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Today’s top stories
In the last 24 hours, unknown attackers hit three commercial ships carrying oil in the Strait of Hormuz. The key passageway for the world’s oil, which is one of the hot spots in the U.S. and Israel’s war in the Middle East, is now effectively closed. President Trump is urging ships to keep using the route and is promising protection, but has offered very little detail on how that protection will work.
Commercial vessels are pictured offshore in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, on Wednesday, after attacks hit ships in the region.
AFP via Getty Images
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AFP via Getty Images
- 🎧 The U.S. and Israel could soon reach a point when there are a limited number of viable targets for their bombing campaign in Iran, NPR’s Greg Myre tells Up First. Oil prices spiked today to $100 a barrel. Iran might keep the Strait of Hormuz closed to inflict as much economic pain as possible and deter future U.S. and Israeli attacks on them again, Myre says.
- 🎧 Yesterday, the International Energy Agency announced that member nations would release 400 million barrels from their strategic oil reserves. It’s the largest crude oil release the IEA has ever coordinated. Of those, 172 million will be coming from the U.S. over four months beginning next week. Former Trump economic adviser Stephen Moore tells NPR’s Tamara Keith the president is betting that the conflict with Iran will be short, gas prices will soon drop and voters will forgive or forget. But rising fuel costs could make other essentials more expensive for consumers, Keith says. This could become a political challenge for Republicans in the midterm elections, where affordability is a top issue.
The Pentagon has launched a formal investigation into a missile strike on an Iranian girls’ school that killed at least 165 civilians, many of them children. A preliminary assessment determined that the U.S. was at fault for the strike, which happened on the first day of the war.
- 🎧 If a U.S. role is confirmed, this attack would mark one of the highest civilian death tolls by the U.S. in a single incident in 35 years, NPR’s Kat Lonsdorf says. Iran has released images of missile parts it says struck the school. The parts appear to belong to a U.S.-made Tomahawk missile. Only a few countries use Tomahawks, including the U.S. Recently, Trump suggested the missiles were “generic” and could have been fired by Iran. But experts told NPR that the U.S. is the only actor in this conflict that uses Tomahawks.
The Trump administration is seeking to tighten rules for immigrants with temporary legal status seeking a commercial driver’s license, citing several high-profile crashes involving foreign-born drivers. Critics argue that these changes won’t improve road safety. According to the Department of Transportation’s estimate, the proposed regulations could force around 200,000 immigrants, including asylum-seekers and DACA recipients, out of the trucking industry.
An internal government watchdog and members of Congress are separately investigating new allegations of Social Security data misuse by a Department of Government Efficiency staffer. On March 6, the Social Security Administration’s inspector general alerted House and Senate leaders about an anonymous complaint regarding potential data misuse by a former DOGE employee, according to a copy of the letter obtained by NPR. This week, congressional Democrats ramped up their investigation into DOGE’s access to Social Security data after receiving whistleblower claims that a former agency software engineer retained databases containing personal information on nearly every American.
