On a recent gray and dreary day, lecturer Chesney Snow circles a studio at Princeton University’s Lewis Center for the Arts, surveying students who are role-playing on yoga mats. Their aesthetic of Nikes, shell-toe Adidas, and Pumas matches the subject perfectly: hip-hop. 

Mr. Snow’s students – seven women and one man – are preparing to perform spoken word and body movements as an accompanist plays a black upright piano.

“Center yourselves,” Mr. Snow instructs. “Being vulnerable in hip-hop is really, really central to the work that we have to do.”

Why We Wrote This

Colleges are adding courses and even degrees in hip-hop, signaling a growing recognition in academia of the musical genre as an art form. Educators and students believe career paths will keep opening.

The course name is Miss-Education: The Women of Hip-Hop. 

Although an elective on this campus, hip-hop has advanced in academia, from the first class on the genre being taught at Howard University in 1991 to minors and certificates, and now to full degrees in hip-hop offered at schools like Johns Hopkins University’s Peabody Institute in Baltimore and Loyola University New Orleans. Some educators say hip-hop studies can boost student engagement and foster culturally relevant pedagogy. It also bridges the gap between academic theory and lived experience. 

A Broadway actor and singer who founded the American Beatbox Championships, Mr. Snow envisions the class as a study of feminism in hip-hop. But he also wants it to be performance-based, similar to the popular early aughts MTV program “The Lyricist Lounge Show,” which blended sketch comedy and hip-hop. He says he uses musical theater, comedy, and hip-hop to delve into critical social issues.

His students read scholarly books, learn the importance of documenting history, and conduct research through interviews. Performance is next, with original student pieces in the pipeline.

How we got here

Hip-hop music, created in the 1970s on New York City streets, was once considered a fad, but it has grown to become arguably the most influential music genre in the United States and a dominant force globally, creating billionaire artists and producers and dominating music charts. Hip-hop has influenced global fashion and social justice movements and solidified itself as a major art form. From rapper and music producer Kendrick Lamar’s Pulitzer Prize to classes in esteemed university lecture halls, hip-hop has solidified its status.

Academics say that, like jazz in its early days , hip-hop has relatively few academic programs for now, but it will keep growing. 

Hip-hop practitioners are being hired to teach, students are writing dissertations, and more graduate courses that draw research dollars are being taught. Money has been pumped into conferences at institutions such as Ohio State University, Columbia University, the University at Buffalo, and Rutgers. 

Harvard University started the Marcyliena H. Morgan Hip Hop Archive & Research Center in 2002. In 2012, the University of Arizona was the first to offer a minor in hip-hop studies. A year later, Harvard offered the first Nasir Jones Hip Hop Fellowship. 

In 2021, Loyola University New Orleans offered the first Bachelor of Science in Hip Hop and R&B. In January of this year, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign board of trustees approved a Bachelor of Arts degree in Hip Hop Culture and the Arts. The Illinois Board of Higher Education is reviewing the proposal.

From study to career

Bachelor’s programs in hip-hop signal not only students’ willingness to invest four years studying it in college. It also means students believe hip-hop degrees will help them transition into marketable careers spanning from hip-hop artists and producers to teaching and researching the art form’s contributions to the world, similar to jazz more than half a century ago.

“Hip-hop has been a galvanizing grassroots arts movement that grew from our cities, including having a vibrant history and presence here in Baltimore,” says Fred Bronstein, dean of the Peabody Institute, the country’s oldest conservatory, at Johns Hopkins University. Mr. Bronstein says that the major grew from a popular class that composer and pianist Wendel Patrick started teaching in 2018. Enrollment in the course has tripled over the last five years, he says.

The major blends Peabody’s music engineering and technology programs with performance training, the foundation of its strong reputation.

Mr. Patrick leads the program and recruited Grammy Award-winning rapper Lupe Fiasco to be a visiting professor. Mr. Fiasco has held other prominent faculty appointments at schools such as Yale University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

“We in academia have to break down artistic silos, expand the canon, and teach all our students to think more broadly about what it means to be a musician,” Mr. Bronstein says via email.

Using a hip-hop lens to see the world

Timothy Welbeck is an assistant professor of Africology and African American Studies and the director of the Center for Anti-

Racism at Temple University. Last year, he began teaching a class called Kendrick Lamar and the Morale of m.A.A.d City, which uses five of Mr. Lamar’s studio albums – a blend of Black music art forms, such as rap, jazz, and rhythm and blues – to discuss themes like police brutality, housing segregation, and urban policy. 

In addition to his Pulitzer, Mr. Lamar is an Emmy Award-

winner who recently became the most decorated Grammy Award-winning rapper of all time.

“It’s a legitimate form of academic study, but it took a long time for the academy to figure that out, and there was a lot of stumbling along the way,” Mr. Welbeck says. 

He says that it was hard for academics to wrap their heads around what hip-hop studies can be. 

“If we can talk about Shakespeare, we can talk about Kendrick Lamar. If we can talk about Beethoven and or Chopin and Bach, and talk about baroque music and how that illustrated the tones and the impressions of the time that it was released, we can talk about how ‘good kid, m.A.A.d city’ reflected the times that it was released,” Mr. Welbeck says, referring to Mr. Lamar’s second studio album.

How it relates

Toby Jenkins, a professor of higher education at the University of South Carolina and associate provost for faculty development, teaches a course on hip-hop culture and has documented some of the history of hip-hop and academia. She says that she treats hip-hop as a tool for student engagement.

“I think it is attractive to students to have institutions that have unique offerings that seem exciting,” Dr. Jenkins says. “[Students] expect it to feel a little bit different than high school felt, and to be more life-giving and exciting.”

The class she teaches this semester touches on hip-hop culture and elevates themes in everyday life, such as what it means to have ambition, to affirm people in their lives, or to be creative and authentic to oneself. There’s the music and the genre’s visual and audio components. Students create playlists for each class and discuss reading material through a hip-hop lens. 

“As some scholars become really important, you see somebody writing a book, and they’re on The New York Times Best Seller list, then [hip-hop] becomes okay,” Dr. Jenkins says. “You see an institution like Harvard creating the Nas fellowship, and it becomes OK. Harvard has a whole archive on hip-hop. This is viable.”

“A serious class”

Back at Princeton, second-year neuroscience major Rachel Adjei participated in a class recently where students interviewed Grammy-nominated rapper Rah Digga over Zoom to learn about documenting oral history. 

“What really drew me to the class was the title, the Miss-

Education portion,” says Ms. Adjei, referring to the play on the self-titled iconic debut solo album “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill,” the first hip-hop album to win a Grammy for Album of the Year. 

“Not only are we going to be working with hip-hop and creating raps, but also embodying them on stage and giving yourself a presence,” she says.

Faculty understand that parents paying more than $80,000 a year for their children to attend college might be dubious. But as hip-hop on campus grows, so might the career opportunities that have nothing to do with performance, educators say. 

Jediah Worrell is a second-year African American studies major. She was all smiles as she and her two group partners performed their skit in Mr. Snow’s class. An amateur rapper herself, she raced to a microphone in front of a camera, where Rah Digga smiled back and answered her questions. She enjoys the class, but when she told her mom about it, she got questions.

“My mom’s response was, ‘So when are you going to take a serious class?’” she laughs and shakes her head. “But I was trying to explain to her, as an African American studies major, this is a part of my field. This is also a part of the culture and what we’re studying, the interior of Black life.”

By sending Vice President JD Vance to spearhead U.S. peace talks with Iran, President Donald Trump has handed his vice president a high-stakes role with far-reaching global consequences. It’s also a role that carries high political stakes for Mr. Vance, an avowed skeptic of foreign military interventions who serves a president who has embraced brinkmanship in wartime as few U.S. leaders have done before.

Mr. Vance is due to begin talks with Iranian officials in Islamabad, Pakistan on Saturday along with Mr. Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law. The talks come after a two-week ceasefire was agreed to Tuesday in a war launched six weeks ago by Mr. Trump in concert with Israel. The U.S. and Israel have pummeled Iran in a spiraling conflict that has severely disrupted trade in the Persian Gulf and spread to other countries in the region, including Lebanon, which Israel has partially occupied.

The ceasefire is designed to allow the U.S. and Iran to try to come to terms that satisfy U.S. goals of curbing Iran’s nuclear ambitions and offensive missile capabilities while also providing Iran with economic sanctions relief and security guarantees. Also key is the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran has throttled since the war started, and where it is now seeking to levy tolls on transiting ships, including oil tankers critical to supplying global markets.

Why We Wrote This

As he prepares to lead the U.S. delegation in Pakistan to try to reach a peace agreement with Iran, Vice President JD Vance’s longtime anti-interventionist stance could help build trust with the Iranians. But Mr. Vance also could end up taking the blame if talks fall apart.

It’s unclear whether the two sides will talk directly or indirectly through mediators. Were Mr. Vance to meet directly with Iranian officials, he would become the highest-ranking U.S. official to do so since the 1979 Islamic Revolution that ended decades of U.S. involvement in Iran under royal dictatorship.

Mr. Vance’s longstanding opposition to “forever wars” in the Middle East has raised questions about his support for the war against Iran. The New York Times has reported in detail on the doubts he raised in prewar administration meetings, including about likely negative reactions from Mr. Trump’s “America-First” supporters who had welcomed his pledge to end costly wars and focus on domestic programs. The vice president’s reputation as an anti-interventionist reportedly led Iranian officials to specifically request that he play a role in peace talks (Mr. Vance said on Wednesday that he wasn’t aware of any requests.)

Mr. Vance has made no public criticism of Mr. Trump’s decision to go to war. But his private skepticism has been telegraphed and now he’s entering a “political minefield” as the point man for U.S.-Iran talks – possibly a loyalty test set by Mr. Trump, says Matt Wylie, a Republican strategist. “He’s tried to make it known he wasn’t for this, which is why he gets to be the face of doing it.”

Mr. Wylie adds, “I think he is going to run into a problem where his loyalty to Trump will sort of destroy a lot of his political base.”

