Trump blasts NATO after allies rebuff his call to help reopen Strait of Hormuz
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to members of the media onboard Air Force One on March 15, 2026 while en route to Joint Base Andrews, Maryland from West Palm Beach Florida. President Trump returned to Washington D.C. on Sunday following a weekend trip to Florida. (Photo by Nathan Howard/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — After NATO allies rebuffed his call to assist the U.S. in securing the critical Strait of Hormuz, President Donald Trump said on Tuesday the U.S. doesn’t need their help after all.
“I think NATO’s making a very foolish mistake,” Trump said, airing out his grievances with the transatlantic alliance during an Oval Office meeting with Ireland’s Taoiseach Micheál Martin.
“This was a great test because we don’t need them, but they should have been there,” the president added.
Trump over the weekend requested U.S. partners in Europe and Asia send warships to help police the strait, where roughly one-fifth of the world’s oil supply is caught in the crosshairs of the U.S. and Israeli war with Iran.
No country has publicly announced plans to send ships or other kinds of assistance to unblock the strait.
“This is not our war; we did not start it,” German Defense Minister BorisPistorius said on Monday.
“We will not be drawn into the wider war,” British Prime Minister Keir Starmer similarly said.
Despite the cold shoulder from several allies, President Trump on Monday said that “numerous countries” had told him “they’re on the way.” Trump did not identify which countries, and said that Secretary of State Marco Rubio would soon provide a list.
As of Tuesday afternoon, no list had been released.
When asked what countries would join in a coalition to secure the strait, Trump said he’s had “great support from the Middle East” including Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and “of course Israel” — but did not explicitly say what those countries would be doing.
In a social media post on Tuesday, Trump wrote the U.S. military had been “informed by most of our NATO ‘Allies’ that they don’t want to get involved with our Military Operation against the Terrorist Regime of Iran, in the Middle East, this, despite the fact that almost every Country strongly agreed with what we are doing, and that Iran cannot, in any way, shape, or form, be allowed to have a Nuclear Weapon.”
Trump said the U.S. didn’t need the assistance from those countries, or from “Japan, Australia and South Korea.”
“Well, we don’t need too much help, and we don’t need any help, actually,” Trump later said in the Oval Office.
When asked if he would retaliate against NATO countries for not heeding his call or if he was rethinking the alliance, Trump said no.
“I have nothing currently in mind. But I will say that I’m not exactly thrilled,” Trump said.
Trump pointed to the assistance the U.S. provided to help Ukraine fight Russia’s invasion under the Biden administration as he criticized NATO for not stepping in to help with reopening the Strait of Hormuz.
“You would have thought they would have said, ‘We’d love to send a couple of minesweepers,'” Trump said. “It’s not a big deal. It doesn’t cost very much money. But they didn’t do that. So, you know, it’s — I think it’s very unfair to the United States, not to me, but to the United States.”
Meanwhile, the impact of Iran’s stranglehold is being felt abroad and at home. The price of oil has hovered around $100 a barrel this week. In the U.S., the national average for a gallon of gas is $3.79 — up about 88 cents from a month ago.
President Trump had also called on China, which Iran is still allowing to transit the Gulf, to assist in the Strait of Hormuz. The response from China’s foreign ministry was a call for all parties to immediately stop military operations.
President Trump announced Tuesday that his previously planned trip to China is now postponed for five to six weeks. Trump didn’t provide details on why, only that he was “resetting the meeting” originally scheduled for early April.
“I look forward to seeing President Xi. He looks forward to seeing me, I think,” Trump said.
Becky Pepper Jackson competes in discus and shot put on the girls high school track and field team in her West Virginia hometown. (ABC News)
(WASHINGTON) — The Supreme Court on Tuesday will for the first time wade into the heated national debate over whether transgender girls should be allowed to participate in girls’ and women’s sports.
The justices will hear arguments in a pair of cases from Idaho and West Virginia, where federal courts have blocked state laws that would prohibit trans girls from participating on teams consistent with their gender identity.
