Trump says US 'totally obliterated' military targets on Iranian island used for 90% of its oil exports
From his seat on Air Force One, which is ferrying him to his Florida beach club, Donald Trump just announced on social media that the US military has “executed one of the most powerful bombing raids in the History of the Middle East, and totally obliterated every MILITARY target in Iran’s crown jewel, Kharg Island.”
The five-mile-long coral island, located about 15 miles off the coast of mainland Iran in the northern Persian Gulf, had been previously untouched in US bombing, given its importance to Iran’s oil exports, 90% of which originate there.
Trump claimed that only military targets were struck, since, “for reasons of decency, I have chosen NOT to wipe out the Oil Infrastructure on the Island.”
“However, should Iran, or anyone else, do anything to interfere with the Free and Safe Passage of Ships through the Strait of Hormuz, I will immediately reconsider this decision,” he added.
Iran has effectively closed the strait, a vital channel out of the Persian Gulf for up to 20% of the world’s oil supply, by attacking commercial ships and laying mines.
Vance cites secrecy to dodge questions on his reported reservations about Iran war
Twice on Friday, vice-president JD Vance cited secrecy to dodge questions about claims by unnamed administration officials that he is “skeptical” about or even opposed to the war on Iran Donald Trump launched two weeks ago from an improvised situation room at his Florida beach club.
Trump himself told reporters on Monday at his Florida golf club that Vance “was, I’d say, philosophically a little different from me. I think he was maybe less enthusiastic about going, but he was still quite enthusiastic.”
After Politico reported early Friday that one official texted a reporter that Vance is “skeptical”, “worried about success” and “just opposes” the war on Iran, the vice-president was asked at an event in North Carolina about what he advised the president to do before the attack on Iran, and whether he still has the concerns he has expressed in the past about extended wars.
Vance laughed at the question and then told the reporter who asked: “Imagine the situation: we’re in the Situation Room, where you can’t even take your ipod in there, or your airpods I guess what they’re called, you can’t take your iphone in there, you can’t take anything in there, because it is the most classified space anywhere in the world. And I sit there with Pete Hegseth and General Caine and Marco Rubio and the entire White House team, and the president and I, and the entire senior team, are talking about the options”.
“I hate to disappoint you, but I’m not gonna show up here and in front of God and everybody else tell you exactly what I said in that classified room,” the vice-president said, to laughter from the audience.
“Partially because I don’t wanna go to prison,” he continued, “and partially because I think it’s important for the president of the United States to be able to talk to his advisors without those advisors running their mouth to the American media.”
Speaking to reporters after the event, the vice-president was pressed to explain Trump’s remarks. “The president said earlier this week that you had a philosophical difference, than him, that you were less enthusiastic on the onset of this war. Is that true? And what is your opinion of how it’s going?” a reporter asked.
“When you’re thinking about a major decision like this, the way the president makes these decisions is he talks to a lot of people,” Vance replied.
“Obviously we’re thinking about various ins and outs, various options, what this looks like, how to accomplish our goals, what our goals should be, and I think it’s important for the president of the United States to be able to have that conversation with his team, without his team then running their mouth to the American media,” the cive-resident continued. “So part of what makes our national security team so cohesive is that we all trust each other, and we all have a very free exchange of ideas. I’d like to keep that going.”
Vance then ended the exchange and walked away.
The vice-president’s assertion that the decision to start a war with Iran was made in “the most classified space anywhere in the world”, the White House Situation Room, was undercut somewhat by photographs from the first day of the war, which showed Vance in the Situation Room, while Trump conferred with Rubio, Caine, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, John Ratcliffe, the CIA director, the White House chief of staff, Susie Wiles, and Dan Scavino, Trump’s former caddie turned social media guru, in a makeshift situation room at his Mar-a-Lago beach club, secured mainly by black drapes.
Elizabeth Warren joins Thom Tillis to demand justice department drop investigation of Fed chair Powell
Senator Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican on the Senate Banking Committee, called on the justice department to drop what he called the “weak and frivolous” criminal investigation of the Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell, after a federal judge blocked a justice department subpoena of Powell on Friday.
Tillis, who promised in January to block the confirmation of any nominee for the Federal Reserve board, including Donald Trump’s pick to replace Powell at the end of his term this year, unless the Powell investigation was dropped, reiterated that threat
The ruling, Tillis wrote in a statement, confirms that the investigation of Powell, who has refused to lower interest rates as Trump demands, “is nothing more than a failed attack on Fed independence.”
