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Iran war deprives US farmers of affordable fertilizer as spring planting looms

March 13, 2026 6:18 PM UTC / Reuters

A drone view shows a tractor and a soybean planter parked on a soy farm in Somonauk, Illinois, U.S., May 30, 2024. REUTERS/Jim Vondruska/File Photo [Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab]

• Summary

• Fertilizer shortage due to Iran war alarming U.S and Canadian farmers
• Fertilizer dealers could be 25-35% short of usual spring fertilizer supplies
• Prices have surged since Iran war began

WINNIPEG, Manitoba, March 13 (Reuters) – Farmers in the U.S. and Canada, who were already worried about prospects for another year ​of low profits or losses, now could have spring planting disrupted as they struggle to find fertilizer, and prices ‌for any available supplies have spiked more than a third since the war in Iran paralyzed global trade.

The U.S., which in some years imports half of its urea fertilizer, is about 25% short of the usual supplies that farmers buy for spring planting, according to The Fertilizer Institute, which represents the U.S. fertilizer ​supply chain.

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Supplies could grow still scarcer if fertilizer destined for the U.S. gets rerouted to other places willing to pay more ​for it, an analyst said.

Josh Linville, a fertilizer market analyst at StoneX, said the price offered in New Orleans, ⁠the port area where most offshore U.S. imports enter and prices are set, is as much as $119 less per metric ton than global prices.

“Not only am I ​worried about incoming vessels being turned around to other, better-paying destinations, there’s an argument to be made, if somebody was willing to go ​and buy up (supply on) barges, to load them onto a vessel and export it,” Linville said.

Farmers who do significant springtime fertilizer application and have not already purchased their supplies are finding retail centers empty, or stocked with supplies sold at such a premium that it’s unaffordable for some.

“It sends shivers down your spine,” ​said Saskatchewan, Canada farmer David Altrogge, whose broker told him that a local fertilizer dealer had stopped offering prices for fertilizer due ​to the shortage.

He bought his urea in December, but if he bought it today it would cost C$44,000 ($32,069.97) more. Some farmers in his area now face that price hike ‌or ⁠may not even be able to buy any, he said.

The Iran war has cut off critical nitrogen fertilizer supplies from the Persian Gulf to the world’s farmers. More than 30% of world nitrogen fertilizer exports, as well as fertilizer components like sulfur, pass through the now effectively closed Strait of Hormuz.

Unlike China, most countries do not hold strategic reserves of fertilizer, and much of the U.S. fertilizer dealer system does not hold stocks, ​leaving it vulnerable to sudden ​supply shortages.

“It’s not like there’s ⁠a whole lot of fertilizer sitting on the shelf,” said Veronica Nigh, an economist at The Fertilizer Institute. “It’s very much a just-in-time business model.”

The length of time that the Strait of Hormuz is closed is ​critical. Fertilizer loaded onto ships in the gulf can take weeks to reach markets like the ​U.S., and then ⁠must be transferred to river barges, trucks or trains to reach farmland. Most fertilizer needs to be applied before the crop starts growing, so any supplies arriving too late cannot be used for the 2026 crop.

This week, the American Farm Bureau Federation warned that fertilizer supply shortages could hit ⁠the U.S. ​food supply.

On Thursday, Senator Josh Hawley asked Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate whether ​fertilizer companies were involved in price-gouging. Hawley noted that prices have soared as much as 32% since the start of the war and said this was not reasonable.

He also sent ​a letter to the largest fertilizer companies demanding they explain the price hikes.

($1 = 1.3720 Canadian dollars)

Reporting by Ed White; Editing by David Gregorio

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Exclusive: Trump is preparing to replace Ric Grenell as head of the Kennedy Center | CNN Politics

Published Time: 2026-03-13T19:45:21.381Z / Source: CNN

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[Sunlen Serfaty]

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[Kristen Holmes]

Updated 2 min ago

Updated Mar 13, 2026, 4:01 PM ET

PUBLISHED Mar 13, 2026, 3:45 PM ET

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Ric Grenell attends the opening night of “Les Misérables” at The Kennedy Center on June 11, 2025.

