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What We’re Covering Today

• D.H.S. Shutdown: House Republicans angrily rejected a measure passed by their Senate counterparts early Friday that would have restored most funding for the Department of Homeland Security, deepening an intraparty feud that will most likely extend a partial shutdown of the agency. In a move to address weeks of long lines at airport security checkpoints, the White House said that it had ordered the Department of Homeland Security to pay employees of the Transportation Security Administration out of existing funds.

• Patel Hack: Emails and photographs stolen from a personal email account of Kash Patel before his time as the director of the F.B.I. circulated online on Friday. But there were questions about who had carried out the cyberattack and when the intrusion had taken place.

House Republicans revolt over bill to reopen D.H.S., deepening shutdown rift.

House Republicans on Friday angrily rejected a Senate-passed deal to reopen the Department of Homeland Security, threatening to extend the agency shutdown that has crippled airports in a fit of outrage over the agreement their own party struck with Senate Democrats to end the crisis.

After quickly assessing the compromise that passed the Senate early Friday, conservative House Republicans tore into it in harsh terms. They derided it for hewing too closely to the Democratic position by omitting money for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol, the two agencies responsible for carrying out President Trump’s immigration crackdown, which are operating under previously approved funds.

Representative Katherine Clark of Massachusetts, the No. 2 Democrat, just hit on the logistical hurdle facing any bill that House Republicans try to pass to temporarily fund all of the Homeland Security Department, including ICE and Border Patrol: “The Senate is gone.” House members “know fully well what they’re doing” is continuing the shutdown, she added.

Even if he could pass the stopgap bill, and senators abandoned their spring break plans to hurry back to Washington, Senate Democrats would likely reject the House bill.

Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the minority leader, said House Democrats would vote to pass the Senate-approved bill to partly fund the Department of Homeland Security if Speaker Mike Johnson were to put the measure on the floor. Jeffries added: “This should end, and could end today.”

House Republicans are gearing up to vote on a different measure that would fund the entire agency though May 22, and a majority of Democrats are expected to oppose it. It would need to be voted on by the Senate.

President Trump criticized the Senate-passed Homeland Security funding bill, saying it “wasn’t good” and “wasn’t appropriate” in a call with Fox News. Trump said it was unacceptable that the bill advanced out of the Senate and was delivered to the House without funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement: “In my opinion, you can’t have a bill that’s not going to fund ICE.”

The Department of Homeland Security said Transportation Security Administration officers should begin receiving paychecks as early as Monday. “Today, at the direction of President Trump and the Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin, TSA has immediately begun the process of paying its workforce,” a department spokesperson said in a statement.

March 27, 2026, 2:30 p.m. ET

Speaker Mike Johnson said President Trump supported the plan to pass a short-term funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security. “He understands exactly what we’re doing and why,” Johnson added.

Johnson said House Republicans would vote to send the measure to fully fund the agency to the Senate “as soon as possible,” when asked if his chamber would take up the stopgap bill on Friday.

Hacked files of Kash Patel, before his time as F.B.I. director, circulate online.

Emails and photographs stolen from a personal email account of Kash Patel, the director of the F.B.I., circulated online on Friday, as hackers who claimed to be part of a group affiliated with Iranian intelligence took responsibility for the release.

The release of materials from before Mr. Patel’s time as F.B.I. chief appeared to be an effort to embarrass him as the war in Iran nears its first month. But there were questions about who had carried out the cyberattack, and it remained unclear when the intrusion had taken place.

A performer being sued by the Kennedy Center asked the judge to toss the case, calling it ‘retaliatory.’

Lawyers for a jazz musician who was sued by President Trump’s allies at the Kennedy Center asked a judge on Friday to toss out the lawsuit, calling it an attempt to stifle his protest of the organization’s takeover.

In December, Richard Grenell — at the time, the center’s president and a close ally of Mr. Trump’s — threatened to sue Chuck Redd, a jazz percussionist, for $1 million after Mr. Redd said he would not hold an annual Christmas Eve concert at the facility. Mr. Redd cited his opposition to renaming the performing arts center in honor of Mr. Trump.

The Defense Department argued in a court filing today that media rules it released this week did not defy a court order. The filing is the latest volley in a lawsuit filed by The New York Times in December, which claims that restrictions on journalists that the department adopted in October 2025 are unconstitutional.

The judge in the case, Judge Paul Friedman of the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia, sided with The Times last week. On Monday, the Defense Department issued a revised policy and also announced the closure of journalists’ work space inside the Pentagon. The Times has argued that the moves violate the judge’s order.

In its filing on Friday, the Pentagon laid out why it believed the department was in compliance with the order. Judge Friedman has scheduled a hearing in the case on Monday.

Another senior House Republican will retire as a midterm exodus grows.

Representative Sam Graves, the 13-term Missouri Republican who leads the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, said on Friday that he would retire in January, the latest powerful member of his party to leave Congress ahead of midterm elections in which it is bracing for big losses.

“It’s time to pass the torch and allow a new guard of conservative leaders to step forward and chart a path forward for Missourians,” he said in a statement announcing his decision to depart Washington at the end of his term. “This wasn’t an easy decision, but it’s the right one. I believe in making room for the next generation.”

A federal judge in Rhode Island sided with a union of Veterans Affairs workers, finding that the Trump administration had ignored her previous order to reinstate a contract with the workers it had canceled last year. Judge Melissa R. DuBose gave the government until Tuesday to show it had taken concrete steps to reimplement the agreement.

The House Ethics Committee said it had found violations in 25 of the 27 counts against Representative Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, the Florida Democrat accused of embezzling $5 million of federal disaster money to support her congressional campaign.

The bipartisan vote came after a rare public hearing yesterday that lasted well into the night. Cherfilus-McCormick’s ethics trial was the first time in 16 years that the typically secretive panel had held a public hearing regarding the actions of a sitting lawmaker.

