House falls short of overriding 2 Trump vetoes of bipartisan bills

(WASHINGOTN) — Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard returns to Capitol Hill this week for an annual set of hearings on worldwide threats — her most significant public appearance in months and her clearest opportunity yet to address the intelligence picture surrounding the war in Iran.

Lawmakers are expected to press Gabbard on the administration’s handling of the Iran conflict, homeland security concerns, election integrity and the broader global threat environment at a moment of rising tension.

The hearings will also offer a rare extended look at an intelligence chief who has spent much of the past year largely out of public view. The Senate Intelligence Committee is scheduled to hear from her on Wednesday, March 18, with the House hearing set for Thursday, March 19.

She heads into the hearings under fresh scrutiny after the resignation of Joe Kent, the administration’s top counterterrorism official, who stepped down Tuesday over his objections to the Iran war — the highest-profile administration official to resign publicly over the conflict.

An ODNI official told ABC News that Gabbard was not asked by the White House to fire Kent, pushing back on a report first aired by Fox News.

Kent’s resignation sharpened questions already hanging over the administration’s case for war — whether Iran posed an imminent threat to the United States.

In his resignation letter, Kent said he could not “in good conscience” support the war and argued that Iran posed “no imminent threat” to the nation, directly undercutting President Donald Trump’s repeated public justification for the conflict.

Trump has previously said Tehran posed an imminent threat and was “very nearly” in a position to strike.

Hours after Kent’s resignation became public, Gabbard moved to publicly back Trump’s authority to make that call.

In a post on X, she said the president, as commander in chief, is responsible for determining “what is and is not an imminent threat” and whether action is necessary to protect U.S. troops, the American people and the country.

She added that ODNI’s role is to coordinate and integrate intelligence, so the president has the best information available to inform his decisions, and said Trump had concluded Iran posed an imminent threat after reviewing the available intelligence.

She did not directly address Kent’s allegations or mention him by name.

The moment is especially striking for Gabbard because few figures in Trump’s orbit spent more time warning about regime change wars, intelligence failures and the cost of Washington interventionism.

As a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, she was so vocal in her opposition to war with Iran that she sold “No War With Iran” T-shirts.

In an exclusive interview with ABC News last year, she again spoke about diplomacy, military restraint and the human cost of conflict in terms that reflected a worldview she has carried for years.

In that interview, Gabbard said the stress of her first deployment in her mid-20s turned part of her hair white, and that she kept the streak as a reminder of the high human cost of war.

“War must always be the last resort, only after all measures of diplomacy have been completely exhausted,” she told ABC News in the interview.

This week’s hearings will also unfold against the backdrop of Gabbard’s broader and unusually quiet tenure. Before taking office, she was rarely far from public view, frequently appearing on television, podcasts and social media.

As DNI, that version of her has largely faded from public view.

In recent months, she has appeared mostly in glimpses, at major administration moments.

Gabbard, a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve and the first person in U.S. history to serve as DNI while in military uniform, appeared in uniform at Dover Air Force Base earlier this month during the dignified transfer of six American soldiers killed in a drone strike in Kuwait in the opening hours of the war with Iran.

She also heads into the hearing with other controversies still hanging over her.

Gabbard has drawn scrutiny for her role in the administration’s election integrity push, including her appearance outside the FBI’s operation in Fulton County, Georgia, in January, where federal agents seized election materials tied to the 2020 election, and her subsequent acknowledgment that she arranged a call between President Donald Trump and the agents involved. She has also faced continuing questions about her investigations into election security in Puerto Rico and Arizona.

ABC News previously reported that Gabbard arranged a call between Trump and FBI agents involved in the seizure of election materials in Fulton County, an unusual move given the sensitivity of the investigation. In Arizona, a senior administration official told ABC News that Gabbard was not on the ground but was still “working across the agency to ensure election integrity.”

The hearing is shaping up as more than a routine annual threat assessment.

It will be the clearest public test yet of how Gabbard explains the role she has carved out inside the Trump administration, and how she reconciles the anti-war politics that helped define her rise with the office she now holds at the center of a war she is being asked to defend.

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(WASHINGTON) — Strikes continued across the Middle East on Tuesday amid uncertainty over the state of talks between the U.S. and Iran, after President Donald Trump touted progress on negotiations while Tehran denied any dialogue.

Just days after he insisted there was no leadership left to talk to in Iran, Trump on Monday announced the U.S. and Iran held discussions over the weekend and as a result he was postponing major attacks he’d threatened on Tehran’s energy infrastructure.

“We have had very, very strong talks,” Trump told reporters. “We’ll see where they lead. But we have … major points of agreement.”

Steve Witkoff, White House special envoy, and Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, led the talks for the U.S. side, according to Trump. Trump did not identify who the U.S. was negotiating with in Iran, but said it is not the new supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei.

Trump said a meeting would take place “soon.”

Iran, on the other hand, publicly denied any talks have taken place. Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran’s speaker of Parliament, said Trump’s claims were an attempt to influence markets suffering from Iran’s stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz.

The Trump administration is not confirming if and when in-person talks will take place between U.S. and Iranian officials in the coming days.

“These are sensitive diplomatic discussions, and the United States will not negotiate through the press. This is a fluid situation, and speculation about meetings should not be deemed as final until they are formally announced by the White House,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement provided to ABC News.

Pakistan has positioned itself as a mediator between the U.S. and Iran.

A Pakistani official familiar with the negotiations told ABC News that there are “several proposals” floating around regarding the next steps for talks and said an in-person meeting in Islamabad is on the table.

Trump on Tuesday shared to his social media platform a post from Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, who wrote on X: “Pakistan welcomes and fully supports ongoing efforts to pursue dialogue to end the WAR in the Middle East, in the interest of peace and stability in region and beyond.”

