Pentagon eyes surging carrier group to Middle East amid tensions with Iran
U.S. President Donald Trump tours the Ford River Rouge Complex on January 13, 2026, in Dearborn, Michigan. Trump is visiting Michigan where he will participate in a tour of the Ford River Rouge complex and later give remarks to the Detroit Economic Club. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — The Pentagon was expected to send additional military assets to the Middle East in coming days, according to several people familiar with the discussions, including possibly the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group.
Such a move is considered a typical precaution at times of heightened tensions because of the 30,000 troops stationed throughout the region in countries like Qatar, Jordan, Syria and Iraq.
The added firepower would serve as a deterrent to attacks by adversaries against U.S. bases. But it also would give President Donald Trump additional options to strike Iran later if he chooses.
Examples of assets that could be surged include an aircraft carrier strike group accompanied by cruisers and missile destroyers, as well as Air Force fighter squadrons and land-based air missile defense systems.
Discussions of the additional military assets come as Trump threatened to attack Iran’s government because of violent clashes with protesters. Officials in Tehran responded by threatening to strike back at U.S. bases if he followed through.
According to one person familiar with the discussions this week, Trump was told that a military strike against Iran could be extraordinarily dangerous and potentially risk the lives of U.S. service members in the region, particularly if the government in Tehran felt it was on the brink of collapse. NBC News was first to report this detail.
On Wednesday, Trump told reporters he opted against strikes for now because the U.S. had been told “on good authority” that the killing of protestors in Iran had stopped. Trump also said Friday that 800 planned executions in Iran had been halted, a claim that could not be immediately verified.
In an interview with Fox News on Wednesday, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi denied Tehran had any plans to execute protesters.
Several sources said there had been long-running concerns among U.S. officials that the military didn’t have the right mix of assets in place to protect against a potential massive retaliatory strike from Iran, given that Trump had surged much of the military’s force to the Caribbean to support the capture of Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro.
There is currently no aircraft carrier in the Middle East, although officials say there are six Navy ships, including three missile destroyers. The Pentagon declined to comment.
If the Lincoln is deployed to the Middle East from the South China Sea, it’s expected to take longer than a week to arrive. The USS Lincoln was spotted earlier this week on satellite sailing away from the Philippines.
Travelers wait in line at a Transportation Security Administration (TSA) checkpoint at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL) in Atlanta, Georgia, US, on Friday, March 20, 2026. (Photographer: Elijah Nouvelage/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — President Donald Trump said on Saturday that he is ready to deploy Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to U.S. airports starting Monday if Democrats don’t agree to a funding package to end the Department of Homeland Security shutdown.
“I look forward to moving ICE in on Monday, and have already told them to, ‘GET READY.’ NO MORE WAITING, NO MORE GAMES!” the president wrote in a post to his social media platform.
In an earlier social media post on Saturday, Trump wrote that unless Democrats “immediately sign an agreement” he will move to deploy ICE agents into American airports and conduct security enforcement “like no one has ever seen before.”
Trump said that operations would include immigration enforcement. It’s currently unclear what security roles, exactly, ICE agents will take on in airports.
The White House referred ABC News back to the president’s post when asked what capacity Americans can expect to see ICE operating in at airports.
Trump’s statements come after Democrats on Friday blocked legislation to reopen DHS for the fifth time since the partial shutdown began in mid-February.
Democrats have demanded changes to policy surrounding ICE and Customs and Border Protection in exchange for votes to fund all of the department. Republicans, meanwhile, have rejected Democratic efforts to fund other agencies in DHS like the Coast Guard, Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
Thousands of TSA employees have now missed their first full paychecks, and travelers are facing long lines at airports around the country.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, during an appearance on Fox News earlier Saturday, called on Democrats to negotiate with Republicans.
“I just wish they would stop using the American people as leverage. Make them go through pain so Democrats can get what they want legislatively,” Duffy said.
On Capitol Hill, in a rare Saturday morning press conference, Senate Majority Leader John Thune also urged Democrats to agree to a funding deal.
“At some point, the Democrats are going to have to take yes for an answer. I know they think this is politically good for them. It is not,” Thune, R-S.D., said.
A bipartisan group of lawmakers met behind closed doors with White House border czar Tom Homan throughout the week. The latest meeting concluded late Friday night.
“We need to get the government open and we’ll keep talking until it has,” Homan told ABC News after the meeting.
Thune said he believed that meeting was “productive” and confirmed that the Trump administration added to its offer on DHS funding and submitted legislative text, though lawmakers have not publicly discussed what the new offer from the White House entails.
