(SANA’A, Yemen) — President Donald Trump announced he ordered the U.S. military to launch “decisive and powerful military action” against the Houthis in Yemen.
“They have waged an unrelenting campaign of piracy, violence, and terrorism against American, and other, ships, aircraft, and drones,” Trump posted on his social media platform Truth Social. “We will use overwhelming lethal force until we have achieved our objective.”
A U.S. official confirmed to ABC News that U.S. air and naval assets hit dozens of Houthi targets in Yemen, including missiles, radars and drone and air defense systems. The official characterized the attacks as an opening salvo against the Houthis and sends a strong message to Iran.
A spokesman for Yemen’s ministry of health said at least nine people have been killed in the strikes and another nine injured. He said most of the casualties were civilians, and the number of those killed and injured will be updated as rescue and recovery efforts continue.
The strikes are the largest and most significant military action that Trump has taken in his second term.
The Houthi attacks were carried out by fighter jets from the Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier, now in the northern Red Sea, as well as Air Force attack planes and armed drones launched from bases in the region, according to a source familiar with the plan.
Trump approved the plan on Friday, the source added.
The strikes Saturday are the result of several high-level White House meetings this week with Trump and top national security aides, including Vice President J.D. Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, national security adviser Mike Waltz, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Gen. Michael E. Kurilla.
The attacks could intensify in scope and scale depending on the Houthi reaction, a source familiar with the plan said.
The source stressed this is not expected to be a single day event and said that “this will be decisive.”
Earlier in March, the Houthis warned they would resume attacking shipping vessels if Israel’s blockade of aid in Gaza continued.
Trump also had a stark message for Iran, writing that its support for the Houthis must end “immediately.” The president redesignated the Houthis as a foreign terrorist organization via an executive order in first days in office.
In a message to the Houthis, Trump threatened that if the attacks don’t stop, then “hell will rain down upon you like nothing you have ever seen before.”
The Biden administration also conducted multiple strikes against the Houthis as they disrupted international shipping lanes in the Red Sea with attacks.
The last U.S. airstrike in Yemen against the Houthis occurred on Jan. 8, while former President Joe Biden was still in office, when a precision strike targeted two underground ammunition bunkers. There had been no other airstrikes since then partly because the Houthis stopped attacking ships during the ceasefire between Hamas and Israel.
Trump slammed his predecessor, writing, “Joe Biden’s response was pathetically weak, so the unrestrained Houthis just kept going.”
Since the October 2023 Hamas attack on Israel, the Houthis have launched more than 100 attacks on vessels in the Red Sea, causing disruptions to global trade through one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world. The Houthi rebels had initially framed their attacks as a way to pressure Israel to stop the war that was launched following the Oct. 7 terrorist attack. But as shippers began to avoid the regions of the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea, the rebel strikes still continued.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden is making a sweeping move to ban all future offshore oil and natural gas drilling on America’s East and West coasts, the Eastern Gulf of Mexico and Alaska’s North Bering Sea.
“My decision reflects what coastal communities, businesses, and beachgoers have known for a long time: that drilling off these coasts could cause irreversible damage to places we hold dear and is unnecessary to meet our nation’s energy needs. It is not worth the risks,” Biden said in a statement announcing the decision.
According to the White House fact sheet, this move blocks drilling in more than 625 million acres of U.S. oceans.
The fact sheet adds that Biden took those actions under “Section 12(a) of the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act” and adds that his actions “have no expiration date, and prohibit all future oil and natural gas leasing” in the designated areas.
“We do not need to choose between protecting the environment and growing our economy, or between keeping our ocean healthy, our coastlines resilient, and the food they produce secure and keeping energy prices low. Those are false choices,” Biden added.
The fact sheet says that after this sweeping move, “Biden will have conserved more lands and waters than any other U.S. president in history.”
The action comes as President-elect Donald Trump continually made his “drill, baby, drill” promise on the campaign trail, vowing to unlock America’s drilling capabilities in an effort to lower energy costs for Americans.
But the law Biden used, the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, was written so a presidential action under its authority is permanent, differing from other executive actions. If the Trump administration were to attempt to reverse Biden’s actions, Congress would likely have to change the law.
ABC News’ MaryAlice Parks contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered an immediate pause on gender-affirming medical care procedures for all active-duty service members in a memo that was addressed to senior Pentagon leadership and military command.
The Feb. 7, 2025, memo, which was obtained today by ABC News, also ordered an immediate pause on all new promotions in the military for individuals “with a history of gender dysphoria.”
“Effective immediately, all new accessions for individuals with a history of gender dysphoria are paused, and all unscheduled, scheduled, or planned medical procedures associated with affirming or facilitating a gender transition for Service members are paused,” the memo says.
“Individuals with gender dysphoria have volunteered to serve our country and will be treated with dignity and respect,” the memo continued, adding that the Department of Defense would provide “additional policy and implementation guidance” to service members “with a current diagnosis or history of gender dysphoria.”
