2024
March
18
Monday

Monitor Daily Podcast

March 18, 2024
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Amelia Newcomb
Senior editor

Hard lines, red lines – they arise in daily decisions and international crises alike. Today, Howard LaFranchi looks at how they’re playing out as the White House navigates its relationship with Israel amid the war in Gaza.

Hard lines may make a choice easier. They may sometimes be needed for principled reasons. But more than a few public figures have paid a price for establishing lines that must not be crossed – and then ignoring them. That speaks to an international stage that frequently demands nuance and flexibility.


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Today’s stories

And why we wrote them

Jabin Botsford/Reuters/File
Former President Donald Trump attends the Trump Organization civil fraud trial, in the New York State Supreme Court building in Manhattan, Nov. 6, 2023.

Today’s news briefs

Julie Bennett/Reuters
Audrey O'Neil watches over her grandson, 7-month-old Mason Deleeuw, who was conceived after five rounds of in vitro fertilization treatments. The two wait for Mason's parents, Peter and Meredith Deleeuw of Huntsville, Alabama, while they lobby lawmakers in support of legal safeguards for IVF treatments, at the Alabama State House in Montgomery, Feb. 28, 2024.
Courtesy of Robert Klose
Anton plays in his orphanage in Ochakiv, Ukraine, in 2001, when the writer first met him and took this photo. He was brought to the orphanage when he was 3 and his great-grandmother could no longer care for him. He was adopted at age 5. Since early in the war, the port city of Ochakiv has come under Russian attack.

The Monitor's View

REUTERS
People attend a protest to mark the two-year anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, at the Old Town Square in Prague, Czech Republic, Feb. 24, 2024.

A Christian Science Perspective

About this feature

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Mark Schiefelbein/AP
Visitors gather beneath cherry blossoms that enter their peak bloom this week along the Tidal Basin, in Washington, March 18, 2024. The National Cherry Blossom Festival, which begins March 20, commemorates the 1912 gift of 3,000 cherry trees from the mayor of Tokyo. If you can’t make it to the Tidal Basin this year, you can check out the scene via bloomcam.org.
( The illustrations in today’s Monitor Daily are by Karen Norris. )

A look ahead

Thank you for joining us today. Tomorrow, security correspondent Anna Mulrine Grobe will look at a question that springs from a slowdown in U.S. military aid for Ukraine: Would Europe be prepared to defend itself if needed?

More issues

2024
March
18
Monday
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