Closing summary
This concludes our live coverage of the second Trump administration for the day. Here are the latest developments:
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Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, denied that he is in talks with Steve Witkoff, Donald Trump’s real-estate pal turned chief diplomat, and accused the US of leaking false claims that the two are in direct contact to calm panicked markets.
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After Trump claimed that he had spoken to a former US president who told him that he approved of his attack on Iran, all four living former presidents denied having spoken with Trump about Iran.
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Trump publicly revealed details about a Republican congressman’s “terminal” diagnosis that could have left him “dead by June”, prompting Mike Johnson, speaker of the House, to say: “That wasn’t public.”
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The appointment of a controversial slate of vaccine advisers by Robert F Kennedy Jr likely violated federal law, a federal judge ruled, and all votes taken by the committee over the past year have been stayed.
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Gregory Bovino, the US border patrol chief and frequent Fox News guest who was the face of the Trump administration’s mass deportation efforts until the killing of two protesters in Minneapolis by federal agents, said he will retire within weeks.
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Trump, who once mocked the gestures of a New York Times reporter with a congenital condition that limits his ability to move his joints, claimed that the governor of California’s dyslexia means that he is “dumb”.
Key events
Iran’s foreign minister says US is lying that he is in talks with Witkoff ‘to mislead oil traders’
Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, denied on Monday that he is in talks with Steve Witkoff, Donald Trump’s real-estate pal turned chief diplomat, and accused the US of leaking false claims that the two are in direct contact to calm panicked markets.
After Jeremy Scahill of Drop Site News reported on Monday that Araghchi had ignored personal messages from Witkoff last week aimed at resuming negotiations, a US official told Axios that the two were in contact.
“My last contact with Mr. Witkoff was prior to his employer’s decision to kill diplomacy with another illegal military attack on Iran,” Araghchi wrote on X. “Any claim to the contrary appears geared solely to mislead oil traders and the public.”
Earlier on Monday, Araghchi also used Elon Musk’s social media platform to warn Pete Hegseth, the US defense secretary, that his comments that US forces would show Iranians “no quarter” in battle were an inducement to war crimes.
“When the U.S. Secretary of War declares ‘no quarter’, he doesn’t project strength. He conveys moral bankruptcy and ignorance about law of armed conflict,” Araghchi wrote. “We advise him to review the Hague Convention and Rome Statute of the ICC, unless he aspires to join Netanyahu as war criminal.”
Speaking about Iran at the Pentagon on Friday, Hegseth said: “We will keep pressing. We will keep pushing, keep advancing, no quarter, no mercy for our enemies.”
As Dan Maurer, a retired Army lieutenant colonel and judge advocate, wrote for Just Security on Saturday:
“No quarter” is a war crime:
a. As law of armed conflict experts Michael Schmitt and John Tramazzo have explained, “no quarter” is “an order that there shall be no survivors, a threat to conduct operations on that basis, or fighting in that manner” (emphasis in the original). To command, threaten, or practice that “no quarter” be given to one’s enemies in battle is to simply say to subordinates: “do not accept surrender;” this implies killing every combatant regardless of their expressed desire to surrender and become a prisoner of war.
b. Such orders, threats, and fighting have been long recognized under customary international law (see here and here), the Hague Convention (art. 23, Annex to Convention IV, 1907) and the Geneva Convention’s Additional Protocol I (art. 40) as absolutely prohibited.
A federal appeals court on Monday largely upheld a ruling that blocked a “sweeping and unprecedented” freeze on trillions of dollars in government funding that the Trump administration instituted early last year, Reuters reports.
A three-judge panel of 1st US Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston sided with Democratic attorneys general from 22 states and the District of Columbia, ruling that the White House’s budget office had directed federal agencies to implement a categorical freeze on funding that was likely improper.
The circuit’s chief judge, David Barron, wrote that said the Office of Management and Budget “directed the agency defendants to freeze such funds without considering an obvious aspect of the problem – namely, the reliance interests of the recipients of the obligated federal funds that were to be frozen.”
