Trump says ‘too late’ for talks with Iran, warns US has enough munitions to fight ‘forever’
US President Donald Trump arrives for a medal of honor ceremony in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC, US, on Monday, March 2, 2026. President Trump is awarding the Medal of Honor to three US Army soldiers. (Photographer: Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump on Tuesday said it’s “too late” for talks with Iran and warned the U.S. has enough munitions to fight “forever.”
“Their air defense, Air Force, Navy, and Leadership is gone,” Trump wrote of Iran in a post to his social media platform. “They want to talk. I said ‘Too Late!'”
The comments come as the administration’s war with Iran enters its fourth day and as questions remain on why the urgent military action was necessary and how long it will last.
Trump could face those questions and others from reporters when he hosts German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in the Oval Office at 11:15 a.m. ET.
The president has not given a formal address to the nation on the attacks on Iran, instead posting video statements to social media or speaking to individual reporters at various news outlets.
Overnight, apparently responding to questions raised about stockpiles of U.S. weapons being used to intercept Iranian missiles and drones, Trump posted that the U.S. has a “virtually unlimited” supply.
“Wars can be fought ‘forever,’ and very successfully, using just these supplies,” Trump wrote in a social media post, despite having said on Monday that the U.S. would “easily prevail” in the conflict and campaigning in opposition to “forever wars.”
Trump, though, did acknowledge in the post that the stockpile of some of the country’s highest-grade munitions is “not where we want it to be” and blamed that on U.S. support for Ukraine in fighting Russia’s invasion.
Still, Trump concluded the post by stating: “The United States is stocked, and ready to WIN, BIG!!!”
Trump’s social media post on Tuesday that it’s “too late” for talks with Iran comes just days after he told The Atlantic: “They want to talk, and I have agreed to talk, so I will be talking to them.”
Plus, mixed messages have come from the administration on Iran’s future. Trump over the weekend encouraged Iranians to rise up and topple the government, though Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Monday rebuffed the idea that regime change was the U.S. objective for striking Tehran.
Meanwhile, the war is widening in the Middle East as Iran seeks retaliation for the U.S. and Israeli attacks, which killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and several senior leaders. Tehran’s struck more nearly a dozen countries, and the State Department has warned U.S. citizens to leave the region and closed several embassies.
So far, six U.S. service members have died in the war and more have been wounded. Trump, in an interview with NewsNation, teased retaliation for the killing of American troops.
ABC News’ Fritz Farrow and Meghan Mistry contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — Senate Republicans early Thursday morning approved a blueprint for their budget bill to fund immigration enforcement after an all-night voting marathon.
The vote marks the first step in a new plan to reopen the Department of Homeland Security, which has been shut down since mid-February — making it the longest shutdown in U.S. history.
The budget resolution, which kicks off the drafting process of a bill that Republicans said would provide billions of dollars to Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection, was approved by a vote of 50-48.
Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Rand Paul joined with the Democrats in voting against the resolution. All other Republicans voted in favor of it, except for Sen. Chuck Grassley, who missed the vote as he recovers from a procedure to remove gallstones.
The Senate approved the resolution at about 3:36 a.m. after a vote-a-rama that lasted approximately six hours.
During that time, the Senate considered 17 amendments. Democrats, as promised, forced a number of votes on affordability-related items. Their amendments aimed at lowering the cost of everyday expenses — ranging from health care to electricity to childcare to gas prices.
Though a number of Democratic amendments won the occasional Republican supporter, Republicans ultimately defeated every Democratic-led amendment.
“What kind of bubble are they living in? How apart are they from people’s real needs? And instead, take that money, which should have gone to lowering people’s costs, and giving it to an agency that everyone knows needs reform,” Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, said on the Senate floor after the GOP budget blueprint passed.
Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, vowed that Republicans are going to work to “get the job done” by June 1 — the deadline publicly set by President Donald Trump for Republicans to fund the immigration enforcement agencies.