“We all know how this is going to end and the D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office should save itself further embarrassment and move on,” Tillis added. “Appealing the ruling will only delay the confirmation of Kevin Warsh as the next Fed Chair.”
Jeanine Pirro, the former Fox News host appointed US attorney for Washington DC by Trump, heatedly dismissed Tillis’s plea, in a news conference in which she said the decision by “an activist judge” would be appealed, and scolded journalists for asking her why grand juries are refusing to charge people her office seeks to prosecute for what appear to be partisan, political reasons.
Asked directly about Tillis’s threat to block Trump’s nominees, Pirro said: “honestly, I don’t know and I don’t care. You know why? I am in a legal lane. All of the rest is white noise. I don’t care what they say.”
Pressed as to whether she could assure the senator that the investigation would be dropped, Pirro shot back: “Did you hear what I just said? I just said that this decision will be appealed.”
Moments later, as Pirro insisted that she did not even know who Trump’s pick to lead the Fed after Powell was, she was forced to silence an incoming call on her phone.
Senator Elizabeth Warren, the senior Democrat on the banking committee, also said that the Senate should not confirm any new nominees to the Federal Reserve unless and until politically motivated criminal investigations into both the central bank’s chair, Powell, and a board member, Lisa Cook, end.
In a social media post, Warren said that the ruling by federal district court judge James Boasberg, blocking a justice department subpoena of Powell, just confirmed “what we all already know: the Trump Administration’s weaponization of DOJ against Jerome Powell amounts to nothing more than a witch hunt.”
“The Senate should not move forward with any Fed nomination until the probes against Powell and Lisa Cook are dropped,” Warren said.
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A group of protesters in Texas was found guilty of providing support for terrorism and other charges on Friday in a closely watched case in which prosecutors alleged anti-ICE activists were actually part of an antifa cell.
The case was seen as a major test of the first amendment and whether the government could use a broad anti-terrorism statute to prosecute leftwing protesters. It marked the first time the government alleged individuals were part of an antifa terrorist cell in a criminal prosecution.
Nine defendants – Benjamin Song, Zachary Evetts, Autumn Hill, Meagan Morris, Maricela Rueda, Savanna Batten, Ines Soto, Elizabeth Soto and Daniel Sanchez-Estrada – were all tried together in the case. They faced a mix of charges of providing material support to terrorists, rioting, attempted murder, as well as firearms and explosive charges.
Sanchez-Estrada was the only defendant not at the protest, and was only charged with corruptly concealing a document or record, after prosecutors say he moved leftwing zines following the arrest of his wife, Maricela Rueda, on the Fourth of July. Song also escaped after the incident and there was an 11-day manhunt for him. Several other people were charged with assisting Song during that period.
The nine defendants were convicted on all of the charges they faced, with limited exceptions. Of the five charged with attempted murder, Evetts, Hill, Morris and Rueda were acquitted on three counts of attempted murder and firearms charges. Song was acquitted on two charges of attempted murder and convicted on one. He was also convicted of the firearms charges.
Trump removes Ric Grenell as head of what he calls 'the Trump Kennedy Center'
In the midst of armed hostilities with Iran in a war he started, Donald Trump found time on Friday to concern himself with what he apparently considers a pressing issue: who will run the Kennedy Center, the living memorial to John F Kennedy created by Congress that Trump added his name to, while it is closed for renovations.
Trump announced on social media that he has replaced Ric Grenell, the belligerent Republican activist currently running the arts center, with Matt Floca, the operations vice president, who was photographed in December personally overseeing the addition of Trump’s name to the center’s facade by the independent journalist Chris Geidner.
Earlier in the day, as US forces remain engaged in combat with Iran, Trump shared renderings for the renovation of what he called the “new, highly improved, TRUMP KENNEDY CENTER!”
Grenell, long known for his hyper-aggressive confrontations with journalists and political rivals on Twitter and then X, served as US ambassador to Germany and then acting director of national intelligence during Trump’s first term. He was appointed despite no prior arts experience.
A source “familiar with the White House view” told CNN that Trump blames Grenell for doing a bad job of managing the publicity for the Kennedy Center during his tenure. The president apparently blames Grenell for a host of artists cancelling appearances after Trump had himself appointed chairman of the center’s board, and then had his name added to the exterior wall of the center, despite lacking congressional approval for changing the name of the memorial to his assassinated predecessor.
