Congress to be briefed on Iran strikes ahead of vote over president’s war powers
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog.
With all members of Congress across both houses due to be briefed today on the Iran strikes, the Trump administration has presented a shifting new justification for its war.
Secretary of state Marco Rubio, defense secretary Pete Hegseth and general Dan Caine will brief the full membership of the House and Senate on Tuesday, with a possisble vote on parallel war powers measures to follow.
It comes after House speaker Mike Johnson suggested on Monday that the White House believed Israel was determined to act on its own, leaving the president with a “very difficult decision”.
The Republican was speaking following a classified briefing at the Capitol, the first for congressional leaders since the start of the conflict, a joint US-Israel military campaign that killed Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
The strikes have quickly spiraled into a wider Middle East conflict, leaving hundreds of people dead, including at least six US military service personnel.
Johnson said the attack on Iran was a “defensive operation” because Israel was ready to act against Iran, “with or without American support”.
“The commander in chief has said this is going to be an operation that is short in duration,” Johnson said. “We certainly hope that’s true.”
Politico is reporting that he Senate could vote as early as Tuesday on senators Tim Kaine and Rand Paul’s measure to limit Trump’s strikes, followed by a separate House vote on a resolution from Thomas Massie and Ro Khanna.
The Democrats’ strategy of forcing votes on war power resolutions has been portrayed as a way for Congress to reclaim its constitutional powers to declare war but have, so far, all failed.
In other developments:
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In his first conference since the joint US-Israel operation against Iran, Donald Trump laid out his administration’s objectives moving forward. This includes destroying Iran’s missile capabilities, annihilating their navy, preventing Iran from ever having nuclear weapons, and ensuring the country “cannot continue to arm, fund and direct terrorist armies outside their borders”.
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In a heated Pentagon press conference, Pete Hegseth initially said that US troops wouldn’t be in Iran, but later said he wouldn’t get into details. “We’re not going to go into the exercise of what we will or will not do,” he said. “This is not Iraq. This is not endless … Our generation knows better, and so does this president.”
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US Central Command (Centcom) said that six service members have been killed in action, and eighteen have been seriously wounded in the US-Israel war on Iran.
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The US state department is urging Americans to “depart now” from more than a dozen Middle Eastern countries, following the US-Israel strikes on Iran. Hundreds of thousands of travelers are currently stranded in the Gulf states, as the airspace over some of the world’s busiest airports, such as Dubai and Abu Dhabi, closed over the weekend.
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Kuwait air defences mistakenly shot down three US F-15 fighter jets flying in Iran-related operations, the US Central Command (Centcom) said on Monday. All six crew members ejected safely, were safely recovered and in stable condition.
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In an appearance on Fox News, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Iran’s “ballistic missile program and their atomic bomb program” would have been “immune within months” if the United States and Israel had not struck the country this weekend.
Key events
Trump says US stockpiles mean “wars can be fought ‘forever’”
In a late night post on Truth Social, Donald Trump said that the US munitions stockpiles “at the medium and upper medium grade, never been higher or better”.
He added that the US has a “virtually unlimited supply of these weapons”, meaning that “wars can be fought ‘forever’”.
This comes after Trump said that the US-Israel war on Iran could go beyond the four-five weeks that the administration initially predicted. The president also did not rule out the possibility of US boots on the ground in Iran during an interview with the New York Post on Monday.
“I rebuilt the military in my first term, and continue to do so. The United States is stocked, and ready to WIN, BIG!!!,” he wrote.
DHS secretary to testify before Congress
The embattled homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, will answer questions from lawmakers on the Senate judiciary committee today.
This will be the first time she’s addressed members of Congress since federal immigration officers fatally shot two US citizens – Renee Good and Alex Pretti – during a surge of law enforcement in Minneapolis.
The actions of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) throughout the crackdown drew condemnation from both parties. Now, a funding bill to keep Noem’s department open remains stalled on Capitol Hill. Democrats have pushed for stronger guardrails on immigration enforcement agents, while Republicans have called many of their demands (like the need for officers to appear visible and no longer wear masks while patrolling and making arrests) non-starters.
Several Democrats have also called for Noem to resign or risk impeachment.
We’ll bring you the latest lines as things get underway.
Donald Trump is in Washington today. We will hear from him at 11am when he welcomes German chancellor Friedrich Merz to the White House for a bilateral meeting. We’ll bring you the latest lines from that summit, particularly the president’s first in-person meeting with a close ally since the US-Israel war on Iran began. The conflict enters its fourth day, with six US service members killed and 787 Iranian casualties since strikes started on Saturday.