“The vast majority of Republicans stuck together to do something Democrats are refusing to do: Fully fund the Border Patrol and ICE for three and a half years through the Trump presidency,” Graham said in a statement Thursday morning.
But the overnight vote-a-rama was just the first step in what could be a lengthy reconciliation process.
The GOP’s budget resolution now heads to the House where Speaker Mike Johnson hopes his rank and file will sign off on the Senate’s resolution next week. If approved, House members may begin directing committees to craft their bill that meets the instructions in the budget resolution. If House and Senate Republicans agree on legislation, both chambers will have to pass it again. That will include a second vote-a-rama in the Senate.
The GOP’s funding push for ICE and CBP comes amid the record-long DHS shutdown, now in its 68th day.
Many federal employees across DHS, including the Coast Guard, Secret Service, Federal Emergency Management Agency and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency have gone without pay as Congress struggles to advance a funding deal. Throughout the shutdown, ICE and CBP have continued to receive funds due to an influx of cash provided in the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill passed by Congress last summer, and the administration has redirected other funding to support TSA workers.
Democrats have said they won’t support funding for ICE and CBP without reforms to their operating procedures, after two American citizens in Minneapolis were fatally shot by federal agents earlier this year.
Republican leaders, meanwhile, are expected to hold off on passing a full DHS funding bill until they can successfully fund the two immigration enforcement agencies.
“We’ve got to make sure that we don’t isolate and, as I say, make an orphan out of key agencies of the department. And there’s some concern on our side that if you do the bulk of the department first before that, then they could be left out. We can’t allow for that,” Speaker Johnson said earlier this week.
Bill Clinton speaks onstage during the Clinton Global Initiative 2025 Annual Meeting at New York Hilton Midtown on September 25, 2025 in New York City. (Photo by JP Yim/Getty Images for New York Hilton Midtown)
(WASHINGTON) — Former President Bill Clinton is set to give a closed-door deposition to the House Oversight Committee on Friday as part of its investigation into Jeffrey Epstein in Chappaqua, New York.
In her deposition Thursday, Hillary Clinton said she did not know Epstein, could not recall ever encountering him and never visited him on his island or at his home or office.
Hillary Clinton said after her deposition that the committee asked her over and over if she knew Epstein and there were questions that were off subject — about UFOs and the debunked “Pizzagate” conspiracy.
“So if they are going to fulfill their responsibilities to literally investigate the investigations, which is what they originally said was the scope of their work, I think they could have spent the day more productively,” she said.
Neither Bill Clinton nor Hillary Clinton has been accused of wrongdoing and both deny having any knowledge of Epstein’s crimes.
No Epstein survivor or associate has ever made a public allegation of wrongdoing or inappropriate behavior by the former president or his wife in connection with his prior relationship with Epstein.
“No one is accusing, at this moment, the Clintons of any wrongdoing,” Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer said Thursday morning ahead of Hillary Clinton’s deposition. “They’re going to have due process, but we have a lot of questions, and the purpose of the whole investigation is to try to understand many things about Epstein.”
Bill Clinton’s association with Epstein was first noted publicly in 2002 after reporters learned of the former president’s flight that year on Epstein’s jet for a humanitarian mission to multiple African nations.
Bill Clinton told New York Magazine through a spokesperson at the time that “Jeffrey is both a highly successful financier and a committed philanthropist with a keen sense of global markets and an in-depth knowledge of 21st century science.”
Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s co-conspirator who was sentenced to 20 years in prison for sex trafficking and other crimes said in a recorded interview last year with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, that it was she, not Epstein, who had a friendship with Bill Clinton, and that she was the one who suggested and organized his trips on Epstein’s aircraft.
The Clintons were subpoenaed to appear under oath in front of the committee for a deposition in January, but failed to comply, arguing the subpoenas were without legal merit. Rather, they proposed a four-hour transcribed interview instead.
David Kendall, the Clintons’ lawyer, argued that the couple has no information relevant to the committee’s investigation of the federal government’s handling of investigations into Epstein and Maxwell, and should not be required to appear for in-person testimony.
