LAS VEGAS (AP) — When his parents were about his age, they bought their first home. But for 27-year-old Brian Torres Suazo, that milestone feels like a distant dream, despite a secure job with union wages and down payment assistance.

Torres Suazo expects to continue sharing an apartment with roommates for the foreseeable future, kept on the sidelines of homeownership by stubbornly high costs, even in cities once known for their affordability, such as his native Las Vegas.

He’s not alone. In a restless electorate frustrated by high prices, the cost of housing stands out. Democrats are pushing to channel this anger into support for their quest to chip away at Republicans’ unified control of Washington, maintaining their focus on economic concerns even when war with Iran dominates the news.

Their path cuts through Nevada, a perennial swing state won by Republican Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election and now home to closely contested U.S. House races.

“I would be paying more — a lot more — in mortgage than I am for rent right now,” said Torres Suazo, a food runner on the Las Vegas Strip. Sometimes he feels like politicians aren’t listening to people like him. “It’d be nice if more people that knew what it’s like to work for a living could be in those rooms to make decisions,” he added.

Housing affordability isn’t just a coastal concern

In all directions from the Strip, tract homes with sharp-angled roofs and earthy paint schemes sprout from the desert by the dozen. Streets to nowhere snake through the dirt, ready for future homes. Wooden signs dot roadsides advertising homes from the $300,000s for a townhome to over $1 million for big houses in the most desirable suburban neighborhoods.

Housing costs have long been a potent political issue in pricey metropolitan areas like New York and San Francisco, but now the issue is popping up virtually everywhere.

During the coronavirus pandemic, white-collar workers newly empowered to work remotely cashed out their equity in high-priced cities and bid up prices across Sun Belt cities like Las Vegas, Phoenix, Dallas, and Charlotte, North Carolina. At the same time, near-zero interest rates drove a wave of refinancing that gave existing homeowners mortgage payments that now seem impossibly low.

Almost 40 million people visited Las Vegas last year, and gamblers wagered $14 billion at Clark County casinos, according to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. The steady flow of people and cash attracts dreamers and strivers with the promise of a good job and an affordable home.

The population of Clark County, which includes Las Vegas, grew 17% to 2.4 million between 2014 and 2024. The country as a whole grew 6% over that period.

“If you ask locals who grew up here, some of them feel that housing is out of reach for them,” said Las Vegas real estate agent Tony Clifford. “You talk to somebody from out of state – Northwest, West, California – we’re still so cheap compared to them.”

Home prices and mortgage rates have ticked down from historic highs in much of the country, and real estate agents say Las Vegas is now considered a buyer’s market. Houses are staying on the market longer, and more sellers are accepting discounted offers or offering concessions, such as covering closing costs. But monthly mortgage payments are still much higher than they were before the pandemic.

In Las Vegas, resale home prices rose 53% between December 2019 and the same month last year, according to the Case-Shiller index. The index tracks homes that have previously sold, excluding new construction, which makes up more than a quarter of the Las Vegas market.

In Las Vegas, the median home sale price rose 65% between the first quarter of 2020 and the same period last year, reaching $393,000, according to Federal Reserve data. It ticked down to $379,000 during the fourth quarter last year.

Nationally, 30-year mortgage rates followed a similar trend, bottoming out at 2.65% nationally in 2021 before peaking in 2023 at nearly 8%. They’ve settled around 6% this quarter.

Still, even with rates and prices stabilizing, they remain higher than they were before the pandemic. The median resale house at the prevailing interest rates with 20% down would cost $2,300 per month in December 2025, double the figure from December 2019.

Big investors are buying up houses

Large investors own about 11% of single-family home rentals in Las Vegas, according to the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution, compared with about 3% nationally.

They’re increasingly becoming bipartisan targets as they buy and rent out single-family homes, though economists generally discount the benefits of constraining them. Trump and Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford, the leading Democratic candidate for governor, are both among a growing cadre of officials calling for limits on corporate homeownership.

“People live in homes, not corporations,” Trump said in a social media post in January, calling for Congress to ban large institutional investors from buying houses. He’s also pressured the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates and proposed extending mortgage terms to 50 years, privatizing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and allowing homebuyers to tap retirement or Education Savings Accounts for a down payment.

Ford’s housing plan, released last month, also calls for banning algorithmic pricing of rents, tackling regulatory barriers that block or slow new construction and seeking to unlock federal land for homebuilding. The federal government owns 84% of the land in Nevada.

Nevada’s Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo, who is one of the most vulnerable incumbent state leaders in the country, has tried to address the problem, announcing last month that his administration has approved $64 million to boost a dozen housing development projects, mostly in the Las Vegas and Reno areas, along with assistance for homebuyers.

The midterms may hinge on affordability

Democrats are making affordability the central plank of their pitch to voters in November, arguing that Trump has failed in his campaign promise to bring prices back down despite Republican control of Congress. They believe anxiety over the cost of living has been a major factor in their victories in a series of off-year elections, including the races for governor of New Jersey and Virginia as well as special elections down the ballot.