Later Trump will meet with energy secretary Chris Wright at 2pm ET. That will be closed to the press but we’ll let you know if the opens up.
President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that Tehran wanted to talk but it was too late, as the United States continued its military operation against Iran.
“Their air defense, Air Force, Navy, and Leadership is gone. They want to talk. I said “Too Late!” Trump said in a Truth Social post commenting on an opinion piece.
Trump rebukes Starmer over UK refusal to back strikes on Iran
Jessica Elgot
Donald Trump has criticised Keir Starmer again over the UK’s refusal to aid the offensive strikes on Iran, saying the “relationship is obviously not what it was”.
Starmer had issued his strongest rebuke yet of Trump’s action in Iran, saying the UK did not believe in “regime change from the skies” and defended his decision not to allow the use of British bases to conduct the strikes.
But the prime minister said the UK would allow the use of its bases for defensive action to protect allied forces and nations in the Gulf and Middle East who have been hit by a wave of retaliatory strikes after the US-Israeli attacks on Iran.
Speaking to the Sun, Trump compared Starmer’s actions unfavourably with France’s support for the strikes and with the backing of the Nato secretary general, Mark Rutte. “He has not been helpful. I never thought I’d see that. I never thought I’d see that from the UK. We love the UK,” he said.
“It’s a different world, actually. It’s just a much different kind of relationship that we’ve had with your country before. It’s very sad to see that the relationship is obviously not what it was.”
Dharna Noor
A North Carolina congressional primary on Tuesday is an early test of datacenter politics – a fight increasingly shaping elections nationwide.
In the Durham-area fourth district, Congresswoman Valerie Foushee is seeking her third term against progressive challenger Nida Allam, a Durham county commissioner she defeated in 2022.
The heated rematch comes against the backdrop of a major datacenter battle in the district. Allam has come out staunchly against a massive new proposed facility, and is supporting a federal datacenter moratorium. Foushee, meanwhile, said she does not personally support the new development, but that datacenter decisions should be left to local leaders, not federal ones.
Until mid-February, Allam’s campaign donations dwarfed Foushee’s, thanks to Pacs such as Justice Democrats and gun control activist David Hogg’s Leaders We Deserve. In the last two weeks, that picture has changed dramatically as major Pacs have raced to back the incumbent.
Chief among them is Jobs and Democracy, a Super Pac whose sole disclosed donor is Anthropic, the AI firm behind Claude. The group has spent about $1.6m on Foushee’s re-election campaign since February 21.
Though Anthropic has no known links to the local datacenter proposal, opposition to it has left some local residents especially skeptical of all political funding tied to big tech.
Anthropic brands itself as safety-focused, making headlines in recent days for refusing the Pentagon’s demand for unfettered use of its products, though its tools have since reportedly been used in strikes on Iran. The company has backed some state AI safeguards and last year helped defeat a federal ban on state AI regulations.
North Carolina kicks off some of first midterm primaries for key Senate and House races
George Chidi
The marquee matchup for the open US Senate seat in North Carolina will begin to resolve into focus Tuesday, with a well-known former Democratic governor and a Donald Trump-endorsed but untested Republican appearing to lead the field.
In the Democratic primary, former two-term governor Roy Cooper is ahead in recent polling against the slate of other candidates who have never held elected office. Cooper is widely seen among North Carolina’s Democrats as their best chance at flipping a Republican-controlled seat, now held by retiring US senator Thom Tillis, a conservative who has turned hard against the Trump administration on its handling of healthcare, defense and the Epstein file disclosures.
For Republicans, Michael Whatley, the former Republican National Committee chair, leads the field in polling, with his closest competitor, representative Don Brown, in the single digits.
Polling in both primaries has been relatively scant and may have masked softness in conservative support for Whatley. About half of the Republican electorate remains undecided heading to voting booths Tuesday.
Whatley has Trump’s endorsement, but that hasn’t stopped the grumbling on the right.
“The president made a horrible mistake forcing Whatley on us,” said Brant Clifton, who publishes the Daily Haymaker, a conservative news site in North Carolina. Whatley has been closely connected to Tillis over the years, which sullies him among voters for whom Tillis has become unpopular, Clifton said.
“Trump spends a lot of time talking about how bad Tillis sucks and expressing his anger at Tillis, but here he is. He’s got the RNC working to shove Mike Whatley down our throats, but Tom Tillis and his wife are responsible for elevating Whatley out of obscurity to the state Republican party chairmanship.”