The adjudicatory panel will now schedule a hearing of the full panel to determine its recommendations for sanctions or expulsion. After that, the entire House will vote on the recommendation on the floor.

Hegseth strikes two Black and two female officers from a promotion list.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is blocking the promotion of four Army officers to be one-star generals, a highly unusual move that has prompted some senior military officials to question whether the officers are being singled out because of their race or gender.

Two of the officers targeted by Mr. Hegseth are Black and two are women on a promotion list that consists of about three dozen officers, most of whom are white men, senior military officials said.

Trump’s signature is set to appear on U.S. currency.

President Trump’s signature will appear on U.S. dollars later this year, the Treasury Department said on Thursday. The decision to have Mr. Trump’s John Hancock on America’s paper currency represented an unprecedented change, one that the department said was being made in honor of the United States’ 250th anniversary.

Mr. Trump is set to become the first sitting U.S. president to have his signature on the greenback. His name will appear alongside that of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. As a result, the U.S. treasurer, whose name has been on the currency for more than a century, will not appear on the currency.

The Latest on the Trump Administration

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• Standoff With Iran: President Trump’s war with Iran is testing the limits of his unorthodox diplomatic style as he grasps for a deal to end the conflict, relying on a jumble of emissaries that reflect his improvisational approach.

• Army Promotions Blocked: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is blocking the promotions of two Black officers and two women to be one-star generals, a highly unusual move that has prompted some officials to question whether the officers are being singled out because of their race or gender.

• Pentagon-Anthropic Dispute: A federal judge temporarily stopped the Department of Defense from labeling Anthropic as a security risk, in a reprieve for the start-up that has been in a dispute with the Pentagon over the use of A.I. in warfare.

• Brazilian Gangs: The Trump administration is weighing designating Brazil’s two biggest drug gangs as terrorist groups, after lobbying by two sons of former

• ‘No Kings’ Protests: More than 3,000 demonstrations are scheduled across the country on Saturday to condemn an array of Trump’s policies and to express general discontent toward the president, whom the protesters view as acting like a monarch.

• Signature on Currency: Trump will become the first sitting president with his signature on the U.S. dollar, the Treasury Department said, in honor of the United States’ 250th anniversary this year.

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Speaker Mike Johnson dismissed the Senate bill as “a joke” and said House Republicans would instead advance a measure to fully fund the agency. Credit…Eric Lee for The New York Times

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Key Takeaways

• Gregorys Coffee has grown from one small Park Avenue bar in 2006 to 53 locations nationwide, with typical stores now doing over $1 million in annual sales.
• Revenue reached about $40 million last year and is projected to hit roughly $45 million this year.
• Gregorys Coffee founder and CEO Gregory Zamfotis attributes the growth to quality coffee, roasted in-house.

Two decades ago, Gregory Zamfotis was at a crossroads. He was a second-year law student at Brooklyn Law School and had just been offered a full-time position at a real estate law firm. The only problem was that Zamfotis wanted to open his own business. 

“I grew up in the food business,” he explains in a new interview with Entrepreneur. “My father operated a number of concepts in New York City, so I grew up working with him.”

Zamfotis worked at his father’s sandwich shop during his time in law school. By the end of his education, he was effectively running the place. He wound up “really enjoying” the work and considering it as a potential career. He knew he wanted to start a business of his own one day, separate from his father’s endeavors. So after graduating from law school, he took his interest and passion for coffee and his experience working in food service, and decided to open his own coffee shop. He was 24 years old. 

“If you were in the Midtown Financial District, the areas where the majority of New Yorkers are spending their time working, the only options for coffee really were Starbucks or Dunkin,” Zamfotis says. “I thought that was a huge opportunity because I grew up working there. I wanted to take what I had learned, apply it to the coffee industry, and do it in a part of the city that was extremely underserved at the time.”

Zamfotis started by opening one coffee bar on Park Avenue and decided it would simply be better than anything around it. The plan was to obsess over the drinks, the ingredients and the feel of the place until it earned a permanent slot in New Yorkers’ daily routines.

Day after day, cup after cup, that little shop turned into a magnet for regulars who didn’t just like the coffee; they were loyal to the brand. The identity sharpened around bold, playful branding and a menu that refused to cut corners. 

“We wanted to do a quality specialty coffee operation in a volume setting,” Zamfotis says, describing early days when he put in “70 to 80 hours a week” at the store to make sure it ran exactly as he envisioned.

What surprised him

What Zamfotis didn’t fully understand at the time was how hard it would be to do coffee exceptionally well at scale. “I guess I was surprised at just how complex doing coffee really well was,” he says. “The only way we were gonna win is if we could differentiate ourselves from the national players or the other people doing coffee around the block.”

That realization pushed him into a kind of self-imposed coffee bootcamp. He visited shops, attended conferences, and immersed himself in the craft. “I had to spend a lot of time and energy not only visiting other coffee shops, traveling, going to conferences, listening to speakers, and just pouring myself literally into all things coffee, to make myself an expert,” he says.

That work changed the culture and the product. “There’s a difference between doing things well and doing things great,” he explains. As he elevated the coffee program and training standards, customers began noticing the difference — and kept their daily habit. “Customers, maybe in the beginning, were coming because of all the other things…great service, fast, good-looking store…then once I started to elevate the coffee program higher and higher, while also keeping all those other elements so strong, that’s when we really started to make things better,” he says. 

Today, Gregorys roasts its own beans in Long Island City, bakes fresh pastries, and emphasizes personalization — from milk choices to syrup levels — while still moving fast. The goal, Zamfotis says, is that customers should feel like they’re sacrificing nothing: not time, not quality, not options.

