WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden is “deeply concerned” about the unauthorized release of classified documents on Israel’s preparation for a potential retaliatory attack on Iran, a White House spokesman said Monday.
The Biden administration is still not certain whether the classified information was leaked or hacked, White House national security spokesman John Kirby said. Officials don’t have any indication at this point of “additional documents like this finding their way into the public domain,” he said.
Kirby said the Pentagon is investigating. U.S. officials on Saturday confirmed an investigation by the administration.
“We’re deeply concerned, and the president remains deeply concerned about any leakage of classified information into the public domain. That is not supposed to happen, and it’s unacceptable when it does,” Kirby said.
Rescue workers use an end loader Monday to remove rubble of destroyed buildings at the site of an Israeli airstrike that buildings in a southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon.
The documents are attributed to the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency, and note that Israel was still moving military assets in place to conduct a military strike in response to Iran’s blistering ballistic missile attack on Oct. 1. They were sharable within the “Five Eyes,” an intelligence alliance comprised of the U.S., Great Britain, Canada, New Zealand and Australia.
Marked top secret, the documents first appeared online Friday on the Telegram messaging app and quickly spread among Telegram channels popular with Iranians.
Analysts at the SITE Intelligence Group, a consultancy that monitors and analyzes online threats from extremist groups, tracked the release of the documents to a Telegram channel popular with Iran-backed militias.
The channel contained posts from an anonymous user with a long history of posting other allegedly top-secret content who said they had access to the leaked documents. The user also wrote they sold some of the material and provided it to the Iranian military.
The release comes at a pivotal time in the Middle East, as Israel considers its response to Iran’s attack.
“The smallest item — even something like the leak of this relatively innocuous document — could move things in new directions,” said Rita Katz, SITE’s co-founder and executive director.
Flames and smoke rise Sunday form an Israeli airstrike on Dahiyeh, a southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon.
Meanwhile, Israel said late Monday it planned to carry out more strikes in Lebanon against a Hezbollah-run financial institution that it targeted the night before and which it says uses customers’ deposits to finance attacks against Israel.
At least 15 branches of Al-Qard Al-Hasan were hit late Sunday in the southern neighborhoods of Beirut, across southern Lebanon and in the eastern Bekaa Valley, where Hezbollah has a strong presence. One strike flattened a nine-story building in Beirut with a branch inside it.
The Israeli military issued evacuation warnings ahead of the strikes, and there were no reports of casualties.
Associated Press journalists witnessed strikes late Monday in the coastal region of Ouzai, near Beirut’s airport, and Lebanon’s Health Ministry said an airstrike near Beirut’s largest public hospital killed four, including a child, and wounded 24. It was the first strike on the Lebanese capital in 10 days.
An Israeli soldier waves from a tank Monday near the Israeli-Gaza border in southern Israel.
Israeli ground forces invaded Lebanon this month. The military said it aims to push Hezbollah out of southern Lebanon so tens of thousands of Israelis can return to their homes nearby after more than a year of cross-border rocket and drone attacks. Israeli airstrikes have pounded large areas of Lebanon for weeks, forcing more than a million people to flee their homes.
Hezbollah has been launching rockets into Israel almost every day since Hamas’ deadly raid into Israel last year that sparked the war in Gaza.
The United States hopes to revive diplomatic efforts to resolve both conflicts after the killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar last week, but so far all sides appear to be digging in.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken was scheduled to travel to the Middle East again, making his 11th trip to the region since the war in Gaza erupted last year.
The State Department said Blinken would depart Monday for a weeklong trip to Israel and a number of Arab countries on a visit that also comes as Israel weighs retaliation against Iran for a ballistic missile attack this month. His other stops are likely to include Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, officials said.
The trip was expected after Biden said last week he would dispatch Blinken to the region following Israel’s killing of Hamas military chief Yahya Sinwar, a move that some believe could open a window for new talks on a cease-fire proposal that has been languishing for months.
U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken attends a reception Friday for U.S. President Joe Biden in Bellevue Palace, Berlin.
Blinken will meet Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Isaac Herzog in Israel on Tuesday, Israeli officials said.
“Secretary Blinken will discuss the importance of bringing the war in Gaza to an end, securing the release of all hostages, and alleviating the suffering of the Palestinian people,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said in a statement.
He said Blinken also would underscore the need for a dramatic increase in the amount of humanitarian aid reaching Gaza, something that Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin made clear in a letter to Israeli officials last week.
That letter reminded Israel that the Biden administration could be forced by U.S. law to curtail some forms of military aid should the delivery of humanitarian assistance continue to be hindered.
Rising rents are pushing Americans out of cities. Here's why it's causing the 'donut effect.'
Rising rents are pushing Americans out of cities. Here's why it's causing the 'donut effect.'
Updated
Big cities in America have undergone seismic shifts in recent years, largely influenced by the shift to remote work that accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic. As white-collar workers transitioned to remote and hybrid work models, many businesses found they were no longer tied to the physical office. Workers scattered beyond cities, triggering significant changes in the housing market.
