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Refusal to allow use of bases in Rota and Morón follows Pedro Sánchez’s condemnation of US-Israeli action

Spain has denied the US permission to use jointly operated military bases on its territory to attack Iran as Madrid stepped up its criticism of the “unjustified and dangerous military intervention”.

Spain’s socialist prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has explicitly condemned the US and Israel’s “unilateral military action” against Iran, warning that it is contributing to “a more hostile and uncertain international order”. The rebukes have been reinforced by his government’s refusal to allow the US to use bases in Rota and Morón for the continuing strikes against Iran.

José Manuel Albares, Spain’s foreign minister, said on Monday that while the government wanted “democracy, freedom and fundamental rights for the Iranian people”, it would on no account allow its bases to be used in the ongoing military action.

Trump won the presidency in 2016 and 2024 thanks in no small part to campaigning against the long and draining wars of his predecessors. Now, he’s started a war of his own.

Beijing can again leverage its critical minerals dominance over an increasingly busy US military, as Taiwan slides further down the White House list of priorities

As the US and Israel opened a new chapter of chaos in the Middle East, China stands to benefit from a Washington establishment that does not have the political or physical resources to focus on Asia.

Officially, China has condemned the attacks. Wang Yi, the foreign minister, called them “unacceptable” and called for a ceasefire, rhetoric that is typical of Beijing in response to Donald Trump’s increasingly erratic foreign policy moves.

Wang made similar comments after the US capture of the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, in January. The Chinese government wastes no opportunity to present itself as the defender of international laws and stability, although it provides little material support to smaller partners in the crosshairs of the US president’s latest furies.

Iran continues to target American bases and Hezbollah fires at Israel as conflict spreads across Middle East

Iranian drones hit the US embassy in Riyadh as Tehran continued to launch waves of retaliatory strikes at the Gulf and Israel, while Israeli soldiers began operating in southern Lebanon on the fourth day of an increasingly regional war in the Middle East.

The drone attack on the US embassy in Riyadh caused a minor fire, prompting the diplomatic mission to tell Americans to distance themselves from the compound. The attack followed an earlier Iranian drone strike on the US embassy in Kuwait, as Iran continued to target US bases, facilities and personnel in Arab Gulf states.

The pro-Iran group Hezbollah also continued to target Israel, saying it launched two missile salvoes overnight targeting military bases in northern Israel. In response, Israel continued to carry out strikes and issue evacuation orders for villages in south Lebanon, virtually emptying out the country south of the Litani River and turning the southern suburbs of Beirut into a ghost town.

A Minnesota county attorney may pursue charges against federal officers for alleged misconduct during an immigration crackdown in the Minneapolis area

A Minnesota prosecutor announced an investigation Monday that may lead to charges against federal officers, including Border Patrol official Greg Bovino, for misconduct during an immigration enforcement crackdown.

Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said in a news conference that her office is already looking into 17 cases, including one where Bovino threw a smoke canister at protesters on Jan. 21. Another on Jan. 7 involved federal officers making an arrest outside a high school and deploying chemical irritants while students and staff were in the area.

“Make no mistake, we are not afraid of the legal fight, and we are committed to doing this correctly,” Moriarty said. “Operation Metro Surge caused immeasurable harm to our community.”

GOP Rep. Nancy Mace is under investigation by the House Ethics Committee for allegedly attempting to profit off of a congressional program intended to defray housing costs for lawmakers’ Washington, DC, residences — a claim she has denied.

According to a newly published report from the Office of Congressional Conduct, the South Carolina Republican sought and was paid roughly $9,500 beyond the actual costs of her residence in DC.

“There is substantial reason to believe that Rep. Mace engaged in improper reimbursement practices,” the nonpartisan watchdog group said in its official referral to the House Ethics Committee. The ethics committee announced Monday it is investigating the matter.

Parents and teachers who oppose the state policies sued, claiming their parental, free speech and religious rights were violated.