Scaling from one store to 53 — and to $45 million

Zamfotis estimates the first shop took 12 to 18 months to find consistency; the company hit the $1 million annual sales mark around year two or three. That traction gave him the confidence to open a second location roughly two and a half years after the first — and it was an instant hit. 

“When the first location may have taken 12 to 18 months to stabilize, the second location was stable from the get-go…very busy from the day we opened,” he says.

From there, growth became a function of systems and people. “I’ve always said you can only grow as fast as the people [you have] to help execute,” Zamfotis says. For about 12 years, every single person in a position of authority at Gregorys was promoted from within, often starting as baristas.

That philosophy helped the company expand from two stores to 53 across New York, New Jersey, Washington, D.C., Florida, California, Arizona, and Tennessee. The financials now reflect that footprint. “Last year we did just around $40 million,” Zamfotis says. “This year, I believe the projection is closer to like $45 million.”

Exploring franchising

At some point, Gregorys hit a crossroads: keep grinding out corporate stores one by one, or admit that the “incredible box” they’d built was strong enough to share with other operators and scale faster than a single team ever could. That’s when Craveworthy Brands and its CEO Gregg Majewski stepped in as managing partner and corporate operator in August 2025, bringing a platform built for franchising, from training to shared services that could support a national push.

“We knew that if we wanted to continue to grow the brand at the speed that was necessary, the only way was to attach to franchising,” Majewski tells Entrepreneur in a new interview. 

Now, with a 20-year track record and a typical store pulling in roughly $1 million in annual revenue (with high performers around $1.6 million and drive-thru models at about $1.4 million), Gregorys is no longer just the underdog Park Avenue café. It’s a New York–forged coffee brand stepping into the franchise spotlight, aiming to sell 50 to 75 locations in its first year of franchising this year and inviting operators to go toe-to-toe with the biggest coffee players in America.

“Any brand that’s been around the industry as long as that and has been successful in as many markets as it has over the 20-year timeframe is perfect for franchising — especially when you built your reputation in one of the hardest cities in the world to operate in, New York,” Majewski says. Gregorys has “a group of regulars that absolutely live and die [for] this brand,” Majewski explains. 

Craveworthy Brands brings scale muscle to franchising ambition. The firm has 21 brands in its portfolio, eight of which are already franchising, and it provides the infrastructure that early franchisees often lack: training, shared services, construction support, and operational systems built to replicate performance across stores. Craveworthy’s portfolio includes brands like Big Chicken, Taffer’s Taver,n and Genghis Grill. 

For would-be franchisees, Gregorys is now pitching itself as a way into a coveted segment that can otherwise be hard to access. Majewski notes that “some of the bigger players are sold out or aren’t accepting.” Gregorys offers a build-out cost “anywhere from $200,000 to $700,000,” he says.  

Why franchising works

Majewski is clear about why he believes franchising works, not just for Gregorys but across Craveworthy’s portfolio. On the franchisor side, the hurdle is ensuring systems and procedures are in place so the company can train effectively and execute the product consistently. 

On the franchisee side, the challenge is more psychological: “following the systems and procedures and reminding yourself that you bought into a system,” he says. The promise is that if the system is well designed and properly followed, it exists “for a reason so you can be successful.”

Majewski insists that culture is the differentiator in a successful franchise. He says success comes from “establishing an incredible culture in the system” and making sure operations are simple enough to replicate. “If any concept is ever too complicated, you can’t have the consistency,” he explains. 

The goal is that “when you walk into a store in Indiana or a store in California, you get the same experience,” he says. For Gregorys, that means protecting not only the coffee quality and menu but also the feel of a brand born on Park Avenue and refined in New York City’s daily grind.

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Gregory Zamfotis. Credit: Gregorys Coffee

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In January 2025, when the U.S. House took up legislation to bar trans women’s participation on women’s sports teams, all but two Democratic representatives — Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez — voted against the bill.

When the Senate took up a similar proposal three days ago, every Democrat present voted against it.

Why don’t more Democrats explicitly moderate their stands on transgender rights, immigration, and other issues? Those who maintain far-out positions are well to the left of the electorate and its emblematic median voter. The trans issue clearly weakened Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, leaving her open to devastating pro-Trump ads.

In the case of one of the most disputed rights claimed by some parts of the transgender activist community — transgender women’s participation on women’s sports teams — Democrats have clear liberal grounds to challenge that claim, by asserting that they are protecting a woman’s right from unfair competition.

But this phenomenon — drifting far from the median voter — is hardly limited to the left. There are many factors behind the reluctance of both Democrats and Republicans to shift to the center.

For one thing, donors, especially the growing legions of small donors, prefer more extreme candidates. Adding additional pressure, what have come to be known as “the groups” — advocacy organizations on the left and the right — demand fealty to policies that are sometimes politically costly; they threaten to support primary challengers to run against those who defy their authority. On a psychological level, Democrats and liberals are morally committed to protecting marginalized groups from harm and defending racial and sexual minorities.

Before exploring these pressures, let’s go to the dominant political fact of life working against moderation, which is that there are decisive majorities in both the House and the Senate that have no interest in abandoning more extreme stands. Many Democrats and Republicans won their seats with the promise to fight the partisan opposition until hell freezes over.

The combination of partisan gerrymandering, the deepening of affective polarization — smoldering hatred of partisan adversaries — and the steadily growing number of safe seats has created a calculus encouraging, nurturing, and fostering political positioning far to the left or right of the median voter.

The key piece of evidence: Of the 435 House districts, The Cook Political Report identifies 36 as competitive, broken down as 17 tossups, 15 leaning Democratic, and four leaning Republican. Adding the eight likely Democratic and 17 likely Republican districts, which are much less likely to be competitive, brings the total to 61, or a measly 14 percent of all 435 members.

In this one-seventh of House districts that are at least somewhat competitive, there is a real payoff on Election Day for a candidate to moderate more extreme stands.