The migration pattern was dubbed "the donut effect" by Stanford University economist Nicholas Bloom and Arjun Ramani, now a grad student at MIT. In a 2021 paper, they observed that the centers (or holes) of major cities in America saw big population decreases, while the surrounding areas of those places (the donuts) saw population gains. Urbanites, free from their daily commutes, sought more spacious and affordable housing outside of dense center centers, shifting supply and demand in the housing market.
To understand this transformation, Section 8 Housing analyzed academic research and Zillow data to see how the housing market in America has shifted since the pandemic.
Rise of the suburbs
Updated
One way to see which geographic locations are growing in popularity is by tracking how much rental rates have changed. The Stanford study looked at 12 major metros in the United States, broken down by zip code. We have taken their analysis and updated it with figures projected through August 2024.
Our analysis reveals the trends the two researchers observed in 2021 have largely persisted. Between February 2020 and August 2024, rent in the centers of 12 major metros in the U.S. has risen by around 14%. Rents increased by around 31% in high-density areas in these regions. Meanwhile, rents have increased by around 46% in the suburbs of these major metros, and 53% in the exurbs.
Recent housing trends show more people are moving within metros, as opposed to between metros, according to the Stanford analysis. Hybrid roles, which allow people to go into the office a few days of the work week, have allowed for longer commutes but not major moves out of the region entirely. In other words, while some "Zoom towns" have boomed, the number of people moving from big cities to more remote locales is limited compared to the number who have moved to the suburbs. Consider that two of America's top 10 Zoom towns in 2023, Naperville and Arlington Heights in Illinois, are both in the suburbs of Chicago.
Significant shifts in San Francisco
Updated
The San Francisco Bay Area, known for its tech-driven economy and sky-high cost of living, starkly illustrates the donut effect. Bay-area hotspots like San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose have seen severe population declines, as remote work and rising living costs have pushed many residents to suburban or exurban areas, particularly in the hills east of Oakland.
Between February 2020 and November 2022, several of San Francisco's densest neighborhoods saw population declines of over 20%, according to change-of-address data from the U.S. Postal Service. While rising housing costs played a major role in this exodus, other factors also contributed. Increasing concerns about public safety and rampant public drug misuse have driven some residents and businesses away, sparking fears that the city could fall into a doom loop, in which it will not be able to recover its economic and social status.
Four zip codes in the city of San Francisco saw population declines during this period of over 20%, including parts of Pacific Heights, SoMa, Mission Bay, and more—all relatively high-density areas. In contrast, two of the zip codes that saw some of the biggest percentage increases in population were Alamo and Bethel Island, two smaller communities that are about 30 and 60 miles east of San Francisco, respectively.
The City by the Bay has started to rebound, albeit slowly. The latest Census data shows that between 2022 to 2023, San Francisco's population grew by around 500 people to nearly 809,000. That is still well below its 2020 population of 873,965 people. Official data show that property crime was down nearly a third in the first quarter of the year. Meanwhile, the fact the city is ground zero for the artificial intelligence boom bodes well for its job market.
A trend across the country
Updated
Like rent, home prices have gone up more quickly in rural and suburban locales. Home prices across most of the United States have increased by an average of around 50% since February 2020. Home prices have risen much more slowly in denser parts of the country. The densest zip code in America, 10028, corresponds to part of the Upper East Side in New York City. Home prices there have fallen by around 21%.
These trends represent a twist on the patterns seen over the past few decades. Starting in the 1980s, "superstar cities" emerged in the United States, pulling away from the rest of the country economically. Cities like New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles became hotbeds for jobs for white-collar workers, attracting college graduates seeking work. This trend continued throughout the 2010s all the way up to the pandemic; housing costs in these major metropolitan areas skyrocketed accordingly.
In addition to housing costs, the post-pandemic shift toward the suburbs and an increase in remote work have drastically impacted local economies. Office vacancies hit a record 20.1% in the second quarter of 2024, according to Moody's. This has caused trouble not just for real estate companies, but city governments as well. Many big city governments are facing budget shortfalls. If current real estate trends do not reverse themselves soon, city governments might have to cut their budgets, or raise taxes to make up the deficits.
These changes to the housing market might not last forever. Many big companies like Disney and JP Morgan have already started to issue return to office notices for their workers. On Sept. 16, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy announced the tech giant would require its workers to be present in the office five days a week, arguing that it would better foster collaboration amongst its employees.
Not all workers are pleased by the prospect of returning to their pre-pandemic commuting patterns. According to a survey conducted by KPMG in July and August, 83% of big company CEOs say they expect a "full return to office" over the next three years, up from just 64% in 2023. How America's cities will fare in the future may hinge on how the debate between corporate mandates and workers' desire for flexibility ultimately shakes out.
Story editing by Alizah Salario. Additional editing by Kelly Glass. Copy editing by Kristen Wegrzyn.
This story originally appeared on Section 8 Housing and was produced and distributed in partnership with Stacker Studio.