MAGA divisions over Iran

That base is divided over Iran policy, questioning Israel’s role in initiating the conflict, and unhappy about rising gas prices at home. While it’s too early to know what issues will matter in the 2028 election in which Mr. Vance is expected to seek the Republican nomination, “it’s very hard for vice presidents to extricate themselves from the policies of their president,” says Matthew Dallek, a political historian at George Washington University.

For now, “he’s got to be the chief defender of the war in Iran. He’s got no choice,” Professor Dallek says. That puts Mr. Vance “in a particularly tough political spot.”

Vice presidents are often tasked to lead efforts that don’t yield easy solutions, but rarely as the principal in peace talks to end a war, says Joel Goldstein, professor emeritus at St. Louis University School of Law and an expert on the vice presidency. Traditionally, presidents have tapped senior diplomats and special envoys for such roles.

While the vice presidency can be a springboard to the presidency, Mr. Vance will be in the unusual position in 2028 of only having served a single term, given Mr. Trump’s term limit. Past vice presidents who served two terms in that role could use the first term to establish themselves and then start preparing to run for the top job, says Professor Goldstein. “In Vance’s case it’s all compressed into one.”

During his successful run for the U.S. Senate from Ohio in 2022, Mr. Vance, a first-time political candidate, leaned into his hardscrabble working-class background and military service to burnish his America First credentials with Trump voters. He had served in Iraq as a public affairs officer in the Marine Corps, an experience that he said shaped his political views.

In 2024, he said on the Senate floor, “I saw when I went to Iraq that I had been lied to. That the promises of the foreign policy establishment of this country were a complete joke.” Later that year, Mr. Trump picked Mr. Vance as his running mate, elevating a politician nearly half his age to a position that would make him a future standard-bearer for a post-Trump Republican Party.

A loyal No. 2

Last June, Mr. Vance defended Mr. Trump against criticism in the run-up to U.S. airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear sites. The airstrikes, which Mr. Trump claimed at the time had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program, were opposed by some high-profile MAGA media figures like Tucker Carlson. Mr. Vance wrote on X that voters “are right to be worried about foreign entanglement after the last 25 years of idiotic foreign policy. But I believe that the president has earned some trust on this issue.”

Before the latest strikes against Iran, Mr. Trump had raised the possibility of sending Mr. Vance and Mr. Witkoff to talk with Iranian officials. Instead, he used Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner as his envoys, before U.S. and Israeli airstrikes began with the assassination of Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamanei, whose son has since replaced him.

When Mr. Trump ratcheted up his rhetoric against Iran, threatening on Tuesday to destroy its “civilization” if it didn’t reopen the Strait of Hormuz, Mr. Vance, on a visit to Hungary, was far less bellicose. He said the U.S. had “largely accomplished its military objectives” and that the war would shortly conclude. He also spoke in measured terms after the announced ceasefire about the negotiating stances of both sides.

But the idea that Mr. Vance’s past skepticism towards war with Iran will smooth his path to a deal in Islamabad may be wishful thinking, says Mitchell Reiss, a former U.S. special envoy for the Northern Ireland peace process under President George W. Bush. One reason: Mr. Vance’s boss, Mr. Trump, tore up in 2018 the detailed nuclear non-proliferation deal with Iran signed under President Barack Obama. Iranians also may suspect the last U.S. negotiations, with Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner, were simply a ruse to buy time before preplanned military actions.

“The Iranians are going to be extremely skeptical of whoever the American interlocutor is,” Ambassador Reiss says. “You could be Mahatma Gandhi and show up on behalf of the United States, and I don’t think it’s going to impress the Iranians at this point.”

Barbara Slavin, an Iran specialist and distinguished fellow at the Stimson Center, a Washington think tank, says the chances of a breakthrough seem slim because the two sides’ demands are so far apart. That could put Mr. Vance in a near-impossible situation as Mr. Trump seeks an exit strategy from the war.

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“Nobody knows that this [ceasefire] is going to even last two days, let alone two weeks,” she says.

Staff writer Victoria Hoffmann contributed to this report.

By sending Vice President JD Vance to spearhead U.S. peace talks with Iran, President Donald Trump has handed his vice president a high-stakes role with far-reaching global consequences. It’s also a role that carries high political stakes for Mr. Vance, an avowed skeptic of foreign military interventions who serves a president who has embraced brinkmanship in wartime as few U.S. leaders have done before.

Mr. Vance is due to begin talks with Iranian officials in Islamabad, Pakistan on Saturday along with Mr. Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law. The talks come after a two-week ceasefire was agreed to Tuesday in a war launched six weeks ago by Mr. Trump in concert with Israel. The U.S. and Israel have pummeled Iran in a spiraling conflict that has severely disrupted trade in the Persian Gulf and spread to other countries in the region, including Lebanon, which Israel has partially occupied.

The ceasefire is designed to allow the U.S. and Iran to try to come to terms that satisfy U.S. goals of curbing Iran’s nuclear ambitions and offensive missile capabilities while also providing Iran with economic sanctions relief and security guarantees. Also key is the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran has throttled since the war started, and where it is now seeking to levy tolls on transiting ships, including oil tankers critical to supplying global markets.

Why We Wrote This

As he prepares to lead the U.S. delegation in Pakistan to try to reach a peace agreement with Iran, Vice President JD Vance’s longtime anti-interventionist stance could help build trust with the Iranians. But Mr. Vance also could end up taking the blame if talks fall apart.

It’s unclear whether the two sides will talk directly or indirectly through mediators. Were Mr. Vance to meet directly with Iranian officials, he would become the highest-ranking U.S. official to do so since the 1979 Islamic Revolution that ended decades of U.S. involvement in Iran under royal dictatorship.

Mr. Vance’s longstanding opposition to “forever wars” in the Middle East has raised questions about his support for the war against Iran. The New York Times has reported in detail on the doubts he raised in prewar administration meetings, including about likely negative reactions from Mr. Trump’s “America-First” supporters who had welcomed his pledge to end costly wars and focus on domestic programs. The vice president’s reputation as an anti-interventionist reportedly led Iranian officials to specifically request that he play a role in peace talks (Mr. Vance said on Wednesday that he wasn’t aware of any requests.)

Mr. Vance has made no public criticism of Mr. Trump’s decision to go to war. But his private skepticism has been telegraphed and now he’s entering a “political minefield” as the point man for U.S.-Iran talks – possibly a loyalty test set by Mr. Trump, says Matt Wylie, a Republican strategist. “He’s tried to make it known he wasn’t for this, which is why he gets to be the face of doing it.”

Mr. Wylie adds, “I think he is going to run into a problem where his loyalty to Trump will sort of destroy a lot of his political base.”

MAGA divisions over Iran

That base is divided over Iran policy, questioning Israel’s role in initiating the conflict, and unhappy about rising gas prices at home. While it’s too early to know what issues will matter in the 2028 election in which Mr. Vance is expected to seek the Republican nomination, “it’s very hard for vice presidents to extricate themselves from the policies of their president,” says Matthew Dallek, a political historian at George Washington University.

For now, “he’s got to be the chief defender of the war in Iran. He’s got no choice,” Professor Dallek says. That puts Mr. Vance “in a particularly tough political spot.”

Vice presidents are often tasked to lead efforts that don’t yield easy solutions, but rarely as the principal in peace talks to end a war, says Joel Goldstein, professor emeritus at St. Louis University School of Law and an expert on the vice presidency. Traditionally, presidents have tapped senior diplomats and special envoys for such roles.

While the vice presidency can be a springboard to the presidency, Mr. Vance will be in the unusual position in 2028 of only having served a single term, given Mr. Trump’s term limit. Past vice presidents who served two terms in that role could use the first term to establish themselves and then start preparing to run for the top job, says Professor Goldstein. “In Vance’s case it’s all compressed into one.”

During his successful run for the U.S. Senate from Ohio in 2022, Mr. Vance, a first-time political candidate, leaned into his hardscrabble working-class background and military service to burnish his America First credentials with Trump voters. He had served in Iraq as a public affairs officer in the Marine Corps, an experience that he said shaped his political views.

In 2024, he said on the Senate floor, “I saw when I went to Iraq that I had been lied to. That the promises of the foreign policy establishment of this country were a complete joke.” Later that year, Mr. Trump picked Mr. Vance as his running mate, elevating a politician nearly half his age to a position that would make him a future standard-bearer for a post-Trump Republican Party.

A loyal No. 2

Last June, Mr. Vance defended Mr. Trump against criticism in the run-up to U.S. airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear sites. The airstrikes, which Mr. Trump claimed at the time had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program, were opposed by some high-profile MAGA media figures like Tucker Carlson. Mr. Vance wrote on X that voters “are right to be worried about foreign entanglement after the last 25 years of idiotic foreign policy. But I believe that the president has earned some trust on this issue.”

Before the latest strikes against Iran, Mr. Trump had raised the possibility of sending Mr. Vance and Mr. Witkoff to talk with Iranian officials. Instead, he used Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner as his envoys, before U.S. and Israeli airstrikes began with the assassination of Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamanei, whose son has since replaced him.

When Mr. Trump ratcheted up his rhetoric against Iran, threatening on Tuesday to destroy its “civilization” if it didn’t reopen the Strait of Hormuz, Mr. Vance, on a visit to Hungary, was far less bellicose. He said the U.S. had “largely accomplished its military objectives” and that the war would shortly conclude. He also spoke in measured terms after the announced ceasefire about the negotiating stances of both sides.

But the idea that Mr. Vance’s past skepticism towards war with Iran will smooth his path to a deal in Islamabad may be wishful thinking, says Mitchell Reiss, a former U.S. special envoy for the Northern Ireland peace process under President George W. Bush. One reason: Mr. Vance’s boss, Mr. Trump, tore up in 2018 the detailed nuclear non-proliferation deal with Iran signed under President Barack Obama. Iranians also may suspect the last U.S. negotiations, with Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner, were simply a ruse to buy time before preplanned military actions.