Shannon Finney/Getty Images/File

President Donald Trump is expected to remove Richard Grenell as head of the Kennedy Center, according to three sources familiar with the matter.

The move comes as the arts and culture institution, which now bears Trump name on its façade, is expected to close for two years for renovations as the president seeks to remold it in his image.

The announcement of Grenell’s departure could come as soon as today, two of the sources said.

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Grenell’s tenure as interim president of the Kennedy Center since February 2025 has been marked by tumult, plagued by high-profile performance cancellations, protests, declining ticket sales and financial strain as he sought to execute the president’s vision for the arts center.

Despite earlier warmth between Trump and Grenell, a longtime loyalist who has served in various roles across the president’s two terms in office, the president had become frustrated with a slew of negative headlines about his revamp of the arts institution, the sources said.

One source familiar with the White House view said that the president liked Grenell, but felt that he had fumbled when it came to his leadership of the Kennedy Center, including on managing the publicity.

A White House official insisted that Grenell wasn’t being fired but that he was always intended to help during the Kennedy Center’s transition period and then leave the role.

While leading the Kennedy Center, Grenell often bucked the trends of the arts world, defying traditions and stretching norms in place for decades, which critics contend has led to strain and brought irreparable harm to the institution.

Those who work with Grenell described him as combative, confrontational and headstrong. A source close to the Kennedy Center lamented that Grenell had no experience or grounding in the arts world and came in “with a sledgehammer” and “campaign schticks” that are moving the institution in the wrong direction.

But others contended that he was exactly the person to carry out Trump’s vision and that he brought a “no-nonsense mentality” to his work and brought in many new staff to the center.

In recent days, Trump has been “kind of is souring on him,” a source close to the Kennedy Center said.

“Ric worked really hard to keep in Trump’s good graces, but Trump got tired of turning on the news and hearing every day how bad the Kennedy Center was being run and (how) Trump is killing it,” the source said.

One of the sources familiar with the plans moving forward for the Kennedy Center also described Grenell’s departure as a transition, not a removal, noting that the arts institution is moving towards the building phase of its planned renovation, and that Grenell did want to be there during the construction.

CNN has approached Grenell and the White House for comment.

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The suspect authorities say killed an ROTC instructor at Old Dominion University had previously been convicted of providing material support to ISIS but received a shorter prison sentence than federal prosecutors sought before his release in 2024, according to court records.

Mohamed Jalloh, a naturalized U.S. citizen originally from Sierra Leone, entered a classroom Thursday at the Norfolk school and opened fire after confirming it was an ROTC class, killing Lt. Col. Brandon Shah, authorities said. The FBI’s Norfolk Field Office said ROTC cadets physically subdued Jalloh and ended the attack, adding that their actions “rendered [him] no longer alive.”

“The horrific tragedy that occurred today on ODU’s campus never should have happened,” Rep. Jennifer Kiggans, R-Va., said.

Court records show Jalloh was arrested in 2016 for providing material support to ISIS.

Federal prosecutors sought a 20-year prison sentence, but Senior U.S. District Judge Liam O’Grady sentenced him to 132 months — roughly 11 years.

According to prosecutors, a now-deceased ISIS member overseas arranged contact between Jalloh and an individual he believed to be a fellow supporter but who was actually an FBI confidential human source. Investigators said Jalloh also traveled to Nigeria as part of the plot.

The overseas terrorist wanted an attack carried out, while Jalloh told the FBI source he decided not to renew his enlistment with the Virginia Army National Guard after listening to lectures from al Qaeda terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki, a New Mexico native against whom President Barack Obama ordered a fatal drone strike in 2011.