Many Americans say Trump is focusing on the wrong priorities, according to multiple surveys, including a January AP-NORC poll, and they largely think Trump is neglecting the issue of costs at home.

Trump was reelected in large part because of economic concerns, but recent polling shows that the bulk of Americans aren’t seeing benefits from his policies yet, and most don’t think he’s paying enough attention to the issue.

A large share of registered voters see the economy as one of the top issues facing the country, and a recent New York Times poll found that about half of registered voters say Trump’s policies have made life for most Americans “less affordable.”

The issue will remain salient in November even as the Iran war raises interest in foreign policy, said Democratic strategist Paul Begala, one of the architects of Bill Clinton’s 1992 strategy that emphasized domestic economic concerns during a time of global upheaval from the first Gulf War and the fall of the Soviet Union.

“Trump’s refusal to raise the minimum wage, and his willingness to raise the cost of health care, electricity, hamburger, and now gas, is a two-edged sword that will cut down a large number of congressional Republicans,” Begala said.

Housing is a thorny political issue. Rooted homeowners like high prices that inflate their net worth, at least on paper, a reality that Trump has nodded to repeatedly this year, assuring homeowners he wants to keep their values high.

But those prices become handcuffs if they want to move on but are priced out of the bigger homes or better neighborhoods they’re eying.

Michele Niemeyer feels trapped in the condo she bought for more than $500,000 just off the Strip. The homeowners association fee just went up to $686 a month, straining her budget, and the value of her unit has plummeted. But the neighborhoods that were in her budget when she bought the condo are now out of reach.

“I want to move,” Niemeyer said. “I just don’t know where.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — As Congress responds to President Donald Trump’s attack on Iran, lawmakers who served on the front lines of Iraq and Afghanistan are making their voices heard in a war debate that has taken on intensely personal meaning.

Many admit mixed feelings, taking satisfaction in seeing vengeance taken on the leadership of an Iranian regime that has targeted U.S. service members for decades, yet fearful that another generation of soldiers could soon face the same combat experiences that they did.

“Do I take gratification? You know there’s the Marine side of me: Yeah, of course,” said Arizona Democratic Sen. Ruben Gallego, whose company suffered some of the heaviest losses on the U.S. side during the Iraq War. “I know they killed a lot of American soldiers, American Marines. But do I also understand that I have a responsibility not to let my lust for revenge drive my country into another war?”

Experiences in the post 9/11 wars are also coloring the decisions of the Trump administration, given that top officials, including Vice President JD Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, were once deployed to Iraq.

Gallego, like others on Capitol Hill, leaned heavily on his firsthand experience of fighting in the wars after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks as he assessed the Iran conflict. Lawmakers wore bracelets etched with the names of friends killed in battle, told stories of coming under attack from Iran-backed militant groups and reflected on their own life-changing injuries suffered during combat.

Veteran lawmakers are wary of war

While the initial votes on Iran saw Congress divide mostly along party lines, with Republicans backing Trump’s actions and Democrats warning of an extended conflict, veterans in both parties share deep reservations about entering the conflict.

“As somebody who knows a lot of friends that didn’t come home and a lot of Gold Star families, that’s why the week before the attack, I was actually one of the ones that was talking about caution and why we needed to avoid at all costs getting into another long, drawn-out Middle Eastern war,” said Republican Rep. Eli Crane of Arizona, a former Navy SEAL who left college to enlist the week after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Crane said his concerns were partially assuaged by briefings from the Trump administration that indicated to him the president is not planning a drawn-out war. He voted against a war powers resolution that would have halted attacks on Iran unless Trump got congressional approval.

But Crane said wars are never straightforward. “I’ve been on military operations that did not go to plan many times, and so I understand the nature,” he said, adding that he was calling for the Trump administration to approach the conflict with “humility and caution.”

Gallego and other Democrats worried that it was too late for that approach. They paid tribute to the six U.S. military members who were killed in a drone strike in Kuwait and worried that there could soon be more American casualties.

“War is dirty, and mistakes happen,” Gallego said. The longer the conflict drags on, he added, the more chance there will be for U.S. military members to be killed. He said he saw that in Iraq when friends would be killed by seemingly random shots from enemy combatants.

Still, many Republicans argued that it was necessary to attack Iran to stop a regime that for decades has helped train and arm militant groups throughout the Middle East. Republican Rep. Brian Mast, who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, led the debate on the House floor against the war powers resolution.

Mast, who served as an Army bomb disposal expert, now uses prosthetic legs after receiving catastrophic injuries from an improvised explosive device in Afghanistan. “Me especially, many of my other colleagues, no one wants to see our military go into combat or war,” he said.

Then he added, “But Iran’s terror, which has caused the deaths of thousands of Americans, it has to stop.”

Trying to push soldiers to forefront of war debate

Important questions loom for Congress as the conflict with Iran unfolds and spreads to other parts of the Middle East. The price for the operation is already likely running into the billions of dollars, likely forcing the Trump administration to soon seek billions in funding from Congress. The outbreak of war has also scrambled global alliances and the future of U.S. foreign policy.

Shadowing it all is the potential of another drawn-out conflict. Lawmakers said they owe it to their fallen comrades to ensure that doesn’t happen.