“The Iranians are going to be extremely skeptical of whoever the American interlocutor is,” Ambassador Reiss says. “You could be Mahatma Gandhi and show up on behalf of the United States, and I don’t think it’s going to impress the Iranians at this point.”

Barbara Slavin, an Iran specialist and distinguished fellow at the Stimson Center, a Washington think tank, says the chances of a breakthrough seem slim because the two sides’ demands are so far apart. That could put Mr. Vance in a near-impossible situation as Mr. Trump seeks an exit strategy from the war.

Deepen your worldview

with Monitor Highlights.

Already a subscriber? Log in to hide ads.

“Nobody knows that this [ceasefire] is going to even last two days, let alone two weeks,” she says.

Staff writer Victoria Hoffmann contributed to this report.

America is moonstruck once more.

With Artemis II and its four crewmembers returning to Earth after a record-breaking, and visually spectacular, trip around the moon, the U.S. love affair with lunar exploration has been renewed.

Something else from that era may have been renewed as well. In the punch-counterpunch style of the 1960s, a rival nation’s response to Artemis could be coming in a matter of months. In the second half of this year, the China National Space Administration is scheduled to launch Chang’e 7, an uncrewed mission that – if successful – would be the nation’s second successful landing on the lunar south pole. (In 2023, India became the first nation to land in the resource-rich region.)

Why We Wrote This

The United States and China are leading a global competition to build a permanent presence on the moon. Scientific research, national pride, and potentially lucrative lunar mining operations are at stake.

NASA will hope to one-up the Chinese again in 2028, when it plans to return humans to the lunar surface on Artemis IV.

It has all the hallmarks of a space race, experts say, but it differs in important ways from America’s contest with the Soviet Union in the 1950s and ’60s. Among them: Both China and the United States want to not just return to the lunar surface but establish a permanent presence there. And unlike the ’60s, there are more than two players in the space business.

Slow and steady progress over two decades has China with its nose in front right now, according to experts, but with NASA last month announcing a new plan to build a moon base in the early 2030s, the U.S. has the capability – and renewed focus – to take the lead in lunar exploration once more. Both countries have ambitious goals, and with human operations on the moon unprecedented and difficult, this race is likely to last over a decade. If the first space race was a rocket-fueled roller coaster, this one might be closer to the Iditarod.

“If the finish line is the moon becoming a site of regular, sustained human activity, we’re still fairly early in that race,” says David Burbach, director of the Space Studies Group at the U.S. Naval War College, speaking in his personal capacity.

China’s Chang’e

In 1970, China launched its first satellite into orbit. It would be 30 years before the Chinese government began even researching a mission to the moon. Then, in 2007, the Chang’e 1 probe launched to the moon.

The China National Space Administration has since performed five other Chang’e missions – named after the Chinese moon goddess – and they have all been successful. The missions have delivered two rovers to the lunar surface, Yutu 1 and Yutu 2. The second rover is still operating after its arrival with Chang’e 4 in January 2019.

Amid these successes on the moon, Chinese astronauts, called taikonauts, have routinely set new milestones. Their first manned flight in space came in 2003, and in 2008 the first spacewalk. The agency’s Tiangong space station has been operational since 2022.

The Chinese space agency doesn’t share much information, but it appears that the agency hasn’t had any major setbacks or failures, says Dr. Burbach.

“They’ve tried some really ambitious things, and they’ve all succeeded on the first try,” he adds.

China has now put forward plans to build a permanent base on the lunar south pole – a region believed to be rich in water ice, a resource chemically different from ice on Earth that could be used to make propellant and support human inhabitants. The China National Space Administration in 2021 signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, pledging to jointly build the International Lunar Research Station.

Described as a “comprehensive scientific experiment base with the capability of long-term autonomous operation,” the station, according to China, will be “open to all interested countries and international partners.” At least 12 countries have reportedly partnered on the project, including Venezuela, Egypt, and Pakistan. Separately, India aims to land its own crewed mission to the moon by 2040, and has signed an agreement with Japan to explore the lunar south pole.

The Chinese space agency wants to build a robotic base by 2035, and then a base that can support human inhabitants by 2045. The Chang’e 7 mission is seen as the first step in that process.

China does have one significant advantage over the U.S., experts note. The country’s slow and steady progress is aided by its autocratic government, which can fund the lunar program as it sees fit without having to worry about public opinion or a change in administration.

“They have a more spaced out timeline they’re working with,” says Victoria Samson, chief director for Space Security and Stability at the Secure World Foundation, a private nonprofit focused on promoting peaceful uses of outer space.

“Our [timeline] keeps shifting to the right, whereas China’s has more or less stayed at 2030.”

New focus at NASA

In late March, NASA announced that it was accelerating its lunar exploration program.

The moon had been an afterthought in U.S. spaceflight for a half century. The space race had been won, and NASA turned its attention to reusability and international collaboration through the space shuttle program and the International Space Station.

For decades, presidents flipped NASA priorities back and forth. George W. Bush proposed sending crewed missions to the moon, and establishing a base there, as a stepping stone for Mars exploration. Barack Obama canceled that effort, shifting focus to sending humans to Mars by 2030. Early in his first term, Donald Trump created the Artemis program to return humans to the moon.

Yet Artemis I, an uncrewed test flight that orbited the moon, didn’t launch until 2022. With a race against China likely to focus minds – and open purse strings – in Congress, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman announced changes to speed things up.

“The clock is running in this great-power competition, and success or failure will be measured in months, not years,” Mr. Isaacman said on March 24. NASA, he added, should “concentrate [its] extraordinary resources.”

The changes – announced on the eve of the Artemis II launch – are dramatic. The agency paused work on Lunar Gateway, a multinational space station meant to replace the International Space Station, to focus on a moon base. The Artemis III mission was narrowed and moved to 2027 instead of 2028. Artemis IV aims to land humans on the moon in 2028.

Overall, NASA wants to increase its launch cadence from one launch every three years to one launch every 10 months. The new, $20 billion plan hopes to establish a permanent human presence on the moon by the 2030s.

A long road ahead

In that sense, this new space race – or space marathon – is about who can build a moon base first. The competition “is ultimately about who gets to control the lunar surface,” says Norbert Schorghofer, a senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute, in an email.

“Whoever controls access to the lunar surface and lunar resources will for all practical purposes own the moon,” he adds.

Geopolitics are another uncertainty. Whoever establishes a stronger presence could take the lead in setting rules for lunar operations, including mining the moon’s potentially billion-dollar resources. Both the U.S. and China are signatories to the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, which says no nation can own a planetary body, but how the agreement would be enforced is unclear. Efforts by private companies to establish operations on the moon is another complication.

NASA sees the Artemis Accords, developed with the State Department in 2020, as a key effort to establish “a common set of principles” for the latest era of space exploration. The document explicitly permits the mining of celestial bodies, and outlines standards for resource extraction, space debris, and the sharing of scientific data, among other topics. Sixty-one nations have signed on to the agreement as of January. Two notable exceptions: China and Russia.

But there is a long road ahead. If the U.S. and China are engaged in a metaphorical space marathon, they’re both currently in the first mile, experts say. That’s a lifetime in geopolitics, and in the harsh environment of the moon, the two countries may face bigger problems than each other.

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“If nothing else, the moon is a very challenging environment to keep people alive in,” says Ms. Samson.

“China will be following the same laws of thermodynamics on the moon as us,” she adds. “So there’s no reason they shouldn’t want to coordinate with us on lunar missions.”

The United States paused its 38-day war against Iran on Wednesday, with President Donald Trump appearing eager to declare victory and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth saying the military, “for now, has done its part.”

Announcing a two-week ceasefire just minutes before the Tuesday deadline he had set for reopening the Strait of Hormuz – an ultimatum that included threats that “a whole civilization will die” – President Trump hailed the truce as a “big day for world peace.” The Iranian regime has “had enough,” he said.

But hours after the truce, Iran and Gulf Arab countries reported new attacks, Israel bombarded Lebanon, and Iran once again closed the strait, through which 20% of the world’s oil flows, raising concerns about whether the deal would hold.

Why We Wrote This

President Donald Trump and his defense secretary are boasting of military success. But Iran’s peace proposal, which Mr. Trump says is a "workable" basis for talks, appeared to reflect Iran’s wishes without making meaningful concessions.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration came under criticism for being willing to negotiate an Iranian 10-point peace plan that appeared to give that country significant concessions while not addressing America’s stated reasons for starting the war.

Secretary Hegseth claimed “a capital V military victory,” and Iran’s army and navy suffered tremendous blows, analysts agree. Indeed, there was little doubt going into the war that America’s armed forces could beat Iran’s.

The question was at what cost – and to what end.

For now, all sides can make the case for victory. For the Iranian regime – more hardened than ever, some analysts say – success means having survived. For the U.S. and Israel, the win is in claiming to have dramatically curbed Iran’s ability to strike out militarily against the rest of the world.

At the Wednesday briefing, Mr. Trump said the U.S. action had resulted in a “very productive regime change” in Iran, while Mr. Hegseth seemed to blur the definition of what, exactly, regime change means.

“It’s a new group of people who’ve seen the full capability” of the U.S. military with “a new calculus about what it means to negotiate with us,” Mr. Hegseth said.

What the Iran peace plan says

Iran has submitted a 10-point peace proposal that Mr. Trump said Wednesday is a “workable basis on which to negotiate” with “almost all of the various points of past contention” resolved. The two-week ceasefire, announced Tuesday night, will allow the deal to be “finalized and consummated,” Mr. Trump added.

Under these terms, Iran’s military could retain its current control of the strait. And Iran and Oman could charge transit fees of up to $2 million on selected ships that pass through the waterway, with the collected funds used for postwar reconstruction rather than using reparations from the U.S. and Israel, according to other reports. The waterway operated under international, not Iranian, control before the war began, analysts point out.

When asked Wednesday morning whether the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran had effectively closed, was now reopened to ships, Gen. Dan Caine, America’s top military officer, did not appear certain. “I believe so,” he said.

