As President Donald Trump directs military strikes on Iran, he is also fighting online attacks at home from some of the loudest voices in his MAGA political movement.
“This is Israel’s war. This is not the United States’ war,” former Fox News host Tucker Carlson said Tuesday on his weekly political podcast.
“No one should have to die for a foreign country,” Megyn Kelly, another former Fox News host with a massive online following, said on her podcast Monday.
Daily Wire podcaster Matt Walsh beseeched fellow conservatives on Monday to stop supporting Trump’s military campaign. “I can’t take the gaslighting, guys. I really can’t,” he wrote on X.
MAGA critics of Trump’s new military conflict say they are struggling to reconcile it with his “America First” principles and long record of criticizing costly and protracted American military interventions. The president has said operations against Iran could go on for four to five weeks, or longer.
“I think to them it feels legitimately like a betrayal on a fundamental tenet of Trumpism,” said Matthew Dallek, a professor at George Washington University’s Graduate School of Political Management.
Trump has dismissed the idea that his critics could speak for the Make America Great Again movement: “MAGA is Trump,” he said in an interview with independent journalist Rachael Bade on Monday.
Online infighting is common in political movements, but Dallek said the degree of open dissent among conservatives over Iran suggested it could be a “breaking point” for some of Trump’s most influential supporters. Carlson, Kelly, and Walsh together list more than 13 million subscribers among them on YouTube, with millions more on X and other platforms.
Trump claimed that he alone spoke for MAGA after Bade asked him about the rebellion in the ranks of his supporters, according to a post she published late Monday. “MAGA wants to see our country thrive and be safe. And MAGA loves what I’m doing — every aspect of it,” he said.
White House spokesperson Olivia Wales echoed the president’s comments in a statement to the Washington Post. “President Trump is MAGA and MAGA is President Trump,” she wrote in an email. “With Operation Epic Fury, President Trump is putting America first, eliminating the threat to our people, and securing our Nation and world for generations to come,” she added.
Trump has made opposition to foreign military intervention a cornerstone of his political platform since he first sought the presidency.In the 2016 Republican primary, he called the Iraq War “a big, fat mistake” as he sought to tie rival Jeb Bush to his brother George W. Bush’s unpopular legacy. Running against Democrat Kamala Harris in 2024, Trump called himself “the candidate of peace,” and said in his election night victory speech: “I’m not going to start a war.”
Stephen K. Bannon, Trump’s chief strategist for part of his first term in office, warned that turnaround could become a political problem for the president. He criticized the Iran operations after a guest on his War Room podcast over the weekend suggested the conflict could be “a hard slog.”
“I’m just going to be brutally frank,” Bannon said. “That was not pitched in the 2024 campaign. It just wasn’t. We’re going to bleed support.”
Whitney Phillips, a professor of information politics at the University of Oregon, said the president was severely testing his supporters’ loyalty.
“Trump has put these people in such an impossible position,” she said. “He’s not asking them to bend a little — he’s asking them to entirely reconfigure themselves into a new kind of balloon animal.”
Walsh, who has long urged Trump to take a hard line on immigration, transgender people, and diversity policies, is among the MAGA influencers refusing to reconfigure.
He criticized the administration’s “confused” messaging on the justification for the Iran operation in an X post on Monday that drew a lengthy response from Trump’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt. Her X post listed what she called the “clear objectives” of Trump’s military campaign.
Instead of Walsh and others falling in line, an online fracas ensued. Some X users mused that Walsh might be fired by Daily Wire founder Ben Shapiro, who had opened his own podcast on Sunday by lauding the operation that killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Shapiro did not respond to a request for comment. Walsh stepped up his online campaign against Trump’s strategy, taking aim at his fellow Trump supporters.
“Conservatives are now running around saying ‘Iran has been waging war on us for 47 years,’” Walsh posted Monday on X. “Okay, then why didn’t any of you call for an attack on Iran at any point until now? … You and I both know that almost every conservative influencer in the business was opposed to war with Iran until just now.”
Laura Loomer, a right-wing influencer who has described herself as “Trump’s loyalty enforcer,” has used her own online platform to attack critics of the war and sought to enlist Trump in hitting back at them. She posted on X that she had spoken to Trump and congratulated him, but also told him about the criticism he was receiving from Carlson, Kelly, Rep. Thomas Massie (R., Ky.) and former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R., Ga.) — a group she lumped in with “communist Democrats.”
“I’m so glad I was able to speak to President Trump after the strikes on Iran and show him what the Woke Reich, including Tucker, Megyn, and Marjorie Traitor Greene have been saying about him,” Loomer added Tuesday. “He was not happy when I showed him, but he told me he is focused on winning and they aren’t.”
Conservative figures opposing the war appear to be in the minority despite the attention their criticism has generated.
An analysis by the Post of about 5,000 online posts, podcasts, and newsletters from 79 conservative politicians and commentators since the Iran conflict began last weekend showed that most supported the operation, but that more than a dozen criticized it at least some of the time. Only a few were staunchly opposed to Trump’s new military intervention in Iran.
While Trump returned to office amid a wave of online loyalty from leading conservative voices, experts in political communication said that in just a few days the Iran attacks had begun to test the limits of his influence.
A.J. Bauer, a professor of journalism at the University of Alabama, said the pushback has gained traction in part because the administration has struggled to articulate a clear message on Iran for the right to rally around. That has left conservative influencers to chart their own course based on their personal beliefs, their loyalty to Trump, and their assessment of the risk that the conflict becomes unpopular with MAGA voters.
A flash poll conducted by the Post over the weekend found that Americans oppose Trump ordering airstrikes on Iran by 52% to 39%; 9% said they were unsure.
Sam Rosenfeld, a professor of political science at Colgate University, said the influencer backlash over Iran also speaks to wider problems emerging for Trump. His approval rating was 39% ahead of last month’s State of the Union address.
There is an “emerging sense that Trump’s centrality to right-wing politics has an endpoint in the not-so-distant future,” Rosenfeld said. “That all serves to loosen Trump’s symbolic grip on the right’s discourse.”
Texas primary voters of both parties voted with cool heads Tuesday, rejecting candidates who appealed to their parties’ bases with more inflammatory styles that could have proved riskier in a general election.
But challenges remain for Democrat James Talarico — who won the primary outright on a unifying message of reaching out to all Texans — and for Republican Sen. John Cornyn, who nosed ahead of firebrand Attorney General Ken Paxton but now faces a punishing May 26 runoff against him.
Democrats face an uphill battle to flip a Senate seat in the red state no matter what happens in the runoff, as they mount their long-shot bid to retake the Senate in November. The chamber is currently controlled by Republicans, 53-47, and Democrats would have to flip several deep-red states like Texas to regain control.
The next few months will determine how well-positioned Texas Democrats are to regain a Senate seat that has eluded them for more than 30 years, as the party hopes unusually high voter enthusiasm and weariness with President Donald Trump could fuel their comeback.Talarico in the coming months must work to unite the party by attracting Black voters who strongly backed his opponent, all while fending off coming attacks from the right painting him as a radical.
And Cornyn’s political survival may depend on the actions of someone who is notoriously hard to predict or corral — Trump. The president said Wednesday that he would soon endorse one candidate and that the other should quit the race. If he does not get Trump’s endorsement, Cornyn may struggle to clear the runoff, and either way the next few months will be a divisive slugfest between two Republicans with large megaphones.
“We are not going to go quietly, and we are not going to let you buy the seat,” Paxton said at his election-night party in Dallas, referencing the tens of millions of dollars Cornyn and his allies poured into the race.
FILE – This photo combination shows Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, left, in Dallas and Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, in Austin, Texas, both on March 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez, Jack Myer)
Cornyn, a fourth-term senator who is widely considered to be a stronger general-election candidate than the scandal-plagued Paxton, fell short of the 50% mark that would have avoided a runoff. Paxton was impeached by the GOP-controlled Texas House in May 2023 on charges of bribery but was acquitted by the Senate.