That is decidedly not the case in the remaining 86 percent of House districts — 374 of them, 189 solid Democratic and 185 solid Republican — that are not competitive, with the winner chosen in the primary and the general election a formality.

Candidates in these safe districts are under no pressure to moderate in order to win a general election, and primary voters are free to vote ideologically instead of strategically.

Senate races are less preordained, but still a majority are foregone conclusions, party-wise: Nine to 11 states are considered battlegrounds, or “purple,” while 39 to 41, depending on who is doing the analysis, fall into the solid red or blue camp.

For a decisive majority of House members and a slightly less commanding majority of senators, then, the cost of adopting more extreme and intensely partisan stands drops close to zero, with a payoff in added voters in ideologically driven primaries.

What this comes down to is that in the calculations of incumbents in safe districts, adopting the hard-nosed position leaves no ideological space for challengers in the primaries.

In fact, among polarized primary electorates in these districts, the successful nominee is very likely to be naturally comfortable

positioning himself or herself at the further end of the political spectrum, deeply hostile to the opposition party, opposed in principle to compromise.

What does this mean for moderation and bipartisanship? Many if not most members of the House and Senate reject them as a threat to their political future and as contrary to what they believe in.

This conclusion is based not only on extensive political research but also on actual voting patterns.

Michael Bailey, a political scientist at Georgetown, has found that moderation lifts candidates in competitive districts but penalizes those in noncompetitive districts.

In an email, Bailey explained, “The primary election systems in most states strongly encourage and reward more ideologically extreme behavior.” In an October 2025 paper, “Ideology, Party and Policy-Oriented Voting,” Bailey put it this way:

When control of the national legislature (Congress) is closely contested — as it is in the U.S. in recent years — extreme candidates win primary and general elections under a broad range of contexts, especially when the parties are highly polarized. Many districts will nominate and elect legislators who are more extreme than even the party median.

“When control of the legislature is closely contested and the policy impact of a single legislator is modest,” he wrote,

because party nominators know that the district median will prefer electing an extremist from a favored party than a moderate from a disfavored party.

For example, a moderately conservative district median voter will prefer the policy outcomes under Republican control, even if their individual legislator is very conservative, over the policy outcomes under Democratic control, with a moderate Democrat representing their district.

The ideological patterns in Congress are evident in state legislative contests, Bailey wrote, citing a May 2025 paper, “Polarization and State Legislative Elections,” by three political scientists, Cassandra Handan-Nader of N.Y.U., and Andrew C.W. Myers and Andrew B. Hall of Stanford. They wrote:

The polarization of the whole set of candidates seeking state legislative office has risen dramatically over the past two decades. The growing polarization of state legislators tracks the polarization of the set of candidates running for office quite tightly.

While “more moderate candidates enjoy a meaningful advantage in contested general elections, that advantage has declined somewhat in recent years. At the same time, more extreme candidates are favored in contested primary elections.”

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Do you doomscroll? If so, you’re not alone. One 2024 survey found that almost a third of American adults regularly doomscroll—that is, swipe through endless social media feeds—and millennials and Gen Zers are even more likely to engage in this behavior.

This is partly because social media feeds often have no end, so users continuously scroll to get to the next thing that catches their attention—and the next after that. These design features keep users on social media platforms—but they have also been criticized as a pathway to problematic social media use and even addiction.

But is it possible for someone to become addicted to social media in the same way as they can develop an addiction to nicotine or alcohol, say? The answer is more complicated than you might think.

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has an entire center dedicated to digital well-being, the Center of Excellence on Social Media and Youth Mental Health. On its website, it explains that concerning social media use might include behaviors such as struggling in school because of technology or withdrawing socially—but that concerning use may not always rise to the level of “addiction.”

The issue of whether social media is addictive is at the center of thousands of lawsuits brought against the companies Meta, TikTok, YouTube and Snap. The verdict in one of these cases, involving Meta and YouTube, could be decided as soon as this week. In New Mexico, a jury recently found that Meta must pay $375 million for endangering child safety in violation of the state’s consumer protection law.

To try and understand what the science says about social media and addiction, we spoke to two experts in the field: Jenny Radesky, co-medical director of the AAP’s social media and youth mental health center, and Bradley Zicherman, a clinical associate professor at Stanford University, who directs the Youth Recovery Clinic and treats patients struggling with social media.

What evidence is there for social media addiction?

“I tend to think of addictive use as being a subset or a more intense or severe form of the larger umbrella of problematic media use,” Radesky says. The AAP encourages a broader (and less stigmatizing) term to talk about the issue: “problematic Internet use.”

Zicherman is more comfortable describing this kind of problematic behavior as addiction. “It is most appropriate at this point to actually say that there is a condition of social media addiction,” he says.

Zicherman likens social media to slot machines: “Because you don’t know when you’re going to win,” he says, “you keep pulling that slot machine lever, pressing the button, pressing the button, pressing button—eventually you win something.”

He argues that social media features such as likes, followers, and never-ending new content feeds function in much the same way, triggering a rush of dopamine that some users will keep chasing. Dopamine, a neurotransmitter, helps the brain identify pleasurable experiences—say, validation or success or even a good meal—and to repeat behaviors linked to them. Substances like drugs, however, can make the process go haywire

The AAP notes that in a 2021 Common Sense Media survey, tweens said they spent about 18 minutes per day on social media, while teenagers devoted about an hour and a half, on average. And there is evidence that comes with some risks: One study published last May, for example, analyzed data from 11,876 children enrolled in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study, a large, long-term investigation that has been tracking children’s mental health over time. The May paper showed that an individual’s increase in social media use correlated with increased signs of depression in the following year. Interestingly, the reverse wasn’t true—children who had higher “depressive symptoms” didn’t necessarily use social media more later on.