“The defendant was fully aware of what he was doing and the consequences of those actions. His only misgivings seemed to be a fear that he would waver at the critical moment,” prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memorandum obtained by The Associated Press.

O’Grady later handed down an 11-year sentence that included mental health treatment and substance abuse testing, according to the wire service, and Jalloh was released in 2024.

Jalloh’s release also required he have no contact with any terrorist organizations and computer monitoring during probation.

“Jalloh was sentenced in 2017 to 132 months in prison for providing material support to ISIS. The [government] had asked for a sentence of 240 months, the statutory maximum,” former federal prosecutor William Shipley wrote on X.

“The Judge who imposed the reduced sentence was Senior Judge Liam O’Grady, in the Eastern District of Virginia, a GWB appointee. Judge O’Grady announced he was taking Senior Status in June 2020 — right in the heart of the start of COVID, meaning there was no chance that Pres[ident] Trump would be able to get his replacement confirmed.

“[Joe Biden] ended up nominating his replacement — Judge Patricia Giles.”

Giles, he said, controversially ruled in 2024 that Virginia had illegally purged noncitizens from the voter rolls too close to that year’s election and ordered their restoration.

Asked whether the spate of recent attacks shows a resurgence of ISIS threats to the homeland or if previously lax immigration policies have played a role, a spokesperson for National Counterterrorism Center Director Joe Kent pointed to recent comments he made after the Iran mission began:

“As the Iran conflict continues to unfold, ODNI’s National Counterterrorism Center is engaged and operating at full capacity, 24/7. We are tracking developments in real time, assessing any potential risks to the homeland, identifying emerging threats and providing timely, actionable intelligence to the White House, law enforcement and interagency partners to detect and prevent attacks against the American people,” Kent said.

Kent said counterterrorism officials are “acutely aware” and focused on eliminating “persistent” threats posed by thousands of people with terror ties who “poured into our nation unchecked during four years of open borders under Biden.”

“Constant vigilance is a must. Stay aware of your surroundings, and if you see something suspicious, report it immediately to local law enforcement. Every one of us has a role to play in keeping this nation secure,” Kent said.

A DOJ spokesperson told Fox News Digital there are “no known or credible threats to the homeland” at this time and that federal agents are “maintaining a constant state of vigilance to keep Americans safe.”

Fox News Digital reached out to ODNI, the FBI and O’Grady for comment.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Military exercises in Alaska and Greenland test forces on operating in Arctic conditions

March 13, 2026 / 2:51 PM EDT / CBS News

U.S. forces this week wrapped up their participation in an annual Arctic training exercise that for the first time was held in both Alaska and Greenland. Arctic Edge, which began in 2018, includes training to respond to threats that Russia — and increasingly China — could pose to the U.S.

The portion in Greenland was coordinated with Denmark and involved both U.S. and Danish special forces. The long-planned exercise took place despite President Trump’s repeated threats this year to take control of Greenland, which is an autonomous territory of Denmark.

According to NORAD and U.S. Northern Command, which ran the exercise, Denmark hosted the U.S. in Greenland for training focused on operating in the Arctic. Every other year, Arctic Edge takes place in the winter and this year’s was the first in recent years to take place in the dead of winter.

File: A U.S. Air Force Special Operations Forces (SOF) Airman navigates the ice sheet during a simulated search and rescue for ARCTIC EDGE 2026 (AE26) in Kangerlussaq, Greenland, March 7, 2026. Defense Visual Information Distribution Service

“Half of the battle in exercising in the wintertime in the Arctic is simply surviving,” Royal Canadian Air Force Lt. Gen. Iain Huddleston, the deputy commander of NORAD, told reporters earlier this week.

The overall lesson of the exercise is the military must prepare units for the Arctic before they get there, according to U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. Robert Davis, who is the head of U.S. Alaska Command, the Alaskan NORAD region, and commander of the 11th Air Force.