Cornyn warned Paxton that “judgment” was coming for him. “I refuse to allow a flawed, self-centered, and shameless candidate like Ken Paxton to risk everything we’ve worked so hard to build,” he told reporters.
The bitter intra-Republican warfare marked a stark contrast to the Democratic side of the ledger, where Rep. Jasmine Crockett set aside her earlier attacks on Talarico — and a legal challenge she filed Tuesday after voters were turned away from polling places in her Dallas district —and urged Democrats to come together Wednesday.
“Texas is primed to turn blue and we must remain united because this is bigger than any one person,” Crockett wrote in a social media post.
Talarico also urged unity, telling his supporters Tuesday, “The stakes in Texas are too high for division.”
Mudslinging in the final weeks of the race may have caused some damage that Talarico will need to repair ahead of November, however. Crockett called the argument that Talarico was more electable than her a “dog whistle” and slammed him for not condemning ads run by a super PAC that supported him as “straight-up racist.” (Talarico does not control the super PAC, and the group denied darkening Crockett’s skin in an ad.)
Crockett ran strong with the state’s Black voters, while Talarico appeared to run away with the Latino vote in the state. He beat Crockett by 30 percentage points or more in 21 counties that are more than 75% Latino. In counties that were 20% or more Black, Crockett won by 25 percentage points.
Nancy Zdunkewicz, a Texas Democratic pollster, said she believed that much of the Crockett-Talarico tensions played out online rather than on the campaign trail and that the primary electorate was not divided.
“She has conceded graciously, and I don’t want to overstate any damage done simply because of the social media dialogue, which was unnoticed by voters,” she said.
Former Vice President Kamala Harris, who backed Crockett in the final days of the race, urged voters to unify. “I congratulate James Talarico for his win, and the inspiring campaign he continues to build,” she said in a statement. “I offer him my full support in the months ahead.”
Republicans have a while to go before they can start their postprimary healing process, a delay that could dampen enthusiasm in November. It is also unclear whether Republicans will continue to vote with their heads instead of their hearts in May by backing Cornyn. Runoffs tend to feature a smaller, more intense group of voters compared with regular primaries, which could benefit Paxton. And it remains an open question whether Trump will support Cornyn, a nod that could put him over the top.
Political analysts also do not know if the roughly 13% of Republicans who voted for GOP Rep. Wesley Hunt, who failed to make the runoff, will show up again in May and, if so, which candidate they would favor.
Cornyn’s allies have warned the president that should Paxton be their nominee, the party would have to spend $200 million to get him over the finish line — a haul that would take away from other competitive Senate races Republicans are defendingin Maine, North Carolina, and Ohio. Paxton historically has not been a strong fundraiser, and Democrats have nominated Talarico, whom they see as a stronger candidate than Crockett in the general election and who may take more resources to beat.
Cornyn has Trump-connected allies on his side as they make this pitch, including Trump’s former campaign manager Chris LaCivita, who is running his super PAC, and Trump pollster Tony Fabrizio.
Republicans in the state are sounding the alarm about record-breaking primary turnout for Democrats, which they see as a signifier of high enthusiasm going into November. Ross Hunt, a Republican pollster, called the turnout “a code red alert for Texas Republicans” in an analysis he published earlier this week. He predicted Democrats have added more than 480,000 voters to their turnout in the fall.
“Republicans will need to do everything right this fall: we will need to select the best nominees for the General Election, maximize GOP turnout, practice intense message discipline, and have a clear-eyed and dispassionate understanding of where the new front line of defense stands after March 3rd,” he wrote.
The House Ethics Committee will investigate allegations that Rep. Tony Gonzales (R., Texas) had an affair with a former staff member who later died after setting herself on fire, the committee said Wednesday, ensuring that the scandal that has dogged Gonzales through his bitter primary race will continue to factor heavily as he heads into a runoff.
An investigative subcommittee will look into allegations Gonzales “engaged in sexual misconduct towards an individual employed in his congressional office” and “discriminated unfairly by dispensing special favors or privileges,” Rep. Michael Guest (R., Miss.), chair of the Ethics Committee, wrote in a letter Wednesday.
Under House rules, lawmakers are not permitted to engage in sexual relationships with staff.
Gonzales, a married father of six, has been accused of having an improper relationship with a then-aide, Regina Ann Santos-Aviles, who died in September after lighting herself on fire in her backyard. Her death was ruled a suicide.
Since then, the former aide’s estranged husband has shared text messages that showed Gonzales pressing Santos-Aviles for a “sexy pic” and asking her about her favorite sex position. Santos-Aviles pushed back against the lawmaker, writing, “This is going too far boss,” at one point in the May 2024 conversation.
Gonzales recently declined to say whether the messages are authentic.
Gonzales has denied any wrongdoing or improper relationship with Santos-Aviles, and he adamantly refused calls to resign from Congress or to end his reelection bid — several of which came from his Republican colleagues.
Representatives for Gonzales’ office did not immediately respond to requests for comment Wednesday.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.), who is holding onto a razor-thin majority in the House, has called the accusations against Gonzales “very serious” but not called on Gonzales to step aside, saying the issue would “play out” in his reelection bid.
Gonzales on Tuesday fell short of the majority vote required to avoid a runoff. Now he will face off against the other top finisher in the GOP primary, Brandon Herrera, a YouTuber with a gun business who calls himself “the AK Guy.” Herrera maintained a narrow lead Wednesday morning with most of the votes counted.
The Office of Congressional Conduct, a nonpartisan office governed by a board of private citizens, had begun looking into allegations against Gonzales in November, according to the San Antonio Express-News, and it was required to refer the matter to the House Ethics Committee by Wednesday for either further review or dismissal.
Under House rules, the Ethics Committee has up to 90 days to release the OCC’s report — unless it creates an investigative subcommittee, as it has this time, in which case it still must release the OCC’s findings within a year. Members of the investigative subcommittee have not been selected yet, Guest said Wednesday, suggesting findings of the investigation will not be made public very soon. There is no timeline for Ethics Committee investigations, which can take months.
Rep. Nancy Mace (R., S.C.), one of the GOP lawmakers who has called on Gonzales to resign, introduced a resolution last week that would compel the Ethics Committee to release, within 60 days of adoption, all reports related to sexual harassment violations involving lawmakers, their staff members, or lobbyists.
“I mean, literally, [Santos-Aviles] killed herself in the most heinous way,” Mace told Fox News on Tuesday, referring to the Gonzales allegations that she said had motivated her to introduce the bill. “She literally lit herself on fire and died, and we’re just going to sit here and say, ‘Let the process play out’? No.”
Voters do not always punish scandals, and this was apparent Tuesday night in other Texas primary races. Rep. Henry Cuellar (D., Texas) handily defeated a primary challenger, despite being charged in 2024 with bribery, money laundering, and conspiracy and being pardoned by President Donald Trump last year.
Texas State Attorney General Ken Paxton, who faced a lengthy impeachment trial and a very public divorce in which his wife accused him of adultery, nevertheless will head into a runoff against Sen. John Cornyn (R., Texas) for his seat after neither captured a majority of the vote Tuesday.
DALLAS — State Rep. James Talarico topped Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett in an expensive and fiercely contested Texas Senate Democratic primary that once again has the party dreaming of a big upset in November.
Who Talarico will face depends on a May runoff between longtime Republican Sen. John Cornyn and MAGA favorite Ken Paxton — a race expected to get increasingly nasty over coming months and could hinge on whether or not President Donald Trump offers an endorsement.
Texas, along with North Carolina and Arkansas, on Tuesday kicked off midterm elections with control of Congress at stake and against the backdrop of the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran.
No Democrat has won a statewide race in the reliably Republican state in over 30 years, but in a statement after his victory, Talarico proclaimed “We’re about to take back Texas.”