“To me, it’s to speak out. It’s to say another generation should not go fight in an open-ended, ill-conceived regime change war in the Middle East,” said Democratic Rep. Pat Ryan, his hand moving to a bracelet etched with the names of friends who were killed during his two Army combat tours in Iraq.

Others remembered how frustrated they became with Washington during their service, especially as soldiers tried to fight with insufficiently armored vehicles and not enough troops.

“I know what it was like to be on the very end of the receiving line of the decisions made in Washington,” said Democratic Rep. Jason Crow, who entered the Army as a private before being promoted to a captain and deployed to both Iraq and Afghanistan.

Crow said that front-line soldiers often suffered “because people stopped asking tough questions. People stopped being held accountable. Congress stopped voting on it.”

Another veteran, Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, said that was one of the reasons she sought a congressional seat in the first place. As a Blackhawk helicopter pilot with the Illinois National Guard, Duckworth lost her legs when her helicopter was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade in Iraq.

“I ran for Congress so that when the drums of war started beating once again, I’d be in a position to make sure that our elected officials fully considered the true cost of the war,” she said. “Not just in dollars and cents but in human lives.”

Anthropic is suing the Trump administration for what it calls an “unlawful campaign of retaliation” against the artificial intelligence company over its refusal to allow unrestricted military use of its technology.

Anthropic asked federal courts on Monday to reverse the Pentagon’s decision last week to designate the artificial intelligence company a “ supply chain risk.” The company also seeks to undo President Donald Trump’s order directing federal employees to stop using its AI chatbot Claude.

The legal challenge intensifies an unusually public dispute over how AI can be used in warfare and mass surveillance — one that has also dragged in Anthropic’s tech industry rivals, particularly OpenAI, which made its own deal to work with the Pentagon just hours after the government punished Anthropic for its stance.

Anthropic filed two separate lawsuits Monday, one in California federal court and another in the federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., each challenging different aspects of the government’s actions against the company.

“These actions are unprecedented and unlawful,” Anthropic’s lawsuit says. “The Constitution does not allow the government to wield its enormous power to punish a company for its protected speech. No federal statute authorizes the actions taken here. Anthropic turns to the judiciary as a last resort to vindicate its rights and halt the Executive’s unlawful campaign of retaliation.”

The Defense Department declined to comment Monday, citing a policy of not commenting on matters in litigation.

Anthropic said it sought to restrict its technology from being used for two high-level usages: mass surveillance of Americans and fully autonomous weapons. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other officials publicly insisted the company must accept “all lawful” uses of Claude and threatened punishment if Anthropic did not comply.

Designating the company a supply chain risk cuts off Anthropic’s defense work using an authority that was designed to prevent foreign adversaries from harming national security systems. It was the first time the federal government is known to have used the designation against a U.S. company.

President Donald Trump also said he would order federal agencies to stop using Claude, though he gave the Pentagon six months to phase out a product that’s deeply embedded in classified military systems, including those used in the Iran war.

Anthropic’s lawsuit also names other federal agencies, including the departments of Treasury and State, after officials ordered employees to stop using Anthropic’s services.

Even as it fights the Pentagon’s actions, Anthropic has sought to convince businesses and other government agencies that the Trump administration’s penalty is a narrow one that only affects military contractors when they are using Claude in work for the Department of Defense.

Making that distinction clear is crucial for the privately held Anthropic because most of its projected $14 billion in revenue this year comes from businesses and government agencies that are using Claude for computer coding and other tasks. More than 500 customers are paying Anthropic at least $1 million annually for Claude, according to a recent investment announcement valued the company at $380 billion.

Anthropic said in a statement Monday that “seeking judicial review does not change our longstanding commitment to harnessing AI to protect our national security, but this is a necessary step to protect our business, our customers, and our partners.”

Sunday’s attack brought the death toll to at least 157 people since the Trump administration began targeting those it calls “narcoterrorists” in small vessels in early September.

As with most of the military’s statements on the more than 40 known strikes in the Eastern Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea, U.S. Southern Command said it targeted alleged drug traffickers along known smuggling routes. The military did not provide evidence that the vessel was ferrying drugs. It posted a video on X that showed a small boat being blown up as it floated on the water.

President Donald Trump has said the U.S. is in “armed conflict” with cartels in Latin America and has justified the attacks as a necessary escalation to stem the flow of drugs into the United States. But his administration has offered little evidence to support its claims of killing “narcoterrorists.”

In a meeting with Latin American leaders on Saturday, Trump encouraged them to join the U.S. in taking military action against drug-trafficking cartels and transnational gangs, which he said pose an “unacceptable threat” to the region’s national security.

To that end, Ecuador and the United States conducted military operations this past week against organized crime groups in the South American country.

With Saturday’s gathering, Trump aimed to demonstrate that he remains committed to focusing U.S. foreign policy on the Western Hemisphere, even while waging a war on Iran that has had repercussions across the Middle East.

Critics have questioned the overall legality of the boat strikes as well as their effectiveness, in part because the fentanyl behind many fatal overdoses is typically trafficked to the U.S. over land from Mexico, where it is produced with chemicals imported from China and India.