The Supreme Court on Monday barred California from enforcing state rules that restrict when schools can notify parents about students who come out as transgender and requires teachers to use children's preferred pronouns.

The court, on a 6-3 vote on ideological lines, allowed a federal judge’s ruling in favor of parents who oppose the policy on religious grounds to go into effect. The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had put the judge’s decision on hold pending further litigation.

The court's ruling focused on the parents' claim that their rights under the free exercise clause of the Constitution's First Amendment were violated. The court also said they have valid parental rights claims under the Constitution's 14th Amendment.

GOP Rep. Thomas Massie accuses Donald Trump of attempting to distract from the Jeffrey Epstein scandal by launching new offensive overseas

A Republican lawmaker has warned Donald Trump that the joint U.S.-Israeli assault on Iran “won’t make the Epstein files go away.”

Operation Epic Fury began in the early hours of Saturday morning and saw airstrikes on Tehran and other Iranian cities that ultimately led to the killing of the country’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and a wave of retaliatory strikes by the regime across the Middle East.

At least four U.S. soldiers have already been killed, three American fighter jets have been brought down over Kuwait in an apparent friendly fire incident, the exchange of hostilities has spread to Lebanon, and Trump has said he is anticipating the mission continuing for “four to five weeks,” urging the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to surrender and the people to rise up.

S. app uninstalls of ChatGPT’s mobile app jumped 295% day-over-day on Saturday, February 28, as consumers responded to the news of OpenAI’s deal with the Department of Defense (DoD), which has been rebranded under the Trump administration as the Department of War.

This data, which comes from market intelligence provider Sensor Tower, represents a sizable increase compared with ChatGPT’s typical day-over-day uninstall rate of 9%, as measured over the past 30 days.

Meanwhile, U.S. downloads for OpenAI competitor Anthropic’s Claude jumped up by 37% day-over-day on Friday, February 27, and 51% as of Saturday, February 28, after the company announced that it would not partner with the U.S. defense department. Anthropic said it was not able to agree on the deal terms over concerns that AI would be used to surveil Americans and be used in fully autonomous weaponry, which AI is not yet ready to do safely.

Container ships account for roughly 100 of ​the 750 ships ensnared in the Strait of Hormuz ‌backups following U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran, Jeremy Nixon, CEO of container carrier Ocean Network Express (ONE), said on Monday.

"About 10% of ​the container ship global fleet is caught up ​in this," Nixon said at S&P Global Market Intelligence’s TPM26 ⁠container shipping conference in Long Beach.

Maritime insurers ceased covering voyages through ​the strait between Iran and Oman, which carries around one-fifth of ​oil consumed globally as well as large quantities of gas, as Iran retaliated against U.S. and Israeli strikes. The commander of the country's ​Revolutionary Guards told Iranian state television Monday that any ​ship that attempted to transit the strait would be set aflame.

France is to boost its nuclear arsenal and extend the deterrent to cover other European countries, in a major development of its nuclear defence policy.

In a speech in Brittany, President Emmanuel Macron explained the changes as the response to an increasingly unstable strategic environment.

"The next 50 years will be an era of nuclear weapons," he said.

Speaking to naval officers in front of a nuclear submarine at the Ile Longue base near the port of Brest, he said the number of French nuclear warheads would be increased from their current level of around 300.

The Trump administration has decided to drop its prolonged court fights against four law firms with ties to Democrats, after it had sought and failed to cut out the firms’ access to the federal government as part of an apparent retribution campaign by Donald Trump.

The cases had been some of the most shocking attempts at retribution by Trump for his own past legal issues, with Trump aiming at large and well-known firms with prominent lawyers who had ties to Democratic administrations and the party.

Other firms under threat of similar Trump executive orders cut deals with the administration and changed their approach, especially by shifting the political leanings in the pro bono work they were willing to do, from liberal causes to more conservative ones.

Though the executive orders didn’t survive in court, they have widely curtailed large American law firms’ willingness to oppose the administration and represent progressive causes publicly.