And the first six days of the war alone cost the US $11.3bn, the Pentagon briefed members of Congress – though it wasn’t clear if those numbers included the cost of the buildup or the US missile defenses as well. The ultimate toll of Iran’s closure of the strait of Hormuz on the world economy remains to be seen.
Tens of thousands of US citizens were stranded in the region as the state department hurriedly slapped together a taskforce to evacuate them.
Now it has focused on a new goal–that of opening the strait of Hormuz, whose closure has sent prices for oil to more than $100 a barrel and even prompted the Trump administration to halt sanctions on Russian oil, reversing its policy in a different war.
“Each of these goals would have required a different military strategy,” said Michael Singh, managing director of the Washington Institute and a former senior director for Middle East affairs at the national security council under George W Bush.
‘No clear goal’: lack of Iran war plan has unleashed chaos and could stymie US military for decades, say critics
White House contends with reality of shoddy preparations for war and unclear conditions for victory
The aim of the US mission has shifted repeatedly since January’s naval buildup – from backing Iranian protesters being killed in a government crackdown, to eliminating Iran’s nuclear programme, to knocking out its ballistic missiles system.
Most of the internet’s blessings—the opportunities for communities to connect despite physical borders and oppressive controls, the avenues to hold the powerful accountable without immediate censorship, the sharing of our hopes and frustrations with loved ones and strangers alike—tend to come at a...
“While Martinez’s death was reported in local media at the time, the reports did not identify HSI involvement or disclose that a federal agent fired the shots through the driver-side window,” Newsweek reported, citing publicly available information and records obtained by American Oversight through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
‘How Many Other Killings Are They Concealing?’ ICE Shot Ruben Ray Martinez in Texas Last March
“Americans deserve immediate answers and an independent investigation of the shooting,” said Congressman Greg Casar.
Demands for accountability are mounting after internal records revealed this week that an officer with Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations fatally shot Ruben Ray Martinez, a 23-year-old US citizen, almost a year ago in South Padre Island, Texas.
Staff members at the United States’s premier infectious-disease research institute have been instructed to remove the words “biodefense” and “pandemic preparedness” from the institute’s web pages, according to e-mails Nature has obtained.
Exclusive: Key US infectious-diseases centre to drop pandemic preparation
Staff members have been instructed to scrub this topic and ‘biodefense’ from the agency’s website.
The directive comes amid a broader shake-up at the US National Institute of Allergy & Infectious Diseases (NIAID), 1 of 27 institutes & centres at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). NIAID is expected to deprioritize the 2 topics in an overhaul of its funded research projects, according to 4 NIAID employees.
In just three weeks since the start of 2026, there have officially been six deaths of detainees in ICE custody, per the official reporting mechanism of DHS’s newsroom. That follows Dec, which was the deadliest month of 2025, in which 7 detainees–and we are talking about human beings here, 74% of which have no criminal convictions–died in ICE custody.
ICE Detainee Deaths Were at Record Highs in 2025. This Year Looks to Get Far Deadlier.
Only 3 weeks into 2026, there have already been 6 detainee deaths in ICE custody, a record-breaking pace.
In 2025, at least 32 people died while in detainment by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). That grim figure technically matches the record high number for detainee deaths that was set 21 years earlier in 2004, but I can’t help but suspect that the true number is actually even higher.
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