The boat strikes also drew intense criticism following the revelation that the military killed survivors of the very first boat attack with a follow-up strike. The Trump administration and many Republican lawmakers said it was legal and necessary, while Democratic lawmakers and legal experts said the killings were murder, if not a war crime.

NEW DELHI (AP) — The United States and Iran have offered sharply different accounts of the sinking of an Iranian warship in the Indian Ocean last week, with Washington rejecting Tehran’s claim the vessel was unarmed and Iranian officials insisting it was operating in a noncombat role.

The United States Indo-Pacific Command on Sunday rejected Iran’s claim that the warship IRIS Dena was unarmed when it was sunk in a submarine attack in international waters off Sri Lanka on March 4. In a statement on X, INDOPACOM called Iran’s assertion that the vessel was unarmed “false.”

The response followed strong objections from Tehran, which has repeatedly characterized the warship as defenseless, saying it was returning home after taking part in a naval exercise.

An Indian navy official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the media, said the Iranian vessel was not “entirely unarmed” and had taken part in drills alongside other countries’ warships.

Some experts have, however, suggested that visiting ships at such events typically do not carry a full combat load of live munitions unless scheduled for live-fire drills. They say even during the sea phase of exercises, ships generally carry only tightly-controlled ammunition limited to specific drills.

Rahul Bedi, an independent defense analyst based in India, said the vessel may have used some limited non-offensive ammunition during the naval exercises, but protocol requires “the participating platforms to be unarmed.”

“The precondition of participating in such a parade, or such a ceremony, is that it (the vessel) comes unarmed. That is the precondition of the Indian Navy and it’s a precondition of most navies when they hold such similar sort of fleet reviews,” Bedi said.

Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Saeed Khatibzadeh said Friday that the warship, sunk by a U.S. torpedo, had not been carrying weapons and accused Washington of targeting a ceremonial vessel.

“That vessel was by invitation of our Indian friends, attending an international exercise. It was ceremonial. It was unloaded. It was unarmed,” he told reporters in New Delhi.

The IRIS Dena was sunk on March 4 in the Indian Ocean near Sri Lanka after being struck by a torpedo fired from a U.S. submarine, according to American and Iranian officials. The Sri Lankan navy rescued 32 sailors and recovered 87 bodies.

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth described the IRIS Dena as a “prize ship” and said it “died a quiet death.” Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi described the attack as “an atrocity at sea” and stressed that it had been “a guest of India’s Navy.”

Disputes over whether the vessel was armed have intensified tensions over the incident, which occurred as it was returning from multinational naval exercises in India, and raised questions about whether it was operating in a noncombat role when it was attacked.

India’s defense ministry said in a statement after the exercises that “live firings as part of surface gun shoots, as well as anti-air firings, were also undertaken” by participating vessels.

The warship’s sinking highlighted how the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran is spreading beyond the Middle East.

Two other Iranian vessels — the IRIS Bushehr and IRIS Lavan — are docked in Sri Lanka and India after seeking assistance from the two countries.

Associated Press writer Aijaz Hussain in Srinagar, India, contributed to this report.

JERUSALEM (AP) — New footage shows what an expert investigative group says is likely an American Tomahawk missile hitting a compound in southern Iran, meters from the school where a deadly blast killed over 165 people at the start of the war raging in the Mideast.

It comes as mounting evidence points to U.S. culpability for the Feb. 28 strike, which hit a school adjacent to a Revolutionary Guard base in Minab, Iran, in the country’s southern Hormozgan Province. Experts interviewed by The Associated Press, citing satellite image analysis, say the school was probably struck amid a quick succession of bombs dropped on the compound.

A U.S. official familiar with internal deliberations on the matter has told the AP that the strike was likely American. The official spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to comment publicly on the sensitive matter.

The new footage, first analyzed by the investigative group Bellingcat, was taken the day the school was struck but circulated Sunday by Iran’s semiofficial Mehr news agency. It shows a missile hitting a building, sending a dark plume of smoke into the air.

The AP was able to geolocate the video and determine it was taken from a site adjacent to the school, while smoke was already rising from the school vicinity. Satellite imagery of the compound is consistent with visual identifiers found in the video, including a flat-roofed building, power lines and vehicles.

Trevor Ball, a Bellingcat researcher, identified the munition as a Tomahawk cruise missile — which only the U.S. is known to possess in this war. It’s the first evidence of a munition used in the strike.

U.S. Central Command has acknowledged using Tomahawk missiles in this war and even released a photo of the USS Spruance, part of the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier group located within range of the school, firing a Tomahawk missile on Feb. 28.

Bellingcat said the footage “appears to contradict” U.S. President Donald Trump’s claim that Iran was responsible for the deadly school blast. Neither the U.S. military’s Central Command nor the Israeli military immediately replied to requests for comment Monday from the AP.

When asked by a reporter Saturday whether the U.S. was responsible for the blast, which killed mostly children, Trump responded, without providing evidence: “No, in my opinion, based on what I’ve seen, that was done by Iran.” Trump added that Iran is “very inaccurate” with its munitions. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth quickly chimed in to say the U.S. was investigating.