Conversely, some studies suggest social media use can have some benefits. A recent study that included more than 100,000 Australian students in grades four to 12 showed that older adolescents who engaged in moderate social media use after school—up to 12.5 hours per week—had higher scores on measures of well-being than those who didn’t use social media at all.

Why is the research so mixed?

Part of the reason why there are such conflicting results is that social media and addiction is hard to study, Radesky says. Researchers often rely on study participants to self-report how they feel about a digital product, and these reports are not always reliable and are inherently subjective. Collecting phone data doesn’t offer a full picture either. Scientists could perform brain scans to look at how social media affects the brain’s reward centers, but that would require teenagers to undergo magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans—which would also not exactly be a true snapshot of their real-life social media use, Radesky says.

Adults can have an unhealthy relationship with social media, but Zicherman says that children and younger users may be particularly vulnerable. Some platforms, such as Meta’s Instagram, have taken steps to limit younger users on the platform, including by offering special teen accounts or by limiting how long younger users can be on the app. But some of these age-based restrictions may be ineffective, not least because some kids may be able to get around them, Zicherman says.

“We’ve intentionally designed automatic defaults like Sleep Mode that encourage teens to leave the app and pause notifications over night. Parents can go even further by restricting their teens’ total time to as little as 15 minutes a day or setting scheduled breaks when teens are required to exit our apps,” a Meta spokesperson said in a statement, adding that the company now uses artificial intelligence to help verify young users’ ages. Google didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Addictive or not, social media platforms benefit from holding users’ attention, the experts argue. Some studies suggest people may seek out social media to dissociate—mindlessly scrolling purely to give their brain a break. But that behavior could also lead to “a loss of agency,” Radesky says.

“[There] are all these design features that keep us going and going and going,” she says. These include never-ending feeds, autoplay, and “engagement-based algorithms” that optimize for content that keeps users hooked. “Whether or not it was intentional, I think it simply is designed to be addictive,” Zicherman says.

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Paratroopers leaping down from Osprey choppers and swarming onto the shores of Kharg Island under a hail of gunfire…could this be the next phase of fighting in the Iran war?

The Pentagon is sending its prestigious 82^nd Airborne Division to the Middle East— elite soldiers trained to parachute into hostile foreign territory and take control of the area.

The deployment, leaked to media on Tuesday, is just the latest round of forces being directed to the region as the U.S. gears up for a potentially huge escalation in the war — a possible invasion of Iran’s oil export hub.

Up to 3,000 paratroopers could be joining the estimated 5,000 Marines currently being shipped over, swelling the ranks of the 50,000 American troops already in the Middle East.

President Donald Trump has proposed a deal with the Iranians this week, but also threatened attacks, saying the U.S. “can take out” Kharg Island “at any time”. The small island, sitting just 15 miles off the mainland, is crucial to Iran’s already poor economy, as it accounts for 90 percent of Tehran’s oil exports.

U.S. forces bombed it last week, targeting naval mine sites. But the arrival of thousands of Army soldiers and Marines could give the White House several options to launch an attack on land and allow the administration to make good on its threat.

Why Seize Kharg Island?

Iran’s shut down of the Strait of Hormuz, the crucial shipping lane through which a fifth of the world’s oil and gas normally transits, has been one of the most effective elements of its fight back against the U.S and Israel’s bombardments since February 28.

Blocking flows through the strait has sent oil and gas prices soaring on supply concerns, wreaking havoc on share markets.

Seizing Kharg Island, which lies further north of the Strait in the Gulf, would give the U.S. control of Iran’s oil exports — the backbone of its economy — and also a foothold in the waterway. Taking control of Kharg would pressure Tehran into easing its chokehold on the Strait.

Iran says it is prepared for a U.S. invasion, though. On Wednesday, one of its top wartime leaders said Tehran was “closely monitoring all U.S. movements in the region, especially troop deployments.”

“Do not test our resolve to defend our land,” warned parliamentary speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf.

Why Has the 82nd Airborne Division Been Deployed?

The 82^nd — a division of the U.S. Army —  is usually stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, but can be deployed anywhere, at any time. Officials speaking anonymously have indicated the troops are being sent over, but details on when they would arrive or where they would go have not been disclosed yet.

Unlike other soldiers, they’re trained to swoop into an area within 18 hours without lots of tanks or armored vehicles to back them up. That can leave them vulnerable to enemy attacks, experts say, but their goal is speed and surprise.

They would be supported by thousands of Marines who have also been ordered to the region in recent days. These Marines are masters of missions like quickly taking control of islands, said retired U.S. Navy Vice Admiral Robert Murrett, now a professor of practice of public administration and international affairs at Syracuse University. 

Establishing control over an island is “as front a center a mission” as these Marines could have, Murrett told Newsweek.

The Marine Element

Just shy of 5,000 Marines are currently heading to the Middle East, in two Marine Expeditionary Units (MEUs).

The 31st MEU, made up of 2,200 Marines, are travelling with the USS Tripoli, which left Japan last week and is expected to arrive in the region on Friday.

The Pentagon has also ordered the Boxer Amphibious Ready Group (ARG) — made up of three warships and carrying the 11th MEU — to the region from California. That will take about three to four weeks to arrive, according to reports.

It’s “unusual” for two large MEUs to be deployed at the same time in the Middle East, Murrett said. They would likely work together as even combined, they would still be a relatively small force when pitched against what could be thousands of Iranian soldiers.

While it would make sense to use this number of troops on an island or to launch in-and-out raids on the mainland, they couldn’t hold territory on Iran’s coast for any length of time. These rapid-response units don’t have enough soldiers or equipment to do this successfully.

There have been reports that the U.S. could send troops to clear Iran’s southern coastline, ultimately reopening the Strait of Hormuz. Speculation has also swirled that the U.S. could take other islands off Iran’s coast to achieve the same goal as the need to restore traffic in the strait becomes more pressing for the U.S.