Grenell was rumored to have been in contention to be Trump’s second-term secretary of state, after he brokered a limited economic agreement between Serbia and Kosovo in 2020 that the president falsely portrayed as ending the war between the two former Yugoslav regions which concluded decades earlier.
As the independent journalist Jacqueline Sweet reported a week after the 2024 election, Grenell deleted more than 6,371 of his old posts on Twitter, now X, including tweets as far back as 2012 when he joined Mitt Romney campaign as foreign policy spokesman, before being ousted after just weeks when his abrasive posts came to light.
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Here's a recap of the day so far
A federal judge in Washington DC blocked two justice department subpoenas to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors – including one seeking testimony from chair Jerome Powell – over his remarks to Congress on the central bank’s renovation project. In a 27-page ruling issued on Friday, chief judge James Boasberg said “a mountain of evidence suggests that the Government served these subpoenas on the Board to pressure its Chair into voting for lower interest rates or resigning.”
Speaking to Fox News, Donald Trump again tried to limit concerns around the economy in the wake of the war on Iran, particularly the increasing price of fuel. “This will bounce right back when it’s over, and I don’t think it’s going to be long when it’s over,” he said. When asked when that might be, Trump said it would be up to him: “When I feel it in my bones.”
The armed suspect who crashed into a large Michigan synagogue had lost four family members in an Israeli airstrike in his native Lebanon last week, an unnamed official told the Associated Press on Friday. Ayman Mohamad Ghazali, 41, a naturalized US citizen born in Lebanon, was killed by security after ramming into Temple Israel in West Bloomfield Township outside Detroit on Thursday.
During his Pentagon press conference on Friday, Pete Hegseth downplayed disruption to the strait of Hormuz, which Iran has closed off. “We have been dealing with it, and don’t need to worry about it,” the defense secretary said without offering much detail.
Employees at the Transport Security Administration (Tsa) are set to miss their first full paychecks on Friday, as the partial shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) nears a month. This week, the Senate failed again to pass a funding bill to reopen the department, as Democratic lawmakers demand stronger guardrails on federal immigration enforcement.
Federal judge blocks justice department subpoenas of Fed chair
A federal judge in Washington DC blocked two justice department subpoenas to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors – including one seeking testimony from chair Jerome Powell – over his remarks to Congress on the central bank’s renovation project.
Powell is a frequent target of Donald Trump.
The president frequently disparages the outgoing Fed chair – calling on him to cut interest rates, and regularly referring to him as Jerome “too late” Powell.
In a 27-page ruling issued on Friday, chief judge James Boasberg said “a mountain of evidence suggests that the Government served these subpoenas on the Board to pressure its Chair into voting for lower interest rates or resigning.”
He added that “on the other side of the scale, the Government has produced essentially zero evidence to suspect Chair Powell of a crime”. Boasberg ultimately found that the subpoenas were issued “for an improper purpose” and the court “will quash them”.
A reminder that Powell’s term leading the Federal Reserve expires in May. The president nominated former Fed governor Kevin Warsh to lead the central bank. However, Trump has been met resistance from lawmakers, including Republican Thom Tillis. The North Carolina senator is a crucial vote on the Senate banking committee, and refused to confirm Warsh until the probe into Powell was dropped.
“This ruling confirms just how weak and frivolous the criminal investigation of Chairman Powell is and it is nothing more than a failed attack on Fed independence,” Tillis said on Friday. “We all know how this is going to end and the D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office should save itself further embarrassment and move on.”
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During his phone interview with Fox News today, the president also said that he believes Russia might be helping Iran “a little bit”.
I think he might be helping him a little bit, yeah, I guess. And he probably thinks we’re helping Ukraine, right? Yeah, we’re helping [Ukraine] also. And so, [Putin] says that, and China would say the same thing. You know, it’s like, hey, they do it and we do it. In all fairness, they do it and we do it.
This comes after Trump also relaxed certain sanctions on Russia, amid the whipsawing price of oil in the wake of the conlict with Iran.
Trump says war on Iran will end 'when I feel it in my bones'
Speaking to Fox News, the president again tried to limit concerns around the economy in the wake of the war on Iran, particularly the increasing price of fuel. “This will bounce right back when it’s over, and I don’t think it’s going to be long when it’s over,” he said.