Crockett concedes
Crockett on Wednesday conceded the primary in the Texas Senate race to Talarico.
“Texas is primed to turn blue and we must remain united because this is bigger than any one person,” Crockett said in a statement. ”This is about the future of all 30 million Texans and getting America back on track.”
Crockett’s campaign had said she planned to sue over voting issues in Dallas and she spoke only briefly on Tuesday night to warn that “people have been disenfranchised.” A spokesperson did not immediately respond to a question about those plans.
Republicans head to round 2
Cornyn, meanwhile, is seeking a fifth term but is facing a tough challenge from Paxton, the state attorney general. Cornyn hopes to avoid becoming the first Republican senator in Texas history to seek reelection and not be renominated.
The GOP contest also featured U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt, who finished a distant third and conceded. But him making it a three-way race made it tougher for any candidate to reach the 50% vote threshold needed to win the nomination outright and avoid the May 26 runoff.
All three campaigned on their ties to Trump, who did not make an endorsement in the race. Now both Cornyn and Paxton will again fiercely compete to curry the president’s favor.
Cornyn was facing a tough enough battle that he didn’t hold an election night party. Instead, in comments to reporters in Austin, he sought to make the case that a runoff win by Paxton would leave “a dead weight at the top of the ticket for Republicans.”
“I’ve worked for decades to build the Republican Party, both here in Texas and nationally,” Cornyn said. “I refuse to allow a flawed, self-centered and shameless candidate like Ken Paxton to risk everything we’ve worked so hard to build over these many years.”
Addressing supporters in Dallas, Paxton made a point of saying he felt like he had during a recent trip to Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Florida estate. He also proclaimed: “We proved something they’ll never understand in Washington.”
“Texas is not for sale,” he said.
Cornyn’s cool relationship with Trump is part of what made him vulnerable. He and allied groups spent at least $64 million in television advertising alone since July to try stabilize his support.
Paxton, who began campaigning in earnest only last month, has made national headlines for filing lawsuits against Democratic initiatives. He remained popular in Texas despite a 2023 impeachment trial on corruption charges, of which he was acquitted, and accusations of marital infidelity by his wife.
Senate GOP leaders, who are backing Cornyn, worry that Paxton’s liabilities would make it harder to defend the seat if he is the nominee — and require significant spending that could be better used elsewhere.
Confusion at some polling places
In the Democratic campaign, Crockett and Talarico each argued that they would be the stronger general election candidate in a state that backed Trump by almost 14 percentage points in 2024.
Voting was extended in Dallas County and Williamson County, outside Austin, after voters reported being turned away and directed to different voting precincts because of new primary rules. Paxton’s office later challenged a decision keeping the polls open longer, and the state Supreme Court ruled that ballots cast by people not in line by 7 p.m. should be separated from others.
It was not immediately clear how the court’s action would be carried out or how many eligible ballots remained to be counted in Dallas County, Crockett’s home base. Crockett said she would seek legal action after voting was concluded.
And in Harris County, which includes Houston, a spokesperson said that as of 10 p.m. there were still voters at 20 centers.
Democratic race featured clash of styles
Crockett and Talarico waged a spirited race as Democrats look for their first Senate win in Texas since 1988.
Crockett has built a national profile for zinger attacks on Republicans and focused on turning out Black voters in the Dallas and Houston areas. Talarico, a seminarian who often references the Bible, held rallies across the state, including in heavily Republican areas.
“We are not just trying to win an election,” a jubilant Talarico told supporters in Austin before the race was called. “ We are trying to fundamentally change our politics. And it’s working.”
Dallas voter Tanu Sani said she cast her ballot for Talarico because he “really spoke to me in the way he tries to unify.”
Tomas Sanchez, a voter in Dallas County, said he supported Crockett because “she cares about immigrants, she cares about the American people in a way that a lot of the Republicans have proven they haven’t.”
Talarico outspent Crockett on television advertising by more than four to one as of late February. He got a burst of attention — and campaign contributions — last month from CBS’ decision not to air his interview with late-night host Stephen Colbert, who said the network pulled the interview for fear of angering Trump’s FCC.
Other key primaries
Texas’ races also featured new congressional district boundaries that GOP lawmakers — urged on by Trump — redrew to help elect more Republicans. The result matched several Democratic incumbents in primary fights and set up new general election battlegrounds.
Republican former Rep. Mayra Flores was attempting a comeback but was defeated by Eric Flores, a lawyer endorsed by Trump, for the nomination to run against Democratic Rep. Vicente Gonzalez. Mayra Flores made history in a 2022 special election as the first Republican to win in the Rio Grande Valley in 150 years but lost her bid for a full term later that year.
Incumbent Republican Rep. Dan Crenshaw lost his primary to state Rep. Steve Toth, who was endorsed by Sen. Ted Cruz.
Another incumbent GOP incumbent, Rep. Tony Gonzales, was considered vulnerable after an alleged affair with a staffer who killed herself. He was challenged by gun manufacturer and YouTube influencer Brandon Herrera, who calls himself “the AK guy.” The two will head to a runoff in a district that includes Uvalde, site of a deadly 2022 shooting at Robb Elementary School.
Former Major League Baseball star Mark Teixeira clinched the Republican primary to succeed GOP Chip Roy in southwest Texas.
Democrat Bobby Pulido, a Latin Grammy winner, won his party’s primary in South Texas against physician Ada Cuellar. Pulido will face two-term Republican Rep. Monica De La Cruz.
In suburban Dallas, Democratic Rep. Julie Johnson was facing former Rep. Colin Allred, a former NFL linebacker and 2024 Senate nominee.
Democratic Rep. Al Green was fighting to stay in office after his Houston-based district was drawn to lean Republican. Green, 78, ran in a newly drawn district against Democratic Rep. Christian Menefee, 37, who won a January special election for the current 18th District.
Republican Gov. Greg Abbott easily won his primary and will face Democratic state Rep. Gina Hinojosa. Roy advanced to a primary runoff with Mayes Middleton for attorney general.
The Senate is scheduled to take an initial vote Wednesday on blocking President Donald Trump from ordering further strikes on Iran, offering the first test of Congress’s support for a campaign that Trump launched without its consent.
Democrats — along with Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.) — are forcing a vote on a war powers resolution over the opposition of most Republicans, who control the Senate. Democrats are imploring a handful of Republicans to break with their party to end the conflict and reassert Congress’s control over declaring war.
At least four Republicans besides Paul would need to support the resolution for it to pass if every senator is voting. One Democrat, Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, has said he will oppose it.
“I pray so hard for my colleagues to exercise the judgment that this is not the right time for more war,” Sen. Tim Kaine (D., Va.) said Monday on the Senate floor.
But the resolution faces tough odds.
Congress has voted on seven other war powers resolutions since June, all of which failed. Most Republicans support the U.S. and Israeli air campaign that started Saturday, which has killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other top Iranian leaders, and they are working to defeat the resolution.
“We should let him finish the job,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) told reporters, referring to Trump. “We should cheer him on, in my view.”
The House is set to vote Thursday on a similar war powers resolution, which Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) said he believes he has the votes to defeat.
“The idea that we would take the ability of our commander in chief … to finish this job is a frightening prospect to me,” Johnson told reporters. “It’s dangerous, and I am certainly hopeful — and I believe we do — have the votes to put it down.”
Even if the resolution passes the Senate and the House, Trump could veto it. Overriding Trump’s veto would require a two-thirds majority in both chambers. No war powers resolution has ever overcome a veto.
The Senate vote Wednesday is an initial procedural vote to advance the resolution, and any Republicans who support it could still oppose its final passage.
That’s what happened in January, when five Republicans — Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine, Josh Hawley of Missouri, Todd Young of Indiana, and Paul — voted with Democrats to advance the resolution blocking strikes on Venezuela. But Hawley and Young flipped days later after Trump wrote on social media that they “should never be elected to office again,” though they extracted some concessions.
