The News You Need on Monday, March 23rd, 2026.
The news you need today from Scott Horton and Charles Kaiser.
To Celebrate the Birth of The Horton-Kaiser Report
Charles: A tiny fraction of the stellar nursery known as Sh2-284 is visible in this glittering, star-filled NASA Hubble Space Telescope image. This immense region of gas and dust is the birthing place of stars, which shine among the clouds. Bright clusters of newborn stars glow pink in infrared light, and clouds of gas and dust, resembling puffy cumulus clouds, are dotted with dark knots of denser dust.
My work here is dedicated to the memory of Joe Stouter, who taught me to see the beauty in the night sky, and everywhere else.
What Does Israel’s “Right to Exist” Even Mean?
A conversation with Tucker Carlson
The Economist Insider
Scott: The Economist’s feature interview with Tucker Carlson is fascinating for what it tells us about the participants. Economist editor Zanny Minton Beddoes flails embarrassingly when Tucker turns the tables on her demanding to know what “Israel’s right to exist” really means and what she thinks about Israel’s performance in Gaza. Carlson on the other hand, once Rupert Murdoch’s fair-haired boy, now increasingly emerges as the man to succeed MAGA in the leadership of the GOP. He’s well-spoken, quick on his feet, and rarely beholden to reason or a careful study of the facts. This interview may be a good introduction to the Republican party’s rhetoric in three years.
Bibi is an Existential Threat to All of Us
Netanyahu’s Fruits of War: Bashing Gatekeepers and Wowing the Israeli Public
Haaretz
Charles: Yossi Verter writing in Haaretz: Benjamin Netanyahu and his partners are not legitimate political rivals; they are an existential enemy, far more dangerous than any murderous regime or terrorist organization.”
Clara Bingham Recalls Her Mother and the Story of the Abortion Movement in America
Charles: I usually dislike journalism written in the first person–old school Times person–except when it’s a beautiful personal remembrance like this one. Luckily for us, Clara Bingham, author of The Movement, an acclaimed oral history of Women’s Liberation, discarded her own rule against writing about herself to give us The Night I Finally Saw My Mother Clearly. Clara explains it was only after her mother Joan died that Clara found Joan Bingham’s name on the historic “We Have Had Abortions” petition, making Clara realize for the first time “how deeply I had misunderstood her.”
The Night I Finally Saw My Mother Clearly
Oprah Daily
Trump’s Iran War is Irrational, Poorly Planned and Morally Reprehensible
Europeans’ justified mistrust in Trump’s war in Iran
Le Monde
Scott: Europe’s distrust of Trump’s war-making in the Gulf is well warranted; Europe must continue to tack away from his misadventures. Donald Trump alone bears responsibility for this situation, given his policy of fait accompli. Le Monde’s editorial furnishes a good summary of where Europeans and Britons now stand on Trump’s Iran war: it’s irrational, poorly planned and morally reprehensible. Nothing good is going to come of it.
Scott: For Trump, war on Iran is merely an appetizer. The main course is eliminating the opposition and ruling as a dictator in America. In their writings, Levitsky and Ziblatt say that “Domestic Enemy Designation” is the ultimate stage of aggregation of authoritarian power, when a democracy is transformed into an authoritarian dictatorship. This is it.
Always Read Abdi Latif Dahir First
On Beirut’s Waterfront, Loss Meets Life, and Luxury, Amid War
Charles: Another beautifully written account from the Middle East Correspondent at ground zero:
The shirtless jogger, his headphones in and his back slick with sweat, ran past a row of tents pitched along the seafront in downtown Beirut, Lebanon’s capital. In one tent, a displaced family of four — uprooted by weeks of war that have convulsed the nation — watched him pass.
For a moment, the scene held its uneasy calm. The evening sun faded into the Mediterranean Sea, the steady rhythm of the waves softened the edges of the day, and the runner kept his pace, eyes forward. And then a deafening roar shattered it all: An Israeli airstrike had hit a nearby neighborhood, sending plumes of smoke into the sky.