An ARG is made up of an amphibious assault ship — in this case, the USS Boxer, which is essentially a small aircraft carrier ferrying troops, helicopters, and advanced fighter jets — and two other ships. 

They carry vehicles, equipment, and smaller landing craft for Marines to quickly land on shore. 

Such an operation would be an amphibious assault, where U.S. troops would surge onto land from small boats and helicopters, supported by aircraft firing on any Iranian assets that could threaten the American personnel.

The U.S. would find and knock out the major defenses on Kharg in advance. Iranian state-linked media reported that U.S. strikes last week had targeted air defenses on the island, which would threaten troops, aircraft, and ships in a future invasion.

But Iran would still have some weapons to hit back at an invasion, including firing longer-range ballistic missiles or drones from the mainland.

Fighter jets and helicopters would need to shield the U.S. forces while they establish positions on the island, from which they can then launch further attacks.

But it’s risky. Troop deaths would be a nearly impossible to avoid, and although the Marines would receive some cover from their fighter jets and helicopters, ARGs don’t have the same firepower to target Iranian threats as aircraft carriers. 

So a Navy destroyer ship, equipped with powerful long-range missiles, would be key in protecting the ARG, said Murrett.

However, getting bigger ships close enough to the island to support the Marines has its own dangers. They would likely come under fire from Iranian forces, including from anti-ship missiles, and there are fears of mines within the waterway.

Once they’re on shore, the countdown starts. While the Marines and the 82nd could hold an island for a while — even under persistent Iranian fire — they would be unlikely to keep control of mainland Iranian sites without more troops arriving quickly.

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Prestigious 82^nd Airborne Division to the Middle East

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At the start of the year, the Russian economy looked to be giving way. Under the strain of war and sanctions, revenues were falling, production was shrinking, and trade was running low. With rising tariffs, credit was prohibitively expensive and borrowing all but impossible: A wave of bankruptcies was on the horizon. In late January, Russia was forced to sell oil to India at just $22 per barrel, about a third of the market rate. As a symbol of unsustainability, it was hard to beat.

President Vladimir Putin has heard such complaints throughout the war. Yet, according to those around him, he has chosen largely not to listen. Officials and business leaders, for their part, understood that the continuation of the war was his absolute priority and that the country’s economic situation was of little consequence. But in February, something shifted. Mr. Putin began, suddenly, to pay attention to the flagging economy. There were even signs he might be changing his mind on negotiations with Ukraine, perhaps seeking an exit from the conflict.

Then came the war in Iran. In one swoop, the conditions for conciliation were overturned. Amid buoyant oil prices, Western division and American overreach, the pressure on Mr. Putin to come to terms ebbed away. By a strange twist of history, the start of the war in Iran halted the prospect of ending the war in Ukraine — at the very moment when Mr. Putin appeared ready to consider it.

In February, Mr. Putin seemed ready to change course and overhaul his negotiating team. Kirill Dmitriev, the Kremlin’s chief envoy who is widely seen as an insubstantial figure with no real mandate, was reportedly on the verge of dismissal. The leading candidate to replace him was Igor Sechin, the head of the state oil giant Rosneft. Regarded as Mr. Putin’s right-hand man, Mr. Sechin previously oversaw Russia’s relationships with Latin America, as well as the cultivation of close relationships with American oil executives. Here was an indication that Mr. Putin might begin to take talks seriously.

At the same time, rumors began circulating of an imminent large-scale reshuffle of the Russian government. If Mr. Putin were to engage properly in negotiations and pursue peace with Ukraine, he would have to entirely rebuild the structure of power. According to people close to the Kremlin, that could include dismissing the current government. Clouds had already begun to gather over Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin: Individuals close to him have recently become defendants in criminal cases.

We will never know what might have happened. On Feb. 28, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in a joint U.S.-Israeli attack; in the days that followed, everything changed. Oil prices surged above $100 a barrel and, in a major reversal, the United States lifted sanctions on Russian oil. Demand soared for Russian fertilizer as the world reeled from disruptions to food supply. All of a sudden, the economic problems bedeviling Russia seemed to evaporate.

What’s more, divisions deepened between the United States and its NATO allies, who refused to send ships to the Strait of Hormuz. President Trump called it a “very foolish mistake.” For Mr. Putin, whose foreign policy has been built around cultivating disorder in the West, this was welcome. Equally important is the absorption of America’s attention in the Middle East, pushing Ukraine far from mind. It’s not just attention that is being diverted: The United States is burning through weaponry and ammunition that could otherwise be sent to Ukraine.

In America, too, the Kremlin spies an advantage. It’s not hard to see how a protracted conflict with Iran could erode Mr. Trump’s political standing and weaken the Republican Party, making the upcoming midterm elections especially precarious. This reinforces Mr. Putin’s conviction about the transience of American politics. Mr. Trump, like any American president, is a temporary figure: A new administration will eventually arrive, potentially with a very different approach to Russia. The war in Iran may hasten that shift. In this view, concessions on Ukraine would be pointless.

These are all considerable boons for the Kremlin. But the money now flooding into Russia is by no means a guarantee that Mr. Putin will be able to continue the war indefinitely. On the contrary, some close to the government believe that the current situation will be short-lived. By May, many in Moscow expect, the war in Iran could be over, and sanctions against Russia reinstated. For the troubled Russian economy, there is no permanent salvation.

The situation inside Russia is becoming turbulent, too. Ahead of parliamentary elections this fall, the Kremlin is in a state of near-paranoid anticipation, nervously flip-flopping on plans to stuff Parliament with veterans and dealing harshly with a pro-regime blogger who publicly turned on Mr. Putin. It has moved to block Telegram, the country’s most widely used messaging platform, while internet outages are becoming increasingly frequent in Moscow and St. Petersburg. The rumors of sweeping government reshuffles have not gone away.