When asked when that might be, Trump said it would be up to him: “When I feel it in my bones.”
During an interview with Fox News earlier today, Donald Trump said he did believe Iran’s new supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei is alive. “I think he’s damaged, but I think he’s probably alive in some form,” the president told Brian Kilmeade in a phone interview.
At a Pentagon press conference on Friday, Pete Hegseth said he believed Khamenei to be “likely disfigured”.
Trump also said that if needed, US forces will escort ships through the strait of Hormuz, after the Iranian regime severely disrupted passage through the crucial waterway. “We would do it if we needed to,” the president said today. “But, you know, hopefully things are going to go very well.”
Department of Defense moves additional marines and warships to the Middle East - report
The Pentagon is moving additional marines and warships to the Middle East, three unnamed officials tell the Wall Street Journal.
As the Iranian regime continues to disrupt the flow of oil and cargo ships through the strait of Hormuz, defense secretary Pete Hegseth has approved a request from US Central Command (Centcom) to send a unit “typically consisting of several warships and 5,000 Marines and sailors” to the region, according the officials cited.
According to the Journal, the Japan-based USS Tripoli and its attached Marines are now headed for the Middle East. Marines are already in the Middle East supporting the Iran operation, the officials said.
The extra force comes as the Trump administration routinely claims that the US military has significantly degraded Iranian capabilities to the point of victory. Earlier this week, the Donald Trump boasted “we won”, while on stage at an event in northern Kentucky. On Friday. The president also told Fox News earlier today thathe US plans on hitting Iran “very hard” over the next week.
At a Pentagon press conference today, Hegseth was bellicose. “[Iran’s] production lines, their military plants, their defence innovation centres; defeated. Iran’s leadership is in no better shape,” he told reporters. “Desperate and hiding, they’ve gone underground, cowering – that’s what rats do.”
Only 77 ships have so far crossed the strait of Hormuz in March as the Mideast war disrupts one of the world’s most vital shipping routes, a maritime data firm reported on Friday.
Lloyd’s List Intelligence said most of these vessels belonged to the so-called ‘shadow fleet’ – ships used to skirt Western sanctions and regulations, typically linked to Russia and Iran.
They are often ageing ships in poor condition, without proper insurance and with opaque ownership.
The 77 transits recorded so far this month compare with 1,229 passages between 1 and 11 March last year, according to Lloyd’s List Intelligence.
Reporting from Portland, Oregon
US immigration agents in Oregon used a custom-made app to identify neighborhoods and people to target, and had daily arrest quotas they sought to meet during operations, courtroom testimony has revealed.
Details about Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers’ surveillance tools and arrest goals in the state have come to light in a federal lawsuit that compelled officers to answer questions under oath, offering a rare window into opaque, internal strategies that are generally kept secret and have been driving mass detentions and chaotic raids.
The class-action suit, filed by Innovation Law Lab, an immigrants’ rights non-profit, challenged ICE’s practice of detaining people without warrants or probable cause. Advocates said the tactic resulted in widespread racial profiling and unconstitutional arrests, and a federal judge sided with the plaintiffs, issuing a ruling broadly halting warrantless arrests in Oregon.
Testimony in a December hearing in the case provided a remarkable acknowledgment by an ICE officer of how daily target arrest numbers played out at the local level, and appeared to contradict the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials’ repeated claims that officers didn’t have quotas. Trump adviser Stephen Miller has publicly said the administration’s target was 3,000 daily arrests. The hearing also appeared to be the first time that ICE disclosed in court its use of an app called Elite for operations.
In the hearing, an ICE agent identified as JB testified that his team was given a verbal order to target eight arrests a day.
JB’s team was made up of nine to 12 officers and was tied to the DHS’s so-called “Operation Black Rose”, which launched in Portland last fall and yielded more than 1,200 arrests through mid-December, according to DHS. The target of eight daily arrests a team suggested a potential quota of about 50 daily arrests across Oregon, Innovation Law Lab estimated.
Read the full report:
Officials say that suspect in Michigan synagogue attack lost relatives in Israeli strike on Lebanon
The armed suspect who crashed into a large Michigan synagogue had lost four family members in an Israeli airstrike in his native Lebanon last week, an unnamed official told the Associated Press on Friday.