The outcome of the cases will determine the fate of those laws and similar measures in 27 other states. There are an estimated 122,000 transgender American teens who participate in high school sports nationwide, according to the Williams Institute at UCLA Law School.
Lower courts have concluded separately that the bans discriminate “on the basis of sex” in violation of Title IX, the landmark civil rights law that has promoted equal opportunities for women and girls in athletics, and the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause.
The states are asking the justices to overturn those decisions and reinstate their laws, arguing that sex and gender identity are not synonymous when it comes to women’s athletics and that allowing transgender girls to compete against cisgender girls is unfair and unsafe.
“It really comes down to one simple question,” said West Virginia Attorney General John McCuskey in an interview with ABC News. “Is it legal and constitutional for states to delineate their athletic playing fields based on the immutable physical characteristics that people have that are associated with their sex that’s assigned at birth?”
Becky Pepper Jackson, a high school sophomore from Bridgeport, West Virginia, who competes in discus and shot put on the track and field team, brought the legal challenge to her state’s law in 2021. She is the only known openly trans athlete in West Virginia in any sport.
“Someone has to do it. Someone has to do this for all of us,” Becky, 15, told ABC News in an exclusive interview. “Otherwise these laws and bills are just going to stand.”
Transgender athletes make up just over 1% of the more than 8 million teenage student athletes nationwide, according to the Williams Institute.
Idaho college student Lindsay Hecox, a former track and cross-country runner who was barred from trying out for her school teams, sued over her state’s ban in 2020. Last year, she asked the court to drop her case because she no longer wished to compete in sports and didn’t want to be in the spotlight. However, Idaho fought to keep the case alive.
“Everyone has had the experience of being told, look, you can’t play. You have to sit on the bench, or you can’t make the team. And everyone knows how that feels,” said Sasha Jean Buchert, an attorney with Lambda Legal, an LGBTQ advocacy group involved with the cases.
“That’s what’s happening to transgender kids right now,” Buchert said. “And the scope of [these bans] is absolutely absurd.”
Becky, who has openly identified as a girl since third grade, said she has never undergone male puberty, thanks to puberty-blocking medication, and has no physiological advantage over her peers.
“She has testosterone from her adrenal glands just like every female out there, but that’s the only testosterone she has,” said her mother, Heather Jackson. “She’s actually not the biggest person on her team. There’s people taller than her; there’s people shorter than her. She’s just an average female teenager.”
As a young cross-country runner, Becky was consistently at the back of the pack. More recently, she earned a spot in the state championship for discus and shot put, where she placed third and eighth, respectively.
“I put in time over the summer and after practices just trying to improve my technique and get better,” she said.
Her performance at an eighth grade track meet in 2024 drew protests from other athletes who claimed she made them uncomfortable in the locker room and on the field.
“I just didn’t think it was right,” said Sabrina Shriver, 16, a former discus thrower who refused to compete against Becky at the meet and later quit the sport because of her participation in the league. “It was just, I don’t know, we all just felt uncomfortable and we’re just, we didn’t want any part of it.”
The competitive advantage boys and men have physically over girls and women has been well established in physically demanding sports by medical research and serves as a primary basis for distinctions between the sexes in athletics.
Studies have shown testosterone produced during male puberty does lead to more muscle mass, larger hearts and lungs, greater body height and longer limbs on average for boys and men, according to the American College of Sports Medicine.
Before puberty, however, “sex differences in athletic performance are minimal,” the group says research shows.
A key issue in the West Virginia case is a dispute over whether Becky, 15, possesses an advantage at all, given she has not undergone male puberty, takes estrogen supplements and does not produce high levels of testosterone.
“If [sports leagues] look at the medical records of individuals like the Olympic committee does, testing people — they test for performance enhancing medications or drugs that their athletes take — so if we can look at those levels, let’s look at her levels,” Heather Jackson said.
McCuskey says a testing regimen is just not practicable and that Becky can still compete, but on a boys team. “We have to be able to draw a line here,” he said.
“Becky is bigger and stronger and faster than the females that she’s competing against,” said the attorney general.