All four living former US presidents deny Trump’s claim one of them privately endorsed his war on Iran
After Donald Trump claimed twice on Monday that he had spoken to a former US president who told him that he approved of his attack on Iran, all four living former presidents denied having spoken with Trump about Iran in statements from aides to CNN and other outlets.
Before his hand-picked Kennedy Center board met to approve his plan to close the living memorial to John F Kennedy he recently had his name added to, Trump defended his war on Iran by claiming that it was a war that every president since the 1979 Iran hostage crisis would have been justified in starting.
“Every president knew- I’ve spoken to a certain president, who I like actually, a past president, former president, he said, ‘I wish I did it, I wish I did,’ but they didn’t do it. I’m doing it,” Trump said.
When reporters asked, “Which president?” Trump replied: “I can’t tell you that. It would be very bad for his career even though he’s got no career left.”
At an Oval Office event later in the day, Trump repeated his evidence-free claim that the attack on Iran was justified because, “if they had a nuclear weapon, they would’ve used it.”
“But they never had the chance, I never gave them the chance to use it,” Trump said, despite widespread agreement that Iran was not close to obtaining a nuclear weapon and might have stopped pursuing one more than two decades ago.
“Other presidents should’ve done- I spoke to one of the former presidents, who I actually like. I actually speak to some, I do like some people, it’d be shocking. And he said, ‘I wish I did what you did.’”
A short time later, the president repeated his false claim that the international Iran nuclear deal he withdrew from in 2018 “was a road to a nuclear weapon” for Iran, which would have somehow developed one while under international inspections, and then used it to attack Israel and the United States.
“It would’ve been used, I would say, two to three years ago, and and it would’ve been used in the Middle East. And, by the way, after they were finished that, they were coming over here,” the president claimed, pointing at his desk.
The Fox News correspondent Peter Doocy then tried again to guess who the former president praising Trump’s attack on Iran was.
“Was it George W Bush?” he asked.
“No,” Trump answered.
“Was it Bill Clinton?” Doocy asked.
“I don’t want to say,” Trump replied.
Trump then hinted that it was Clinton, saying that the former president who praised his reckless, illegal war was “a member of a party, they have Trump Derangement Syndrome all, but it’s somebody that happens to like me, and I like that person who’s a smart person, but that person said: ‘I wish I did it.’”
After Clinton’s spokesman told HuffPost that it was not him, CNN reported that aides to Clinton, Bush and the other two former Democratic presidents still living, Barack Obama and Joe Biden, all denied that their bosses had spoken with Trump about Iran.
Aides to the non-living former presidents could not be reached for comment.
Chris Stein
Donald Trump on Monday publicly revealed details about a Republican congressman’s “terminal” diagnosis that could have left him “dead by June”, prompting Mike Johnson, speaker of the House, to say: “That wasn’t public.”
Trump touched on Neal Dunn’s health during a meandering press conference at the White House held alongside leaders of the Kennedy Center and other top Republicans, in which he also discussed topics including the performing arts venue’s upcoming renovation, the breast cancer diagnosis of Susan Wiles, his chief of staff, and the war with Iran.
His comments about the 73-year-old Florida representative came as Republicans struggle to maintain their majority in the House of Representatives, which they control with just one seat, with three seats vacant.
The historically small majority has made health scares and any other event that can force a lawmaker to resign or retire a pressing concern for Republican leaders, ahead of the November midterms in which Democrats are vying to take back the chamber.
“We had one man who was very ill. It looked like he wasn’t going to make it,” Trump said as he sat beside Johnson.
With Trump’s urging, Johnson then began talking about Dunn’s health and how the congressman decided to remain in the House despite being given a “grim” outlook.
“If others got this diagnosis, they would be apt to go home and retire,” Johnson said.
“What was the diagnosis?” Trump asked.
“I think it was a terminal diagnosis,” Johnson replied.