Thune said he hopes additional meetings take place over the weekend.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, in speech on the Senate floor on Saturday, urged Republicans to support a Democratic effort to fund TSA while other negotiations continue.
“It is unacceptable for workers and travelers and entire airports to get taken hostage in political games, but that’s what the Republicans are doing,” Schumer, D-N.Y., said.
“It is unacceptable to say we will only pay TSA workers if it is attached to a bill that funds ICE with no reforms, but that’s what the Republicans have been doing. Democrats want to pay TSA workers ASAP, with no strings attached,” Schumer added.
Schumer said Democrats are “having productive conversations on reforming ICE and CBP” but that the process is “ongoing.”
“But we must fund TSA now. Let us keep negotiating the outstanding issues with ICE, but let us start sending paychecks to TSA workers now. Let us end the long lines at the airport now,” Schumer said.
Tugboat pushing a barge upstream on the Mississippi River at West Memphis, Arkansas. (Ron Buskirk/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — Mayors from Minnesota to Louisiana traveled to Washington earlier this month with a bipartisan message that protecting the Mississippi River is not just an environmental issue, it is a matter of national security.
The mayors met with lawmakers and federal officials, including the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Homeland Security, as part of their annual Mississippi River Cities & Towns Initiative fly-in, and later spoke with ABC News about growing pressures facing the river corridor.
Stretching more than 2,300 miles through 10 states, the Mississippi River forms the backbone of one of the most important economic corridors in America. According to data shared by the mayors’ coalition, the river system generates nearly $500 billion in annual revenue and directly supports about 1.5 million jobs.
Its waters also carry a massive share of the nation’s agricultural exports, making the river central to U.S. and global food supply chains. According to the National Park Service, the Mississippi River Basin accounts for 92% of America’s agricultural exports, including 78% of the world’s exports of grains and soybeans.
Founded in 2012, the Mississippi River Cities & Towns Initiative (MRCTI) brings together local governments along the river corridor to coordinate priorities including clean water, economic stability, disaster resilience and food security.
However, this year’s trip to Washington came with new urgency.
Several mayors said the rise of artificial intelligence, declining infrastructure, growing demand for water and energy, geopolitical tensions in the Middle East affecting fuel prices and increasingly severe weather events are placing unprecedented pressures on the region.
One concern raised during the discussions was growing interest from water-scarce regions in the western U.S.
“The Colorado River Basin is looking at the Mississippi River Basin to move water into areas of Phoenix, Vegas — the places that are most water insecure on the continent,” Colin Wellenkamp, executive director of MRCTI and a Missouri state representative, told ABC News.
He added they “are looking into the Mississippi River basin for their water supply for the future.”
Coalition co-chair Mayor Melisa Logan of Blytheville, Arkansas, said the river system has become a national security concern as water demands grow.
“This water is absolutely essential for the security of the country, and you move it to another basin irresponsibly, right? That puts the nation at risk,” Logan told ABC News.
Several major U.S. water systems are already governed by interstate compacts, including the Great Lakes Water Compact and the Delaware River Basin Compact. These legally binding agreements, often approved by Congress, help to establish rules for managing and protecting shared water resources.
Supporters of a Mississippi River Compact say a similar framework could help coordinate policy across the 10 states that rely on a basin that supports national and international trade and food supply chains.
“That’s why these mayors are pursuing a Mississippi River Compact to protect the Mississippi,” Wellenkamp said.
He noted that his state passed a law for such an agreement.
“The other nine states aren’t far behind, because this is a real risk in the future,” Wellenkamp added.
Beyond water access, many mayors said the rising cost of disasters has become another urgent concern for communities along the river.
Logan, Blytheville’s mayor, said protecting the river requires key coordination across state lines, as communities along the river often struggle to secure federal funding for projects that cross state boundaries.
“Typically, they do it state by state by state,” Logan said, referring to federal funding programs. “But these impacts are multi-state by watershed.”
According to MRCTI materials, natural disasters along the Mississippi River corridor have caused more than $250 billion in losses since 2005.
Mayor Buz Craft of Vidalia, Louisiana, said local leaders often face delays when seeking federal disaster assistance.
“We need Congress to quit changing the goal post, for example, when we have an issue, whether it’s a tornado or hurricane,” he said.
Changing White House administrations can also put them back to square one, Craft noted.
“Just when you are about to get that funding for that past disaster they say ‘Oh, now you got to go through this,’ start all over and apply to this program, and it’s really a rat race,” he said.
Global instability is also beginning to show up in everyday costs for residents along the river. Several of the mayors said fuel prices along the Mississippi River recently jumped about 20 cents overnight. Those increases can quickly ripple through food prices, the mayors said, because much of the nation’s food supply moves by truck, rail or barge along the Mississippi River system.
