Concerns about an extended conflict, the mounting U.S. death toll and a perceived lack of clarity about the mission’s purpose are percolating among President Donald Trump’s MAGA base as the military operation in Iran puts the president at odds with some of his most ardent supporters.
Hanging over the debate is the memory of previous Middle Eastern conflicts, which stretched for years and claimed the lives of thousands of U.S. soldiers.
Trump's presidential campaigns tapped into the American public’s disenchantment with the long and costly conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. He described the Iraq war as a "disaster" and "one of the worst decisions ever made in the history of our country."
But Trump’s second attack on Iran has already resulted in the deaths of six American service members, and the president is warning that more lives could be lost in a conflict with an uncertain timeline.
The president has launched a series of dramatic military operations in his second term, though. The first two in Iran and Venezuela were quick, and no U.S. soldiers died, limiting the blowback from his political base.
The Supreme Court on March 2 backed parents' right to be told if their child changes their name, or pronouns they're using in school, blocking California rules aimed at preventing teachers from outing transgender students to their parents.
Events are still unfolding rapidly across the Middle East, so here's a quick recap:
Dozens of teenage girls were attending their regular training sessions of volleyball, basketball, and gymnastics in the main sports hall in Lamerd, a city near the Persian coast, when a missile slammed into the building at 5 p.m. on Saturday. Additional strikes hit two nearby residential areas and a hall adjacent to a school, as the U.S. and Israel pounded targets across Iran on the first day of what President Donald Trump declared as a regime change war. According to local officials cited in Iranian state media, the strikes on Lamerd killed at least 18 civilians and wounded scores more.
Explosions were reported in the Russian port city of Novorossiysk overnight between Sunday and Monday.
In the middle of the 7th century, a plague swept through the walled city of Jerash, in what is now modern-day Jordan.
All unaccompanied immigrant children who are pregnant, many by rape, are being moved to a single facility in Texas in order to avoid providing abortion services in a significant human rights violation, critics say.