“He would be dead by June,” Trump interjected, prompting the speaker to say: “OK, that wasn’t public, but yeah, OK. It was grim, that’s what I was going to say.”
Melody Schreiber
The appointment of a controversial slate of vaccine advisers by Robert F Kennedy Jr likely violated federal law, and all votes taken by the committee over the past year have been stayed, a federal judge ruled on Monday.
The advisory committee on immunization practices (ACIP) is not able to meet later this week, since its membership has been invalidated, the judge said. The meeting has been postponed, an HHS official said.
The unprecedented changes to routine US immunization recommendations in January, when health officials unilaterally changed one-third of the schedule, were “arbitrary and capricious” and were also blocked, the court found.
Judge Brian E Murphy ruled on a lawsuit brought by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) against the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
“This is a major victory,” said Richard Hughes IV, one of the lawyers representing the AAP.
When Kennedy fired all 17 members of the ACIP in June and replaced them with his own hand-picked advisers, many of whom have expressed anti-vaccine views, the health secretary likely violated the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA), the judge found.
For that reason, the 13 appointments were stayed by the judge, essentially invalidating their role on the committee.
Gregory Bovino, border patrol commander who led deadly Minneapolis crackdown, plans to retire
Gregory Bovino, the US border patrol chief and frequent Fox News guest who was the face of the Trump administration’s mass deportation efforts until the killing of two protesters in Minneapolis by federal agents, told the New York Times on Monday he will retire within weeks.
Bovino, who personally led immigration raids in Los Angeles, Chicago and Charlotte, North Carolina last year, often trailed by government videographers creating social media content, was reprimanded by a federal judge for lying to her when he claimed that he was struck by a rock during a confrontation with protesters in Chicago.
After border patrol officers killed Alex Pretti in Minneapolis in January, Bovino, lied to reporters, saying that Pretti, who was filming a raid, had approached border patrol agents with a gun.
“The agents attempted to disarm the individual, but he violently resisted. Fearing for his life and the lives and safety of fellow officers, a border patrol agent fired defensive shots,” Bovino said. “This looks like a situation where an individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.”
Bovino was repeatedly caught making false and misleading statements. He defended a major immigration sweep in California in early 2025 by claiming agents had a “predetermined list of targets”, many with criminal records, but documents showed that 77 out of 78 people taken into custody during the operation had no prior record with the agency, a CalMatters investigation revealed.
Last June, while defending the arrest of a US citizen in a high-profile case, Bovino falsely claimed on social media that the man had been charged with assaulting an officer.
The border patrol commander was also a frequently belligerent and openly partisan social media commentator, despite his nonpartisan role. During the immigration crackdown in Minnesota, for instance, Bovino seconded a rightwing operative’s attack on the state’s governor, Tim Walz, in a social media post that misspelled the names of two of the four Democratic governors he attacked. “Waltz [sic] is of the same class as newsome [sic], stein, pritzker – gubners who choose illegal aliens over there [sic] own citizens. Amazing incompetence,” Bovino wrote, referring to Gavin Newsom, Josh Stein and JB Pritzker, the governors of California, North Carolina and Illinois.
Newsom greeted reports of Bovino’s impending retirement with this parting shot to Bovino, delivered on social media: “Good riddance. You ruined lives. Spread fear. And spewed hatred. If you’re remembered, it will be as the smallest man who ever lived.”
Gavin Newsom’s dyslexia means he is ‘dumb’, says Trump
Donald Trump, who once mocked the gestures of a New York Times reporter with a congenital condition that limits his ability to move his joints, claimed on Monday that the governor of California’s dyslexia means that he is “dumb”.
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office about his demand for a federal law to require voters to have photo identification to be allowed to vote, the president made the entirely fictional claim that “in California if you ask a person to show their identification, they have the right to put you in jail.”
In fact, while California did enact a law in 2024 that bars local governments in the state from requiring photo ID from voters, and it would be an offense to block voters from casting ballots unless they produce ID on demand, the state does require a drivers license number, a California identification number, or the last four digits of a social security number to register to vote.