Meanwhile, some communities are also preparing for a different kind of pressure, the rapid expansion of artificial intelligence infrastructure. The data centers that power AI systems require massive amounts of electricity and water for cooling, placing new increased demands on local power grids and water systems.
Mayor David Goins of Alton, Illinois, said companies have already begun exploring potential sites in his city.
“I think it’s important to get in front of it and get ahead of it,” he said. “This meeting right here is timely to get the resources that we can, that we can have at our disposal through different companies, organizations, to start preparing ordinances and start getting some type of framework or groundwork, because it’s coming.”
For the mayors gathered in Washington, the message they hoped policymakers would hear was simple: the Mississippi River’s importance stretches far beyond the cities along its banks.
“If you don’t live on the Mississippi River, you don’t necessarily understand the importance of the Mississippi River Basin to our entire continent,” Quincy, Illinois, Mayor Linda Moore said. “One in 12 people in the world is fed by food that flows up and down the Mississippi on a barge or from the river itself.”
For the mayors who traveled to Washington this week, the Mississippi River is more than a waterway — it is an economic lifeline whose currents shape American agriculture, trade and communities across the country.
Mayor Hollies Winston of Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, said the river’s influence reaches far beyond the 10 states it touches, and may stretch long into the future.
“If that water is not protected, we don’t know the impact that that has on the economy 15, 20, 30 years from now,” Winston said.
(WASHINGTON) — Sen. Elissa Slotkin, a Democrat from Michigan, said on Wednesday that she is under federal investigation for a video that she and other Democratic lawmakers posted on social media last year that told military service members that they could refuse illegal orders.
“Last week, U.S. Attorney from the District of Columbia, former Fox host Jeannine Pirro, reached out asking to interview me because of a 90-second video that I filmed in November,” Slotkin said in a video posted to X this morning. “This is on top of an FBI inquiry that came in from the counter terrorism division late last year.”
Slotkin, a former CIA officer, first learned that she was being investigated when she was contacted by federal prosecutors — a detail first reported by The New York Times, and confirmed to ABC News by her office.
A spokesperson for the U.S. attorney’s office says they neither confirm nor deny the existence of an investigation. It’s not clear what the basis of the investigation may be.
In the November video under investigation, Slotkin appeared alongside other Democrats who previously served in the military or in the intelligence community telling U.S. service members that they have a right to refuse unlawful orders.
In November, a CIA spokeswoman attacked Slotkin for her participation in the video, saying in a social media post that the senator joins “the ranks of disgraced former intelligence officers” who have abused their “credentials to advance a malicious and disingenuous political agenda.”
The video has been a subject of focus because of separate actions taken by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth against Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly, who was also featured in the original post on social media. Hegseth last week moved to censure Kelly, which led Kelly to file a lawsuit against Hegseth arguing the censure violated his constitutional rights.
The censure will result in a reduction in rank and Kelly’s retirement pay, a process Hegseth said would take 45 days.
Democrats involved in the video have defended their message as being in line with the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the Constitution.
Much like Kelly, Slotkin vowed that she won’t be silenced by the investigation.
“This president does not represent the views of the majority of Americans. Even if you voted for him, I do not believe that his vision of America is shared by a majority of Americans because this country is worth fighting for,” Slotkin said in her post on Wednesday. “Our freedom of speech is worth fighting for. Our values, our core values are worth fighting for and right now speaking out against the abuse of power is the most patriotic thing we can do.”
President Donald Trump has criticized the Democrats featured in the video, saying in social media posts in November that they are “traitors” whose actions are “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!”
Asked in November if Trump wants to execute members of Congress, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the president did not — adding that the Democrats in the video are “encouraging [service members] to defy the president’s lawful orders.”
Hegseth said in his censure letter that the video “Undermines the Chain of Command; Creates Confusion About Duty; Brings Discredit Upon the Armed Forces; and Is Conduct Unbecoming an Officer.”
In her video on Wednesday, Slotkin said that following Trump’s posts, threats against her and her family have gone “through the roof.”
“I went on 24/7 security from Capitol Police, I had a bomb threat at my house. My parents were swatted in the middle of the night and my siblings had cop cars placed in their driveways,” Slotkin said.
She said this investigatory move comes from “the president’s playbook.”
“Truth doesn’t matter, facts don’t matter, and anyone who disagrees with him becomes an enemy, and he then weaponizes the federal government against them. It is legal intimidation and physical intimidation meant to get you to shut up.”