Some leaked details of the peace proposal suggest that Iran is seeking acceptance of its right to continue with its nuclear enrichment program. Many analysts argue that such a concession by the U.S. is an unlikely prospect, since it would run counter to one of Mr. Trump’s stated reasons for attacking Iran in the first place.

This is bolstered by The New York Times reporting this week that the Trump administration, during talks in the February run-up to the war, offered to fund Iran’s nuclear fuel indefinitely to get the country’s civilian energy program going. That move, the report said, was to test whether Iran’s regime was truly interested in benign nuclear energy resources, as it claimed, or nuclear weapons. Iran reportedly rejected the offer, making the administration’s case, some officials argued, that the regime remained focused on developing a nuclear bomb.

At the Pentagon, officials say, they will soon be focused on retrieving enriched uranium that remains buried under rubble since the U.S. strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities last June.

“Right now it’s buried, and we’re watching it. We know exactly what they have,” Mr. Hegseth said Wednesday. The regime will give it to the U.S. “voluntarily,” or the U.S. will “take it out,” he added.

Destruction of many, but not all, weapons

Eager to bolster their claim of victory, Pentagon officials on Wednesday emphasized the destruction that the war had wrought on Iran’s military.

The U.S. has destroyed roughly 80% of Iran’s air defense systems, as well as 450 ballistic missile storage centers and 800 facilities that housed attack drones, General Caine said. The U.S. has also sunk 90% of Iran’s Navy, with 150 ships, along with half of its small attack boats, now “at the bottom of the ocean,” he added. Some 95% of Iran’s naval mines have also been decommissioned, according to military intelligence that the general cited.

But as these numbers suggest, Iran still has firepower. About 20% of Iranian air defenses are still functional, some analysts said. The number of storage facilities that U.S. and Israeli strikes have destroyed sounds impressive. Still, the remaining capacity is difficult to evaluate without knowing the overall total, Kelly Grieco, a senior fellow at the Stimson Center, said in a post on the social platform X.

And while the U.S.-Israel force’s destruction of 95% of Iran’s mines sounds promising, it leaves the Middle Eastern nation with potentially hundreds of mines, Ms. Grieco added. That’s plenty of explosives that could be used to close the strait again.

Analysts, meanwhile, remain split on how quickly Iran could rearm should the regime decide to do so. It could also reposition its weapons systems, including the shoulder-fired missile launchers known as MANPADS that shot down a U.S. F-15E fighter jet last week, setting off a search and rescue mission for two crew members.

The Pentagon is now analyzing the details of the downed fighter jet, including the “tactical lessons learned,” General Caine said.

For now, the U.S. military will ''be hanging around” the region to ensure Iran complies with the ceasefire, Mr. Hegseth said.

In the meantime, as Wednesday wore on, there were concerns about whether the ceasefire would hold as the United Arab Emirates reportedly carried out airstrikes on an Iranian refinery in retaliation for earlier Iranian strikes on the UAE’s infrastructure.

Even as military leaders were fielding reporters' questions in Washington, Lebanon was undergoing some of the most intense attacks from Israel since the war began. Closing the strait once again was Iran’s response.

When asked whether there would be some “grace period” for the exchange of strikes to end, Mr. Hegseth was philosophical.

“It takes time, sometimes, for ceasefires to take hold,” he said.

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Another reporter asked the Secretary whether the U.S. is still encouraging protesters in Iran to rise up, or whether it is satisfied with the country’s current leadership.

“They’re brave people,” he said. “We wish them the best.”

The crew of Artemis II set a record Monday for the farthest distance humans have traveled from Earth, as the spacecraft swung around the far side of the moon.

Shortly after traveling 248,656 miles away from Earth, breaking the record set by Apollo 13 in 1970, Artemis mission specialist Jeremy Hansen said he and his crewmates “choose this moment to challenge this generation and the next to make sure this record is not long-lived.”

NASA and its partners in the commercial U.S. space industry are counting on the Artemis mission to break records and garner enough popular support to help usher in a new era of space exploration, one that is fueled by a thriving space economy.

Why We Wrote This

The Artemis II crew made history Monday, reaching the farthest distance humans have ever traveled from Earth. NASA and its commercial partners aim to also pioneer a new space economy through the Artemis missions.

To accomplish that goal, NASA is testing a strategy of relying more heavily on public-private partnerships. For Artemis II, that has meant partnering with traditional contractors like Lockheed Martin and Boeing. For future Artemis missions, partnerships are to include SpaceX and Blue Origin and other newcomers, like Firefly Aerospace, a Texas-based private space company that successfully landed a spacecraft on the lunar surface in March 2025.

Where once only governments could afford the eye-watering sums associated with reaching outer space, private companies like SpaceX have helped turn rocket launches into a (relatively) cheap, profitable business. Meanwhile, companies like Firefly are designing rovers and landers for NASA – and other customers – to explore the lunar surface and help build a permanent lunar outpost in the near future.

Firefly Aerospace is one of thousands of private space companies that now make up the commercial space industry. As of 2021, there were over 10,000 companies in the industry, Forbes reported, with a total value in excess of $4 trillion.

NASA is hoping that the future of space exploration is built on public-private partnerships with several of these companies.

The Artemis program, which will involve partnerships with multiple private companies in future missions, is a glimpse into that future. However, while the commercial space sector has certainly grown, it is not as big or as profitable as NASA officials hoped it would be by this point. The lunar economy could be worth around $170 billion over the next two decades, according to a 2021 analysis by PricewaterhouseCoopers. But as it stands today, there are some hard economic realities, like lack of current profitability, standing between private industry and that kind of lucrative space economy, according to experts.

Still, there is excitement – particularly following NASA’s announcement in late March of a new plan to gradually build a permanent base on the moon, starting with returning humans to the lunar surface in 2028 with Artemis IV. The landing spacecraft for that mission are being built by private companies.

When the Blue Ghost touched down last year, “it felt like starting something new,” said Kevin Scholtes, a future systems architect at Firefly Aerospace, in an interview on Monday.

“It felt like we were getting the tremendous privilege, with a lot of help from NASA, to start a new chapter in space exploration.”

Successes, and warning signs

The government paving the way for private industry to turn a profit has happened previously. The most apt comparison might be the settlement of the American West, which the government facilitated through friendly contracts with railroad companies.

A similar trend has happened in low Earth orbit. During the Apollo era in the 1960s and ’70s, only NASA (or put another way, taxpayers) could pay the cost of entry into space. Private companies – led by billionaire Elon Musk’s SpaceX – have helped slash the cost of launches by about 70% through developing reusable rockets and lighter payloads.

Now, private rocket launches into low Earth orbit are routine. But these launches often serve one purpose: to deploy new communications satellites into orbit.

“Now we’re incredibly dependent on” satellite communication, says Angel Abbud-Madrid, director of the Center for Space Resources at the Colorado School of Mines.

But if the space economy is going to be worth trillions of dollars in the future, he adds, “you’re going to have to get more” revenue streams.

Other ventures once seen as building blocks for a space economy have fallen flat. The market for space tourism, for example, seems to have dried up amid high costs and a lack of demand.

At an event in late March announcing the agency’s pivot to focusing on a moon base, NASA officials bemoaned the slow progress of private efforts to create a commercial space station in low Earth orbit. (The agency has been planning to decommission the International Space Station by 2030.)

“This is a real challenge; this is a real problem,” said Amit Kshatriya, NASA associate administrator, at the event, a week before the Artemis II launch.

“Having our presence in [low Earth orbit] is a national imperative,” he added. But “the current industry that we have that’s proposing to build destinations does not have the direct experience with that, or the resources, to go do it.”

Mining the moon

The economic viability of commercial operations in cislunar space – meaning the region extending from Earth’s atmosphere to the lunar surface and beyond – might be even more remote. For one, the moon is 100 times farther away from our planet than low Earth orbit. Secondly, as of right now there is no profit to be found.

Surveys have found potentially useful resources on the lunar surface. Rare earth elements, used to power many modern devices, have been found on the moon. So has helium-3, an isotope that could be used in nuclear fusion, cryogenics, and quantum computing. Extremely rare on Earth, helium-3 has been scattered across the moon by solar winds for billions of years.

Potentially the most valuable lunar resource is water ice, a resource that is chemically different from ice on Earth and could be vital for human missions and settlements. Found mostly on the lunar south pole, in permanently shadowed craters, the deposits could (in theory) be turned into rocket propellant and oxygen for breathing. Finding a way to efficiently mine and process this lunar ice could (in theory) turn the moon into a self-sustaining gas station for deep-space exploration.

“You can then start lowering the transportation costs,” says Dr. Abbud-Madrid. “Then you start opening up cislunar space.”

But if that is to become reality, a lot of science has to happen first, experts say – science such as what Artemis II conducted with its lunar flyby Monday, when the crew became the first humans to directly view some areas of the far side of the moon in daylight. The crew spent the roughly seven-hour flyby photographing and cataloging features of the surface in detail. They had 35 targets for 10 science objectives, including identifying potential future landing sites.

“We need more scientific characterizations of the moon,” says Scott Pace, director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University. “There’s water on the moon, but that’s like saying, ‘There’s gold in the West.’”

Several private companies are gearing up for a gold rush. Three companies – Interlune, Black Moon Energy, and Magna Petra – are focused on helium-3 mining. Colorado-based Lunar Outpost is building vehicles it says could support the construction and operation of a permanent lunar base.

Conversations and “friendly” competition

While these possible ventures have major financial question marks around them, there are also legal, environmental, and even moral consequences, analysts say.

For example, what would be the rules for a lunar economy? The Outer Space Treaty of 1967 says the moon cannot be taken over by any nation, but it doesn’t explicitly ban mining of its resources. The Artemis Accords – a U.S.-led guidance on “best practices” for “the civil exploration and use of outer space,” signed by 61 nations – affirms that resource extraction in outer space is lawful, provided certain conditions are met.

