Donald Trump has accused Iran of trying to stall on making a peace agreement by running down the clock before November’s US midterm elections in the hope of getting better terms.
“They thought they were going to outwait me, you know, ‘we’ll out-wait him, he’s got the midterms’,” the US president told a meeting of his cabinet at the White House on Wednesday.
He insisted the approach – supposedly aimed at ratcheting up pressure on the US and global economies by keeping the strategically vital strait of Hormuz closed – would fail, and claimed that Iran “wants very much to make a deal”.
“I don’t care about the midterms. Look what happened last night,” Trump said, an apparent reference to the triumph of Ken Paxton, whom he had endorsed, over the sitting Republican senator John Cornyn in the Texas Republican Senate primary.
Trump accuses Iran of stalling peace deal to ‘outwait’ him until US midterms
Trump said the Iranian economy was in free fall, suggesting that made it imperative for Iran to compromise: “They have 250% inflation, their money has no value, their whole economic system is broken down.”
His comments, at the 12th cabinet meeting of Trump’s second term, came as talks aimed at ending the near-three-month conflict are said to be at a crucial stage. Current attempts to reach a deal had so far failed, he claimed, because “we’re not satisfied with it”.
Trump ramps up attacks on Talarico after Paxton’s Texas Senate runoff win
Republican leaders rushed to throw their weight behind Ken Paxton following his big primary victory in Texas over the four-term US senator John Cornyn amid anxiety within the party over his prospects in November’s general election.
Hours after the race was called, Donald Trump – who backed Paxton, despite intense concern among establishment Republicans – on Truth Social attacked Paxton’s Democratic rival in the midterm elections.
Protests erupt as hunger strike rocks New Jersey ICE jail
Protests against immigration enforcement at a facility where detainees are on a hunger and labor strike erupted in fresh violence on Tuesday night as federal officers sprayed chemicals and charged demonstrators outside the jail in New Jersey.
Following hours of relative quiet, a day after masked and armored Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) personnel pepper-sprayed US senator Andy Kim, tension ramped up again outside the Delaney Hall facility on the fifth day of the strike.
‘Scum’: Trump attacks US states’ efforts to regulate prediction markets
Donald Trump wrote in a social media post it was “critically important” that the federal government retain control over the multibillion-dollar prediction market industry, as he cast a critical eye on state attempts to impose new restrictions.
Trump official says plans in works to stop processing international flights in sanctuary cities
The Trump administration has threatened to stop processing international flights in major cities around the country as a reaction to protests against immigration enforcement.
Markwayne Mullin, the homeland security secretary, said during an interview with Fox News on Tuesday that the administration is “drawing up plans” to take the action, in response to days of clashes at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center in New Jersey.
Company led by Republican fundraiser pardoned by Trump wins $106m federal contract
The day before Donald Trump’s first term ended in 2021, he inked a pardon for Elliott Broidy, a scandal-plagued Republican fundraiser and former Republican National Committee official who had pleaded guilty three months earlier to trying to illegally lobby Trump and his administration.
Last month, a company headed by Broidy won a $106m contract from the Department of Justice, according to federal contracting records.
What else happened today:
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US importers are expected to receive $85bn in tariff refunds after the supreme court struck down Donald Trump’s tariffs in February, according to US Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the agency that collects tariffs.
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Jill Biden said she had been “frightened” as she watched Joe Biden’s faltering performance during his 2024 presidential debate, and thought her husband might have suffered a stroke.
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Joe Biden, the former president, has filed a lawsuit to try to prevent the justice department (DoJ) from releasing transcripts and audio of interviews that exposed his frequent memory lapses and helped derail his 2024 re-election campaign.
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Three Democratic state attorneys general said their deputies were turned away from a roundtable hosted by JD Vance on Tuesday, sowing confusion about what the White House has billed as a bipartisan crackdown on fraud.
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The Trump administration is building a quarantine and treatment center in Kenya for Americans affected by the Ebola outbreak, instead of bringing them home.
Catching up? Here’s what happened Tuesday, 26 May.