The memo came after President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Jan. 28 rescinding Biden administration policies that permitted transgender service members to serve openly in the military based on their gender identity. The executive order is being challenged in federal court by prominent LGBTQ+ advocacy groups, including Human Rights Campaign, which filed a pair of lawsuits against the Trump administration on behalf of active-duty transgender service members.
The executive order directed the Department of Defense to revise the Pentagon’s policy on transgender service members and stated that “expressing a false “gender identity” divergent from an individual’s sex cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for military service.”
The order further argued that receiving gender-affirming medical care is one of the conditions that is physically and mentally “incompatible with active duty.”
“Consistent with the military mission and longstanding DoD policy, expressing a false ‘gender identity’ divergent from an individual’s sex cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for military service,” the order continued.
Hegseth echoed this sentiment in the Feb. 7 memo, saying that “efforts to split our troops along lines of identity weaken our Force and make us vulnerable. Such efforts must not be tolerated or accommodated.”
Human Rights Campaign and Lambda Legal filed a federal lawsuit on Thursday on behalf of six active-duty transgender service members, challenging the Trump administration over the president’s ban on transgender service members.
“By categorically excluding transgender people, the 2025 Military Ban and related federal policy and directives violate the equal protection and due process guarantees of the Fifth Amendment and the free speech guarantee of the First Amendment,” the lawsuit said. “They lack any legitimate or rational justification, let alone the compelling and exceedingly persuasive ones required. Accordingly, Plaintiffs seek declaratory, and preliminary and permanent injunctive, relief.”
A similar lawsuit against the Trump administration was filed on Jan. 28 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia by advocacy groups GLAD Law and the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR) on behalf of six additional active duty service members.
“By categorically excluding transgender people, the 2025 Military Ban and related federal policy and directives violate the equal protection and due process guarantees of the Fifth Amendment and the free speech guarantee of the First Amendment,” the lawsuit said. “They lack any legitimate or rational justification, let alone the compelling and exceedingly persuasive ones required. Accordingly, Plaintiffs seek declaratory, and preliminary and permanent injunctive, relief.”
A similar lawsuit against the Trump administration was filed on Jan. 28 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia by advocacy groups GLAD Law and the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR) on behalf of six additional active duty service members.
ABC News reached out to the White House regarding the lawsuits but requests for comment were not returned.
The immediate impact of the memo on transgender service members is unclear, but ABC News has reached out to the plaintiffs in each of those lawsuits for comment.
Shannon Minter, lead counsel of NCLR, told ABC News in a statement on Monday that Hegseth’s memo “underscores the urgency of the need for court intervention.”
“The administration is already taking steps to implement the ban even before the stated deadlines in the original executive order,” Minter said. “Transgender applicants are already being turned away and transgender service members are being targeted and denied medically necessary care.”
Court records show that a hearing in this case is scheduled on February 18 in the D.C. district court, where Judge Ana Reyes is presiding over the case.
ABC News’ Briana Stewart contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — If she is confirmed as director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard would be the youngest-ever in that role, the first millennial, the first Asian American, and only the second woman to hold the position.
But she is expected to face questions in her confirmation hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee about statements she has made that appear to support U.S. enemies and dictators as well as having no significant experience in intelligence. Gabbard can only afford to lose the votes of three Republicans and sources tell ABC News the vote on her nomination is expected to be a close one.
In excerpts from her opening statement, Gabbard confronts her critics.
“The truth is: what really upsets my political opponents is my consistent record of independence, regardless of political affiliation, and my refusal to be anyone’s puppet. You know who else is committed to defending our country and reforming Washington with a fierce and unparalleled independence, President Donald J. Trump who ran and won with a mandate for change this November,” she says in the excerpt.
For most of her career, Gabbard has broken barriers. She was the youngest woman ever elected to a state house of representatives and the first to graduate from the Accelerated Officer Candidate School at the Alabama Military Academy as a distinguished honor graduate. In Congress, she was the first Samoan American, the youngest woman elected at the time, and the first combat veteran to serve — a distinction she shares with Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth.
Gabbard has prepared extensively over the past two months for her hearings, meeting with former DNI leaders, including John Negroponte, the first DNI, and Michael Allen, who led Negroponte’s confirmation hearing preparations. She also has consulted with former CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden, along with Trump allies Morgan Ortagus, deputy special presidential envoy for Middle East peace, and FBI director nominee Kash Patel.
She has sought input from a broad range of intelligence experts, former government officials and lawmakers across the aisle. She has participated in policy roundtables with lawyers, ex-intelligence officials, and national security negotiators, including figures involved in the Abraham Accords.
She also held a full-scale mock confirmation hearing ahead of Thursday’s Senate Intelligence Committee proceedings. Former Republican Sen. Richard Burr, who chaired the committee from 2015 to 2020, will introduce her.