China and Russia, which are planning to build a permanent base together at the moon’s south pole, are not signatories to the Artemis Accords.

This doesn’t mean a lunar turf war is inevitable, experts say. The International Space Station has proved that foreign governments can collaborate in space despite tensions on Earth, but a space station is very different from a planetary body with potentially lucrative resources.

“If everyone wants to go [to the south pole] and everyone wants to have a base there, there’s going to have to be some conversation,” says Dr. Abbud-Madrid.

“And this is a good time to do it,” he adds. “All of these things have to be addressed before we start on a massive scale.”

In the meantime, Artemis II has begun its journey back to Earth. The crew is scheduled to splash down off the coast of San Diego on Friday.

2026 is also scheduled to be a busy year for commercial moon shots. Three companies – in partnership with NASA – are scheduled to land scientific payloads on the lunar surface, including a second Blue Ghost mission by Firefly Aerospace.

Mr. Scholtes describes the competition between all these companies as “a friendly rivalry.”

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“We compete over the same contracts; we compete over the same missions,” he says. “But ultimately, we’re in the same industry.”

“All ships are going to rise and sink with the tide,” he adds. “We love it when our competitors succeed because it means more opportunity for everyone.”

With some 68,000 immigrants in detention – as of February – and a goal of making space for up to 92,600 by this fall, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has roiled communities as it snaps up warehouses to hold those it hopes to deport. 

After record-high illegal border crossings under the Biden administration, President Donald Trump ordered a whole-of-government crackdown on illegal immigration. His administration has also moved to end deportation protections for many immigrants lawfully here. Congress last year gave ICE a $45 billion check to expand detention and help fulfill Mr. Trump’s mass deportation goals, as arrests began to surge in the interior. 

ICE says detention isn’t punitive, but ensures immigrants show up on their court dates and are already in hand when a judge orders deportation. Meanwhile, the Trump administration is broadly interpreting the reasons for mandatory detention and urging immigration judges to deny immigrants bond. 

Why We Wrote This

The Department of Homeland Security has been buying up warehouses around the United States so that it can house more immigrants that it hopes to deport. Some communities oppose the new detention sites, while some local officials see economic opportunities.

As ICE buys warehouses that the agency says would hold 1,000 to 10,000 beds each, some communities are pushing back. Towns where new ICE sites could crop up are grappling with infrastructure and humanitarian concerns. 

Newly confirmed Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin is reviewing where things stood under his predecessor, so, last week, DHS said it had paused new warehouse purchases. Mr. Mullin said during his confirmation hearing that he wanted to work with communities where detention centers were proposed. 

Critics say the government uses harsh detention conditions to coerce “self-deportation,” and they raise concerns about access to medical care and legal counsel. DHS has denied such claims. Meanwhile, 14 people have died in ICE custody so far this year, reports analyst Austin Kocher, a professor at Syracuse University. (ICE did not respond to several questions sent by the Monitor.)

Why is ICE expanding its detention efforts?

The agency says it wants to “streamline” the deportation process and hold more people in fewer detention centers. 

ICE sees detention as a way to guarantee deportations of those ordered to leave, as it’s easier to deport people from custody than to search for them. Despite the administration’s claims that it targets “the worst of the worst,” most ICE detainees have not been convicted of crimes. That said, civil immigration violations are enough to deport someone without a criminal history.

ICE has reportedly bought at least 11 warehouses around the country. Separately, ICE has also canceled 13 planned warehouse purchases, nearly all following local opposition, according to Project Salt Box, a website tracking the purchases through public records. The agency has said its goal is buying 24 “non-traditional facilities.” 

How have communities responded to new proposed detention sites?

Reactions have been mixed. After local backlash, warehouse purchases have slowed significantly in recent weeks, says Michael Wriston, a former intelligence analyst and head of Project Salt Box. 

From New Hampshire to Mississippi, elected officials and residents have voiced alarm over the facilities’ potential impacts on local resources and their suitability for human habitation. They say the federal government hasn’t consulted with them. Still, states and localities generally have little power to stop the federal government from buying up properties. 

In Social Circle, Georgia, a city of 5,000, ICE purchased a warehouse where it plans to hold at least 7,500 detainees with 2,000 staff members. Once operational, the site will exceed the city’s entire sewage capacity and overwhelm local emergency resources, says City Manager Eric Taylor. 

“I’m extremely worried,” says Mr. Taylor, adding that he locked a water meter at the facility in February to prevent water from being turned on. “[DHS officials] don’t seem to have any plans for how they’re going to address [the facility’s impact].” 

Mr. Taylor says the only time he heard from Homeland Security regarding the warehouse was in mid-February, weeks after the $129 million purchase was made. During the meeting, he says, a federal official presented a sewage analysis that erroneously included an out-of-county treatment plant under Social Circle’s sewage system. Mr. Taylor says he has since reached out to DHS multiple times but hasn’t heard back.

In Bradford County, Florida, prisons are already a major source of employment, so county officials see a new ICE facility as a potential economic boost. County commissioners voted in January to refine a proposal to turn a vacant, county-owned warehouse into a facility holding at least 1,000 detainees for ICE. The facility would be run by Sabot Consulting, which the county sheriff says reached out to him with the proposal. The company did not respond to a request for comment.

Bradford County Sheriff Gordon Smith says he “totally supports” the idea. In his county of roughly 30,000, the project would create hundreds of “living-wage jobs,” he says, and bring infrastructure upgrades to the warehouse that the county can’t afford itself. 

“If we don’t do something to bring more economic development to our community, we’re going to be in a real crisis,” the sheriff says.

How long can ICE detain immigrants in these centers?

“The courts have said that you cannot detain people forever,” says Kathleen Bush-Joseph, who until this month worked as a lawyer at the Migration Policy Institute. However, “sometimes people can languish in detention for long periods of time.” 

In 2001, the Supreme Court ruled that ICE can’t indefinitely detain people who have final deportation orders. That case said they shouldn’t be held for more than six months if it appeared unlikely they would be deported. By contrast, courts haven’t set detention limits for people still awaiting outcomes in their immigration cases. 

How long people are in detention can depend on a variety of factors. For those with cases still in immigration court, choosing to fight on and appeal can extend their stay.

Detention is “the cornerstone of the deportation process,” says Scott Mechkowski, a former deputy field office director at ICE, but it costs money. “Every day that you’re in custody, you’re costing taxpayers X amount of money.”

As much as immigrants want to get out of ICE detention, it’s not easy. They are not entitled to lawyers at the government’s expense. Still, immigrant detainees have been filing challenges to their detention in high numbers – on average, more than 200 a day, ProPublica reported in February.

Other logistical and even diplomatic barriers can block deportation and prolong detention. For example, some countries don’t cooperate in accepting their citizens. 

Another wrinkle: Courts have both stymied and sped up federal attempts to bypass deportation roadblocks, with mixed rulings on plans such as third-country deportations.

What about children? How long can ICE detain them?

Whether a child is with a guardian matters. Under U.S. law, DHS generally can’t detain unaccompanied minors past 72 hours. By then, those children must be transferred to the Department of Health and Human Services. That agency housed on average 2,348 unaccompanied children in February.

Families, on the other hand, can be held in custody longer. Courts have interpreted a decades-old settlement agreement in a way that generally requires ICE to hold family groups including minors no longer than 20 days. 

At the Dilley detention center in Texas, families with children have endured lockdowns, virus outbreaks, and worms in food, according to complaints. It is not clear yet whether any of the new facilities will hold families.

Over 900 children have been held beyond 20 days as of January, reports NBC News, citing data from court-appointed monitors. 

The Trump administration, it seems, “is not taking those rules very seriously,” says Scott Shuchart, a former assistant director for regulatory affairs and policy at ICE. “It does seem like they’re detaining people, family groups, longer term.”

As the White House’s deadline for Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz looms amid reports that Tehran has rejected the latest ceasefire proposal, President Donald Trump intensified his rhetoric on Monday, warning that the “entire country can be taken out in one night – and that night might be tomorrow night.”

Mr. Trump alternately threatened to bomb Iran back to the “stone ages” and touted “significant” and imminent prospects for peace during a midday news conference. A reporter asked the president whether he is winding down the U.S. war or ramping it up.

“I can’t tell you,” he said.

Why We Wrote This

Despite President Donald Trump’s latest threats, diplomacy continues for an Iran ceasefire. He set an April 7 deadline to reopen the Strait of Hormuz shipping lanes, but he has moved deadlines before.

Was he concerned that carrying out threats to bomb Iran’s civilian infrastructure could constitute a war crime, as some experts in international humanitarian law have suggested? “No, not at all,” the president replied, adding, “I hope we don’t have to do it.”

On the podium, Mr. Trump had gathered Cabinet officials to share details of the rescue of a U.S. airman this past weekend involving “hundreds” of troops, including special operations forces.

“It was an incredibly brave and courageous mission,” said Air Force Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “Having the guts to try means so much to so many.”

This culmination of the promise of U.S. military forces — to leave no one behind — did not appear to temper the president’s resentment of the Iranian regime, however, or of the journalists who broke the news last week of the downed U.S. fighter jet and missing service member that set off an Iranian search.

“The person who did the story will go to jail” if they do not reveal their sources, President Trump said.

Hours after the airman was rescued on Easter Sunday, flying across the Iranian border into safe territory just after midnight, Mr. Trump issued an expletive-laden social media post threatening to blow up Iran’s bridges and power plants unless it reopened the Strait of Hormuz.

Threats and maneuvering

It was on March 26 that Mr. Trump set a 10-day deadline for Iran to reopen the Strait, where traffic has been largely halted since the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran five weeks ago.

Over the weekend, he extended that deadline by three days to April 7 at 8 p.m. Eastern. Mr. Trump said on Monday that he did this because Iran had asked for an extension.

“I can’t talk about the ceasefire, but I can tell you that we have an active, willing participant on the other side,’’ he said.