Democrats wanted to force a vote on the Iran resolution before the strikes, which Kaine said last week would increase its odds of passing.But they did not do so, in part because negotiations between the Trump administration and Iran were still underway.
Some Democrats have compared Trump’s strikes on Iran to the Iraq War, although President George W. Bush sought and received authorization from Congress before the U.S. invasion in 2003. Trump has not asked for authorization to strike Iran.
“I pray that my colleagues will vote to end this dangerous and unnecessary war that has already resulted in the loss of six servicemembers and injured others,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) said in as statement. “We owe it to those in uniform, their families, and all Americans to not make the same mistakes that we made in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
The U.S. invaded Afghanistan in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and occupied the country for nearly 20 years. While U.S. forces succeeded in killing Osama bin Laden, the architect of the attacks, in Pakistan in 2011, they never defeated the Taliban, which had sheltered bin Laden. The Taliban overthrew the American-supported Afghan government weeks before U.S. forces withdrew and remains in power.
The War Powers Resolution, which Congress passed in 1973 in response to the Vietnam War, allows a single lawmaker to force a vote to withdraw U.S. forces from a conflict or to block strikes when hostilities are imminent. It also requires the president to withdraw forces after 60 days — or 90 days if the president seeks an extension — unless Congress declares war or authorizes the use of military force.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R., S.D.) said Tuesday that he doesnot believe the Trump administration needed to seek authorization to continue the Iran campaign even if it lasts for longer than 90 days.
“I think the president has the authority that he needs to conduct the activities, the operations that are currently underway there,” Thune told reporters.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and other administration officials held briefings for lawmakers Tuesday, which Sen. Chris Murphy (D., Conn.) said convinced him that the campaign could last a long time.
“I think they have contempt for Congress,” Murphy told reporters. “They have no plans to come to Congress for any authorization, even if they were to insert ground forces.”
A Florida developer who is building data centers in Pennsylvania. A Chicago crypto trader whose company was sued by the Biden administration. And a Southwestern Pennsylvania coal magnate whose firm received a permit from state regulators last year to expand operations — and is now seeking approval to open a new mine.
Shapiro’s gubernatorial campaign raised at least $8.5 million last year from nearly 240 CEOs, founders, business owners, and other top executives, according to an Inquirer analysis of campaign-finance records that were made public last month.
That includes the single biggest donation to the campaign: $2.5 million from billionaire and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Shapiro’s haul from top executives represents 50.8% of the $16.8 million he raised from donors who listed their occupation in campaign finance filings.
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During his first three years in office, Shapiro, 52, has sought to build a profile as a pragmatic, business-friendly governor, focusing on speeding the permitting process and promoting economic development through government grants and tax breaks.
At the same time, the governor has proven adept at raising campaign cash from people who have business interests before state government in Harrisburg. Those include a skill game developer who staved off a major policy defeat this year and a waste coal power plant owner who gave $100,000 to Shapiro two days before the governor pulled out of a multistate program that requires such facilities to pay for their greenhouse gas emissions.
It’s a contrast with the rising populism on both the left and right, marked by a “Fighting Oligarchy” tour by progressive leaders and the MAGA movement’s deep suspicion of elites.
It’s not unusual for corporate executives to make contributions to candidates from both parties. But the practice could invite scrutiny for Shapiro in a White House run — particularly among voters and activists who are dismayed by the role of money in politics.
“We are concerned about any elected leaders taking monetary donations from corporate interests, regardless of who they are,” said Ashley Funk, executive director of the Mountain Watershed Association, a nonprofit that opposes a Shapiro donor’s coal mining expansion.
“I think that it influences decision-making,” she said.
‘The speed of business’
For now, Shapiro’s pledge to make Pennsylvania’s government run “at the speed of business” appears to have won over many executives, helping him build a massive fundraising advantage in his reelection bid. Shapiro raised $23.2 million overall in 2025, compared with the $1.5 million reported by his likely Republican opponent, State Treasurer Stacy Garrity.
“I’ve long admired the way the commonwealth approaches economic development and innovation, and I have deep respect for Gov. Shapiro’s leadership,” said Bob Clark, executive chairman and founder of Clayco, a Chicago-based real estate and construction firm that is redeveloping a site at the industrial hub known as the Bellwether District in South Philadelphia.
Clark gave Shapiro’s campaign $100,000 last year. “I consider him both a trusted colleague and an effective leader,” he said.
In recent weeks, the governor has celebrated pledges by pharmaceutical companies to invest billions of dollars in new facilities in Montgomery County and the Lehigh Valley, secured with tens of millions of dollars in state incentives. And last year, Amazon said it would spend $20 billion in Pennsylvania to build two new artificial intelligence data centers, in what officials called the single largest private investment in state history.
Shapiro’s allies say he stands up to big business, too, highlighting how he successfully prodded PJM Interconnection LLC — the Valley Forge-based regional electric grid operator whose voting members largely consist of companies in the electricity industry — to impose and extend a price cap. He has also received support from organized labor.
Shapiro argues that the way to restore faith in institutions is not by railing against billionaires but by showing that the government can fix real problems — “get s— done,” in his parlance.
Garrity, the Republican state treasurer, says Shapiro’s actions don’t live up to the hype.
“Liberal national donors may be investing in Josh Shapiro’s political vanity project, but hardworking Pennsylvanians are seeing nothing in return,” she said in a statement.
Garrity received nearly $380,000 from more than 60 CEOs and other top business executives. That figure represents about 41% of her contributions from donors who listed their occupation in campaign-finance filings.
Shapiro’s campaign said his coalition is “reflective of a governor who is delivering for all Pennsylvanians — and of a campaign that is fighting to win up and down the ballot.”
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The governor has “focused on growing our economy and creating jobs, and he has delivered — creating tens of thousands of jobs, winning major deals, and building the only growing economy in the Northeast,” campaign spokesperson Manuel Bonder said in a statement.
Shapiro highlighted one such deal in July, when he appeared alongside executives at defense contractor Rhoads Industries at the Navy Yard in South Philly to announce the firm’s $100 million plan to build a new manufacturing facility, create 450 jobs, and boost production of submarine parts.
“One of the things that Rhoads is known to do is get things done. … We want to turn out product; we want to turn it around; we want to get it done,” president Mike Rhoads said.
Looking toward Shapiro, he said, “Somebody standing to my left has the kind of same attitude.”
Gov. Josh Shapiro (right) with Rhoads Industries CEO Dan Rhoads in July 2025 at the Navy Yard.
Taking his turn at a lectern that read “Rebuilding America’s Fleet,” Shapiro said Rhoads’ investment — with help from the state — would “ensure the future of submarine manufacturing, shipbuilding, and all things important to securing our freedom is going to run right through the Philadelphia Shipyard.”
Three months later, in October, CEO Dan Rhoads contributed $10,000 to Shapiro’s campaign — the single largest donation he made to a candidate for state office in the last decade, records show. Rhoads did not respond to requests for comment.
Data centers and ‘skill games’
Shapiro donors’ business interests include everything from data center construction to state regulation of slot machine-style games and approvals for a nuclear reactor.
Dan Hilferty, CEO of Philadelphia-based Comcast Spectacor — which owns the Flyers and the Xfinity Mobile Arena in South Philly — gave $40,000. A political action committee affiliated with parent company Comcast also gave $50,000. Comcast Spectacor and the 76ers are building a new arena at the South Philadelphia sports complex, and Shapiro last year did not rule out offering state incentives. Hilferty, a former CEO of Independence Blue Cross, previously gave Shapiro’s campaigns $27,500 over the last decade. Other Comcast Spectacor executives contributed about $95,000 during that period.
