An Increase in U.S. Troops to the Middle East, and a String of Attacks on Jewish Sites

0:00This podcast is supported by Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Here's a story that's not getting nearly enough attention. Defunding Planned Parenthood has already caused chaos and harm, and access to essential reproductive care is plummeting. Right now, the Trump administration's backers in Congress want to permanently defund Planned Parenthood, forcing even more health centers to close, and millions at risk of losing access to care. It takes less than a minute to help. Go to plannedparenthood.org slash defend and make a gift of any size. From The New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford.

0:38Today's Wednesday, March 25th. Here's what we're covering.

0:45In the war with Iran, President Trump is pushing forward on two fronts at the same time. There's diplomacy and there's military force. Both are currently on full display. We're in negotiations right now. They're doing it along with Marco, J.D. The Times has learned from two officials briefed on the diplomatic approach that the U.S. put together a 15-point plan to end the war with Iran and sent it over. We're actually talking to the right people and they want to make a deal so badly. You have no idea how badly they want to make a deal. It's unclear what all is in the plan. The officials say it deals with Iran's ballistic missile and nuclear programs and shipping routes.

1:25It's also unclear whether Israel, which has been bombing Iran in coordination with the U.S., is on board with it. But it shows that the White House is eager to negotiate to find an off-ramp to the conflict that's been driving up oil prices and rattling the economy. According to officials, the plan was delivered via Pakistan, whose army chief has emerged as a key go-between for the U.S. and Iran. Iran may have trouble delivering a quick response to the American outreach, though. Senior officials there have been struggling to communicate with each other, and they're worried that if they meet up to talk in person, they could be bombed.

2:02At the same time, even as President Trump is talking up the negotiations, defense officials tell The Times the U.S. is sending around 2 ,000 paratroopers to the Middle East. It's unclear where exactly they'll be deployed, but the officials said it would be within striking distance of Iran. They could, for instance, be sent to seize Karg Island, Iran's main oil export hub, which U.S. warplanes have already targeted. Separately, about 2 ,300 Marines are scheduled to arrive in the region this week. They could also be tasked with taking Karg Island or helping to clear the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran has effectively closed, choking off a key oil and gas route.

2:40In the face of all this, the U.S. proposal on the table, the new wave of troops, Iran has been defiant. Multiple Iranian officials have publicly denied their country is negotiating with the U.S. and their forces have continued to fire off missiles, proving they still have an arsenal.

3:00Meanwhile, in Europe. Today we received very sad news about this attack on a Jewish school. It's totally unacceptable. Investigators are trying to figure out if a string of attacks on Jewish sites over the past few weeks have been carried out by Iran or its proxies. Four ambulances belonging to the Jewish Community Ambulance Service were set on fire in Golders Green. In London on Monday, residents in a neighborhood with a large Jewish population were woken up by the sound of exploding oxygen canisters as ambulances parked next to a synagogue were torched. And in Belgium and the Netherlands, two Jewish schools, a bank and a car in a Jewish neighborhood, have also been attacked.

3:41It stoked a new wave of fear and anxiety amid an already sharp uptick in anti-Semitic incidents. So far, investigators haven't publicly said who's behind the attacks, though a previously unknown Islamist group has taken credit online. It warned that the attacks would continue if European countries didn't distance themselves from, quote, American and Zionist interests. There are questions about whether the group is a bogus front masking the involvement of Iran. Police have made arrests in some of the cases, which could potentially clarify if they were coordinated, and if so, by whom. One expert at the International Center for Counterterrorism told the Times that the goal of the recent attacks, which did not lead to any injuries, appears to be to create confusion and get attention, and that, quote, there's no reason to believe this was the last attack.

4:41In the U.S., a special election last night in Florida handed Democrats a surprising win right in President Trump's backyard. In a Palm Beach district that includes Mar-a-Lago, a first-time Democratic candidate beat out a Republican to flip a statehouse seat. The win is part of a broader trend. Since the 2024 election, Democrats have flipped more than two dozen seats in battleground or Republican-led states, including Arkansas and New Hampshire, earlier this month. Republicans have flipped zero. Democrats say the results show mounting anger at President Trump and his party, feelings that could carry through to November in the midterms.

5:23Republican strategists, meanwhile, have framed the losses as a kind of natural regression. It's become common for the party in power to lose seats after they take the White House. Notably, President Trump himself voted in yesterday's special election using a method he's repeatedly railed against, mail-in voting. Just this week, he called the practice, quote, mail-in cheating. He's been pushing Republicans to make it significantly harder to vote by mail, claiming without evidence that it's led to widespread voter fraud.

6:00This year, social media companies have come under intense scrutiny in a series of lawsuits that claim their products have harmed children. And yesterday, Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, faced one of its first major losses in court. A jury in New Mexico found the company misled people about the safety of its platforms and enabled the sexual exploitation of young users. To build their case, state investigators posed as kids online. to show how vulnerable they were to predators. They said they found Instagram, in particular, was a, quote, breeding ground for exploitation. The jury said Meta must pay$375 million in damages, and there could still be more fallout.

6:43In another upcoming trial, the state's attorney general plans to ask the court to order Meta to make changes to its apps to make them safer for young users. The fight in New Mexico is being closely watched by parents, policymakers, and the tech industry, there's been a push to also force changes at TikTok, Snap, and YouTube. In a statement, a Meta spokesman said that Meta will appeal the New Mexico decision and that the company is, quote, confident in our record of protecting teens online.

7:18And finally. You can generate almost any kind of video that you can imagine, from goofy memes to cartoons. Just this fall, OpenAI was pushing its Sora app in a big way. It's the most powerful imagination engine ever built. The promise was huge. Sora could generate realistic videos super fast. People used it to churn out whatever they could think of. Two of my colleagues covering tech at the times made a video of themselves skydiving with a giant pizza as a parachute. It looked good. Disney even signed a deal so people could use Sora to generate videos with copyrighted characters like Mickey Mouse or Yoda.

7:58Some people predicted this was the big one, a first step in killing Hollywood and replacing actors and creators with AI. But now OpenAI just announced it's pulling the plug and shutting Sora down. It didn't give a reason. The decision appears to be part of the company's efforts to focus and streamline its operations. People made a lot of Sora videos, but the app never matched the popularity of OpenAI's breakout hit, ChatGPT. And running a video generation service like Sora is enormously expensive. It requires way more computing power and electricity than other apps or internet services. Essentially, hyper-realistic pizza parachutes have a high cost, and OpenAI seems to have decided it wasn't worth it right now.

8:48Those are the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. We'll be back tomorrow.

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