“Subject to concurrence by US and Iran, Pakistan stands ready and honoured to be the host to facilitate meaningful and conclusive talks for a comprehensive settlement of the ongoing conflict,” Sharif’s post read.

The Pakistani official said Turkey and Egypt are also helping to facilitate the talks between the U.S. and Iran.

The official said the talks would likely take place within the next five days in accordance with Trump’s social media post — suggesting military strikes on Iranian power plants were “paused” for the next five days as Tehran and Washington engage in diplomatic negotiations. The official cautioned nothing is final as of yet.

A spokesperson for the Embassy of Pakistan in Washington declined to comment. The Egypt and Turkish embassies have not responded to requests for comment.

The Turkish foreign minister said last Thursday that his country was talking to both the U.S. and Iran to understand where the two nations stand.

The State Department referred to the White House when asked if Witkoff, Kushner and Vice President JD Vance were expected to travel to Islamabad later this week to meet with Iranian officials, as Reuters has reported. Vance’s office has not responded to a request for comment.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday said he had spoken with Trump, and said Trump believes there “is an opportunity to leverage the tremendous achievements we have attained with the U.S. military to realize the war’s objectives in an agreement — an agreement that will safeguard our vital interests.”

In the meantime, Netanyahu said Israel will “continue to strike both in Iran and in Lebanon. We are crushing the missile program and the nuclear program, and continue to inflict severe blows on Hezbollah.”

President Trump earlier Monday said that Israel would be “very happy” when asked if he believed Israel would abide by a negotiated peace deal.

Meanwhile, thousands more U.S. Marines and several Navy ships are heading to the Middle East, and the Pentagon is seeking $200 billion in supplemental funding.

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(NEW YORK) — From the campaign trail to Capitol Hill, a growing number of Democrats have said they believe President Donald Trump has committed impeachable offenses in his first year back in office.

But with their focus on the midterms, fewer elected Democrats are willing to commit to impeaching Trump if they win back control of the House, given likely Republican control of the Senate and potential for backlash from voters. 

Trump has predicted that Democrats will impeach him if they retake the House, and Republicans plan to make that threat a key piece of their midterm messaging.

“They will do anything to stop the Trump agenda,” Rep. Dan Meuser, a Republican from Pennsylvania, said of Democrats. “People, if they don’t want a two-year president, who they voted for pretty overwhelmingly in 2024, can’t allow the House to flip.”

Instead, many Democrats said they are focusing on the cost of living and the state of the economy.

“There’s a lot for me to be concerned about,” said Rep. Eugene Vindman, a Democrat from Virginia.

Vindman is an Army veteran and former national security official who played a role in raising concerns about Trump’s 2019 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the center of his first impeachment.

“The American people are concerned about costs, and meanwhile, the president is pursuing foreign adventures,” Vindman told ABC News.

Impeachment calls have picked up in 2026 amid the U.S. attack on Venezuela and the Justice Department’s investigations into Trump’s perceived opponents. A number of progressive Democrats from liberal districts and candidates in crowded blue-seat primaries have called for the impeachment of Trump and key cabinet officials.

Democrats are also setting their sights on Cabinet officials: More than 80 Democrats have cosponsored Illinois Democrat Rep. Robin Kelly’s articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem following the deployment of federal agents to Minnesota and the killing of a Minneapolis woman by a federal agent. 

Still, Democratic leaders are moving cautiously ahead of the midterms, when they will need to gain at least three seats to win control of Congress.

“If candidates and members of Congress are not relentlessly focusing on people’s everyday lives, they are making a mistake,” former Democratic Rep. Cheri Bustos, who led the House Democrats’ campaign committee, told ABC News.

“There’s so much of what President Trump has done, is doing, will do that can be labeled ‘impeachable offenses,’ but in the end what good is it going to do? Even if the House has the votes, the Senate will not go along with it,” she said.

The House has already rejected two impeachment pushes from Rep. Al Green, a Democrat from Texas. In June, 128 Democrats voted with Republicans to block his charges over the U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities without approval from Congress. 

In December, just 23 Democrats voted with Republicans to kill a second effort focused on Trump’s comments about Democrats who posted a social media video urging service members to refuse illegal orders, while another 47 voted present.

In a statement after that vote, House Democratic leaders called impeachment a “sacred constitutional vehicle” requiring a “comprehensive investigative process” that had not taken place.

“None of that serious work has been done, with the Republican majority focused solely on rubber stamping Donald Trump’s extreme agenda,” Reps. Hakeem Jeffries, Pete Aguilar and Katherine Clark said, arguing that voting “present” allowed them to “continue our fight to make life more affordable for everyday Americans.”

Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat and the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, said there’s “definitely a rising clamor for impeachment.”

“Of course, it requires a majority vote of the House to get there, but we need a structured method of thinking through all the lawlessness and criminality taking place,” Raskin said.

Kat Abughazaleh, a 26-year-old activist who is running for Congress in Illinois, has argued that Democratic leaders need to “grow a f—ing spine,” and do more to challenge the Trump administration.

She has spoken out and protested against ICE activities in Chicago, and has pleaded not guilty to charges that she interfered with law enforcement during a protest outside an ICE facility in Illinois last fall that went viral on social media.

“One of the most critical failures in American politics is how our leaders have instilled this feeling that we shouldn’t fight for the world we want to see, that we shouldn’t take measures towards a future that we want to live in,” she told ABC News.

“Impeachment is just another tool in the accountability machine that’s supposed to work, but it doesn’t,” she said.

Raskin, who would lead impeachment proceedings in a Democratic House, said he would be “moving very quickly” in the next two months on “announcing a systematic way of thinking” about the various actions of the Trump administration that Democrats find objectionable, and potentially worth investigating.

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