Top executives at Pace-O-Matic, the Georgia-based developer of so-called skill games that have proliferated across convenience stores and bars, gave $50,000. Operators for Skill, a PAC affiliated with the firm, contributed $10,000. The company successfully fended off a push in 2025 by Shapiro and lawmakers to tax the games at a level the industry considered too high. The governor has renewed a push to regulate the games, which some Philadelphia lawmakers say they would prefer to see banned. Pace-O-Matic contributes to both parties and remains “committed to fighting for fair regulation and taxation of Pennsylvania skill games,” said Mike Barley, chief public affairs officer for Pace-O-Matic.
Joseph Dominguez, president of Baltimore-based Constellation Energy, gave $25,000. The company is seeking to restart a nuclear reactor at Three Mile Island, just outside Harrisburg, and needs state and federal approvals. The plant would supply power to Microsoft to support the tech company’s data centers. “Constellation executives contribute to policymakers on both sides of the aisle who, like Gov. Shapiro, prioritize results and pragmatic solutions over politics,” a company spokesperson said.
Brian Patten, CEO of Next Generation Land Co. LLC, gave $10,000. He is a Florida data center developer who says he is pursuing projects in Pennsylvania. Data centers that power companies’ cloud storage and computing needs have drawn backlash across the U.S. over fears of rising electricity rates. In his February budget address, Shapiro said he wants data centers to supply their own energy and pay for any new generation they need. He has also said the U.S. needs to win the AI race against China.
Justin Thompson, CEO of Iron Senergy, a coal operator, gave $10,000. His firm owns the Cumberland Mine in Greene County. When Pennsylvania applied to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for a $400 million grant, it mentioned several firms — including Iron Senergy — that could use the money for decarbonization projects, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported in 2024. The EPA awarded the grant, and the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection is tasked with administering it. The state is now reviewing applications, which it says are confidential.
The Cumberland Coal Mine in Greene County seen in 2020.
Local and national donors
Shapiro drew on a mix of executives from local and national firms. In Pennsylvania, he raised money from health system CEOs (Joseph Cacchione of Thomas Jefferson University, $10,000), bankers (Richard J. Green of Philly-based Firstrust Bank, $125,000), and a home remodeler (Asher Raphael of Power Home Remodeling in Chester, $100,000). Josh Kopelman — founder of First Round Capital and chairman emeritus of The Inquirer’s board of directors — and his wife, Rena, each gave $50,000.
There were private equity investors (San Francisco billionaire John Pritzker, cousin of Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, $50,000), Hollywood producers (Jimmy Miller of talent management and production firm Mosaic, $75,000), professional sports team owners (telecom billionaire Robert Hale, minority owner of the Boston Celtics, $50,000), and a Massachusetts sports betting executive (Jason Robins of DraftKings, $10,000).
For his part, Bloomberg is “a big fan of Gov. Shapiro and a big believer in his leadership, and thinks he’s done a great job for Pennsylvania,” adviser Howard Wolfson told Axios.
At least one donor had ties to President Donald Trump, whom Shapiro often criticizes.
Don Wilson Jr., CEO of Chicago-based trading firm DRW Holdings LLC, gave $10,000 to Shapiro in September.
The Securities and Exchange Commission filed civil charges against a unit of Wilson’s firm while President Joe Biden, a Democrat, was in office. The SEC accused it of operating as an unregistered cryptocurrency dealer.
Biden-era regulators said that firms were dodging that rule by claiming crypto was a commodity, not a security. The enforcers argued this exposed investors to extra risks associated with digital currencies.
Then last March, a couple of months after Trump took office, the new administration dropped the charges against Wilson’s firm. Nine weeks later, Wilson invested $100 million into a Trump bitcoin project, the Financial Times reported.
The company told the newspaper it engages in a “variety of strategies in the crypto ecosystem” and saw value in holding bitcoin. “This transaction was viewed purely through that lens,” it said.
Trump denies having conflicts of interest.
That didn’t stop the Democratic National Committee from flagging the news on its “CORRUPTION WATCH” page.
The Trump administration, the Democrats’ post said, “now appears to be engaged in blatant pay-to-play politics.”
Power plants and coal mines
Among corporate executives, two of the eight biggest donors to Shapiro’s campaign last year were the father-and-son owners of privately held Robindale Energy Services, which owns about 20 companies involved in waste coal reclamation, power generation, mining, and logistics. Robindale’s assets include multiple power plants fueled by waste products from abandoned coal mines.
CEO Scott Kroh and his son Judson, the Latrobe-based company’s president, gave a total of $271,000.
That included a $100,000 contribution from Scott Kroh two days before Shapiro signed the annual budget, which came after a monthslong stalemate. The deal with Senate Republicans included language pulling the state out of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a multistate effort to generate cleaner power that Robindale had vocally opposed.
Robindale’s executives did not respond to requests for comment.
In June 2023, Judson Kroh spoke out against RGGI at a public hearing, telling Pennsylvania lawmakers that Robindale’s power plants have enough capacity to power 500,000 homes. “Our main concern is you’ll see a significant decrease in power exports out of the state due to RGGI, as well as a significant decrease in coal production,” Kroh said.
Other energy industry firms, Republican lawmakers, and building trades unions have also long opposed the initiative, which requires power plants to buy allowances to cover their carbon emissions. They call it a job killer and an electricity tax. Environmental groups say it has reduced pollution and led to investments in clean energy in other states.
Shapiro had for years expressed concerns about the greenhouse gas initiative, which Pennsylvania joined under his predecessor but never implemented due to litigation. Shapiro said in 2021 during his first run for governor that “it’s not clear to me” that the program protected jobs, addressed climate change, or ensured energy reliability.
The Kroh family donated a total of $55,000 to his 2022 campaign and $21,000 the following year. Judson Kroh was among the more than 300 people who served on Shapiro’s transition team.
Many of Robindale’s operations are regulated by the state, and the company spent $150,000 lobbying state government officials last year, records show. Company executives in recent years have largely donated to Republicans in Harrisburg, though they have also supported some Democrats, including Shapiro.
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In addition to its power generation business, Robindale owns coal mines that are subject to state inspections and oversight. When two people died in a Somerset County mine operated by subsidiary LCT Energy, DEP required the company to update its safety protocols. The deaths in 2022 and 2023 came during a time in which there were 20 coal mining fatalities nationwide, according to federal data.
Johnstown-based LCT is currently expanding.
About 30 miles west of Maple Springs, LCT opened another mine in 2018 in Westmoreland County called Rustic Ridge 1, which produces 600,000 tons of coal a year.
The state renewed the permit for the 2,800-acre underground mine in January last year, and from that month through March, the Kroh family donated $70,000 to Shapiro’s campaign.
In April, after a yearslong review, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection approved a permit authorizing LCT to expand its operations there, adding 1,400 acres under the Pennsylvania Turnpike — the equivalent of 93 Lincoln Financial Fields. The permit allows LCT to mine coal up to 600 feet underground. The company sells the coal for production of steel.
The nonprofit Mountain Watershed Association is appealing the DEP’s approval to the Pennsylvania Environmental Hearing Board — whose judges are appointed by the governor, subject to confirmation by the state Senate — arguing that the expansion could harm groundwater and streams.
Others say the mine supports jobs and helps the local economy. Before opening, the company said in 2014 that it would invest $50 million to develop the mine, according to local news reports.
The state budget Shapiro signed in November expanded a program for expedited permitting involving approvals from the DEP, which reviews 40,000 permits a year. Introduced in 2024, the program is currently available for eligible permits such as air quality, dam safety, and oil and gas erosion and sediment control.
The budget legislation — cheered by Shapiro and GOP lawmakers — added more permit types, including one for mining, “which DEP is in the process of adding to the program,” a department spokesperson said.
Funk — the executive director of the watershed association, which has spent millions of dollars over the last 30 years repairing the environmental damage of legacy coal mining — said she is concerned the Krohs’ political giving “might be having an influence over Shapiro and his administration as we work to permit some of Robindale’s projects such as LCT Energy.”
Shapiro says permitting reform reflects his governing ethos.
“When you think about getting stuff done … it requires focus and speed,” he said in December at a National Governors Association event. “We’ve gotta be speedier as a country.”