Kendall contended the Clintons should be permitted to provide the limited information they have to the committee in writing.
Comer had long threatened to hold the Clintons in contempt if they failed to appear before the committee, so when they didn’t, a contempt resolution was drafted and put to a vote.
The Oversight Committee passed the contempt resolution with nine Democrats voting in favor of it, teeing it up for a full House vote.
At the last minute, just before the resolution was to be voted on in the House, the Clintons agreed to sit for a deposition, postponing further consideration of a contempt vote.
Democrats on the committee said they hope this week’s testimony from the Clintons spark Republican committee members to investigate more of Epstein’s ties to President Donald Trump.
Trump has repeatedly denied any knowledge of Epstein’s crimes and has said that he cut off contact with his former friend more than 20 years ago.
While the Clintons have agreed to speak with the committee behind closed doors, they have still pushed for public hearings as part of the committee’s investigation.
“I will not sit idly as they use me as a prop in a closed-door kangaroo court by a Republican Party running scared,” Bill Clinton wrote in a lengthy post on X. “If they want answers, let’s stop the games & do this the right way: in a public hearing, where the American people can see for themselves what this is really about.”
Former Special Counsel Jack Smith (C) arrives to testify during a closed-door deposition before the House Judiciary Committee in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill on December 17, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — Former special counsel Jack Smith, testifying Thursday before the GOP-led House Judiciary Committee, was unequivocal about who caused the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
“Our investigation revealed that Donald Trump is the person who caused Jan. 6, that it was foreseeable to him and that he sought to exploit the violence,” Smith testified. “We followed the facts and we followed the law — where that led us was to an indictment of an unprecedented criminal scheme to block the peaceful transfer of power.”
Smith, who led investigations into Trump’s alleged interference in the 2020 election and alleged mishandling of classified documents, is testifying publicly for first time about his probes.
Trump pleaded not guilty to all charges in both cases, before both cases were dropped following Trump’s reelection due to the Justice Department’s long-standing policy barring the prosecution of a sitting president.
The former special counsel said that partisan politics did not play a role in his decision to charge Trump in his two investigations.
“Some of the most powerful witnesses were witnesses who, in fact, were fellow Republicans who had voted for Donald Trump, who had campaigned for him and, who wanted him to win the election. These included state officials, people who worked on his campaign and advisors,” Smith said of his election interference probe.
In seeking to challenge the results of the 2020 election, Trump was “looking for ways to stay in power,” Smith testified.
Trump was not “was not looking for honest answers about whether there was fraud in the election. He was looking for ways to stay in power. And when people told him, things that conflicted with him staying power, he rejected them or he chose not even to contact people like that,” Smith told committee members.
Under questioning from Democratic Rep. Zoe Lofgren, Smith discussed the witnesses his team had interviewed in his election interference probe.
“There were witnesses who I felt would be very strong witnesses, including, for example, the secretary of state in Georgia who told Donald Trump the truth, told him things that he did not want to hear and put him on notice that what he was saying was false,” Smith said. “And I believe that witnesses of that nature, witnesses who are willing to tell the truth, even if it’s going to impose a cost on them in their lives — my experience as a prosecutor over 30 years is that witnesses like that are very credible, and that jurors tend to believe witnesses like that, because they pay a cost for telling the truth.”
Smith said that he got the phone toll records for some members of Congress because his office was investigating the conspiracy to stop the peaceful transfer of power.
“We wanted to conduct a thorough investigation of the matters, that were assigned to me, including attempts to interfere with the lawful transfer of power. The conspiracy that we were investigating, it was relevant to get toll records, to understand the scope of that conspiracy, who they were seeking to coerce, who they were seeking to influence, who was seeking to help them,” Smith said, arguing that it was a normal piece of an investigation.
In a back-and-forth with Republican Rep. Darryl Issa, Smith said he didn’t target then-President Joe Biden’s political enemies.
