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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Janine Herbst.
Chapter 2: What recent leadership change has occurred in Iran?
Iranian State TV says the country has chosen a new leader, the hardline Mushtaba Khamenei, the 56-year-old son of the slain Supreme Leader. He has close ties with the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard, and his appointment signals a continuation of his father's rule and hardline stance.
President Trump has said Khamenei's son would be an unacceptable choice, and Israel's military has vowed to target any new supreme leader of Iran. A leading investigative group says new video shows a U.S. missile hit an area around an Iranian school at the start of the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran. Iranian authorities say 175 people were killed, most of them schoolgirls.
And Pierce Jane Araf reports the U.S. had denied hitting that school.
Bellingcat, based in the Netherlands, says newly available video shows a U.S. Tomahawk missile hitting a compound of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, where the elementary school was located. The investigative organization said it geolocated the footage released by an Iranian news agency of a strike in Minab in southern Iran on February 28.
The finding appears to contradict President Donald Trump's claim that Iran itself hit the school. Bellingcat noted the U.S. is the only country attacking Iran that is known to use Tomahawk missiles. Israel is not believed to have the weapon. Jane Araf, NPR News, Sulaymaniyah, in the Kurdistan region of Iraq.
President Trump is facing a lot of economic headwinds as the 2026 midterm election year gets underway. NPR's Mara Lyson has more.
Despite President Trump's claims that the U.S. economy is roaring like it's never roared before, job creation is down. The February jobs report showed that the U.S. economy shed 92,000 jobs last month.
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Chapter 3: How has the U.S. responded to the new Iranian leadership?
Oil prices are up. The stock market is down. And in special elections this cycle so far, Democratic candidates keep winning despite their party's historic unpopularity. Still, the president continues to take big risks, including pursuing a war that majorities of American voters oppose.
Less than 40% of Americans tell pollsters they approve of the war in Iran, denying President Trump the rally-around-the-flag effect presidents usually enjoy at the beginning of military conflicts. Mara Liason, NPR News.
Voting rights supporters are marking Bloody Sunday, the day in 1965 when Alabama state troopers beat civil rights marchers on a bridge in Selma. Natasha Harris runs a print shop in Selma. She says it's important to remember.
My husband's family is rooted here in Selma, and so his dad was actually one of the people who crossed the bridge, so it's near and dear to our hearts.
The violence energized the nation and led to the civil rights movement. You're listening to NPR News. Louisiana's crawfish industry is facing a shortage of workers just as the season gets underway. As Mel Bridges with member station WWNO reports, it's due to the Trump administration's changes in federal work visa policy.
Louisiana Agricultural Commissioner Mike Strain explained to state legislators that the issue isn't a lack of eligible workers. Crawfish peeling plants remain understaffed even with an expanded number of H-2B visas.
They simply cannot get their workers. And so some of the plants that normally get 100, 135 workers have gotten zero.
The visas allow U.S. companies to hire foreign workers for seasonal agricultural jobs. While the administration recently lifted the cap on visas by an additional 35,000, the extra visas were distributed via lottery system and only through early February, three months after crawfish season began, leaving many peeling plants at diminished capacity.
Strain says if the crawfish go unpeeled, they'll either go unconsumed or be shipped to Mexico for peeling. For NPR News, I'm Mel Bridges in New Orleans.
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