Ayman Mohamad Ghazali, 41, a naturalized US citizen born in Lebanon, was killed by security after ramming into Temple Israel in West Bloomfield Township outside Detroit on Thursday. There were no casualties or injuries to the synagogue’s staff, teachers and 140 children at the early childhood center on site.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which is leading the investigation, described the attack as an act of violence targeting the Jewish community.
Ghazali came to the US in 2011 on a family-related visa as the spouse of a US citizen and was granted US citizenship in 2016, according to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
A local official in Mashgharah, in central Lebanon, told the Associated Press on Friday that Ghazali’s two brothers and a niece and nephew were killed at their home in the 5 March airstrike just after sunset as they were having their fast-breaking meal during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
At a press conference on Froday, Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer said she would not comment on whether she believed the attack was in response to the ongoing US-Israel war on Iran, that has also resulted in mass casualties and displacement in Lebanon as Israel attempts to strikes Hezbollah targets.
“Putting my theories into the press is not going to help an investigation, so I’m going to refrain from that,” Whitmer told reporters.
The governor did call the Thursday attack antisemitic. “It was hate, plain and simple,” she added. “We must lower the rhetoric in the state and in this country, especially at this moment where we’ve seen such a rise in antisemitism and more attacks on the Jewish community. We must keep each other close. This community is on the edge.”
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It’s worth noting that earlier this week, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said that “more than 300 employees” have left the Transportation Security Administration (Tsa) amid the ongoing shutdown affecting the agency.
Donald Trump has vowed that he will not sign any other legislation until Republicans’ massive – restrictive – voting bill, the Save America act, is passed. The bill would upend voting for all Americans in the middle of a federal midterm election year and create costly, chaotic changes for elections workers.
My colleague Rachel Leingang has this explainer on what the legislation includes and whether it has a chance of becoming law:
House oversight committee seeks to depose prison guard on duty at time of Epstein’s death
As part of its investigation into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, the House oversight committee announced today it is seeking testimony from a prison guard who was on duty the night the disgraced financier died.
In a letter shared on X, the committee’s Republican chair James Comer called Tova Noel for a deposition on 26 March. “Due to public reporting, documents released by the Department of Justice, and documents obtained by the Committee, the Committee believes you have information that will assist in its investigation,” the letter to Noel states.
Epstein was arrested in July 2019 on federal sex trafficking charges and died by suicide several weeks later in a Manhattan jail. Noel and another guard who was on duty were allegedly sleeping and browsing the internet instead of monitoring him that night. They have been accused of lying on prison records to make it seem as though they had made required checks on him before he was found in his cell. Noel also allegedly Googled Epstein minutes before his body was found.
The deposition is part of the oversight committee’s sweeping investigation into Epstein, his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell and potential co-conspirators in their sex trafficking ring, as well as the circumstances of his death.
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Hegseth claims Iran's supreme leader is 'wounded and likely disfigured'
Iran’s new supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei is “wounded and likely disfigured”, Pete Hegseth claimed today, questioning Khamenei’s ability to govern after nearly two weeks of US-Israeli attacks on Iran. At present, there is no proof for the US defense secretary’s claim.
No images have been released of Khamenei since an Israeli strike at the start of the war that killed much of his family, including his father and wife, on 28 February. He was hurt in that attack, Tehran’s ambassador to Cyprus confirmed on Wednesday, and there has been much speculation about the full extent of his injuries and speed of his recovery.
The first comments in his name were read out on state TV rather than delivered live or on video. In the statement, he vowed to keep the strait of Hormuz closed and called on neighboring countries to close US bases on their territory or risk Tehran targeting them.
Hegseth told a briefing this morning:
We know the new so-called not so supreme leader is wounded and likely disfigured. He put out a statement yesterday. A weak one, actually, but there was no voice and there was no video. It was a written statement.
Iran has plenty of cameras and plenty of voice recorders. Why a written statement? I think you know why. His father - dead. He’s scared, he’s injured, he’s on the run and he lacks legitimacy.
Hegseth said that the United States would show no mercy in the war. “We will keep pressing, keep pushing, keep advancing. No quarter, no mercy for our enemy,” he said.
You can follow all the latest developments from the Middle East over on our dedicated live blog here:
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Airport security misses first paycheck as DHS shutdown nears a month
Employees at the Transport Security Administration (Tsa) are set to miss their first full paychecks today as the partial shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) nears a month.
