• War plans exposed: Top national security officials for the U.S. president texted operational details for upcoming military strikes in Yemen to a group chat in a secure messaging app that included the editor-in-chief for The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, the magazine reported Monday. The National Security Council said the text chain “appears to be authentic.” Hours after Mr. Goldberg received the details of the attack March 15, the United States began airstrikes on Houthi rebels. – The Associated Press
• President and the courts, 1: The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to halt a ruling ordering the rehiring of thousands of federal workers, also calling on the court to rein in federal judges who have slowed its agenda. Judges have ruled against the administration more than three dozen times after finding violations of federal law. – AP
• President and the courts, 2: A federal judge temporarily blocked the Department of Government Efficiency from accessing people’s private data at the Education Department, the Treasury Department, and the Office of Personnel Management. – AP
  • Related Monitor story: ‘Move fast and break things’? Judges are telling President Trump to put them back together.
• Protests grow in Turkey: A media union said Turkish authorities arrested several journalists at their homes Monday amid growing protests over the jailing of Ekrem İmamoğlu, Istanbul’s mayor and a top rival to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. A court on Sunday formally arrested Mr. İmamoğlu and ordered him jailed pending a trial on corruption charges. – AP
  • Related Monitor story: We looked at how the Istanbul mayor’s arrest signals the rise of a “new model” of Turkish autocracy.
• South Korea reinstates acting president: South Korea’s Constitutional Court reinstated Prime Minister Han Duck-soo as acting leader, overturning his recent impeachment. Mr. Han had clashed with the liberal opposition Democratic Party over his refusal to fill three vacant seats on the Constitutional Court. The court continues to weigh the case of President Yoon Suk Yeol, whose impeachment over his brief martial law decree left the country’s leadership in limbo. – AP
• Second lady to visit Greenland: Usha Vance, wife of U.S. Vice President JD Vance, will travel to Greenland Thursday as President Donald Trump pursues the idea of U.S. annexation of the semiautonomous Danish territory. She will visit with a U.S. delegation to tour historical sites, learn about the territory’s heritage, and attend a national dogsled race, the White House said. Greenland’s outgoing Prime Minister Mute Egede called the delegation’s visit a “provocation.” – Reuters
• Allies discourage U.S. travel: The United Kingdom, Germany, Denmark, Finland, and Canada have added the U.S. to their lists of nations that citizens should exercise caution in visiting. Some cite border challenges. Relatedly, the U.S. was added this month to a watch list by Civicus, a network of groups that monitors threats to civil liberties. It cited a “dismantling [of] the system of checks and balances which are the pillars of a democratic society.” – Staff

President Donald Trump has made good on his threats to investigate and punish colleges. Sixty universities, including Yale University, American University, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst, are being investigated over alleged antisemitism on campus. The White House has also announced large aid cuts to research powerhouses such as Columbia University, Johns Hopkins University, and the University of Pennsylvania. The billions cut from the National Institutes of Health might hurt the most. Those grants affect the sciences, business, education, health care, and more; they help establish labs to conduct research, augment career training, fund conferences where information is shared, and pay salaries of research operations. Such research can lay the groundwork for what the private sector then picks up and delivers to the marketplace – and its loss could have lasting consequences.

Across the United States, an increase in politically or ideologically motivated violence ranges from organized groups to lone attackers, and from right-wing or white supremacist ideologies to leftist confrontations with police and the recent vandalism against Tesla outlets. In the search for remedies, some public safety experts say it’s essential to remember that the best responses to the varied threats often include simple steps such as sharing solutions and promoting community vigilance.

Basketball is on the rise across Africa. NBA Africa, now runs the first professional NBA league outside North America, backed by donors ranging from former NBA All-Star Luol Deng to former U.S. President Barack Obama. Today, around 1 in 10 players in the NBA are first- or second-generation Africans. But the journey of Kenya’s Nairobi City Thunder speaks to the changes that undergird hopes among Africans that the future of basketball is not just abroad.

Children’s education has been a casualty of Yemen’s 11-year-old war. Many school buildings have been damaged or closed. Thousands of teachers don’t show up for work. In the city of Taiz, educators went on strike late last year. But hundreds of university graduates are volunteering their time to bridge the gap by teaching children themselves. Beyond lessons, these volunteers offer support and compassion. “The demand was overwhelming,” says Munia Saeed, “and we knew we couldn’t stop.”

As a young journalist, David Sheff conducted the last joint interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, spending three weeks with them in New York City in 1980. When Lennon was murdered months later, Sheff became, he writes, “one of the people who circled the wagons around [Ono] as she struggled to survive a period she would later describe as the season of glass, when she was as fragile as glass and almost shattered.” Ono has long been accused of breaking up the Beatles, but Mr. Sheff offers a different perspective in “Yoko,” his compelling biography of the artist, musician, activist, and, most famously, widow of John Lennon.

In the history of countries that offer models of reconciliation after long conflicts, Syria is now trying to make its mark. A good example is a grassroots rescue organization known as the White Helmets. During a severe but short flare-up of sectarian violence in early March, the group’s volunteers quickly entered the killing zone in a minority area to help any and all, conducting around 30 responses a day.

“When we go to rescue someone in need, we don’t ask them about their religion or political opinion,” said Abdulkafi Kayal, head of the group’s operations in the coastal region where the killings took place. “Our mandate is to help those in need,” he told the BBC.

A reporter from the BBC was able to join the Syrian Civil Defence, as the White Helmets are formally known, as it went about its humanitarian missions. What was clear is that such acts of equality and kindness are the necessary building blocks for a country starting over.

“We consider ourselves as an umbrella to serve all Syrians,” Mr. Kayal said.

Civil society groups like the White Helmets are proving to be far more effective at binding Syrians than the new, interim government of former rebel leader Ahmed al-Sharaa. While his Islamist group was able to overthrow a dictatorship nearly four months ago, it has struggled to assure Syrians that it can achieve political inclusion regardless of ethnicity or religion.

“Civil society is always closer to the people than government administrations. We know people’s needs and opinions,” Bayyan Skaf of the activist youth group Khatwa, or Step, told the Monitor's Taylor Luck. many cities, volunteers are forming local councils to meet basic needs or hosting inclusive town halls to prevent the kind of revenge attacks of March 6-10.

As the de facto first responders in violent incidents or simply a fire emergency, the White Helmets and their 3,500 volunteers are emphasizing the need for impartial organizations to provide safety and a path toward justice. 

For almost six decades while living under a dictatorship, reports The Atlantic, “Syrians have been taught to hate and fear one another.” Now local civil society groups are filling a political void, trying to keep anarchy and anger at bay. The White Helmet volunteers who rush to scenes of violence and hatred are, as Mr. Kayal said, showing that it doesn’t matter if a Syrian “is a Muslim, Sunni, Alawite, Christian, Druze or even an atheist.”

“Those families are our families.”