Egyptian, Pakistani, and Turkish envoys are said to have submitted a proposal for a 45-day ceasefire and a reopening of the Strait. “It’s not good enough, but it’s a very significant step,” Mr. Trump told reporters on the sidelines of the White House Easter Egg Roll on Monday.

The regime, for its part, has remained defiant and perhaps emboldened by help it is reportedly receiving from China in the form of satellite images of U.S. military assets in the Middle East, enhanced by artificial intelligence, that could be helping Tehran target U.S. forces, some analysts say.

Iranian leaders said they will reopen the critical waterway only after the U.S. pays reparations for war-related damages and energy losses throughout the country. The plan would put in place a new protocol requiring certain ships to pay a fee – in some cases up to $2 million, according to reports – for transiting the Strait.

“What about us charging tolls?” Mr. Trump said on Monday. “Why shouldn’t we? We’re the winner.”

A taunt, a threat, and a secret

During his turn at the lectern on Monday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth took the rescue of the downed F-15E weapons officer as an opportunity to taunt Iran.

The airman was “under the constant threat of Iranian forces closing in,” Mr. Hegseth said. “Ultimately, it was an impotent Iranian threat,” he added. “Iran is embarrassed and humiliated — and they should be.”

The weekend mission to extract the downed airman was high-risk and involved 155 aircraft. At least three of those aircraft were hit by what the president on Monday called “very, very heavy” Iranian fire.

Injured after ejecting from his fighter jet after it was struck, the downed flyer reportedly climbed 7,000 feet and nestled in a rock crevice as he awaited extraction from deep behind enemy lines.

Another U.S. military pilot whose aircraft was hit during the rescue mission managed to keep control of his plane until reaching Kuwaiti airspace before ejecting and being rescued.

When Mr. Trump turned to General Caine to ask exactly how many U.S. troops were involved in the rescue operation, the general replied, “I’d love to keep that a secret.”

Mr. Trump did share plans that he says are already in place, “where every bridge in Iran will be decimated by 12 o’clock tomorrow night,” and “every power plant will be demolished” if there is no peace deal.

As though to counter the “Trump always chickens out,” or TACO, sobriquet, the president said that after Iran shut down a prospective ceasefire last week, he gave an order to destroy Iran’s largest bridge. “Within 10 minutes after I gave that order, that bridge was over,” he said.

The strike on the newly built suspension bridge between Tehran and Karaj, one of Tehran’s premier infrastructure projects, killed eight people.

Some U.S. military analysts have raised concerns that threats to hit civilian infrastructure such as bridges and power plants could, if carried out, constitute war crimes under the Geneva Conventions.

Mr. Trump’s advisers have reportedly countered that roads and electricity are valid military targets.

The Defense Department employs upward of 10,000 military and civilian lawyers. And they have equal numbers of legal opinions, retired Air Force Gen. C.Q. Brown, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs, said in a discussion at Harvard University last week.

U.S. military lawyers are often split on such questions, he said. “There are things that can be ‘rock-solid’ legal or ‘threadbare’ legal, because you can probably find a [DOD] lawyer someplace that will say, ‘That’s legal.’”

Mr. Trump said he would rather not strike Iranian power plants, particularly since “we may even get involved by helping them rebuild their nation.”

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But he added on Monday that he is not concerned about the impact of potential massive strikes on Iran’s civilian population.

He claimed that when U.S. bomb strikes stop, Iranian civilians tell him that they are “upset” and ask the U.S. to “please come back.’’

“They would be willing to suffer that in order to have freedom,” he said.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Sunday made expletive-laden new threats to escalate strikes on Iran and its infrastructure if it doesn’t open the Strait of Hormuz by his deadline, after American forces rescued an aviator whose Iran-downed plane fell behind enemy lines.

A defiant Iran struck infrastructure targets in neighboring Gulf Arab countries, challenged the U.S. account of the rescue and threatened to restrict another heavily used waterway in the region, the Bab el-Mandeb Strait off the Arabian Peninsula.

In a social media post, Trump vowed to hit Iran’s power plants and bridges and said the country would be “living in Hell” if the Strait of Hormuz, crucial for global trade, isn’t opened by Tuesday. He ended with “Praise be to Allah.”

Trump has issued such deadlines before but extended them when mediators have claimed progress toward ending the war, which has killed thousands, shaken global markets and spiked fuel prices in just over five weeks.

“It seems Trump has become a phenomenon that neither Iranians nor Americans are able to fully analyze,” Iranian Culture Minister Sayed Reza Salihi-Amiri told visiting Associated Press journalists in an interview in Tehran, adding that the president “constantly shifts between contradictory positions.”

Both sides have threatened and hit civilian targets like oil fields and desalination plants critical for drinking water. Iran’s U.N. mission on social media called Trump’s threat “clear evidence of intent to commit war crime.”

Iran’s military joint command warned of stepped-up retaliatory attacks on regional oil and civilian infrastructure if the U.S. and Israel attack such targets there, according to state television.

The laws of armed conflict allow attacks on civilian infrastructure only if the military advantage outweighs the civilian harm, legal scholars say. It’s considered a high bar to clear, and causing excessive suffering to civilians can constitute a war crime.

U.S. describes a dramatic rescue

An intense search had followed Friday’s crash of the F-15E Strike Eagle, while Iran promised a reward for the “enemy pilot.”

Trump said that the service member was “seriously wounded and really brave” and rescued from “deep inside the mountains” in an operation involving dozens of armed aircraft. He said a second crew member was rescued in “broad daylight” within hours of the crash.

A senior U.S. administration official said that prior to locating the pilot, the CIA spread word inside Iran that U.S. forces had found him and were moving him for exfiltration, confusing Iranian officials. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss details not yet made public.

The fighter jet was the first known American aircraft to crash in Iranian territory since the U.S. and Israel launched the war with strikes on Iran on Feb. 28.

Iran also shot down another U.S. military plane, demonstrating both the perils of the bombing campaign and the ability of Iran’s degraded military to hit back. Neither the status of the A-10 attack aircraft’s crew nor where it crashed is known.

On Sunday, Iran’s state television aired a video showing what it claimed were parts of U.S. aircraft shot down by Iranian forces. The broadcaster said that Iran had shot down a transport plane and two helicopters that were part of the rescue operation.

However, a regional intelligence official briefed on the mission told The Associated Press that the U.S. military blew up two transport planes because of a technical malfunction and brought in additional aircraft to complete the rescue. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the covert mission.

Two Black Hawk helicopters were hit during the rescue but navigated to safe airspace, according to a person familiar with the situation who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive information.

Diplomatic efforts continue

Trump’s upcoming deadline centers on growing alarm over Iran’s grip on the Strait of Hormuz, critical for shipments of oil and gas from the Persian Gulf to Europe and Asia as well as humanitarian supplies. Some ships have paid Iran for passage.

An Iranian presidential spokesperson, Seyyed Mohammad Mehdi Tabatabaei, said on social media that the strait can reopen only if some transit revenues compensate Iran for war damages.

A top Iranian adviser, Ali Akbar Velayati, warned on social media that Tehran also could disrupt trade on the Bab el-Mandeb, a key waterway to and from the Suez Canal.

Oman’s Foreign Ministry said that deputy foreign ministers and experts from Iran and Oman met to discuss proposals to ensure “smooth transit” through the strait. Oman has often served as a mediator between the U.S. and Iran.

Egypt said that Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty had spoken with U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, as well as with Turkish and Pakistani counterparts.

Islamabad has said that it would soon host talks between the U.S. and Iran.

Gulf targets struck by Iran

In Kuwait, Iranian drone attacks caused significant damage to power plants and a petrochemical plant. They also put a water desalination station out of service, according to the Ministry of Electricity.

In Bahrain, a drone attack caused a fire at one of the national oil company’s storage facilities and a state-run petrochemical plant, the kingdom’s official news agency said.

In the United Arab Emirates, authorities responded to fires at a petrochemical plant in Ruwais that they said were caused by intercepted debris, halting operations.

The strikes came a day after Israel struck a major petrochemical plant in Iran that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said generated revenue used to fund the war. The petrochemical industry converts oil and gas into products like plastics and fertilizer.

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Meanwhile, more than 1,900 people have been killed in Iran since the war began.

In Gulf Arab states and the occupied West Bank, more than two dozen people have died, while 19 have been reported dead in Israel and 13 U.S. service members have been killed. In Lebanon, more than 1,400 people have been killed and more than 1 million people have been displaced. Ten Israeli soldiers have died there.

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Bassem Mroue reported from Tehran, Iran, Sam Metz from Jerusalem and Samy Magdy from Cairo. Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates; Lisa Mascaro and Seung Min Kim in Washington; Munir Ahmed in Islamabad; and Farnoush Amiri in New York; contributed to this report.

Donald Trump has long questioned the value of the United States’ military and security alliances – at least as far back as 2016, when, not yet president, he dismissed NATO as “obsolete.”

But the president’s derision of America’s alliances and dismissal of their utility – in particular that of NATO and European partners – in the wake of his war in Iran have many officials and analysts concluding that, this time, it’s different.

Mr. Trump, they say, has gone so far in his actions and comments that a divide has formed from which there will be no going back.

Why We Wrote This

America’s European allies have mostly found ways to appease President Donald Trump when he’s questioned the value of U.S. alliances, especially NATO. Yet amid the bitter rhetoric and growing divide over the Iran war, there’s a sense the damage might be irreparable.

“The Europeans are fed up. There’s an exasperation, but there’s also a growing sense that Trump is pushing the limits that make this something of a different order,” says Max Bergmann, director of the Europe, Russia, and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

“I know the analogy of a divorce has been used a lot,” he adds, “but that may be because it is quite apt when what we’re seeing is much like the breakup of a long marriage.”

Over recent weeks, the president has dismissed NATO as a “paper tiger” and European partners as weaklings lacking the fortitude to take up arms alongside their longtime protector. His criticism has turned to expressions of rage as NATO members from Britain to France and Spain have denied airbase access to U.S. aircraft undertaking missions in the war.