On Thursday, the Senate failed again to pass a funding bill to reopen the department. For the fourth time, the upper chamber was unable to clear the 60-vote threshold needed to advance the legislation, as Democratic lawmakers demand stronger guardrails on federal immigration enforcement.
Notably, only some agencies within the DHS, including the Tsa and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), and the Coast Guard are affected by the shutdown. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is able to continue operating thanks to the billions-dollar injection from Donald Trump’s sweeping tax-policy bill, signed into law last year.
For their part, Democrats say they’re willing to separate a bill to keep impacted agencies, like the Tsa, funded, but have been met with resistance from Republicans who demand that Congress pass a full appropriations bill to keep the entire DHS funded through September.
Cuban officials have held talks with the US government to seek solutions to the blockade imposed on the Caribbean nation, Miguel Díaz-Canel has said in a video broadcast on national television.
“These talks have been aimed at finding solutions through dialogue to the bilateral differences we have between the two nations,” Díaz-Canel, the Cuban president, said in the video, which aired on Friday, shortly before he was scheduled to address Cuban media in a rare appearance that comes amid a severe economic crisis and as the Communist government has come under increasing pressure from Donald Trump.
Díaz-Canel said that the Cuban negotiators had participated “on the basis of equality and respect for the political systems of both states, and for the sovereignty and self-determination” of the Cuban government. He added that no petroleum shipments have arrived on the island in the past three months, which he blamed on a US energy blockade.
Cuba’s western region was hit by a massive blackout last week, leaving millions without power.
Trump has said repeatedly that the United States was already in high-level talks with Cuban representatives. Until now, the Cuban government had denied that any official encounters are underway but had not explicitly denied media reports of back-channel discussions with Raul Guillermo Rodriguez Castro, the grandson of Raul Castro, who is 94 and still wields great influence.
In recent weeks Trump has made a series of statements, saying Cuba was on the verge of collapse or eager to make a deal with the United States. On Monday he said Cuba may be subject to a “friendly takeover”, then added: “It may not be a friendly takeover.”
During Pete Hegseth’s Penatgon press conference today, the defense secretary noted that the only thing prohibiting transit in the strait of Hormuz right now is “Iran shooting at shipping”. He appeared to suggest that direct attacks were the biggest threat to the vessels in the waterway. “It is open for transit should Iran not do that,” he said.
Earlier this week, the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reported that US intelligence sees direct attacks by Iran as the greatest threat to oil tankers going through the strait of Hormuz. While the Trump administration has been spooked by possible preparations by Iran to mine the strait, the more potent threat remains the risk of a direct attack by Iran at scale.
As a result, even if US navy destroyers escorted the tankers, they might not be able to intercept every incoming missile, and even in the event the Trump administration provides risk insurance directly to operators, ships’ crews would still need to be convinced to pilot the vessels through the strait.
All six crew members confirmed dead on military plane crash in Iraq
All six crew members aboard a US military refueling aircraft that went down in western Iraq are now confirmed dead, according to a statement from US Central Command (Centcom). The aircraft was lost while flying over friendly airspace on Thursday. This is an update, as earlier Centcom said that only four members of the crew had died.
The KC-135 plane crashed in western Iraq, in an incident the military said involved another aircraft but was not the result of hostile or friendly fire.
Centcom added that the circumstances of the incident are under investigation, and the identities of the service members killed are being withheld until 24 hours after next of kin have been notified.
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Reporting from Detroit
On a rainy Detroit afternoon at a gas station off Interstate 75, Victor Rodriguez watched the pump tally tick up as he filled up his F-250 diesel pickup truck for $4.19 per gallon. It totaled $110. “Ridiculous,” he said.
The US-Israel war on Iran has crippled major portions of the oil supply chain, sending gas prices soaring as the conflict enters its third week. Rodriguez said he supports “getting rid of this thug”, referring to Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed by the US, but the cost is too high.
Rodriguez said he jumped off the freeway while returning from an airport drop-off because he saw diesel advertised for $4.19 per gallon. The high price is a deal compared with the $5.00 per gallon he saw in Romeo, an exurb where he lives about a half-hour drive north.
“Nothing is worth higher gas prices, obviously,” Rodriguez said.
Across Michigan, gas prices have spiked by 60 cents per gallon over the most recent week analyzed by insurer AAA. Most have pushed even higher in recent days, topping $4.30 at one station near downtown Detroit, where prices are generally among the highest. Prices are up 27 cents across the US on average, according to AAA’s last figures.
