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

Episode Date: March 25, 2026

Plus, a jaw-dropping A.I. tool goes dark. Here’s what we’re covering: United States Said to Have Sent Iran a Plan to End the Middle East War, by Adam Rasgon, Julian E. Barnes and Farnaz Fassihi Around 2,000 U.S. Paratroopers to Be Sent to the Middle East, by Eric Schmitt Iran Signals Resilience With Volley of Missiles Across Middle East, by Yeganeh Torbati, Gabby Sobelman, Erica L. Green and Thomas Fuller Investigators Seek Answers in Attacks on Jewish Sites in Europe, by Adam Goldman and Lizzie Dearden Florida Democrats Win Special Election in Mar-a-Lago’s District, by David W. Chen Meta Ordered to Pay $375 Million Over Child Safety Violations, by Cecilia Kang and Eli Tan OpenAI Is Shutting Down Sora, Its A.I. Video Generator, by Cade Metz Tune in every weekday morning, and tell us what you think at: [e-mail]. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Wednesday, March 25th. Here's what we're covering. In the war with Iran, the Trump administration is pushing forward on two fronts at the same time. There's diplomacy, negotiations, 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. It'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. At the same time, the Pentagon has been a lot of the Pentagon has been.

ordered around 2,000 paratroopers to be sent to the Middle East, according to defense officials, giving President Trump additional military options, even as he's weighing diplomacy. 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.

In the face of all of this, the U.S. proposal on the table, the surge 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. Iranian strikes hit Bahrain and Iraq yesterday, and multiple sites in Israel, including a direct hit to Tel Aviv, after Israeli air defenses failed to intercept a missile. Today we received very sad news about this attack on a Jewish school. It's totally unacceptable. Meanwhile, in Europe,

As I saw the vehicle, I was really traumatized and shocked. 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 in the Netherlands, Netherlands, two Jewish schools, a bank and a car in a Jewish neighborhood, have also been attacked. There have been no injuries, but it stoked a new wave of fear and anxiety amid an already sharp uptick in anti-Semitic incidents. A previously unknown Islamist group has taken credit for the attacks and promised future violence if European countries don't distance themselves from what it called, quote, American and Zionist interests. So far, investigators.

haven't publicly implicated that group, and there are questions about whether it's a bogus front masking the involvement of Iran. Police have made arrests in some of the cases, which could potentially clarify whether the attacks have been coordinated, and if so, by whom? One expert at the International Center of Counterterrorism told the Times that the goal of the recent attacks appears to be to create confusion and get attention, and that, quote, there's no reason to believe this was the last attack. In the U.S., a special election last night in Florida handed Democrats a surprising win. In a Palm Beach district that includes Mara Lago, a first-time Democratic candidate beat out a Republican to flip a state house 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. Republican 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. This year, a series of high-profile trials across the U.S. are turning a spotlight on social media companies and the question of whether their products have harmed children. Yesterday, Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, faced its first major loss in court. In New Mexico, a jury 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 to show how vulnerable they were to online 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. In 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 outcome of that fight will be 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. And finally. You can generate almost any kind of video that you can imagine, from goofy memes to cartoons to movie quality videos.

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 turn 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.

Some 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, but the decision appears to be a 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, chat GPT. And running a video generation service, especially a consumer app with no source of revenue, 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.

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