In a televised address on Wednesday evening, Mr. Trump admonished Europe to “build up some delayed courage” and take action to open up the vital Strait of Hormuz on their own. He said the U.S. has “plenty of oil” and as a result is not affected by Iran’s closure of the strait – a dubious claim according to many economists. He also said European nations depend on the oil that passes through it, so they should “take it.”

NATO, again

In an interview on Wednesday with the conservative British newspaper The Telegraph, Mr. Trump said he is “seriously considering” pulling the U.S. out of NATO. Speaking Tuesday with Fox News, Secretary of State Marco Rubio questioned “the value of NATO” and said the U.S. would need to “re-examine” its commitment to the alliance once the Iran war is over.

For their part, Europeans say they are not wavering from their decision not to get involved in a war they believe was not necessary, that they were not consulted on, and which now has triggered an avoidable global economic crisis.

“On the European side, there is less of the shock that people felt over past belligerent remarks by Trump, and more determination not to give in to the intimidation but to follow what we have decided is the right course for us,” says Sven Biscop, director of the Europe in the World program at Egmont – The Royal Institute for International Relations in Brussels.

“The pressuring of NATO and the threats to leave it are more explicit than ever,” he adds, “but leaders are quite adamant about not getting pulled into the war in Iran.”

President Trump will have an opportunity to discuss his deepening doubts about the alliance this week when NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte visits the White House for a long-scheduled meeting.

Mr. Trump has developed a warm relationship with Mr. Rutte, who courted the president at last June’s NATO summit with effusive flattery and commitments to boosting European members’ “fair share” of alliance spending.

But he has fared less well with European leaders who face mounting political pressures at home not to roll over for a deeply unpopular American president and his equally unpopular war.

Their refusal to accommodate the U.S. president on Iran has prompted sharp rebukes from Mr. Trump of a number of European leaders.

Barbed exchange with Macron

Mr. Trump has become particularly derisive of French President Emmanuel Macron – a leader with whom he once enjoyed a cordial relationship – for not joining the U.S. in the Iran war.

The president mocked Mr. Macron at a private event on Wednesday and then singled out France as a laggard in his address that night. Mr. Macron fired back on Thursday with his own tart riposte, telling journalists, “This is not a show. We are talking about war and peace. ... When you want to be serious,” he continued, “you don’t say every day the opposite of what you said the day before.”

Dr. Biscop cites a “bitterness” across Europe that Mr. Trump is disengaging from the war in Ukraine – where Western Europe faces its primary adversary, Vladimir Putin’s Russia – even as he pursues a war that is enriching Russia, easing the pressures on Mr. Putin to end his conflict.

And privately, some European officials are sharing mounting consternation over the U.S. conduct of the Iran war that they say with each passing week is moving further away from the international rules of engagement and values that underpin the NATO alliance.

Mr. Trump has threatened to blast Iran “back to the stone ages” and obliterate the country’s power plants and other civilian infrastructure. These are the same kinds of attacks Mr. Putin has carried out ruthlessly in Ukraine, the European officials note, that have brought rising accusations of war crimes.

As the Iran war accelerates a fraying of transatlantic ties, two different schools of thought on how to respond are emerging among European allies, Mr. Bergmann says.

One side of the “split” is calling for Europe to “face the music” and move ahead with steps to build its own defense, he says. That camp includes Mr. Macron, who has called on Europeans to build a “strategic autonomy.” The other half – typified by Mr. Rutte – cautions against alienating the U.S., especially when Europe simply is not ready to defend itself.

Carrying the traditional marriage analogy further, Mr. Bergmann says the reality is that the U.S., which for decades discouraged any efforts at building a European defense, is like “the husband who would never let his wife get a job and develop skills outside the home, but now ... suddenly has turned critical of her for not taking a job.”

A changed alliance

Others say a realism about a permanently changed alliance has already sunk in.

“There’s definitely a growing awareness that, at some level, there is already a structural change at NATO,” Dr. Biscop says. “The emerging consensus is that the U.S. will continue to provide a nuclear umbrella, but that European militaries will have to provide Europe’s first line of defense.”

Some experts say the Iran war and the way it might have accelerated a U.S. turn away from alliances should also prompt fresh thinking among America’s Arab partners in the Gulf about their strategic dependence on the U.S.

President Trump’s statement in his televised address that “we don’t need the Middle East” should be heeded, some say.

“One of the things [the Gulf states] could do ... is to become better integrated in their defense capabilities,” says retired Army Gen. Joseph Votel, former head of U.S. Central Command. “They are still focused on defending themselves and not thinking of themselves as a bloc.”

The Gulf states could “use this example” to “do more to tie themselves together,” says General Votel, now a distinguished military fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington. More integrated air defenses, maritime capacity, and intelligence sharing, he says, would be the path for them to “taking more responsibility for the Gulf.”

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As for Europe, Mr. Bergmann says America’s partners there feel like they have heeded Washington’s call under President Trump for them to take more responsibility for their defense. But he says there’s a growing sense that what Mr. Trump really wants is unquestioned fealty – and that, he says, is not going to happen.

“Europe has stepped up and replaced U.S. funding in Ukraine, for example,” Mr. Bergmann says. “But taking more responsibility is one thing. It doesn’t mean they’re going to approach the U.S. on bended knee.”

Michael Shull never imagined that a Democrat from the wealthy suburbs of Washington would represent his community in Congress. His corner of Virginia, with its sprawling farms and winding country roads, has been electing Republicans for more than three decades.

Then came an unusual nationwide redistricting battle, with Democrats and Republicans redrawing congressional lines to boost their chances in November’s midterm elections. Virginia could be next as voters consider a new map that would pair conservative rural areas with liberal suburbs, diluting Republicans’ electoral clout.

“Politicians should be elected to be their people’s voice,” said Shull, a Republican member of Augusta County’s board of supervisors. “Not their party’s voice.”

The vote on the constitutional amendment is on April 21, and early balloting has begun. If voters pass the referendum and it survives a court challenge, Shull’s area within the county would be split between the 7th and 9th Congressional Districts. While the 9th District would be the state’s lone Republican stronghold, the 7th District would resemble a lobster with the long tail beginning in Democrat-dominated Arlington and two claws reaching south into rural communities.

Congressional districts are usually redrawn once a decade, but President Donald Trump started a chain reaction last year by encouraging Texas Republicans to devise a new map to help the party in November. After a cascade of redistricting efforts, Republicans believe they can win a combined nine more U.S. House seats in Texas, Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio, while Democrats think they can win a total of six more seats in California and Utah. Virginia could give Democrats an extra four seats — enough to overturn the GOP’s slim majority, at least as things stand now.

“It’s about making sure that we fight back to what Trump’s done,” said U.S. Rep. Don Beyer, D-Va., He said the party needs to persuade voters that the referendum is “not about embracing gerrymandering.”

“I feel optimistic, but it’s close,” he said.

A rural-urban divide

The referendum comes at a moment when Virginia Democrats have tried to make up ground in rural areas. Last year, Democrat Abigail Spanberger campaigned for governor in oyster towns and agrarian hamlets to engage with more conservative voters. Before that winning campaign, she had represented a congressional district that mixed city suburbs, exurbs and adjacent rural communities.

“Anyone who’s doing their job will be responsive to the communities that they seek to represent,” Spanberger said.

But her results were mixed. In counties where fewer people lived in rural areas, she outperformed Democrat Kamala Harris’ Virginia showing in the 2024 presidential race by an average of 6 percentage points or 7 percentage points. In more rural counties, Spanberger gained about 2 percentage points to 4 percentage points.

Democrat Anthony Flaccavento, former congressional candidate and co-founder of the nonprofit Rural Urban Bridge Initiative, is torn over the referendum.

“At some level, it feels like kicking the can down the road -– which is something that my party has done for a long time –- when it comes to winning back rural and working-class voters,” Flaccavento said.

A welcome change for some

Democrats in rural areas who are tired of being outnumbered by their Republican neighbors are embracing the redistricting plan.

“Fight Back, Vote Yes,” said a sign at a No Kings protest in Louisa County. A second said, “Vote Yes. Stop ICE. No Kings.”

State Del. Dan Helmer, who helped spearhead the redistricting effort, greeted protesters and spoke to the cheering crowd. Helmer is now one of at least four Democrats running in the 7th District.

Helmer said Republicans “think that in red areas like Louisa and in rural areas, that people don’t know what’s going on. But I’m looking around right now, I see strong, proud patriots who know exactly what is going on, who know that we have an aspiring dictator who is trying to take away our democracy.”

Jennifer Lee, who has lived in Louisa for 33 years, said she was eager to support the new district lines. Lee said she felt Republicans were perpetuating a double standard, falsely claiming the 2020 presidential election won by Democrat Joe Biden was stolen from Trump but accepting his push to eliminate Democratic seats through gerrymandering.

“That’s their slogan, right? ‘Stop the steal,’” Lee said. “But they started ‘the steal.’ They’re stealing the seats now in all these districts.”

Democrats see a fight for survival

At a town hall hosted by Democrats at a rural Goochland County recreation center, voters nibbled on finger foods and passed around bottled water as they debated whether redistricting violated some kind of moral code.

“I’m sorry, morality just goes out the door right now. We have to do what it takes for us to survive,” said Bruce Silverman, a local nephrologist. He was voting “yes.”

At one point, Roberta Thacker-Oliver stood up to talk. She votes in the rural 9th District, which would become even more Republican with the new map.

“In the redistricting, the 9th is going to become bigger and redder,” she said, adding, “I need to know what to tell my community about why they need to take one for the team.”

“What do we tell them?” she said.

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Associated Press writers Maya Sweedler, Ashlyn Still and Joey Cappelletti in Washington contributed to this report.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Thursday fired the Army’s top officer, Gen. Randy George, a move that is prompting concerns about the politicization of America’s military, particularly during a U.S. war in the Middle East.

General George became the latest of more than a dozen high-ranking officers in the military dismissed in President Donald Trump’s second term. Two other generals, including the Army’s top chaplain, were also fired Thursday.