Several other factors point to a U.S. strike.

One is the launching of an assessment of the incident by the U.S. military. According to the Pentagon’s instructions on processes for mitigating civilian harm, an assessment is launched after a group of investigators make an initial determination that the U.S. military may bear culpability.

Another is the location of the school — next to the Revolutionary Guard base and close to barracks for a naval unit. The U.S. military has focused on naval targets and acknowledged strikes in the province, including one in the vicinity of the school. Israel, which has denied conducting the strike, has focused on areas of Iran closer to Israel and hasn’t reported any strikes south of Isfahan, 500 miles away.

Complicating any assessment of the incident is the lack of images of bomb fragments from the blast. No independent agency has reached the site during the war to investigate.

Janina Dill, an expert on international law at Oxford University, wrote on X that even if the strike was a misidentification — and the attacker believed that the school had been a part of the neighboring IRGC base — it would still be “a very serious violation of international law.”

“Attackers are under an obligation to do everything feasible to verify the status of targeted object,” she wrote.

The Trump administration, however, strikes a different tone on international humanitarian law.

Speaking about the U.S. operation at a press conference March 2, Hegseth said: “America, regardless of what so-called international institutions say, is unleashing the most lethal and precise air power campaign in history.”

“No stupid rules of engagement,” he said. “No politically correct wars. We fight to win, and we don’t waste time or lives.”

Associated Press writer Aamer Madhani in Doral, Florida, contributed to this report.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Oil prices surged and stock markets slid Monday after hard-line Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei was chosen to succeed his late father as Iran’s supreme leader. His appointment, and new strikes on regional oil infrastructure, signaled that Iran was digging in 10 days into the war launched by the United States and Israel.

The war has choked off major supplies of oil and gas to world markets, led foreigners to flee from business hubs and prompted millions to seek shelter as bombs hit sites like military bases, government buildings, oil and water installations, hotels and at least one school.

Khamenei, a secretive 56-year-old cleric, is only the third supreme leader in the history of the Islamic Republic. He has close ties to the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, which has been firing missiles and drones at Israel and Gulf Arab states since his father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who had ruled since 1989, was killed during the war’s opening salvo.

The appointment suggests Tehran is not close to giving up on what it considers a fight for the Islamic theocracy’s survival.

Thousands poured into a central square in Tehran and other locations in a show of allegiance to the new supreme leader, waving flags of the Islamic Republic and shouting phrases like “Death to America” and “Death to Israel.”

“America and Israel: you’ve failed and you will drown in the swamp you are stuck in,” said Abbas Ali Saeedipoor, one of the demonstrators.

Growing alarm as oil prices rise with no end in sight to the war

Brent crude oil, the international standard, surged to nearly $120 a barrel Monday, about 65% higher than when the war started, before retreating below $100. The Dow Jones Industrial Average sank more than 600 points, or over 1.3%, shortly after opening — marking a drop of more than 6-1/2% from its all-time high close last month, though it later pared its losses.

Iran’s attacks in the Strait of Hormuz have all but stopped tankers from using the shipping lane through which a fifth of the world’s oil is carried, and Iranian drones and missiles have targeted oil and gas infrastructure in major producers.

In Brussels, the Group of Seven major industrialized powers decided against tapping into strategic oil reserves for now to ease the impact on oil prices. French Finance Minister Roland Lescure said “We’re not there yet,” before adding that they were ready to take other steps to stabilize markets, like strategic stockpiling.

Trump dismisses oil price concerns

“There is not an oil shortage,” U.S. President Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social overnight. “Prices will drop again soon,” he added, suggesting shipments from Venezuela to the U.S. could help offset the price spike.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the United States is “well on our way” to achieving its objective, which he said was to eliminate Iran’s ballistic missile stockpile, and its ability to produce and launch them. The administration has offered shifting rationales and timelines since the start of the conflict.

Elsewhere in the region, sirens blared multiple times across Israel on Monday amid unrelenting Iranian drones and missiles. A man was killed in central Israel in a missile strike, the first such death in Israel in a week, and a woman was wounded.

Israel said it was carrying out “a wide-scale wave of strikes” on the Iranian city of Isfahan, as well as the capital, Tehran and in southern Iran.

Turkey meanwhile said NATO defenses had intercepted a ballistic missile that entered the country’s airspace for the second time since the war started.

New Iranian leader seen as more hard-line than his father

The younger Khamenei, who has not been seen in public since the war started, was long considered a potential successor — even before the killing of his 86-year-old father. His wife, Zahra Haddad Adel, was killed in the same strike.

An Iranian state TV report suggested the younger Khamenei may have been wounded in that strike, though a state TV analyst later appeared to amend the report, saying he had been wounded in the 1980s Iran-Iraq war in which he served.

The younger Khamenei is seen as even less compromising than his late father, and as supreme leader has final say on all major policies, including war, peace and Tehran’s disputed nuclear program.