He has urged the Supreme Court to stay out of the debate, arguing in a court brief that West Virginia’s law “implicates ‘fierce scientific and policy debates’ that elected legislators are best able to resolve.”
The U.S. Olympic Committee, the NCAA and 29 states ban transgender girls and women from competing on teams consistent with their gender identity. The other 21 states do not have bans, including California and New York, which have laws explicitly allowing trans athletes to compete.
Last year, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority upheld a Tennessee law banning some gender-affirming medical treatments for transgender minors, rejecting claims that the law discriminated “on the basis of sex” and saying that states should have leeway to regulate health care in an area of scientific uncertainty.
In 2020, however, the Court concluded in a landmark decision that a Michigan transgender woman fired by her employer for being transgender was discriminated against “on the basis of sex” under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Justice Neil Gorsuch explained in his majority opinion that her termination was “for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex.”
Becky, Lindsay, and their attorneys with the American Civil Liberties Union and Lambda Legal say the same reasoning should be applied to sports bans.
“There’s been a number of setbacks that we’ve experienced over the last few years in the courts, but I do have a sense of optimism with this case in light of the fact that the legal issues at play here are some of the same issues at play five years ago,” said Buchert, the Lambda Legal attorney.
Notwithstanding the legal arguments, 69% of Americans say transgender girls should only be allowed to play on boys teams, according to a June 2025 Gallup survey.
The Trump administration also supports the exclusion of transgender athletes from sports teams. An executive order signed in February 2025 says “it is the policy of the United States to rescind all funds from educational programs that deprive women and girls of fair athletic opportunities.”
Becky says, while she understands public opinion, she is unable to “go against who I am.”
“I’ve been a girl forever,” she said, “and playing on the guys’ team is going backwards.”
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to reporters during a news conference at Trump National Doral Miami on March 9, 2026 in Doral, Florida. (Roberto Schmidt/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump is traveling to Hebron, Kentucky, on Wednesday to deliver another speech focused on economic messaging. But this time, it’s in the district of Rep. Thomas Massie, the six-term Republican that the president is actively working to oust.
Just two months ahead of a contentious Republican primary between Massie and Trump-endorsed former Navy SEAL Ed Gallrein, the president is set to make two stops in the area: at a packaging facility in Hebron, Kentucky, and then at ThermoFisher in Reading, Ohio, where he’ll discuss efforts to lower prescription drug prices.
The visit comes amid an ongoing, bitter feud between Massie and Gallrein — one of the party’s few significant MAGA proxy battles this year. The race is also one of the most expensive House GOP primaries of the 2026 cycle.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said earlier this week that Trump will be joined by Ohio and Kentucky lawmakers “who he greatly admires and respects and supports.” Massie won’t be at any of Wednesday’s events alongside Trump; a Gallrein spokesperson confirmed to ABC News that he will be in attendance for the president’s event.
Massie has long been the subject of Trump’s ire, but it has ramped up this cycle with Massie’s unwavering push for the release of the files about convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein as well as his opposition to significant legislation championed by the president, including his chief domestic policy package.
In October, Trump said Massie needed to be “thrown out of office,” after the congressman objected to a short-term funding bill backed by the president– also saying, “[Massie] SHOULD BE PRIMARIED, and I will lead the charge against him.”
Trump then nudged Gallrein to enter the race, backed him, and the fifth-generation farmer launched his bid that month.
In a social media post on Monday, Gallrein said the “rally will be a huge moment for our campaign and for the people of Northern Kentucky.” Gallrein wrote Monday on X.
In an interview with ABC affiliate WCPO about the president’s visit and his race against Gallrein, Massie said he’s glad Trump is visiting the district and “paying attention to local issues.”
“I suspect he’s also going to try and help my opponent, but you know that’s really all my opponent has going for him. He’s promised to be a rubber stamp when he gets to Washington, D.C., and I don’t think people here want a rubber stamp.”
Massie told WCPO he will not make Trump’s visit due to prior commitments.
Massie also said the president would “discover” support for the positions he champions, including a focus on releasing the Epstein files and staying out of foreign wars.
