choice goes bad.
• Risk the February job losses are a trend, not a blip.
• Risk the stock market keeps dropping.
• Risk his tariffs, and now soaring oil costs, are pushing prices higher.
• Risk that deregulated AI accelerates job losses.
• Risk that Democratic enthusiasm leads to a midterm wipeout.

Why it matters: Trump fancies himself a high-risk, high-reward president, a confidence cheered by the vast majority of Republican officials and voters. But risk is risk — and by most measures, it's rising everywhere.

Iraq's Kurds are caught in a three-way vise as the Iran war spills across their border:

• They're uncertain, based on President Trump's messaging, whether the U.S. actually wants regime change next door.
• They're under pressure to open the border from Iranian Kurds who want to fight the regime.
• And they're facing a public threat — backed by a private warning — that Iran will retaliate if those militants attack from Iraqi Kurdish soil.

Why it matters: The Kurds of northern Iraq have carved out a stable, semi-autonomous region in one of the world's most volatile neighborhoods. Now, the war next door is threatening to make their neutrality impossible to hold.

President Trump is positioning himself as a central architect of Iran's post-war future, demanding "UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER" on Friday.

The big picture: Trump is signaling ambitions that extend beyond military action into reshaping Iran's political and economic order just as he did in Venezuela. But experts warn it's not that simple.

A new civil rights report argues that lynchings of Black men didn't end in America — they evolved — and that some deaths today may still be misclassified as suicides or accidents.

The big picture: If killings are misclassified, families can lose their paths to justice, and possible patterns of racial violence can remain hidden in plain sight.

President Trump told Axios Friday that his demand for Iran's "unconditional surrender" could mean the complete destruction of the regime's military capabilities — not necessarily a formal surrender.

• "Unconditional surrender could be that [the Iranians] announce it. But it could also be when they can't fight any longer because they don't have anyone or anything to fight with," he said in a phone interview.

Why it matters: Trump's explanation came hours after he appeared to leave no visible off-ramp for Iran, ruling out any kind of "deal" as he demanded "UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER" in a post on Truth Social.

Here's a question the Torah doesn't specifically answer: "Can a Jew let his AI agent run over Shabbat if the last prompt was Friday afternoon?"

Why it matters: It's a post that went viral on X, and is one of many new queries that rabbis debate when it comes to reconciling how modern technology fits within millennia-old tradition.

One of President Trump's first actions upon retaking office was to postpone enforcement of a law that required TikTok to be banned in the U.S. if still controlled by China's ByteDance.

Driving the news: That decision, and several that sprang from it, are the crux of a lawsuit that theoretically could cost TikTok U.S. — now under new ownership — billions of dollars. And possibly lead to renegotiation of the sale itself.

In theory, an emergency that's blocking petro-flows and spiking prices should boost the case for clean energy. But in practice, it's way more complicated.

Why it matters: The Iran war is the biggest energy crisis since Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, if not longer.

Oil and gasoline prices are marching upward again Friday, even as Trump administration officials seek ways to get more barrels into the market.

Why it matters: Ships avoiding the Strait of Hormuz and military threats to regional infrastructure are together shocking oil and natural gas markets.

President Trump seethed when the Supreme Court stripped away his unilateral tariff authority, the first real check on his presidency.

• Then he set out to impose his will on every remaining vector of American power — smashing norms and shrugging off Congress in a historic, 14-day show of executive force.

Why it matters: Over the past two weeks, Trump launched a massive Middle East war, blacklisted the hottest AI company on the planet, ordered new global tariffs, and presided over the biggest media merger in two decades.

Eight in 10 Hispanic voters in Texas say politicians take them for granted —and four in 10 are more likely to support candidates who communicate with them in Spanish — according to a new survey shared exclusively with Axios.

• Inflation and cost of living was the top concern this election year for Texas Hispanics, the survey for TelevisaUnivision by The Harris Poll found.

Why it matters: Texas' primaries this week put the Lone Star State in the spotlight. But what's true in Texas may well extend to other states with large Hispanic populations — and have implications for the November midterms.

• The poll was conducted earlier this week, as a surge in Latino voters in Texas' Democratic primary helped propel state Rep. James Talarico to the party's nomination for the U.S. Senate seat now held by Republican John Cornyn.
• Talarico has emphasized working-class concerns in his campaign — and has reached out to Hispanics with Spanish-language ads while doing some interviews in Spanish.

What they're saying: "If you think you're reaching Hispanics with the message you have on English-language TV for the broad-based audience, you're missing the point," said Daniel Alegre, CEO of TelevisaUnivision.

• "Spanish-dominant or dual-language Hispanics, they will determine where the vote is going to go."
• But Hispanic voters are "no longer the Democratic vote that everyone expected" Alegre said. "They're an issues vote, and they feel they're not being listened to."

Zoom in: Republicans have been making gains among Latino voters in recent elections, though Hispanics' turnout Tuesday in Texas was widely seen as an indication that economic concerns have given Democrats a shot at recapturing support in November's elections.

• "The cost-of-living issue is a national issue, not just a Texas issue, and it impacts Hispanics disproportionately," Alegre said.

Three quarters of respondents said inflation and the cost of living was the most important issue this year.

• Other key issues seen as "very important" in the survey were health care access and costs (69%), jobs and wages (67%), housing affordability (65%), immigration enforcement tactics (54%) and immigration and border security at the Texas-Mexico border (50%).

Methodology: This online survey of 526 registered Hispanic voters in Texas was conducted March 2-4, 2026, online by The Harris Poll on behalf of TelevisaUnivision. The survey was offered in both English and Spanish.

• Breakdown of respondents by political affiliation is 29% Republican, 32% Democrat and 39% as independent. Respondents for this survey were selected from those who agreed to participate in the organization's surveys. The sampling precision of Harris online polls is measured by using a Bayesian credible interval.
• For this study, the overall sample data is accurate to within ± 6.2 percentage points using a 95% confidence level. This credible interval will be wider among subsets of the surveyed population of interest.
• Data are weighted where necessary by age by gender, education, household income, language, and political party affiliation to bring them in line with their actual proportions in the population.

The U.S. and Venezuela "have agreed to re-establish diplomatic and consular relations," the State Department announced Thursday.

Why it matters: The historic deal with a former U.S. foe comes as President Trump pushes to apply his actions in Caracas that led to the capture of former leader Nicolás Maduro to Iran, telling Axios Thursday that he must be involved in picking a successor to assassinated Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

Several dozen Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) officers have fled Beirut over the last 48 hours fearing they will be targeted, two senior Israeli defense officials and a third source with knowledge of the situation told Axios.

Why it matters: The Iranian officers were mostly members of the elite Quds Force, working as military advisers to Hezbollah with significant influence over the group's operations.