Though Iran’s key nuclear sites are in tatters after the U.S. bombed them during the 12-day Israel-Iran war in June, it still has highly enriched uranium that’s a technical step away from weapons-grade levels. Khamenei could choose to do what his father never did — build a nuclear bomb.

President Masoud Pezeshkian, a relative moderate in Iran’s Shiite theocracy, welcomed the choice in a post on X. Top Iranian security official Ali Larijani, speaking to Iranian state television, said Mojtaba Khamenei had been trained by his father and “can handle this situation.”

Israel has already described Khamenei as a potential target, while Trump has called him “unacceptable” and dismissed him as a “lightweight.”

Regional anger grows as energy infrastructure is hit

Saudi Arabia lashed out at Iran following the drone attack on its massive Shaybah oil field, saying Tehran would be the “biggest loser” if it continues to attack Arab states.

In the UAE, home to the futuristic city of Dubai, authorities said two people were wounded by shrapnel from the interception of Iranian missiles over the capital, Abu Dhabi. By mid-afternoon, the Emirati Defense Ministry said 15 ballistic missiles and 18 drones were fired on the country on Monday.

Iran also attacked Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain, where it hit a residential area, wounding 32 people, including several children, according to authorities. Another attack appeared to have started a fire at Bahrain’s only oil refinery, sending thick plumes of smoke into the air.

Bahrain has also accused Iran of damaging one of its desalination plants, though its electricity and water authority said supplies remained online. Desalination plants supply water to millions of residents in the region’s parched desert nations.

The U.S. State Department early Monday ordered nonessential personnel and families of all staff to leave Saudi Arabia following the escalation in attacks. Several other U.S. diplomatic missions have ordered all but key staff to leave.

Israel launches new strikes on Lebanon

Smoke billowed over Beirut after Israel carried out airstrikes on its southern suburbs Monday.

Ahead of the strikes, the Israeli army said it would operate against targets associated with the Hezbollah-linked financial institution al-Qard Al-Hasan — which Israel said finances the militant group — and repeated its warning to residents of Beirut’s southern suburbs to flee.

The war has killed at least 1,230 people in Iran, at least 397 in Lebanon and 11 in Israel, according to officials. Another person died in Israel of an asthma attack on her way to a shelter. Israel reported its first soldier deaths on Sunday, saying two were killed in southern Lebanon, where it is fighting Hezbollah. A total of seven U.S. service members have been killed.

UNICEF, the children’s agency, reported that at least 83 children have been killed and 254 wounded in Lebanon since March 2.

“As military strikes continue across the country, children are being killed and injured at a horrifying rate, families are fleeing their homes in fear, and thousands of children are now sleeping in cold and overcrowded shelters,” it said.

Magdy reported from Cairo and Keaten from Geneva. Associated Press journalists David Rising in Bangkok; Sam Metz in Ramallah, West Bank; Natalie Melzer in Nahariya, Israel; Melanie Lidman in Tel Aviv, Israel; Sally Abou AlJoud in Beirut; Aamer Madhani in Doral, Florida; Lorne Cook in Brussels, Matthew Lee in Washington, and Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed reporting.

If it were scored a hit, the “H” in “The Sun” logo would briefly flash atop the scoreboard. The “E” would illuminate to designate an error.

It felt like you had insider knowledge if you knew to look for the flashing letters before 2023. That’s when the logo came down, and the tradition was retired.

OK, you may have known that one. But with a new season looming at the upgraded stadium, my challenge is to impart some Camden Yards trivia you weren’t aware of. That’s no easy feat since baseball is linked to trivia like “Boog” to “barbecue.”

I searched for the sort of quirky snippets you might pull out during the seventh-inning stretch to impress somebody who doesn’t know nearly as much about Baltimore as they think they do.

I got an assist from a master: Janet Marie Smith, the former Orioles official instrumental in Camden Yards’ design.

She said the late team president Larry Luchino’s vision for Oriole Park “was that it would be an old‑fashioned ballpark and would have the qualities of an Ebbets or Fenway or Wrigley.”

“And so much of my job was to determine what those words meant,” said Smith, now the Los Angeles Dodgers’ executive vice president of planning and development.

Here are some stadium stories:

— I’ve heard fans say the foul poles were transported from Memorial Stadium, the club’s former home, to Camden Yards when the new venue opened in 1992.

That’s exactly half-true.

“We only brought one because those foul poles at Memorial Stadium were only about 65 feet high, and Major League Baseball wanted them to be closer to 80 feet,” Smith said. “But we realized that if we put the foul pole on top of the right‑field wall, which was 16 feet high, we had enough height to meet standards.”

— There is a Baltimore-esque significance to the particular shade of green inside the stadium.

“Green was selected to match the detail on row houses and parks in Baltimore,” Smith said. “We called the mix ‘Camden Green,’ and samples are in Cooperstown in their research library.”

The color was also a nod to Wrigley Field and Fenway Park, which are green inside.

— The official stadium name, Oriole Park at Camden Yards, almost had a punctuation mark that was less than charming.

“When the name was decided, we worked with Ashton Design on options for typeface, etc.,” Smith said. “One mockup substituted ‘@’ for ‘at.’ This was before the Internet. We decided it was too cute and stuck to letters. Thank goodness. What a disaster that would have been!”