In a social media post, Defense Department spokesman Sean Parnell thanked Mr. George for his “decades of service’’ and said that the general’s retirement would be effective immediately. “We wish him well,” he said.

Why We Wrote This

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s removal of over a dozen senior officers is raising concerns about what effect those decisions will have, and whether they could undermine the military’s nonpartisan tradition through politicized appointments.

As the Army chief of staff, General George worked closely with Secretary of the Army Daniel Driscoll, a Trump administration appointee with whom Mr. Hegseth has clashed.

Appointed by President Joe Biden in 2023, Mr. George was a decorated veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He was asked to step down amid reports that he had disagreed with Mr. Hegseth’s decision to block the promotion of several top Army colonels to one-star general, including Black and female officers. Service chiefs generally serve for four years.

The timing of these latest firings, against the backdrop of speculation about whether there will be a U.S. ground invasion of Iran, has also raised questions about how Mr. Hegseth handles military advice that runs counter to his wishes on the war front.

In October last year, Mr. Hegseth forced out Mr. George’s deputy, Gen. James Mingus, from his job as the Army’s vice chief of staff as part of a broader purge of generals deemed “woke” or not aligned with the administration’s vision. The Trump administration has also fired top lawyers for the Army, Navy, and Air Force.

Analysts say the firings could undermine the American tradition of military leadership giving frank advice to political leaders, even as they salute and carry out orders ultimately issued by the civilians who, by constitutional design, are in charge.

In part to uphold this revered tradition, some current and former U.S. military officials are urging troops still rising through the ranks – including those who now say they are tempted to leave due to a loss of faith in the institution – to stay right where they are.

“Don’t throw in the towel,” retired Gen. C.Q. Brown said Thursday night upon hearing about the firings, just minutes before giving a talk at Harvard University on the topic of “Leadership in Challenging Times.”

Service and sackings

Mr. Brown was the first Black Air Force chief of staff. He was hired during President Trump’s first term, then was fired from his job as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff last year during the president’s second term.

It was part of a spate of sackings that included Adm. Linda Fagan, the commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard, and Adm. Lisa Franchetti, chief of naval operations. Both were the first women to lead their respective service branches.

While hundreds of men have attained the rank of four-star general or admiral throughout America’s military history, including Admirals Fagan and Franchetti, only 10 women have done the same.

The Trump administration has also fired top lawyers in each of the military services.

The dismissals, for which the administration has often given no official reason, raise “troubling questions about the administration’s desire to politicize the military and to remove legal constraints on the president’s power,” five former U.S. secretaries of defense wrote in an open letter last year.

One of the letter’s authors was retired Gen. Jim Mattis, appointed by President Trump to be defense secretary during his first term.

“Talented Americans may be far less likely to choose a life of military service if they believe they will be held to a political standard,” warned the former defense secretaries. “Those currently serving may grow cautious of speaking truth to power,” and America’s historically high trust in the military could also “begin to wither.”

A growing gap in trust

Studies show that this is already happening. A poll from the conservative Reagan Institute in December found that overall public confidence in the U.S. military has declined sharply since the group began doing the survey. It’s now at roughly 50%, down from 70% in 2018.

The survey also found a widening partisan gap in trust since Mr. Hegseth began serving as defense secretary in 2025. While confidence among Democrats has dropped to 33%, confidence among Republican respondents has rebounded to 67%.

“The tough part here is that we have a smaller and smaller part of the population that actually knows somebody in the military,” retired General Brown said in a discussion at the Harvard event. “And the less you know about the military, the harder it is for you to have that trust – or a small event can actually really erode that trust.”

For some, one such event has been the reports last month that Mr. Hegseth blocked the promotion of four Army officers – two Black men and two women – to one-star general from a list of roughly 35 candidates.

Only between 3% to 5% of colonels are selected for promotion to one-star, or brigadier general, in any given year.

In his talk at Harvard, Mr. Brown recalled making the controversial decision to speak out about the Black Lives Matter movement following the death of George Floyd. He said he was aware it could affect the Senate’s vote on his confirmation, scheduled for the same week. “In my heart of hearts, I thought it was the right thing to do. And if I did not get confirmed, so be it.”

He ultimately got the job in a 98-0 vote.

On Thursday, a West Point graduate, who later became one of the first women to earn a prestigious Ranger tab, asked how to maintain faith in an institution that seems to be evaluating officers based more on identity than performance.

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Mr. Brown reflected on the value of service even as he recalled “having to represent by working twice as hard to prove the expectations and perceptions” held by some of the leaders he once saluted were “invalid.”

To this, he told her, “Prove them wrong.”

Thirty miles south of Santa Fe, secluded in the New Mexico desert, sits Zorro Ranch, where disgraced financier and convicted sex felon Jeffrey Epstein is alleged to have abused girls and women.

Mr. Epstein’s private island, Little Saint James in the Caribbean, and his seven-story New York City mansion have commanded the most attention related to his crimes. But now, focus has shifted to this lesser-known, 10,000-acre property in New Mexico.

Recently released files from the U.S. Justice Department have led the state of New Mexico to restart an investigation, and to the legislature’s creation of a truth commission that will conduct a separate inquiry.

Why We Wrote This

Two new efforts are underway to examine Jeffrey Epstein's past: One is looking into whether crimes occurred at Zorro Ranch. Another is a bipartisan Truth Commission, formed by the New Mexico state legislature, that seeks to tell the story of what exactly happened there.

Mr. Epstein purchased the ranch in 1993 from three-time former New Mexico Gov. Bruce King. Mr. Epstein owned it for 26 years, and allegations that he harmed minors there date to 1996.

After Mr. Epstein’s death in 2019, the ranch was put up for sale, with proceeds to be directed toward Mr. Epstein’s victims. Don Huffines, a former state senator in Texas and current Republican nominee for comptroller there, bought the ranch. He renamed it Rancho de San Rafael and turned it into a Christian retreat.

Mr. Huffines has cooperated with the New Mexico Justice Department’s investigation.

What is the New Mexico Truth Commission, and what is its goal?

The truth commission is a bipartisan committee of the state’s legislature, established to investigate alleged criminal activity and public corruption related to Mr. Epstein in New Mexico – focused mainly on Zorro Ranch. A resolution to form the committee passed unanimously on Feb. 16.

The commission will try to confirm whether crimes occurred at the ranch. It is scheduled to work until the end of the year and deliver a final report on its findings. An initial report will be issued on or before July 31. The investigation is funded through a $15 million settlement in 2022 between the New Mexico Department of Justice (NMDOJ) and Mr. Epstein’s banks. From that money, $2 million has been allocated to the investigation.

Also in February, New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez relaunched a criminal investigation into allegations against Mr. Epstein. The NMDOJ’s first investigation ended in 2019 at the request of federal authorities, who said the state’s investigation could overlap with the federal prosecution and testimonies. But a federal judge, at the U.S. Justice Department’s request, dismissed Mr. Epstein’s criminal charges on Aug. 29, 2019, about three weeks after the financier’s death while in jail.

Earlier this month, the NMDOJ said it conducted a search of the ranch alongside New Mexico State Police and K-9 units from Sandoval County Fire and Rescue.

Democratic State Rep. Andrea Romero, the truth commission’s chair, said that though the two investigations are separate, her panel and the NMDOJ are “working together.”

The difference, Ms. Romero says, is that the NMDOJ investigation is focused on possible criminal charges, while the truth commission’s ultimate goal is to be “able to tell the public what happened [for] 26 years.”

The commission’s core functions are to have a “survivor-centered accounting of what occurred”; to analyze state policies, laws, and practices that enabled Mr. Epstein and his network to allegedly carry out criminal activity in New Mexico; and to provide recommendations and proposals for legislative reforms.

How will the commission handle Zorro Ranch conspiracy theories?

The Epstein files have captured significant public attention, sparking numerous conspiracy theories related to Mr. Epstein’s death, which was ruled a suicide; his powerful, ultra-wealthy network; and the events that occurred at his various properties.

Theories regarding the ranch include the claim that Mr. Epstein conducted experiments tied to eugenics. The New York Times reported in 2019 that Mr. Epstein took an interest in the idea of impregnating women for the overall goal of transhumanism, a movement that advocates combining different forms of technology, including AI and genetic engineering, to strengthen and alter human beings.

Another conspiracy theory arose from the recent release of documents related to Mr. Epstein. An email, sent anonymously in 2019, alleged that two young “foreign” girls were killed during sexual activities and buried on the ranch. The email was sent to Eddy Aragon, a radio host, by someone who claimed they were a former staff member of the ranch. Mr. Aragon told the Santa Fe New Mexican that he had sent the email to the FBI in 2019.

“While we’ve had so many different conspiracy theories surrounding this, we want the nuts and bolts information around what was alleged at a time that law enforcement was already involved and engaged,” says Ms. Romero. “So, we do have our work cut out for us.”

She said the committee is interested in hearing from people who are willing to tell their stories of what they experienced at the ranch.

Could accountability come out of the New Mexico probe?

“The commission is not just storytelling. It’s also saying, what can we do as a legislature to produce results and have a policy in place to make those changes?” says Ms. Romero.

It is also seeking to understand why the state investigation in 2019 ended before it was complete, and why it remained inactive until this year.

“If it’s not a failure, if it’s [not] a cover-up, if it’s [not a] systemic failure, what is it?” says Ms. Romero. “With so many victims that we know of that had sought justice or that had provided testimony, provided depositions, that had settled with Epstein’s estate or others. ... Why don’t we know that at this point?”

The truth commission cannot bring criminal charges. However, the state legislature gave it the authority to subpoena people of interest to testify. And, it can refer evidence to the NMDOJ’s investigation to aid in potential prosecutions.

Ms. Romero says that the commission is hoping those with information will come forward or submit a tip. It is also meeting with survivors.

“I hope that if there is a way to seek justice in New Mexico that is available to them ... we’re willing to take responsibility for any inaction that happened and fix it,” says Ms. Romero. “Our overall goal is to prevent these things from happening at all.”