Sources on both sides of the aisle on Capitol Hill tell ABC News Gabbard will likely face scrutiny over her past stances on Russia, Ukraine, Syria, and Iran, as well as her defense of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who reached a plea deal with the Justice Department over disseminating classified documents he had obtained illegally. Gabbard said last year on “Real Time With Bill Maher” that “the charges against him are one of the biggest attacks on freedom of the press that we’ve seen and freedom of speech.”
As a member of Congress, Gabbard introduced a bill in 2020 calling for the federal government to drop all charges against Edward Snowden, the former NSA contractor who leaked information in 2013 about how the U.S. government surveils the American public.
She’s also expected to face question on her reversal on Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), a key surveillance tool she voted against reauthorizing in 2020, her last year in Congress.
Gabbard argued that Americans shouldn’t be forced to choose between security and liberty, saying that the Patriot Act and FISA have “been allowing for the abuses of our civil liberties and overreach by our own intelligence and law enforcement agencies through doing things like warrantless sweeping collection of our data, violating our Fourth Amendment constitutional rights.”
Gabbard is also expected to face questions past statements about former President Donald Trump including her decision to vote present on Donald Trump’s.
Over the last two months, Gabbard has met with more than 50 senators, primarily Republicans. The meetings have largely served as an introduction — an opportunity to explain her past positions and assuage concerns about her political evolution. A source close to her told ABC News, “They know they can’t put her in a box. She’s not a Democrat. She’s a new Republican. She has very similar, if not 100% aligned, views with President Trump on ‘America First’ foreign policy. That makes people uneasy because they can’t quite figure her out.”
Gabbard, like Trump, is a former Democrat whose policy views have shifted significantly. Her evolution has been shaped by her 22 years in the Army, including deployments to Iraq, Kuwait, and Djibouti. If confirmed, she will be the first female DNI to have served in the military. She plans to continue serving in the Army Reserve, which is permitted under ODNI regulations.
Behind the scenes, Gabbard has earned bipartisan support within the intelligence community for her willingness to engage with a range of stakeholders. Earlier this month, the families of two former ISIS and al-Qaeda hostages publicly endorsed her nomination in a letter shared with ABC News. The parents of Kayla Mueller, who was killed by ISIS, and Theo Padnos, a former al-Qaeda hostage, argued that the radicalization of individuals — such as Shamsud-Din Jabbar, who drove his truck into a crowd of New Orleans New Year’s revelers — underscores the need for Gabbard’s swift confirmation.
The letter of support came under scrutiny by some lawmakers after rebels toppled Syria’s Bashar al-Assad. Gabbard met with Assad in Syria in 2017, which remains a point of controversy. She has previously defended the trip as a “fact-finding mission” and has maintained that U.S. intervention in Syria empowered extremist groups.
Gabbard warned in the same year that she was concerned that toppling Assad’s regime could lead to groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda to step in to fill the void and “completely massacre all religious minorities there in Syria.”
“I had no intention of meeting with Assad, but when given the opportunity, I felt it was important to take it,” Gabbard said in a 2017 statement. “We should be ready to meet with anyone if there’s a chance it can help bring about an end to this war.”
Padnos, who was kidnapped by the al-Nusra Front in 2012 and held for nearly two years, said Gabbard’s willingness to engage with hostage families compelled him to speak out.
“This is a woman with deep compassion for the victims of terrorism and the courage to get things done,” he told ABC News. “Nobody else has offered their help — except Tulsi.”
Gabbard told ABC News that she was “honored and humbled by that statement of support.”
She has also received backing from law enforcement. The National Sheriffs’ Association endorsed her nomination, citing her commitment to bridging intelligence gaps between federal agencies and local authorities. In a statement, the group praised Gabbard’s pledge to give sheriffs “a seat at the table” in national security discussions.
Sheriff Kieran Donahue, president of the National Sheriffs’ Association, wrote “Gabbard has demonstrated a commitment to addressing the critical disconnect between our intelligence agencies and local law enforcement in preparing for sophisticated and pervasive threats.”
A source close to Gabbard told ABC News that her focus as director of national intelligence will be on restoring trust in the intelligence community and reforming what is and isn’t classified. Specifically, she aims to ensure that the intelligence provided to the Senate and White House is not information already available to lawmakers through media outlets. On Capitol Hill, lawmakers have expressed concern about the overclassification of information.
The source added that Gabbard intends to provide more accurate, raw intelligence to help lawmakers make informed decisions, rather than relying on overclassified data. She also plans to streamline the process for security clearances and return ODNI to its original mission — leading the intelligence community by fostering integration, collaboration and innovation.
Her allies argue that her outsider perspective will help modernize the intelligence community — though critics remain skeptical of her lack of traditional experience.
Thursday’s hearing will test whether Gabbard can win over skeptics — or if her controversial past will derail her bid to become the nation’s top intelligence officer.