During the training exercise, according to Davis, there are routinely aircraft that are damaged and require additional maintenance because of the lack of familiarity with practices unique to the extreme cold, like warming up hydraulic systems beforehand. Some service members try to open the window on an aircraft too soon, and the window cracks.

“Now you can’t use the aircraft until you replace the window — so, a couple of examples of just some of the practical challenges of not operating on a routine basis, and then all of a sudden coming up into the Arctic and having to do a little discovery learning,” Davis said.

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Huddleston and Davis said the exercise did not have a theoretical adversary but had portions to defend against weapons, like the cruise missiles that only certain countries, like Russia and China, could potentially use to threaten the U.S.

“We don’t have any intelligence that would suggest that we’re actually at risk of them launching cruise missiles against Alaska,” Davis said. “Nevertheless, we feel like we need to be adequately prepared to take the military capabilities that the U.S. government has given to us from a defensive perspective and make sure that we can put them together.”

A smaller weapon of increasing concern to the military is the drone. In the exercise, the military practiced responding to a drone incursion at Fort Greely in Alaska.

According to Davis, they tested scenarios including a single drone that might just be surveilling the installation as well as a small swarm of about six drones, to see if the different systems Fort Greely has were able to detect and communicate information to the Army soldiers.

“None of the drones were completely undetected,” Davis said, adding that there are multiple types of sensors and at least one of them detected each of the drone, and none of the systems were negatively impacted by the temperature, which can plummet to -40 degrees fahrenheit.

The U.S. forces did take down one drone, according to Davis, but used a counter-unmanned aerial system that throws a net over the drone and lowers it to the ground intact so the U.S can inspect it.

Because the counter-drone systems at Fort Greely are mostly electronics based and don’t necessarily require batteries, which can drain quickly in the cold, the temperatures “didn’t really affect them in a negative way, which is good,” Davis said.

He said the speed at which industry and commercial companies are modifying and changing drone technology makes it “really difficult” for the formal programs within the military to keep up. That’s a concern the Pentagon is confronting throughout the armed forces, not just in the Arctic.

The Trump administration says higher gas prices are a short-term pain for a long-term gain. Will voters agree? | CNN Politics

Published 2:07 PM EDT, Fri March 13, 2026 / CNN

CNN’s Dana Bash and the “Inside Politics” panel analyze a recent focus group of Biden-Trump voters in Michigan expressing confusion about the reasons for war with Iran and concern about rising gas prices. David Chalian says that Republican lawmakers are already anxious about the midterm fallout, telling Bash, “to find a way to get out of this quickly, declare some victory on objectives and start focusing the attention back on economic concerns is all I’m hearing of their desire right now.”

https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/13/politics/video/inside-politics-gas-prices-iran-michigan-swing-voters

Judge quashes subpoenas sent to Federal Reserve as part of Justice Department criminal probe

Updated on: March 13, 2026 / 3:32 PM EDT / CBS News

Washington — A federal judge has quashed a pair of grand jury subpoenas sent to the Federal Reserve Board as part of a criminal probe by U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s office, saying they were merely a pretext to pressure Chairman Jerome Powell into voting for lower interest rates or resigning.

“There is abundant evidence that the subpoenas’ dominant (if not sole) purpose is to harass and pressure Powell either to yield to the President or to resign and make way for a Fed Chair who will. On the other side of the scale, the Government has offered no evidence whatsoever that Powell committed any crime other than displeasing the President,” Chief Judge James Boasberg of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia wrote in his ruling, which was dated March 11 and unsealed on Friday.

“The Court must thus conclude that the asserted justifications for these subpoenas are mere pretexts,” he added.

In January, Powell revealed that the Federal Reserve had received grand jury subpoenas from the Justice Department as part of an ongoing criminal investigation into him.