A level of public discontent that until recently would have been unthinkable is now part of daily life. Before too long, it seems, Mr. Putin will have to make a consequential choice: either agree to some form of de-escalation in Ukraine, potentially including an end to the war, or move in the opposite direction — tightening controls across the board, even to the point of a new mobilization. It’s impossible to predict what decision Mr. Putin will make. But a large factor will be whether America continues in its own war.

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Pool photo by Alexander Zemlianichenko

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When we think of drought, we tend to think of consequences we can see—wildfires, hose bans, taps that run dry and crops that fail. But it turns out drought can have a damaging effect even on the microscopic level by promoting dangerous antibiotic resistance in bacteria.

The finding is detailed in a study published Monday in Nature Microbiology. Researchers discovered that drought conditions can boost both soil-dwelling and human-hosted bacteria’s ability to resist antibiotics. And as rising global temperatures dry out more of the world, more people may be exposed to these treatment-immune pathogens.

“We found this really surprisingly strong correlation of the aridity index and antibiotic resistance,” says Dianne Newman, senior author of the study and a microbiologist at the California Institute of Technology, who adds that the data are a “wake-up call” for people to pay attention to antibiotic resistance.

“I think [the study authors] are exploring something novel,” says Jason Burnham, an infectious diseases physician and clinical researcher who was not involved in the new research. Antibiotic resistance isn’t a new problem: first noticed soon after the discovery of antibiotics, the ability of some bacteria to evade treatment with these drugs has challenged physicians for decades and contributes to an estimated five million deaths worldwide each year. But connecting it to climate change is an emerging area of interest—and there are many unanswered questions about how a warmer world will influence disease.

Newman and her colleagues were interested in the ecological niche of phenazines, which are naturally occurring antibiotics that live in soil. When they tested the microbial population in wet and dry soil samples, they noticed that drier conditions tended to increase the concentration of antibiotics—and resistant bacteria.

“It stands to reason that if you have bacteria in the soil making antibiotics, and you start drying out the soil, those antibiotics become more concentrated,” Newman says. “The only bacteria that can withstand that are those that can resist it.”

The researchers also looked at soil data from several different ecosystems that had experienced drought and found elevated levels of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Then they analyzed hospital data that revealed that the aridity of a hospital’s location was strongly correlated with the number of antibiotic-resistant infections.

As the planet warms, more of the world—perhaps as much as 25 percent of Earth by 2050—will experience droughts and desert-like conditions. That could translate to much higher rates of antibiotic-resistant bacterial diseases—but it could also help doctors in dry areas better prepare to fight these illnesses.

“What [the authors] are proposing, reading between the lines a little bit, is that hospitals in drier areas may need to use different antibiotics than hospitals with sort of less arid conditions,” Burnham says.

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Carrot cake is as quintessential to an Easter table as ham or lamb. Some say it made its way to Easter’s spotlight because it’s supposedly the favorite snack of the Easter Bunny. Folklore aside, we do know that carrots harvested in the spring are especially sweet. When combined with warm spices, bright citrus, crunchy nuts, and dried fruit, carrot cake strikes the balance of bright yet cozy — perfect for the crossover from winter to spring. Whether it’s a layer cake, sheet cake, or baked in a Bundt, carrot cake is beloved in all forms. 

When considering the best desserts for Easter, we dug into the Food & Wine archives to revisit some of our favorite carrot cake recipes. We chose a classic layer cake, a citrus-scented Bundt, a simple snack cake, and a sheet cake made with loads of cardamom and ghee. The variety of carrot cakes was impressive, but only one delivered on taste and flavor while providing the nostalgic experience many crave from this classic dessert.

Experienced recipe testers from the People Inc. Food Studios got to baking, then tasted the results alongside a team of F&W food experts and editors. It was the ultimate carrot cake showdown, with one cake standing out among the rest.

Winner: Jodi Elliott’s Classic Carrot Cake with Fluffy Cream Cheese Frosting

Food & Wine / Photo by Victor Protasio / Food Styling by Emily Nabors Hall / Prop Styling by Priscilla Montiel

Active time: 40 minutes
Total time: 3 hours 30 minutes

Chef Jodi Elliott took home the 2013 F&W People’s Best New Pastry Chef award for her work at the award-winning restaurant Foreign & Domestic in Austin. She went on to open the now-closed Bribery Bakery, which filled its cases with classic, nostalgic desserts that featured her own creative spins. In a 2014 interview with Edible Austin, she noted, “Everyone connects with desserts that remind them of family and things they can make in their own home.” This feeling of familiarity was what our tasting team loved most about her traditional carrot cake recipe, taking it to the top of our list.

Elliott’s Classic Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting looks and tastes nostalgic. Two round cake layers pack a pound of coarsely grated carrots and loads of toasted pecans for crunch. Buttermilk keeps the layers tender and moist, while a whisper of cinnamon lends subtle spice. Layered with a simple cream cheese frosting, then garnished with more crunchy pecans, this cake looks like it belongs on a cake stand in an American-style 1950s diner. 

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Credit: Food & Wine / Photo by Victor Protasio / Food Styling by Emily Nabors Hall / Prop Styling by Priscilla Montiel

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President Trump seized on initial contacts between Iranian and American officials to back away on Monday from his threat to strike power plants in Iran, declaring that the countries had begun “productive conversations” for the first time since the war began more than three weeks ago.

Iranian officials publicly denied that any negotiations about terms to end the war were underway, and American officials said the contacts were in a very early stage and not substantive.

But Mr. Trump used the opening of even an early dialogue as an offramp from the threat he issued Saturday to attack Iran’s power plants in retribution for the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Iran had vowed not to capitulate, and the 48-hour deadline Mr. Trump had set would have expired on Monday.