Noem to face questions over immigration enforcement and DHS shutdown
Homeland security secretary Kristi Noem is expected to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee later today, with funding for her department still stalled due to Democratic objections to its aggressive tactics.
It will be the first time Noem has appeared before the committee since two people were killed by federal immigration officers in Minneapolis in January.
Noem, appointed by Trump last year, also may field questions on other matters including possible threats to the United States after the US attacks on Iran and reports of disorder within her department.
The former South Dakota governor has overseen Trump’s immigration agenda, including the deployment of thousands of masked federal agents to US cities, where they have swept through neighborhoods in search of possible immigration offenders and clashed with residents.
Noem is scheduled to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday and the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee on Wednesday.
Trump hosts Germany’s Merz for talks eclipsed by Middle East war
President Trump hosts Germany’s Friedrich Merz later today for his first visit with a foreign leader since joining Israel in strikes on Iran.
The long-scheduled White House meeting was supposed to focus on the war in Ukraine and rocky EU-US trade relations, part of a wider effort to salvage frayed transatlantic ties.
But Trump’s signal that airstrikes against Iran could go on for weeks has upended the global agenda, with Tehran striking back against US bases and allies in the region, AFP reported.
Merz, a harsh critic of the Islamic republic’s leadership, said Berlin shared the Iranian people’s “relief” that the “mullah regime is coming to an end”.
Yet he declined to “lecture” the United States and Israel on the legality of the Iran strikes aimed at ending Tehran’s nuclear and missile programs.
Congress to be briefed on Iran strikes ahead of vote over president’s war powers
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog.
With all members of Congress across both houses due to be briefed today on the Iran strikes, the Trump administration has presented a shifting new justification for its war.
Secretary of state Marco Rubio, defense secretary Pete Hegseth and general Dan Caine will brief the full membership of the House and Senate on Tuesday, with a possisble vote on parallel war powers measures to follow.
It comes after House speaker Mike Johnson suggested on Monday that the White House believed Israel was determined to act on its own, leaving the president with a “very difficult decision”.
The Republican was speaking following a classified briefing at the Capitol, the first for congressional leaders since the start of the conflict, a joint US-Israel military campaign that killed Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
The strikes have quickly spiraled into a wider Middle East conflict, leaving hundreds of people dead, including at least six US military service personnel.
Johnson said the attack on Iran was a “defensive operation” because Israel was ready to act against Iran, “with or without American support”.
“The commander in chief has said this is going to be an operation that is short in duration,” Johnson said. “We certainly hope that’s true.”
Politico is reporting that he Senate could vote as early as Tuesday on senators Tim Kaine and Rand Paul’s measure to limit Trump’s strikes, followed by a separate House vote on a resolution from Thomas Massie and Ro Khanna.
The Democrats’ strategy of forcing votes on war power resolutions has been portrayed as a way for Congress to reclaim its constitutional powers to declare war but have, so far, all failed.
In other developments:
-
In his first conference since the joint US-Israel operation against Iran, Donald Trump laid out his administration’s objectives moving forward. This includes destroying Iran’s missile capabilities, annihilating their navy, preventing Iran from ever having nuclear weapons, and ensuring the country “cannot continue to arm, fund and direct terrorist armies outside their borders”.
-
In a heated Pentagon press conference, Pete Hegseth initially said that US troops wouldn’t be in Iran, but later said he wouldn’t get into details. “We’re not going to go into the exercise of what we will or will not do,” he said. “This is not Iraq. This is not endless … Our generation knows better, and so does this president.”
-
US Central Command (Centcom) said that six service members have been killed in action, and eighteen have been seriously wounded in the US-Israel war on Iran.
-
The US state department is urging Americans to “depart now” from more than a dozen Middle Eastern countries, following the US-Israel strikes on Iran. Hundreds of thousands of travelers are currently stranded in the Gulf states, as the airspace over some of the world’s busiest airports, such as Dubai and Abu Dhabi, closed over the weekend.
-
Kuwait air defences mistakenly shot down three US F-15 fighter jets flying in Iran-related operations, the US Central Command (Centcom) said on Monday. All six crew members ejected safely, were safely recovered and in stable condition.
-
In an appearance on Fox News, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Iran’s “ballistic missile program and their atomic bomb program” would have been “immune within months” if the United States and Israel had not struck the country this weekend.
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