— The short foul pole wasn’t the only thing Camden Yards inherited from its predecessor.

There had been a “Welcome Home” sign greeting fans at Memorial Stadium.

“At the last minute, we decided to bring that to Camden Yards and put it over the breezeway on the south end of the warehouse where you cross under into Gate A,” Smith said. “I’m probably the only person who remembers that the sign came from Memorial Stadium.”

— There used to be a clock above The Sun logo.  But instead of numbers, it had letters on the facing spelling out “B-A-L-T-I-M-O-R-E-S-U-N.”

That was an homage to the nearby Bromo Seltzer tower, which had letters spelling its name instead of 1 to 12.

— It was originally thought that fans would regularly use the water taxi to travel to the stadium. That hasn’t happened in a significant way.

But last summer, the Dodgers were faced with traffic congestion getting from their Harbor East hotel to the stadium.

“So the team took the water taxi and had a bus pick them up at the Inner Harbor,” Smith said. “A lot of the Dodgers personnel said it was so cool and wondered why they didn’t do it all the time.”

Trump photo

A bill sponsored by U.S. Rep. Sarah Elfreth would prohibit National Park Service annual passes from featuring the image or likeness of any living political figure.

The Park Service has been issuing passes that include the images of former President George Washington and President Donald Trump.

“It is unnecessarily politicizing something that shouldn’t be politicized,” Elfreth, an Anne Arundel County Democrat, said.

The Interior Department says the new passes are part of a modernization effort to make park access more accessible and affordable.

In the State House this week:

— Monday is the last day to introduce new bills in the session without requiring a suspension of the rules.

— Committee hearings continue. Among them is a Senate Budget and Taxation Committee hearing on Wednesday on a bill allowing voters to decide whether to expand legal gambling to include online casino games.

Have a news tip? Contact Jeff Barker at jebarker@baltsun.com

Lawmakers are posing the question: “How much is too much?”

Some members are also considering legislation to save problem gamblers from their own worst impulses by, for example, raising the minimum age from 18 to 21 to play daily fantasy contests. Problem gambling is gambling that causes harm or disruption to a bettor’s life.

“I think we’ve taken a very cautious approach given how much we have already approved over the last several years,” Senate Budget and Taxation Committee Chairman Guy Guzzone said in an interview. His committee will consider several gambling bills, making him a key player in the gambling expansion debate.

“It’s not that I’m saying everything’s off the table, but we’re just taking a very slow, careful look at all of them and seeing the impact we might feel on all kinds of things, from problem gaming to investments the state has already made in this area,” Guzzone said.

House and Senate committees have scheduled hearings on various gambling bills this week.

In 2024, the Maryland House passed legislation to put casino games onto phones and laptops through legalized online gaming. The bill, which would have required voters’ approval in a ballot referendum, died in the Senate.

]With Maryland facing a projected $1.4 billion budget deficit, sponsors say Internet gaming (iGaming) measures would establish an important new revenue stream without raising taxes.

“We continue to have a structural deficit and have to get out of the habit of balancing the budget for one year without putting new forms of revenue in place,” Democratic Sen. Ron Watson of Prince George’s County said in an interview.

Virginia is considering a casino that could compete with MGM National Harbor — across the Potomac River in Prince George’s County — the state’s top revenue-producing casino.

Maryland’s six casinos collectively contributed $831.3 million to the state in the fiscal year ending last June 30.

“We must act now or we’re going to fall behind,” Watson said.

He said his iGaming measure, if approved by voters, would send $1.5 billion to the state over five years.

Most of the proceeds would go to education — specifically the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future Fund. But Watson said the bill could be amended to direct money toward a variety of concerns, including helping Marylanders keep energy costs down.

The Maryland Center of Excellence on Problem Gambling, which offers a confidential helpline (1-800-GAMBLER), opposes expanding gambling.

The center says problem gambling has been growing in the state, especially among young men who grew up loving sports — and their phones — and can’t control their betting habits. Maryland launched mobile sports betting in 2022.

“That’s the demographic that is most quickly rising” in problem gambling,” said Blair Innis, the center’s government relations coordinator. “We can’t be making money for the state off the backs of addiction,” Innis said in an interview.

Last year, Del. Julie Palakovich Carr, a Montgomery County Democrat, sponsored a consumer protection bill that would have banned credit card use on mobile sportsbooks and raised the minimum age to 21 for fantasy games.

Palakovich Carr has introduced a similar measure in the current, 90-day legislative session that ends April 13.

FanDuel and DraftKings, two leading online sportsbooks, announced recently they will stop accepting credit card deposits following complaints that consumers were being assessed high fees.

“We just want to make sure the rest of the market follows along,” Palakovich Carr said.

“I’m hopeful this will be the year that the General Assembly will recognize the impacts that legalized gambling is having on some Marylanders and will take appropriate action,” she said.

Have a news tip? Contact Jeff Barker at jebarker@baltsun.com

Moore has boasted that his administration balanced the budget this year without new taxes or fees — a reality made possible in large part by a series of tax and fee hikes last year.