Mr. Trump said he would now extend his deadline to Friday to give the talks time to proceed, setting off a flurry of diplomacy by a number of nations seeking to nurture the talks. It remained unclear, though, how seriously the White House was taking the potential for a breakthrough in a conflict that has seen both sides escalate for weeks.

“We’re doing a five-day period,” Mr. Trump told reporters on Monday about his pause on hitting Iranian power plants, targets that are forbidden under most circumstances under the Geneva Conventions. “We’ll see how that goes, and if it goes well, we’re going to end up with settling this. Otherwise, we’ll just keep bombing our little hearts out.”

Even as Mr. Trump retreated from one military option, U.S. and Israeli officials said they were continuing to carry out other strikes against Iran, and more American military assets were headed to the region. Officials said Mr. Trump was still weighing more aggressive operations, including one to seize Kharg Island, Iran’s main oil export hub, and another to send ground forces into Iran to secure highly enriched uranium.

Mr. Trump on Monday provided few details of the conversations with Iran beyond saying Jared Kushner, his son-in-law, and Steve Witkoff, his special envoy, were leading the negotiations. He said they were communicating directly with one of Iran’s leaders, without naming the person. American and Iranian officials familiar with the conversations, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive talks, said Mr. Witkoff has had direct communication with Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, in recent days.

The president said the United States was still demanding an end to Iranian nuclear enrichment and elimination of all of the country’s uranium stockpiles that could be used to one day make a bomb, terms that Iran had previously rejected. It was the breakdown of diplomatic negotiations between Mr. Kushner, Mr. Witkoff, and Mr. Araghchi that led to the United States and Israel launching strikes against Iran at the end of February.

Iranian officials denied Monday that they were negotiating with the United States, and Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of Iran’s Parliament, wrote on social media that Mr. Trump’s comments were an attempt to “escape the quagmire in which the US and Israel are trapped.”

In interviews, four Iranian officials said that the messages passed in the past few days through intermediaries and in direct conversations with the Americans were essentially probes on how to de-escalate the conflict, with the goal of averting a spiraling escalation, including attacks on critical energy infrastructure.

The officials said that Mr. Araghchi told Mr. Witkoff that Iran was not interested in a temporary cease-fire and wanted a sustainable peace deal, with guarantees that the United States and Israel would not attack it again. The officials said the Iranians also sought specific economic sanctions relief from Washington, a topic that, in negotiations before the war, American officials said would only happen after Iran delivered on its nuclear and other commitments in any agreement.

But Mr. Trump’s characterization of these as “productive conversations” seemed to overstate the current state of the talks.

Ali Vaez, the Iran project director at the International Crisis Group, said the Iranians would not engage in a high-level meeting before knowing that the United States was stepping away from its “maximalist” demands.

“Not attacking energy infrastructure is a low bar,” he said. “The terms of a cease-fire, or an agreement that would resolve the longer-term problems. including the fate of the stockpile or reopening of the strait — none of those things are anywhere close to the finish line right now.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said that he spoke with Mr. Trump on Monday and that Mr. Trump believed it was possible to “leverage” their military achievements against Iran to “realize the objectives of the war in an agreement.”

But Mr. Netanyahu, whose strategy has sometimes been at odds with Mr. Trump’s in recent weeks, made it clear he had no intention of letting up. “We are smashing the missile program and the nuclear program, and we continue to deal severe blows to Hezbollah.” He revealed that Israel recently “eliminated two more nuclear scientists” in Iran.

Arab countries in the Persian Gulf decided they did not want to act as mediators as long as Iran continued to attack their countries, but several other countries, including Pakistan, Turkey, and Egypt, have offered assistance, though it remains unclear if there are any mediating partners involved.

Turkey and Pakistan have floated ideas for in-person meetings between U.S. and Iranian officials. One proposal calls for a meeting between Mr. Araghchi, Mr. Witkoff, and Mr. Kushne,r while another suggests Vice President JD Vance meets with Mr. Ghalibaf. Officials said none of the meetings have been scheduled.

“These are sensitive diplomatic discussions and the U.S. will not negotiate through the press,” Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said in a statement. “This is a fluid situation, and speculation about meetings should not be deemed as final until they are formally announced by the White House.”

For Mr. Trump, the prospect of negotiations allows him to buy time to try reopen the Strait of Hormuz and to extract himself from a box of his own construction. On Saturday night, Mr. Trump said if Iran did not open the strait within 48 hours, the United States would “obliterate” Iran’s power plants.

After he issued his threat, it became clear that if he attacked Iran’s electrical infrastructure, the retaliation would take place against Gulf allies who are already trying to keep the war from spreading. But if he backed away from his threat, some officials around him feared he would be conveying weakness to the Iranians.

Already on Monday, Iranian officials said Mr. Trump’s announcement was evidence of the United States giving in. “Trump, out of fear of Iran’s response, backed down from his 48-hour ultimatum,” the Iranian state broadcaster, IRIB, said.

Mr. Trump is facing increasing domestic and economic pressure to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. The war’s global fallout has seen the price of oil and gas shoot up as much as 40 percent since late February, a crisis that is now worse than the oil shocks in 1973 and 1979 combined, according to the head of the International Energy Agency.

Mr. Trump’s statement about talks with Iran immediately reduced energy prices somewhat, but it was unclear how long that could last without tangible progress toward ending the war. The president has repeatedly given optimistic assessments that temporarily eased market jitters, only for prices to rise again.

Mr. Trump on Monday promised the Strait of Hormuz would be open “very soon” and would be “jointly controlled.”

“Maybe me? Maybe me,” he said when asked who would control the key waterway. “Me and the ayatollah. Whoever the ayatollah is.”

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Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, in Tehran last year. He is said to have conveyed to the U.S. that Iran would need sanctions relief and guarantees against future attacks. Credit…Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times

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