“We chose the seaside because it is peaceful,” said Hussein Hame, 37, who, along with his wife and two children, was displaced this month from Dahiya, a collection of neighborhoods on the southern outskirts of Beirut where Hezbollah holds sway. “But this war finds you everywhere.”
War has returned to Lebanon, and the capital’s meandering seafront has become an unlikely front line. Here, a stark contrast has emerged: The displaced and destitute sit in the cold, while others live life as usual — jogging, cycling — amid the dizzying wealth and luxury that exist nearby.
In early March, Israel unleashed a barrage of attacks on Lebanon after the Iran-backed proxy group Hezbollah fired rockets at northern Israel following the U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran. The violence has uprooted more than a million people, with Israel issuing evacuation warnings across much of southern Lebanon and in parts of Beirut and the eastern Bekaa Valley. Israel’s strikes have killed more than 1,000 people, injured more than 2,700 and put Lebanon, once again, on the precipice of disaster.
Escalation in the Middle East: “The ideas of Trump to bomb the power plants of Iran are stupid”
Welt
Scott: In Europe, governments have generally refrained from comment on Trump’s latest 48 hour ultimatum to Iran. Meanwhile senior government advisors have taken to the airwaved to deride the Trump threats as “stupid,” “counterproductive,” and designed to inflict maximum suffering on the civilian population. They could make the whole region uninhabitable for generations. German security expert Nico Lange citicizes Trump’s threat to bomb Iran’s power plants and to occupy Kharg Island. This is a recipe for debacle, pure stupidity.
Elon Musk Wants to Profit from Porn on X
French justice warns US authorities of possible “artificial valuation” of X by Elon Musk
Le Figaro
Scott: Elon Musk’s decision to flood X with pornography was driven by a desire to enhance its market value, French prosecutors observe. French prosecutors said Saturday that they had alerted US authorities of the existence of evidence that tech bro Elon Musk had encouraged the controversy over sexualised deepfakes on X as part of an effort to to inflate the value of his company by turning it into a pornography platform.
UN Investigation Clears Khan of Sexual Misconduct
Judges clear ICC’s Karim Khan over sexual misconduct claims
Middle East Eye
Scott: Karim Khan, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, has been cleared of all wrongdoing by a panel of judges appointed to review the findings of a United Nations investigation into sexual misconduct allegations against him. Reading the results of the independent probe, it’s extremely puzzling why something so seemingly open-and-shut took so long to work through. Perhaps some partybefore the court was using this to blockade a case against it? But Karim Khan KC is
now in the clear and the ICC can resume its work.
What if Andrew was the King?
“Sliding Doors,” Andrew Edition
Air Mail
Scott: Sid Blumenthal offers a fascinating excursion in what-if history. What would the reign of King Andrew I look like? Influential as the Epstein case is, it could clearly have provided the impetus for bringing down the monarchy had Andrew succeeded his mother rather than Charles.
Bags of shredded documents at NY jail after Epstein’s death, officer tells FBI
Miami Herald
Scott: At this point, there is no reason to believe a word that Bill Barr ever said about Epstein or the circumstances of his death. After the death of Jeffrey Epstein, a massive cover-up inside the DOJ. “Less than a week after Jeffrey Epstein was found dead inside his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan, something was afoot inside an office where the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ After Action Team had set up a probe into what had happened to their most high-profile inmate. The FBI was told that there were people shredding documents. Bags of them.” “They are shredding everything,” the inmate told one of the guards, adding that he was asked to give the officials... a hand with the shredding.
France Considers Nuclear Support for Denmark and Greenland
Macron: Denmark gets role in French nuclear deterrence
DR
Scott: In an interview with Danish Radio, French president Emmanuel Macron discusses the proposal to expand France’s nuclear umbrella to include Denmark and Greenland, and his belief that avoiding reliance on American technology and weapons systems is key to European security going forward. The interview furnishes a clear insight into the way erstwhile European allies of the US now view the country under Trump’s leadership: not as an ally, but as a predator not to be trusted.
Edited by Imogen Sayers.