While the president cast the idea of an official asking a voter to produce ID at the polls as harmless, it would be a violation of state law.
Trump then suggested, incorrectly, that Gavin Newsom, California’s governor, was responsible for blocking laws requiring voters to have photo ID – which have historically been used to disenfranchise voters with disabilities and Latino, Black, young and low-income voters, who are less likely to have photo IDs.
“That’s how crazy it’s gotten with a low IQ person, ‘cause Gavin Newscum [sic] has admitted that he is a, that he has learning disabilities,” Trump said. Honestly, I am all for people with learning disabilities but not for my president.”
“Gavin Newscum admitted that he has learning disabilities, dyslexia, uh, everything about him is dumb,” Trump added.
The president then referred incorrectly to a comment Newsom made last month in an interview in Atlanta in which he described his dyslexia as a gift, crediting the learning disability for making him more collaborative and empathic, but also said that it had caused him to score poorly on standardized tests.
Trump claimed, falsely, that Newsom “looked at the audience and said: ‘I’m smarter than you,’ or something like that. On top of everything else I call him a racist because it happened to be a black audience.”
Trump’s attack on Newsom was based on a false account of what the governor said when he was asked by Andre Dickens, Atlanta’s mayor, what he wanted readers of his new memoir to take from his discussion in the book of growing up with dyslexia.
At one point in his lengthy answer, Newsom said that he wanted readers to understand that struggling with learning difficulties had taught him humility. He then told his imagined readers: “I’m not trying to impress you. I’m just trying to impress upon you I’m like you. I’m no better than you.”
“I’m a 960 SAT guy,” he added, in reference to his combined score on the college admissions test, which put him in 40th percentile of test-takers. “I’m not trying to offend anyone – trying to act all there if you got 940,” he joked, turning the the audience.
Because the Atlanta mayor who interviewed Newsom is Black, that small segment of the video was clipped and shared on social media by the rightwing influencer like Benny Johnson, who added the inflammatory false caption: “Gavin Newsom says he relates to black people because he got a 960 on his SAT and ‘can’t read’.”
After Trump mischaracterized Newsom’s comments on social media last week, the governor replied: “I spoke about my dyslexia. I know that’s hard for a brain-dead moron who bombs children and protects pedophiles to understand.”
Vance praises Trump’s intelligence to explain support for war on Iran before Trump claims Iran’s retaliation was ‘unexpected’
JD Vance, the vice-president, was asked by a conservative reporter in the Oval Office on Monday how he squares his past opposition to US wars in the Middle East with his support for the attack on Iran order by his boss, Donald Trump.
Vance first suggested the reporter, Philip Wegmann of RealClearPolitics, who has impeccable conservative media credentials, as a former fellow at the conservative Steamboat Institute who has reported for rightwing publications like the Federalist and the Daily Signal, was trying to cause trouble.
“I know what you’re trying to do, Phil, you’re trying to drive a wedge between … me and the president,” Vance said, before claiming that the central issue was that “Iran should not have a nuclear weapon”.
Experts have said that Iran was not close to having a nuclear weapon even last year, when Trump ordered the bombing of suspected nuclear enrichment sites in Iran and then claimed that Iran’s nuclear program had been “obliterated”.
When Wegmann noted that Vance had previously been a critic of the global war on terror, Vance said that his opposition to previous US wars in the Middle East was that they had been badly managed by previous US presidents.
“One big difference, Phil, is that we have a smart president, whereas in the past, we had dumb presidents,” Vance said.
“I trust President Trump to get the job done, to do a good job for the American people and to make sure the mistakes of the past aren’t repeated,” Vane added.
Trump then joined in to suggest, despite all evidence to the contrary, that Iran’s retaliation against neighboring states that host US military bases was a surprise, and that Iran was not only close to having nuclear weapons, but planned to use them.