Meanwhile, the Maryland Department of Legislative Services projects a nearly $3 billion structural deficit in fiscal year 2028, growing to roughly $4 billion by fiscal year 2030. State lawmakers will likely have to make cuts, raise taxes or both next year.

Dr. Daraius Irani, the vice president of business and public engagement at Towson University, said Maryland leaders are running behind on long-term budget solutions and should get ahead of the issue this legislative session.

“Four years ago really would have been the time to really … look into some of the efficiencies,” he told Spotlight on Maryland. “They ignored some of these structural deficits.”

Irani said state leaders need to pursue structural reforms instead of short-term budget patches.

“The Maryland State Government really needs to look at sort of what it does, what its mission is. One of the challenges that it faces is its revenues aren’t growing as fast as expenditures,” he said. “Collectively, we really have done a poor job of managing Maryland’s finances writ large … I really think that Maryland needs to use this crisis to focus.”

Will taxes go up next year?

Del. Matt Morgan, R-St. Mary’s County, said Maryland Democrats prioritized avoiding tax increases in an election year. He said Marylanders should not be surprised if their elected officials raise taxes next year to counter the increasing deficit.

“They’re kicking the can down the road, and they’ve been kicking the can down this entire term,” Morgan told Spotlight on Maryland. “This is an election budget. No one’s told us what we’re going to do next year.”

Maryland leaders raised a series of taxes and fees last year to address the state’s deficit, including a new tax on IT and data services, tax hikes on high-income earners, and increased tax rates on vehicles, cannabis and sports betting.

Two key factors in the deficit spike next year include scheduled spending increases for Medicaid and the Blueprint education plan. Morgan said his colleagues may have no choice but to reassess these programs and restructure the state government.

“You can make the necessary cuts in the hard choices. Unfortunately, that is probably revolving around the Blueprint front and around the Medicaid expansion,” Morgan told Spotlight on Maryland. “I think when you look down deep inside the budget, you’re finding a lot of programs that are duplicated. You could get rid of a lot of expansion in government.”

Spotlight on Maryland asked Moore’s office what his plan is to address the state’s structural deficits, and whether he would commit to no new taxes and fees in a potential second term. The office did not make that commitment.

His spokeswoman emailed the following statement: “Governor Moore inherited a structural deficit after years of Maryland’s spending outpacing its revenue. Despite that, he has balanced the budget each year in office while focusing on growing Maryland’s economy. Since Day One, he’s been clear that Maryland must break our economy’s dependence on Washington to address the state’s long-standing fiscal issues. That’s why the Governor has been so diligent about growing our state’s private sector and has ushered in major job-creating economic investments from companies like AstraZeneca, Samsung Biologics, and Sphere Entertainment Co. While we appreciate the sentiment about him earning a second term, right now, his focus is passing yet another responsible, balanced budget.”

Doug Mayer, who previously worked as a spokesman for then-Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, said that Moore has no one to blame for the structural deficit but his political allies. Mayer emphasized that Hogan vetoed the $30 billion Blueprint education plan over budget concerns and wanted to restructure state government to save money in the long term. Both efforts, he said, were shut down by the Democratic supermajority in the legislature.

“Moore is a political coward,” Mayer told Spotlight on Maryland. “The budget situation is never going to get better. They’re just going to raise taxes. They won’t do it this year because they’re playing games.”

Another factor in Maryland’s fiscal woes is the loss of revenue from residents leaving for other states. A report last year from the Maryland Comptroller found that from 2022 to 2024, Maryland ranked among the top 10 in the nation for the largest net loss of residents to domestic migration. This included an increase in the number of young adults fleeing amid concerns about housing costs.

‘Next year is very concerning’

Senate Minority Leader Steve Hershey said Moore’s proposed budget does not address future deficits. He said state leaders need to lead with urgency and prove that Maryland is affordable for residents and fruitful for businesses.

“Next year is very concerning and should be concerning for Marylanders,” Hershey told Spotlight on Maryland. “We would like to send market signals out to businesses to tell them that we have a way to address these deficits, that we’re going to scale back the Blueprint, that we’re not going to have to raise taxes. Because as we saw last year, they raised taxes on businesses, and businesses are making decisions every day on whether to stay in Maryland, whether to expand in Maryland, or maybe even come to Maryland. And they need to know what this legislature is looking at with respect to how the budget is going to be here for the next couple of years.”

Spotlight on Maryland sent the following questions to Sen. Guy Guzzone, D-Howard County, chair of the Budget and Taxation Committee; and Del. Ben Barnes, D-Anne Arundel and Prince George’s counties, chair of the Appropriations Committee.

• How do you plan to address Maryland’s pending structural deficits?
• Are you committed to avoiding any new taxes or fees?

Guzzone and Barnes did not respond.

Spotlight on Maryland is a joint venture by The Baltimore Sun, FOX45 News and WJLA in Washington, D.C. Have a news tip? Call 410-467-4670 or email SpotlightOnMaryland@sbgtv.com. Contact Patrick Hauf at pjhauf@sbgtv.com and @PatrickHauf on X.