It was at the end of last year in the hazy stretch between Christmas and New Year’s when time doesn’t feel real, and some of Philly’s top Democrats were huddled around a secret proposal, racing to meet a deadline.
The group — convened by Mayor Cherelle L. Parker, her aides, and some key Philadelphia boosters — was preparing a lengthy bid to bring the Democratic National Convention back to the city in either 2028 or 2032, a potential economic boon and a chance to show off in front of lawmakers, celebrities, and international media.
The confidential proposal to the Democratic National Committee included everything from the city’s hotel space to police outfitting to nitty-gritty details about the electrical grid and voltage capacity at Xfinity Mobile Arena. SEPTA officials drafted a section about the public transportation Philadelphia could offer visitors, and tourism agencies chipped in with insights on hotels and restaurants.
David L. Cohen, a longtime Democratic fundraiser and the president of the recently formed nonprofit host committee called Pick Pennsylvania, said that while the mayor led the effort, the bid also emphasized the “unity of the region and the commonwealth.”
“She wanted it to be really clear this is more than a Philadelphia bid,” he said. “This is a unified Pennsylvania bid.”
It appears the Democratic National Committee was impressed. On Monday, the DNC announced that it is considering five cities, including Philadelphia, to host the 2028 convention, where a Democratic presidential nominee will be coronated. The party is also looking closely at Atlanta, Denver, Chicago, and Boston to hold the early August event.
What comes next is a campaign to lure the convention to Philly, complete with a carefully coordinated public relations effort and a significant fundraising push. Philadelphia’s host committee for 2016, the last time the city held a presidential nominating convention, raised more than $85 million.
The DNC has asked host cities to raise $5 million before being selected. Philly’s fundraising, Cohen said, “will be substantially higher than that number.”
In this 2021 file photo, David L. Cohen speaks as Philadelphia Soccer 2026, the city’s World Cup 2026 bid committee, launched an interactive exhibit at the Independence Visitors Center in Philadelphia. He is now heading an effort to bring the Democratic National Convention to Philadelphia.
Cohen, a former Comcast executive and erstwhile chief of staff to former mayor Ed Rendell, is leading the effort alongside Daniel J. Hilferty, now the CEO of Comcast Spectacor.
Hilferty and Cohen have worked together repeatedly over the last two decades to bring major events to Philadelphia, including a successful bid to become one of a handful of North American cities to host World Cup games this year.
Also involved in coordinating the DNC proposal was Erin Wilson, a Philadelphia native who was a top aide to former Vice President Kamala Harris. She was the national political director for former President Joe Biden’s campaign and planned his 2021 inauguration.
When the DNC comes to town
DNC officials are expected to make a final decision on the 2028 site later this year. That call will likely be made by chair Ken Martin in consultation with top advisers and the committee’s Technical Advisory Group, which assesses logistics and operational matters.
Philadelphia could also have an advocate in State Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta, who represents parts of North Philadelphia and is a DNC vice chair. He is known to have a close relationship with Martin.
Committee officials and the advisory group will tour each of the five finalist cities for a yet-to-be-scheduled site visit this spring.
If history is any indication, the city will roll out the red carpet. In 2014, when 18 members of the DNC came to Philly to check out the city ahead of the 2016 convention, the host committee spent six figures to charm them.
The trip included a tour of Philly’s most popular sites, like Reading Terminal Market and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, as well as a swanky rooftop party and a breakfast at the Comcast Center. Predictably, cheesesteaks were also involved.
“The site visits are as much about feel as they are about technical details,” Cohen said. “After site visits, the teams who are making choices leave here and they have their socks knocked off. They can’t believe how vibrant the city is.”
In this 2014 file photo, Congressman Bob Brady, left, talks with DNC CEO Amy Dacey, center, as they have lunch at Pat’s Steaks in South Philadelphia.
Ryan Boyer, the head of the Philadelphia Building and Construction Trades Council and a close Parker ally, said one of Philadelphia’s best assets might be its mayor. Parker is an unabashed cheerleader for the city and is leading preparations for several major events this year, including World Cup games, the MLB All-Star Game, and the commemoration of America’s 250th anniversary.
“She’s the most effective advocate for bringing people together,” Boyer said, “with just her level of passion, her love of the city, and her love of the job.”
Cohen said he spoke to Parker last year about the potential to bid for the convention, and when she asked him to lead the host committee, he said yes because the city has “a serious chance.”
“As a friend and longtime supporter of hers, if I didn’t think we had a legitimate shot, I would try to talk her out of it,” Cohen said. “If anything, I have poured gasoline on her flames of enthusiasm and said, ‘We should be all in for this.’
”I said, ‘Do what you do best,’” he added. “Get everyone excited about this.’”
That means there is a chance that Shapiro, who was raised in Montgomery County and whose family still lives there, could be nominated in what is essentially his hometown.
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro speaks during the Democratic National Convention Aug. 21, 2024, in Chicago.
In a letter to Martin, Shapiro wrote that Philadelphia “would see substantial economic benefits” from hosting the convention and vowed that the state would be “prepared to ensure our infrastructure, public safety agencies, workforce, and business community are equipped to host thousands of delegates and attendees.”
What’s next: a close look at security and logistics
Behind the pomp of the DNC’s spring site visit will be a serious evaluation of security, transportation, hotels, and arena logistics.
The DNC said in a statement Monday that it will value “new and innovative approaches” to hosting a large-scale event that is likely to bring thousands of tourists. In 2016, the convention drew more than 5,000 attendees and an additional 29,000 visitors — nearly 20,000 of whom were media members.
Nominating conventions are typically designated as National Special Security Events, meaning the federal government leads security because the event is deemed at high risk for terrorism or other criminal activity. That means planners need to know specifics about law enforcement staffing, gear, and other capabilities.
Placards promoting Philadelphia as the host city of the Democratic National Convention in 2016, while the Democratic National Committee was touring the city in August.
Support will also have to come from outside the city. During past conventions, federal law enforcement teamed up with Philadelphia police to secure the venue, and they were joined by officers from across the region.
The DNC also said in its announcement Monday that the committee would prioritize “the importance of forging a strong partnership between the DNC and the host city, including its community, political, and business leaders.”
To that end, the host committee and Parker asked elected officials and civic leaders from across the state to write letters of support that accompanied the city’s bid.
Authors ranged from City Council President Kenyatta Johnson, whose district includes the South Philadelphia stadium complex, to labor leaders to Democrats from the Philadelphia collar counties.
Montgomery County Commissioner Neil Makhija, who wrote a letter to the DNC boosting the bid, said it is important for the committee to see that local governments and law enforcement agencies outside the city are willing to offer support, because “pulling something like this off requires a lot of cooperation on many different fronts.”
“A real concern now when you’re thinking about hosting a political convention is ‘How are we going to manage public safety and a threat environment?’” he said. “There are a number of reasons to point to our region and see a level of collaboration that inspires confidence.”
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, a former Manhattan neighbor of Jeffrey Epstein, has agreed to voluntarily testify before the House Oversight Committee as part of its investigation into the convicted sex offender, the panel’s chairman announced Tuesday.
Lutnick has faced growing bipartisan pressure to testify about his ties to Epstein following the Justice Department’s release of a tranche of documents that suggested Lutnick maintained contact with Epstein years after claiming to have distanced himself from him.
“Secretary Lutnick has proactively agreed to appear voluntarily before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform,” Rep. James Comer (R., Ky.), the committee’s chairman, said in a statement. “I commend his demonstrated commitment to transparency and appreciate his willingness to engage with the Committee. I look forward to his testimony.”
Lutnick’s connection to Epstein also has caused controversy at Haverford College, where president Wendy Raymond is considering convening a committee that would review whether the mega donor’s name should remain on the campus library.
Lutnick will soon become the latest participant in a series of high-profile interviews conducted by the committee for its Epstein probe — the most recent of which included former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. They took part in a pair of contentious, closed-door depositions in New York last week.