The president said that Iran’s leaders “unexpectedly started firing missiles” in retaliation for US and Israeli strikes this month and then claimed that Iran would use a nuclear weapon “within an hour if they get it.”
“They wanted to take over the Middle East, and if I didn’t terminate Barack Hussein Obama’s horrible Iran nuclear deal, which I did in my first term,” Trump said, “you would’ve had them have a nuclear weapon three years ago, maybe four years ago, they would’ve used it, blown up the Middle East and then they would’ve then come after us.”
Trump’s comments are contradicted by the fact that the Iran nuclear deal explicitly prevented Iran from pursuing nuclear weapons in exchange for sanctions relief, included strict international monitoring of its enrichment of uranium for energy or medical purposes, and was not between just the United States and Iran, but the entire world and Iran.
Non-proliferation experts have also pointed out that the logic for countries that do obtain nuclear weapons, like North Korea, is to ensure that they are not attacked by other nations, not that they would use the weapons in an attempt to conquor nations, like Israel and the US, that already have nuclear weapons.
Here’s a recap of the day so far
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Donald Trump said the US is “hammering” Iran’s capacity to threaten commercial shipping in the strait of Hormuz. More than 30 mine-laying ships have been destroyed, he claimed, before adding that the US is unsure if any mines have been dropped into the strait. During his press conference today, the president repeated his call to other countries to help reopen shipping traffic in the strait, saying some countries told him they were on the way and others were “not that enthusiastic” about helping. He notably slammed the UK, again, for its reticence to get involved in the conflict.
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The supreme court will hear arguments in a case challenging legal protections for Haitian and Syrian immigrants. This comes after the government urged the justices to block lower court rulings that prevented the Trump administration from ending Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for both countries. TPS provides relief to people already in the US if their home countries experience a natural disaster, armed conflict or other extraordinary events. The Trump administration has sought to end most enrollment in the program.
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A federal appeals court allowed the Trump administration to deport immigrants to countries other their own for the timebeing. Today, the Boston-based first US circuit court of appeals blocked district judge Brian E Murphy’s ruling last month, which said that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) should prioritize an immigrant’s home country as a first option.
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Susie Wiles, the first woman to serve as White House chief of staff, has been diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer but plans to continue working while undergoing treatment. The 68-year-old revealed on Monday that the illness had been detected in the past week. Both she and Donald Trump struck an optimistic tone, saying doctors expect a strong recovery.
Supreme court to hear arguments in challenge to legal protections for Haitian and Syrian immigrants
The supreme court will hear arguments in a case challenging legal protections for Haitian and Syrian immigrants, after the government urged the justices to block lower court rulings that prevented the Trump administration from ending Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for both countries.
A reminder that TPS provides relief to people already in the US if their home countries experience a natural disaster, armed conflict or other extraordinary events. The Trump administration has sought to end most enrollment in the program – and tried to strip the status from a string of countries, including Haiti, Syria, Somalia and Venezuela – saying it runs counter to US interests.
For now, the supreme court has kept legal protections in place for immigrants from Haiti and Syria, ahead of oral arguments in April.
Trump chief of staff Susie Wiles diagnosed with breast cancer
David Smith
Susie Wiles, the first woman to serve as White House chief of staff, has been diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer but plans to continue working while undergoing treatment.
The 68-year-old revealed on Monday that the illness had been detected in the past week. Both she and Donald Trump struck an optimistic tone, saying doctors expect a strong recovery.
“Nearly one in eight women in the United States will face this diagnosis,” Wiles said in a statement. “Every day these women continue to raise their families, go to work and serve their communities with strength and determination. I now join their ranks.”
The US president, writing on his Truth Social platform, described his aide as “one of the strongest people I know” and said her prognosis was “excellent”. He added that she would be “spending virtually full time at the White House” while undergoing treatment.
Within 20 minutes of Trump’s post, Wiles was sitting alongside the president at a meeting of the Kennedy Center board of trustees in the White House East Room. Wearing a pink jacket, she received embraces from several attendees as she entered.