Gas prices matter in Michigan – a critical swing state that Donald Trump narrowly won twice and lost once. His promise to lower prices across the economy helped propel him back to power here in 2024. So far he has dismissed the nation’s pump pain as temporary. “I don’t have any concern about it,” the president told Reuters. “They’ll drop very rapidly when this is over, and if they rise, they rise, but this is far more important than having gasoline price go up a little bit. And they haven’t risen very much.”
Read the full dispatch:
Donald Trump is in Washington today.
He’ll sign executive orders and greet the National Finals Rodeo winners at the White House, but this will be closed to the press. If anything opens up we’ll let you know and bring you the latest lines.
Later the president will travel to Palm Beach, Florida, for a weekend at his Mar-a-Lago club.
Both Pete Hegseth and Dan Caine were asked today about energy secretary Chris Wright’s comments to CNBC on Thursday, where he said that the US Navy cannot escort ships through the strait of Hormuz now but it was “quite likely” that could happen by the end of the month.
Gen Caine appeared to agree with Wright’s assessment, calling the waterway a “tactically complex environment”.
He added that before the US takes anything through the strait at scale, forces want to ensure any transport is in line with military objectives and carried out “safely and smartly”.
Later Hegseth insisted that the US did, in fact, plan for this when questioned by a reporter. “We want to do it sequentially, in a way that makes the most sense for what we want to achieve and ensure that we’re we’re sending the right signals to the world when we do so,” the defense secretary said, before chiding the media for making it seem that the war is “widening and chaos”.
When asked whether Iran has placed new mines in the strait of Hormuz since the war started, Hegseth said that the US military has “heard them talk about it”, but they have “no clear evidence” that they’re doing so.
This comes after numerous reports, citing US officials, indicate that Iran is preparing to lay more under-water explosives to further disrupt the key chokepoint.
Hegseth says that Centcom has designated investigating officer for probe into bombing of Iranian girls' school
Asked about the ongoing investigation into the bombing of an Iranian girls’ school, Hegseth said he would not let reporting “force our hand into indicating what happened in a particular situation”. This comes after the New York Times found a preliminary investigation blamed the US for the strikes on the elementary school that killed at least 175 people.
I can report that Centcom has designated an investigating officer to complete a command investigation. The command investigation will take as long as necessary to address all the matters surrounding this incident.
Hegseth added that the appointed investigator is from outside Centcom and is a is a general officer.
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'Don't need to worry about it': Defense secretary says US is 'dealing with' disruption to strait of Hormuz
During his press conference on Friday, Pete Hegseth said that disruption to the strait of Hormuz, which Iran closed off, blocking more than 1,000 cargo ships in the process, is being handled by the US military.
“We have been dealing with it, and don’t need to worry about it,” the defense secretary said without offering much detail.
Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, also said that the US is continuing to destroy the Iranian navy. “This means going after Iran’s mine-laying capability and destroying their ability to attack commercial vessels,” he said.
This comes after Donald Trump said that American forces struck 28 mine-laying vessels this week along the vital waterway.
Hegseth later remained resolute about the US’ intention to keep the chokepoint clear. “We have a plan for every option here. We’re working with our interagency partners, and that’s that’s not a strait we’re going to allow to remain contested or with a lack of flow of commercial goods,” he said.
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'Who’s in charge? Iran may not even know': Hegseth questions condition of new Iranian supreme leader
Hegseth questioned whether the new supreme leader of Iran, Mojtaba Khamenei, is actually running the country in the wake of US-Israeli forces killing his father and many members of his family.
The defense secretary said that Khamenei is “wounded and likely disfigured”, and noted that his statement on Thursday was not on camera. “He [Khamanei] called for unity. Apparently killing tens of thousands of protesters is his kind of unity,” Hegseth added.
“He’s scared, he’s injured, he’s on the run, and he lacks legitimacy … Who’s in charge? Iran may not even know.”
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Hegseth touts that the US is 'decimating' Iran's military
At his Pentagon press conference, Pete Hegseth said that the US is “decimating” the Iranian regime’s military “in a way the world has never seen before”.
Hegseth added: “We said it would not be a fair fight, and it has not been.”
The defense secretary said that Friday would be the “highest volume of strikes” that the US has launched against Tehran.