The Department of Commerce did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Lutnick’s interview.
“I look forward to appearing before the committee. I have done nothing wrong and I want to set the record straight,” Lutnick said in a statement to Axios, which first reported his planned appearance.
Testifying before Congress last month, the commerce secretary said he recalled meeting with Epstein three times over the course of 14 years. Lutnick also said he and his family had lunch with Epstein on his Caribbean island in 2012 — after previously claiming that he and his wife had distanced themselves from Epstein around 2005.
The exchanges made public by the Justice Department show that Lutnick, a former chairman of the financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald, and Epstein kept communicating years after Epstein pleaded guilty to two charges of soliciting prostitution, including one involving a minor, and was sentenced to 13 months in jail.
Their last known exchange in the Justice Department documents came in 2018, when Lutnick reached out to Epstein about the Frick Collection, a museum near their neighboring homes, planning construction.
“Are you aware as to them building to block our park views,” Lutnick wrote in an email that his assistant forwarded to Epstein, “What should we do about it? Time is of the essence.” Lutnick also urged Epstein to involve a lawyer, to which Epstein replied, “Will do.”
The following year, Epstein was arrested on federal sex trafficking charges and later died in federal custody. His death was ruled a suicide.
Some lawmakers, including Rep. Robert Garcia of California — the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee — as well as Rep. Thomas Massie (R., Ky.), have called for Lutnick to step down over his connection to Epstein. But President Donald Trump last week signaled he remained confident in Lutnick.
“Howard would go in and do whatever he has to say,” Trump told reporters on Friday about possible Epstein testimony. “He’s a very innocent guy. He’s doing a good job.”
The Oversight Committee has already scheduled depositions for Darren Indyke and Richard Kahn, the co-executors of Epstein’s estate, this month. And Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R., Fla.) has said she plans to ask the committee to bring in “some of the [Epstein] co-conspirators that were given lesser sentences that were known to have trafficked young girls.”
Garcia told the Washington Post that if Democrats retake the House in November and become the majority next year, they will “absolutely” pursue an interview with Trump regarding Epstein. “There’s a long list of subpoenas that we will be engaged in,” Garcia added.
As an expanding Middle East war entered its fourth day, the Trump administration gave shifting rationales for its decision to attack Iran, even as U.S. officials with access to intelligence reports said they saw no sign the country had posed an imminent threat to the United States.
President Donald Trump and his top national security aides, defending a conflict that has tepid public backing and is incurring escalating risks, emphasized Iran’s arsenal of ballistic missiles rather than its nuclear program as the principal threat. But they provided different descriptions of the danger.
At his first public event since the attack began, Trump on Monday never mentioned a key part of his original rationale for the war: deposing Iran’s theocratic regime.
Instead, he emphasized thatIran would “soon” have missiles that could hit targets inside the United States.
What Trump had outlined over the weekend as an effort to devastate Tehran’s rulers so that the Iranian people could take over was, by Monday, “not a so-called regime change war,” in the words of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
Hegseth told reporters at the Pentagon that the Islamic Republic was building sophisticated missiles and other conventional weapons to shield its plans for a nuclear bomb. “Iran had a conventional gun to our head as they tried to lie their way to a nuclear bomb,” he said.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio offered a third line of reasoning. The United States, he said, knew Israel was going to strike Iran, which would lead to counterattacks against U.S. forces and potential casualties, and decided to strike first to minimize the risk.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio speaks to reporters as he arrives for an intelligence briefing with top lawmakers on Iran, at the Capitol in Washington, Monday, March 2, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Iran’s voluminous missile arsenal, which was thinned by U.S.-Israeli strikes last June but still considered dangerous, consists mostly of short-range missiles threatening U.S. bases and allies in the Middle East. Over the last two years, Iran has fired those missiles in response to attacks on its territory or interests, but not preemptively.
As for an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of directly reaching the United States, the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency reported last year that Iran could have that weapon by 2035 “should Tehran decide to pursue the capability.”
Meanwhile, more than three days into the conflict and after more than a thousandairstrikes, U.S. and Israeli weapons so far have largely left Iran’s main nuclear installations untouched, suggesting those sites — significantly damaged last June — are not currently seen as a priority threat.
The White House’s shifting public goals for the war, and questions about the intelligence behind them, have contributed to a lack of clarity about when Trump might declare an end to the largest military operation since the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
As the war widened across the Middle East, Trump said operations against Iran could go on for four to five weeks, or longer. In an interview with the New York Post, the president said he would not rule out sending in U.S. ground troops, but added that they are “probably” not needed.
President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in the Oval Office at the White House, Tuesday, March 3, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
Republican lawmakers have largely backed Trump’s decision to strike Iran, citing its long record of terrorism against the United States and its allies, and its nuclear ambitions.
But Rubio’s decision to pin the justification for the attack on Israel angered prominent MAGA commentators and conservative pundits, who said an operation of this magnitude should be done squarely in the interests of the United States.
“My own feeling is no one should have to die for a foreign country. I don’t think those four service members died for the United States,” said Trump advocate and podcast host Megyn Kelly, referring to the first four acknowledged U.S. deaths in the war, a toll that later rose to six. “I think they died for Iran or for Israel.”
In a social media post Monday night, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi piled on. “Mr. Rubio admitted what we all knew: U.S. has entered a war of choice on behalf of Israel. There was never any so-called Iranian ‘threat,’” he wrote.
This week, the House and Senate are poised to vote on measures that would attempt to halt further military attacks in Iran without lawmakers’ approval, as Democrats frame the conflict as an “illegal war” launched without a clear rationale or an authorization from Congress.
A Washington Post flash poll found that 52% of Americans oppose the strikes “strongly” or “somewhat,” while 39% support them.
Even as the administration’s public case for war shifted, several U.S. officials with access to classified intelligence assessments said there was no information before the strikes began indicating Iran has made sudden, worrisome progress in its missile or nuclear programs.
“There was no imminent threat to the United States of America by the Iranians. There was a threat to Israel,” Sen. Mark Warner (D., Va.), the vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told reporters Monday.
Others said Iran’s weakness, amid severe economic problems and protests that challenged the regime, provided an opportunity to strike.
A former U.S. intelligence official said American spy agencies were concerned by the speed with which Iran reconstituted its missile program after the 12-day war in June. “If you wait a year from now, maybe the regime will have stabilized, the missile program will be more populated and federated,” said the former official, who spoke before the strikes began and requested anonymity to discuss a sensitive subject.
With Trump a potentially lame duck president in a year’s time, “Right now is the sweet spot,” he said.
Multiple legal experts argued that none of the administration’s public explanations for the attacks appeared to constitute a legitimate rationale to enter into such a major conflict, especially without authorization from Congress.
“Having a weapons capacity is not the same thing as presenting an imminent threat of an armed attack,” said Tess Bridgeman, a former senior lawyer on the National Security Council during the Obama administration.
The first days of U.S. and Israeli airstrikes appeared focused on decapitating Iran’s leadership and blunting its ability to retaliate by destroying missile infrastructure and disrupting its military command network.
Rafael Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said Monday that the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency has seen no “major military activity targeting the nuclear facilities” in Iran since the U.S.-Israeli attacks began early Saturday. That assessment, he said, is based on information from Iran as well as multiple satellite images, including those provided “by the U.S. and others.”
Grossi’s assessment came as Tehran charged there was an attack on its Natanz enrichment facility and as Israel warned civilians to evacuate areas around Isfahan, a major center of Iran’s nuclear program.
Satellite imagery of Natanz captured Monday showed damage to three buildings on the site, damage that Grossi indicated was fairly minor. Vehicle and personnel entrances to underground portions of the facility where centrifuges are kept appear to have been hit, according to the imagery.