The subpoenas threatened a criminal indictment related to Powell’s testimony before the Senate Banking Committee in June 2025, according to Powell. The chairman — who has drawn President Trump’s ire for declining to rapidly slash interest rates — said the probe centered on his comments about a years-long renovation project at the Federal Reserve’s office buildings.

The probe has not resulted in any criminal charges.

In his ruling, Boasberg heavily quoted Mr. Trump, and said the motivation behind the criminal probe appeared to be driven by his desire to pressure the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates.

“Jerome ‘Too Late’ Powell has done it again!!! He is TOO LATE, and actually, TOO ANGRY, TOO STUPID, & TOO POLITICAL, to have the job of Fed Chair,” Boasberg cited the president as saying in a post on social media.

“That is one of at least 100 statements that the President or his deputies have made attacking the Chair of the Federal Reserve and pressuring him to lower interest rates,” Boasberg wrote, noting that when the pressure failed, he resorted to calling for Powell’s ouster instead.

“Perhaps it comes as no surprise, then, that the D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office has recently opened a criminal investigation into Powell,” Boasberg wrote.

https://www.cbsnews.com/video/republican-thom-tillis-doj-powell-investigation-not-cute/

Person arrested on charges of selling rifle to gunman in Old Dominion University attack

18 min ago
PUBLISHED Mar 13, 2026, 3:00 PM ET
Crime Gun violence

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Police arrive outside Old Dominion University’s campus after reports of an active shooter on Thursday, March 12, 2026, in Norfolk, Va. (AP Photo/John Clark)

John Clark/AP

A person has been arrested and is facing federal charges for allegedly selling the rifle used in the deadly shooting during an ROTC class at Old Dominion University, according to court documents.

The person, Kenya Mcchell Chapman, is charged with making false statements while purchasing a firearm and dealing firearms without a license.

Prosecutors say the gun was carried Thursday by [Mohamed Bailor Jalloh], a convicted ISIS supporter who stepped into an ROTC classroom at Old Dominion University and opened fire.

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The gun had an obliterated serial number, a law enforcement official familiar with the investigation told CNN.

This story is developing and will be updated.

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Trump posts renderings showing Kennedy Center exterior after planned renovation

March 13, 2026 / 3:27 PM EDT / CBS News

Washington — President Trump on Friday released two renderings of the exterior of the Kennedy Center after its planned renovations, which are slated to be finished in 2028.

Mr. Trump said last month that the performing arts center would close for two years, beginning July 4, for renovations. Mr. Trump said he expected the project to cost about $200 million, below the $250 million for renovations that Congress approved last year.

From the renderings, the building’s exterior looks similar to the current layout. Cherry blossom trees replace the willow trees that long adorned the terrace overlooking the Potomac River, but were removed last year. And it also reflects the change of gold to white columns, completed last year.

Rendering of planned Kennedy Center exterior renovation posted on Truth Social by President Trump, March 13, 2026.

The president said last month he planned to use the building’s existing steel and some of its marble, and that there were no plans to demolish the building.

“I’m not ripping it down. I’ll be using the steel, so we’re using the structure,” he said.

CBS News reported last month that the plans included a new roof and replacing some marble and grout, as well as changes to the terrace that stretches out over Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway toward the river.

Mr. Trump’s name was added in large letters above “The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts” on the building’s facade in December after the institution’s board — many of whom were selected by Mr. Trump — voted on the name change. The move, which lacked authorization from Congress, prompted criticism from Democrats and the Kennedy family.

The building’s two-year closure follows a series of high-profile performance cancellations.

Rep. Gottheimer: American Jews face ‘even more of a surge’ in threats | CNN Politics

By Dana Bash, CNN
Published 1:48 PM EDT, Fri March 13, 2026

Rep. Josh Gottheimer, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, told CNN’s Dana Bash the country is seeing “a huge spike in antisemitism.” He added, “This is not political. This is about making sure we educate our children, we stand up to hate and we make it clear that’s not who we are as a country.”

7:14 • Source: CNN

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