“Maybe they’re not your political enemies, but they sure as hell were Joe Biden’s political enemies, weren’t they? They were Harris’ political enemies. They were the enemies of the president and you were their arm, weren’t you?” Issa asked.
“No,” Smith said. “My office didn’t spy on anyone.”
He said that the decision to bring charges against Trump was solely his decision and that he was not pressured by any Biden official.
“President Trump was charged because the evidence established that he willfully broke the law, the very laws he took an oath to uphold,” Smith said. “Grand juries in two separate districts reached this conclusion based on his actions as alleged in the indictments they returned.”
In his introductory remarks, Smith also said the president illegally kept classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate.
“After leaving office in January of ’21, President Trump illegally kept classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago Social Club and repeatedly tried to obstruct justice to conceal his continued retention of those documents. Highly sensitive national security information withheld in a ballroom and a bathroom,” Smith said.
Smith said that the facts and the law supported a prosecution, and that he made decisions not based on politics, but the facts and the law.
“Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in criminal activity. If asked whether to prosecute a former president based on the same facts today, I would do so regardless of whether that president was a Democrat or a Republican,” he said.
“No one, no one should be above the law in this country, and the law required that he be held to account. So that is what I did,” Smith said. “To have done otherwise on the facts of these cases, would have been to shirk my duties as a prosecutor and as a public servant, of which I had no intention of doing.”
He also criticized what he said was the retribution carried out by the president and his allies against agents and prosecutors who investigated the cases.
“My fear is that we have seen the rule of law function in our country for so long that many of us have come to take it for granted,” he said. “The rule of law is not self-executing. It depends on our collective commitment to apply it. It requires dedicated service on behalf of others, especially when that service is difficult and comes with costs. Our willingness to pay those costs is what test and defines our commitment to the rule of law and to this wonderful country.”
In his opening statement, Committee Chairman Jim Jordan blasted Smith for what he called a partisan investigation into President Trump and other Republicans.
“Democrats have been going after President Trump for ten years, for a decade, and the country should never, ever forget what they did,” Jordan said.
Jamie Raskin, the committee’s ranking Democrat, said that Smith proved that Trump “engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the results of the 2020 election and to prevent the lawful transfer of power.”
“Special counsel Smith, you pursued the facts. You followed every applicable law, ethics rule and DOJ regulation. Your decisions were reviewed by the Public Integrity section. You acted based solely on the facts — the opposite of Donald Trump,” Raskin said.
Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell said that Republicans on the dais “are a joke.”
“They’re wrong. History will harshly judge them,” he said.
Trump’s Thursday appearance marks Smith’s second time before the committee, after he appeared behind closed doors last month. It is customary for former special counsels to appear before Congress publicly to discuss their findings.
In his closed-door testimony, Smith defended his decision to twice bring charges against Trump — telling lawmakers his team “had proof beyond reasonable doubt in both cases” that Trump was guilty of the charges in the 2020 election interference and classified documents cases, according to a transcript of the hearing.
And Smith fervently denied that there was any political influence behind his decision — contrary to allegations of Republicans on the Judiciary Committee, who requested the testimony — such as pressure from then-President Joe Biden or then-Attorney General Merrick Garland, the transcripts shows.
“No,” Smith responded continuously to those allegations, according to the transcript.
Just over an hour before his testimony on Dec. 17, the Department of Justice sent an email to Smith’s lawyers preventing him from discussing the classified documents case, according to the 255-page transcript of the deposition, released last year by the Judiciary Committee along with a video of the hearing.
This meant Smith was unable to answer most questions on that case and the deposition — intended to ask questions about the alleged weaponization of the DOJ against Trump and his allies — mainly focused on the 2020 election case instead.
His team also said Smith will comply with U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon’s order that blocked the release of the second volume of his report dealing with the classified documents case.
Smith’s counsel said the DOJ also refused to send a lawyer to advise Smith on whether his statements were in line with their determination of what he could or could not say regarding the cases, according to the deposition. Smith did say, however, that Trump “tried to obstruct justice” in the classified documents investigation “to conceal his continued retention of those documents.