You can watch the press conference live here:
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The question, asked during a 4 March press briefing with Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, and Gen Dan Caine, was a good one: if the US had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear facilities during an operation last June, “what was the intelligence that suggested that somehow they became a threat once again that required us to get involved with Operation Epic Fury?”
It was asked by Heather Mullins, who works for LindellTV, the television network founded by Mike Lindell, the pillow entrepreneur, Trump cheerleader and 2020 election denier.
On Tuesday, a reporter from the Gateway Pundit, an outlet that “regularly peddles falsehoods and conspiracy theories”, as NPR put it in 2024, asked about reports that the US is unhappy with its chief ally in the operation against Iran, Israel.
“Whether this reporting’s true or not, what’s your message to Americans, those who supported the president and those who aren’t really in favor of this war and who worry that Israel might be taking advantage of the US’s backing?” asked Jordan Conradson.
After the heavy hitters of the Pentagon press corps walked out in October over new restrictions on access and reporting, many worried how the Trump-friendly media who took their place would fill the void – particularly if, say, a war started.
Major fears remain, stoked by questions bordering on sycophancy, but, so far, some longtime skeptics of the pro-Maga press corps say they are doing better than expected at questioning Hegseth and the generals who have been brought out on four occasions to give briefings and take questions from a large group of assembled reporters.
Seven in 10 Americans say Trump’s tariffs caused higher prices
Seven in 10 Americans say Donald Trump’s tariffs have led to them paying higher prices, according to an exclusive new poll for the Guardian.
The Harris Poll survey presents Republicans with a major problem in the battle for the upcoming midterm elections. The majority of all voters (72%) believe Trump’s tariffs have had a negative rather than a positive impact and 67% said tariffs aren’t the right solution for improving the economy.
Yet Trump has made clear he wants to press ahead with more tariffs even after a supreme court ruling curbed many of the levies he introduced last year.
Trump’s signature economic policy gets poor marks across the political spectrum:
64% of Republicans agreed that Trump’s tariffs had led to higher prices compared with 77% of Democrats and 67% of independents who believed the same.
60% of Republicans also said that tariffs had had more of a negative impact on consumers than a positive one, compared with 81% of Democrats and 75% of independents.
Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth is set to give another morning media briefing, updating on the US war on Iran, alongside general Dan Caine.
You can follow along at 8am ET via our Middle East live blog, which will have all the news lines here:
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Trump threatens major retaliation against Iran after attacks on Gulf states
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog.
Donald Trump threatened a major retaliation after Iran launched multiple attacks early Friday on Gulf Arab states, including dozens of drones at Saudi Arabia.
It came after Iran’s new supreme leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei issued a warning to its neighbours about hosting American bases.
Writing on his Truth Social media platform, the US president said:
Iran’s Navy is gone, their Air Force is no longer, missiles, drones and everything else are being decimated, and their leaders have been wiped from the face of the earth.
Watch what happens to these deranged scumbags today.
He added:
They’ve been killing innocent people all over the world for 47 years, and now I, as the 47th President of the United States of America, am killing them.
What a great honor it is to do so!
Meanwhile, four of the six crew members onboard a US military aircraft that crashed in western Iraq were killed, the US military said as rescue efforts continued for the remaining two.
The KC-135 military refuelling plane crashed in western Iraq on Thursday, in an incident the military said involved another aircraft but was not the result of hostile or friendly fire.
In other developments:
The US Senate failed to pass a funding bill to reopen the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), amid a partial shutdown that has lasted almost a month.
In a surprising twist, a White House event in honor of Women’s History Month ended with a medal being presented to… Donald Trump.
The US temporarily suspended sanctions on the sale of Russian oil issuing a Treasury Department license to allow the sale of Russian crude oil and petroleum products loaded on vessels through April 11. “Looks like we fought Iran and Russia won,” Brian Schatz, a Democratic senator from Hawaii observed.
Two Democratic senators, Elizabeth Warren and Chris Van Hollen, called for the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, “to be fired immediately” over the killing of dozens of seven to 12-year-old Iranian schoolgirls in a missile attack on the first day of the US-Israeli war on Iran.
The suspect who killed one person and injured two others at Old Dominion University was identified by authorities as Mohamed Jalloh, a former member of the army national guard who pleaded guilty in 2016 to attempting to provide material support to the Islamic State.
The FBI said it is investigating the ramming of a car into a Michigan synagogue as “a targeted act of violence against the Jewish community”.
