Trump Threatens to Obliterate Iran's Power Plants; Tehran Vows to Strike Back

Oil Surges Past $114 as Gas Prices Jump More Than $1 a Gallon in a Month

Iran's Failed Strike on Diego Garcia Reveals Missile Range That Puts London Within Reach

Musk Announces Tesla-SpaceX Chip Factory in Texas to Fuel AI and Robotics Push

ICE Agents Head to Airports as Shutdown Fuels Hourslong Security Lines

Trump Threatens to Obliterate Iran's Power Plants; Tehran Vows to Strike Back

BREAKING UPDATE, 6:05 a.m. CST: President Trump announced Monday morning that he has instructed the Department of Defense to postpone all military strikes against Iranian power plants and energy infrastructure for five days, citing "very good and productive conversations" with Iran over the past two days toward a "complete and total resolution" of hostilities. Trump said the talks will continue throughout the week, and the postponement is contingent on their success.

Truth Social

President Trump threatened Saturday night to "hit and obliterate" Iran's power plants if the country does not fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz, setting a 48-hour deadline that expires Monday evening Central time. Iran's military responded Sunday by threatening to strike energy, information technology and desalination infrastructure across the region. The escalation recalls the 1991 Desert Storm air campaign against Iraq's electrical grid, in which the U.S. used filament-carrying cruise missiles to short out power lines around Baghdad while deliberately avoiding generator halls that would take years to rebuild. In that campaign, pilots were directed to hit switching yards rather than the plants themselves, aiming for maximum military effect with minimum long-term damage. Whether the current administration would follow a similar approach remains unclear.

Wall Street Journal

Oil Surges Past $114 as Gas Prices Jump More Than $1 a Gallon in a Month

Brent crude, the global benchmark, climbed to $114 a barrel on Monday, up from its Friday settlement of $112.19, while West Texas Intermediate held near $98.40 after settling at $98.23 on Friday. Oil prices have risen more than 50 percent since the United States and Israel struck Iran in late February and triggered Iran's de facto blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. The effects are hitting American consumers directly: the national average gasoline price reached $3.94 a gallon on Sunday, up $1.01 from a month ago, according to AAA. At least nine states are seeing prices above the national average, with California, Washington and Hawaii all topping $5.00 a gallon. California leads the country at an average of $5.76.

NYT / Wall Street Journal

Iran's Failed Strike on Diego Garcia Reveals Missile Range That Puts London Within Reach

Iran's attempted missile attack Friday on a joint U.S.-British military base on Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, roughly 2,500 miles from Iranian territory, demonstrated a longer-range capability than many Western analysts had publicly estimated. Iran fired two missiles at the base, according to a U.S. official: one failed mid-flight and the other was intercepted by an American warship. Israeli military chief of staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir said Iran launched a two-stage intercontinental ballistic missile with a range of 4,000 kilometers, a distance that puts major European capitals including London within reach. Nicholas Carl of the American Enterprise Institute's Critical Threats Project said the strike upends longstanding assumptions about Iranian missile capabilities, raising the question of whether Tehran could pair that range with cluster munition warheads designed to maximize collateral damage rather than destroy discrete targets.

NYT

Musk Announces Tesla-SpaceX Chip Factory in Texas to Fuel AI and Robotics Push

Elon Musk announced Saturday that Tesla and SpaceX will jointly build a massive semiconductor manufacturing facility called Terafab in Austin, Texas, to produce chips for vehicles, Optimus humanoid robots and space-based AI computing satellites. "We either build the Terafab or we don't have the chips," Musk said at an Austin event, framing the project as essential to his companies' AI and robotics ambitions. The factory would represent a significant expansion of U.S.-based chip production, though the facility is intended to serve Tesla and SpaceX internally rather than outside customers. Taking on chip fabrication is a major undertaking: Morgan Stanley analysts estimated the project would cost well over $20 billion over multiple years, calling it "a Herculean task" even by Musk's standards. Tesla already designs its own semiconductors but relies on partners like Samsung Electronics, with which it signed a nearly $17 billion supply deal last July, to actually manufacture them.

Wall Street Journal

ICE Agents Head to Airports as Shutdown Fuels Hourslong Security Lines

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers will begin deploying to airports Monday in an effort to ease security bottlenecks caused by a partial government shutdown. White House border czar Tom Homan said ICE agents could monitor exit lanes and check identification before passengers enter screening areas, freeing up TSA officers to run body scans and X-rays. Travelers reported hourslong waits at airports serving New York City, Atlanta and Houston over the weekend. The underlying cause is a congressional impasse over Department of Homeland Security funding: Democrats are holding up a spending bill in exchange for new limits on ICE officer authority, including requirements to wear proper identification and a ban on masks during enforcement operations. DHS officials have spent the weekend scrambling to figure out how the airport deployment would work in practice.

Wall Street Journal

March 23 1857: First Commercial Elevator Installed in New York City

Vermont inventor Elisha Otis installed the first commercial, steam-powered elevator in an upscale New York City department store, traveling just 40 feet per minute. His built-in safety catch, which stopped the car if the hoisting rope failed, made vertical transportation far safer and helped pave the way for modern skyscrapers.

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Sources

1. Wall Street Journal — Trump threatens power plants / Wall Street Journal — Gulf warns U.S. / Wall Street Journal — Desert Storm parallels
2. NYT — Oil and stocks / NYT — Oil prices and war / Wall Street Journal — Gasoline prices
3. NYT — Iran missiles
4. Wall Street Journal — Tesla SpaceX chip factory
5. Wall Street Journal — ICE at airports