The United States and Israel have long accused Iran of seeking to build a nuclear weapon under the cover of enriching uranium for civilian purposes. Last year’s strikes targeting Iran’s uranium enrichment facilities and other sites significantly delayed the program, U.S., Israeli, and IAEA officials said. Trump and Hegseth said Iran’s nuclear ambitions had been “obliterated.”
The Defense Intelligence Agency in a report produced before those strikes assessed that since 2019, in the wake of Trump leaving a nuclear deal with Iran that limited its nuclear program, the Islamic Republic had boosted uranium enrichment and expanded its stockpiles to the point that the time required to produce sufficient weapons-grade uranium for a first nuclear device had fallen to “probably less than one week.”
The actual time to produce a weapon ranged from two to four months, the agency estimated, according to people familiar with the assessments who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity.
The June strikes targeted Iran’s main enrichment plants at Natanz and Fordow. But the Iranians had been manufacturing centrifuge cascades long before the strikes and likely were storing them at other locations, the people said. “So their ability to do a breakout may or may not have been dependent at all” on the sites that were bombed, one person said.
Post-strike, the DIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies determined that the time Iran now needed to produce enough weapons-grade uranium to build a warhead in extremis — without rebuilding the damaged sites — had lengthened to between four and eight months, people familiar with the matter said.
Uncertainties about Iran’s nuclear program are heightened by the fact that IAEA inspectors left the country last July and haven’t returned.
“The return of the IAEA inspectors will be further delayed as a result of the renewed conflict, and without effective IAEA monitoring, the whereabouts and security of Iran’s highly enriched uranium will now become even more uncertain,” said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association think tank.
In the meantime, Kimball said, “There hasn’t been any sign that Iran is rebuilding anything.”
The Republican-led House Oversight and Government Reform Committee released videos Monday of the closed-door depositions of former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, part of its investigation into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Bill Clinton appeared before the committee on Friday, marking the first time a former president had been compelled to testify before Congress under a subpoena. During his lengthy deposition, the former president sought to distance himself from Epstein, saying he had no knowledge of Epstein’s crimes and stopped associating with him years before his first guilty plea, in 2008.
“There was nothing that I saw when I was around him that made me realize that he was trafficking women,” Clinton told the committee. “I saw nothing, and I did nothing wrong.”
In her hours-long deposition Thursday, Hillary Clinton said she had no recollection of ever meeting Epstein and had known Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell only “casually, as an acquaintance.” Hillary Clinton derided the deposition as “political theater” and sharply questioned why she was being deposed.
House Republicans have issued subpoenas to several people — mostly Democrats — mentioned in the millions of files related to the federal government’s Epstein investigation that have been released by the Justice Department.
They have not called in President Donald Trump, who had a long-standing friendship with Epstein. The president has said that he knew Epstein socially in Palm Beach, Fla., and that they had a falling out in the mid-2000s. Trump has maintained that he did not know about Epstein’s criminal behavior.
Here are some of the highlights of the depositions:
Bill Clinton says Larry Summers connected him with Epstein
In his deposition, Bill Clinton said his former treasury secretary Larry Summers, then the president of Harvard University, first recommended that he strike up an acquaintance with Jeffrey Epstein.
As Clinton recalled, Summers — who recently resigned his positions at Harvard because of his association with Epstein — called Clinton shortly after he left office, in late 2001 or early 2002, when Clinton was setting up a charitable foundation.
Summers told him of “a man named Jeffrey Epstein” who had made a multimillion-dollar contribution to brain research, Clinton said, and described Epstein as an “information-hungry person” who owned a “massive airplane” and “wanted to spend some time talking to me about economics and politics.”
Clinton said he saw the plane as an economical means of doing international travel for his foundation.
After taking about a half-dozen trips aboard Epstein’s jet over a couple of years, Clinton said, he quit doing so because his foundation had launched and he had offers of transportation from people he knew better.
Clinton said he considered Epstein “an interesting man, but I didn’t think he was really interested in what I was doing.”
Clinton told the committee that he first learned of Epstein’s crimes “in 2008, when he was prosecuted. There was nothing that I saw when I was around him that made me realize that he was trafficking women.”
At another point, he told the committee, “I don’t believe any law enforcement agency has ever asked me [about Epstein], and I don’t know enough to volunteer anything.”
Hillary Clinton says she ‘knew nothing about’ Epstein
Hillary Clinton repeatedly testified that she did not know Epstein. She characterized him as not being on her “radar,” but was told in preparation for the deposition that she and Epstein both attended an event at the White House that was put on by the White House Historical Association.
“I have no recollection, in any way, of ever having any conversation at the White House or in any other place or on any kind of device of any sort. I knew nothing about him,” Hillary Clinton said when asked if she had any communication with Epstein.
She testified that she knew Maxwell “casually” as someone who dated an acquaintance of hers — Ted Waitt, a software developer.
Waitt, Clinton said, brought Maxwell as a guest to the wedding of the Clintons’ daughter, Chelsea, in 2010.
Clinton said that she did not consider Maxwell a friend and that her daughter would have been “friendlier” with Maxwell, but that she “had no idea” how often they interacted.
Clinton declined to characterize the relationship between Maxwell and Bill Clinton.
“He’ll have to answer that,” she said when asked if Bill Clinton and Maxwell were friends.
Bill Clinton reacts to hot tub photo during Asia trip
Bill Clinton was shown a photo of himself in a hot tub that was among the Epstein files and that has generated much attention.
He recalled that it was taken while he was in Brunei at the end of a long leg of one of his Asia trips.
He and his party, including Epstein, were guests at a hotel owned by the sultan of Brunei, with whom Clinton had established a warm relationship while he was president, and spent time in the hot tub and pool, which were located on the same floor as some of their suites.
“I swam around. I sat in the hot tub for five minutes or whatever it was. I got up and went to bed,” Clinton said.
Bill Clinton denies having visited Epstein’s island
A Democrat on the committee, Rep. Melanie Stansbury of New Mexico, grilled Bill Clinton on reports that he had been on Epstein’s island.
Clinton repeatedly denied he had ever visited the island. He also denied a report, cited by Stansbury, that he had visited Epstein’s home while he was president.
Bill Clinton says he’s not been in touch with Maxwell for a decade
Bill Clinton said his first recollection of meeting Maxwell was on his first flight aboard Epstein’s plane, when she was working for the financier.
Clinton’s relationship with her “lasted longer and was more extensive than my relationship with Mr. Epstein,” he said, because she started “going with” Waitt, the tech billionaire, who became a major donor to the Clinton Foundation.
Clinton said that, by his recollection, he has not been in contact with her for a decade or more.
He said he did not learn about her participation in Epstein’s sexual abuse of minor girls until “the first evidence against her came out in 2019.”
Hillary Clinton’s deposition was paused after photos were shared
Nearly 80 minutes into the deposition, Hillary Clinton’s lawyer interrupted Republican questioning, saying pictures of the former secretary of state testifying had been posted online.
The attorney argued that the pictures, which had been shared by Rep. Lauren Boebert (R., Colo.), violated the committee’s rules — and noted that the Clintons had repeatedly asked that the depositions be held in public.
Visibly frustrated, Hillary Clinton told Republicans that if they were going to be sharing pictures of the interview, she was “done.”
“You can hold me in contempt from now until the cows come home. This is just typical behavior,” she said. “We all are abiding by the same rules.”
The hearing was then paused. When the interview resumed, Rep. James Comer (R., Ky.), the committee’s chairman, said he advised Republicans that no pictures or videos of the deposition could be released.
The Clintons were accompanied by trusted lawyers
The Clintons were accompanied by two lawyers who for decades have been among the most trusted and protective allies in their orbit.
David Kendall is the Clintons’ longtime personal attorney, and Cheryl Mills was deputy White House counsel during Bill Clinton’s presidency and chief of staff to Hillary Clinton at the State Department. Both are known for their discretion and were part of the legal team that defended Bill Clinton in his 1999 Senate impeachment trial, in which he was acquitted.