In opening remarks, Trump said Wiles had already begun treatment for a “minor difficulty” that she would overcome. “She had a diagnosis – you probably saw it – and she’s gonna take care of it immediately as opposed to waiting,” he told the gathering. “I said do it immediately because with that particular ailment, the faster the better.”
Appeals court allows Trump administration to deport immigrants to ‘third countries’
A federal appeals court allowed the Trump administration to deport immigrants to countries other their own for the timebeing.
Today, the Boston-based first US circuit court of appeals blocked district judge Brian E. Murphy’s ruling last month, which said that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) should prioritize an immigrant’s home country as a first option. The court also declared in February that deportees should have a “meaningful opportunity” to raise a specific claim against “removal to a third country”.
Since Murphy had paused his own ruling – to give the government a chance to appeal – the first circuit’s decision allows the administration to continue with a policy that has come to define Donald Trump’s second term in the White House.
In response to the appeals court’s decision, attorney general Pam Bondi welcomed the news. “There is more work ahead on this important issue,” she said, calling the ruling “a key win” for Trump’s immigration agenda.
Jeffries plans to force vote to separate funding for certain DHS agencies
House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries announced that he will launch a discharge petition for a bill that would fund certain agencies within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that have been shutdown for a month – forcing many employees to work without pay. In order to force a vote on the House floor, Jeffries would need 218 signatures to proceed.
On Wednesday, the top Democrat plans to force a vote on would be legislation to fund the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (Cisa) and the Coast Guard.
Funding for the DHS remains at an impasse, as Democrats demand stronger guardrails on federal immigration enforcement in the wake of crackdowns across the country that have resulted in the fatal shootings of two US citizens. Republicans, for their part, have called many of the proposals from their colleagues non-starters. While the agencies that Jeffries seeks to fund have been affected by the shutdown, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been spared, thanks to a billion-dollar infusion from Donald Trump’s sweeping tax-policy bill signed into law last year.
“Republicans continue to spend taxpayer dollars to fund ICE brutality against American citizens and law-abiding immigrant families,” Jeffries wrote in a letter to his Democratic colleagues. “At the same time, Donald Trump and his sycophants in Congress are spending billions to drop bombs in the Middle East, instead of restoring their cuts to Medicaid and nutritional assistance for millions of children, veterans, seniors and everyday Americans.”
Trump shuts down idea that Israel would use nuclear weapon on Iran
The president quickly shut down a reporter’s question about the possibility of Israel using a nuclear weapon on Iran if the conlict escalates. This comes after one of Donald Trump’s advisors, David Sacks, suggested the possible outcome in a recent interview
“Israel would never do that,” Trump said today. “You’ve pounded them to hell and you could just leave now, and it’ll take 10 years for them to build back not nearly what they have right now.”
During today’s press conference, Donald Trump was asked why – if the US has destroyed all of Iran’s mine-laying vessels – could he not simply reopen the strait of Hormuz for shipping. “It takes two to tango. We have to get people to take their billion-dollar ship and, you know, drive it up,” he told reporters.
“These ships are very expensive,” Trump added. “They don’t want to take a chance.”
The president claimed that some companies, as a result, were still skittish about using vital passageway. “We don’t know if they even set any mines. But the thought that they may have is enough to keep people saying, ‘we don’t need it’,” he said.
Donald Trump evaded the question about what a deal with Iran might look like in the third week of war. The president explained that he had grown frustrated with the regime’s use of video disinformation throughout the conflict.
“They showed buildings in Tel Aviv burning to the ground, high rises burning. They showed buildings in Qatar, they showed buildings in Saudi Arabia burning. And they weren’t burning. They weren’t hit,” he said.
When it comes to ongoing negotiations with the regime, the president added:
I talk to everybody because sometimes good things come out of it. But, I don’t know if they’re ready yet. They’re taking a pounding … and we don’t even know their leaders.