“What they’ll discover is Trump fans in KY-4 and across the entire commonwealth also support my work on the Epstein files, reigning in spending, ending forever wars, draining the swamp, and food freedom!” Massie said in a social media post on Tuesday regarding the president’s upcoming visit to his district.
Ahead of his visit, Trump attacked Massie on his social media platform, saying, “I predict that ‘Representative’Thomas Massie will go down as the WORST Republican Congressman in the long and fabled history of the United States Congress.”
“Massie, who is running against a great American Patriot in the Kentucky Primary, will hopefully lose BIG,” added Trump, who reiterated his endorsement of Gallrein in another post.
The president’s rhetoric toward Massie is not new — in 2020, Trump called on the GOP to “throw Massie out of Republican party” following the congressman’s opposition to a coronavirus relief bill. Still, Massie won his primary by 62 points. In 2022, Trump endorsed Massie for reelection, calling him a “conservative warrior.” Massie won by nearly 60 points that year.
But with Massie on the outs with Trump once again, Kentucky’s primary election — which will take place on May 19 — is expected to remain contentious.
On Tuesday, Massie attempted to paint his opponent as the “Trump traitor,” claiming Gallrein dropped his Republican affiliation after Trump became the party’s presidential nominee in 2016.
“Woke Eddie Gallrein abandoned President Trump’s Republican party – a complete dereliction of his MAGA duty,” the narrator of a recent Massie ad says.
Gallrein spokeswoman Alexandra Wilkes acknowledged that Gallrein changed his voter registration in the past, but pinned the blame on Massie for this decision.
“Ed briefly changed registration out of frustration with the broken system Congressman Massie created in his district, which hurt the Republican Party, and he is proud to stand with President Trump and true conservative Republicans,” Wilkes said in a statement, slamming Massie for “pretending to be a Trump ally.”
Gallrein is also supported by Kentucky Rep. Andy Barr, who is also running for Senate, to replace outgoing Sen. Mitch McConnell. Barr’s decision to endorse against Massie was significant, given that Massie is a part of his delegation. Trump has not yet endorsed in the Kentucky Senate race, and Barr is among the top three GOP candidates working for his endorsement.
U.S. President Donald Trump and Ivanka Trump attend UFC 327 at Kaseya Center on April 11, 2026, in Miami, Florida. The main event of UFC 327 is the light heavyweight match between Jiri Prochazka and Carlos Ulberg. (Photo by Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — The sprawling UFC Freedom 250 event being held on the South Lawn of the White House and the Ellipse event in June are receiving the highest level of security possible, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson told ABC News.
“The ‘UFC Freedom 250’ event held on the South Lawn of the White House and the Fan Festival on the Ellipse on June 13-14, 2026, are designated SEAR 1 events,” a department spokesperson said to ABC News.
Other SEAR 1 events include the Super Bowl, the Chicago Marathon and the Rose Bowl Game.
In years past, the federal coordinator for the SEAR 1 events was an agent from Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) or the U.S. Secret Service. This year’s Super Bowl security posture in San Francisco was led by the lead HSI agent from the San Francisco Field Office.
The event is not a National Special Security Event, which is designated by the Secretary of Homeland Security and includes events like the Presidential Inauguration and the 250 Military Parade.
UFC Freedom 250 — a UFC fight taking place on the South Lawn was an idea that President Donald Trump has been deeply involved in helping plan. UFC President Dana White announced that in addition to the fight, there will be a fan fest on the ellipse and events through the National Mall, including a press conference at the Lincoln Memorial.
The threat landscape has also never been more dynamic, according to law enforcement sources.
A March alert sent to law enforcement partners around the country from DHS talked about the threat of lone actors.
“Lone offenders in the Homeland have not historically been motivated by issues related to Iran, the IRGC, or Shia violent extremism; however, the existential threat to the Iranian regime and increased US or Israeli actions could prompt some US-based violent extremists or hate crime perpetrators to attack targets perceived to be Jewish, pro-Israel, or linked to the US government or military,” the bulletin says.
