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Here’s a recap of the day so far
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As he welcomed Japan’s prime minister to the White House, Donald Trump confirmed that the Pentagon is going to ask Congress for an additional $200bn to fund the war on Iran. Despite routinely claiming the war is “almost over” Trump kept things (typically) vague – noting the US needed more funding for a “lot of reasons”. He also denied that the military was running out of weaponry, and said he’s been “judicious” about spending. However, recent tallies visualized by the Guardian paint a different picture, indicating that the first six days of war cost the US $12.7bn.
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Trump also confirmed that he spoke to Benjamin Netanyahu about Israel’s attack on Iran’s South Pars field, and told the Israeli prime minister not to carry out further attacks on Iran’s oil and gas facilities. Yesterday, Trump said in a post on Truth Social that Washington “knew nothing about this particular attack”, while Israel, has claimed that the attack was coordinated with the US. Today, Trump tried to mitigate the soaring price of oil, as Brent Crude reach $105 at the time of writing this recap. “It’s not bad, and it’s going to be over with pretty soon,” the president said in the Oval Office.
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Darren Indyke, Jeffrey Epstein’s longtime lawyer, told US House lawmakers on Thursday that he “had no knowledge whatsoever of Jeffrey Epstein’s wrongdoings” during his employment. During his closed-door deposition with members of the House oversight committee, Indyke maintained that he did not socialize with Epstein. “I reject as categorically false any suggestion that I knowingly facilitated or assisted Mr Epstein in his sexual abuse or trafficking of women,” he said in his prepared opening remarks provided to the Guardian.
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In a hearing before the House intelligence committee today, Tulsi Gabbard did not say whether she agreed with claims made by her former top counter-terrorism official, Joe Kent, that Iran posed no imminent threat, and the US was ultimately pressured to start a war by Israel. However, when Gabbard was asked whether Kent’s statements blaming Israel for America’s involvement in the war concerned her, she replied plainly: “Yes.”
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At that same hearing, FBI director Kash Patel fielded questions about the firings of several agents as part of the Trump administration’s alleged campaign of political retribution. Last month, at least 10 FBI employees – connected to an investigation of Donald Trump’s handling of classified documents found at his Mar-a-Lago estate after he left office – were reportedly dismissed. Today, Patel maintained that the agents were fired for “for violating their ethical obligations”, without elaborating further. Democratic lawmakers on the House intelligence committe probed Patel about whether the terminations were politically motivated.
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The Senate committee that held a confirmation hearing for Markwayne Mullin to lead the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), approved Trump’s nomination, creating a glide path for his confirmation when the full chamber casts its votes in the coming days. Notably, Republican senator Rand Paul, who chairs the Senate homeland security committee voted against Mullin’s confirmation, after they continued to clash during Wednesday’s hearing. Democratic senator John Fetterman, however, supported Mullin’s nomination.
Key events
Coral Murphy Marcos
A teenager being held at a US immigration detention facility in Florida died this week, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) said on Thursday, the youngest person to die in ICE custody since Donald Trump took office last year.
Royer Perez-Jimenez, 19, originally from Mexico, was found “unconscious and unresponsive” in his room on 16 March at the Glades county detention center in Moore Haven, Florida, according to the ICE press release.
“He died of a presumed suicide; however, the official cause of his death remains under investigation,” reads the notification.
Perez-Jimenez was arrested by authorities in Volusia county, Florida, on 22 January and was charged with felony fraud for impersonation and misdemeanor resisting an officer. He was placed under ICE custody on 21 February and moved to the detention center in Moore Haven five days later.
“At intake, Perez was evaluated by medical staff,” reads the press release by ICE. “He denied any behavioral health issues or concerns and answered ‘no’ to all suicide screening questions.”
White House sends reporters Fox News poll that finds majority of Americans say Trump’s Iran war makes US ‘less safe’
The White House emailed reporters a link to a new Fox News poll on Thursday, drawing their attention to the fact that 61% of those surveyed “view the Iranian regime as a real national security threat.”
While that’s true, anyone who clicks on the link provided by the White House will learn that this figure is, in fact, a sharp decline from the 73% of Americans who said that nine months ago, just before the US bombed Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities.
Worse still for the White House, the new Fox News survey also shows that a majority of Americans, 51%, say that “Trump’s handling of Iran has made the US less safe,” while just 29% agree that the president’s war on Iran has made the US safer.
A look at the cross-tabs shows that 17% of Trump’s own voters in 2024 says that his war on Iran has made the US less safe.
A plurality of Americans who are military veterans are also opposed to Trump’s Iran war, with 44% saying Trump’s actions have made the country less safe, and just over a third of veterans, 37%, saying he has made the country safer by attacking Iran.
The poll also finds that a clear majority of respondents, 57%, disapprove of the job Trump is doing as president, while 43% approve.
The poll was one of several sent to reporters in an email with the subject heading: “Americans Agree that Operation Epic Fury Is an Overwhelming Success”.
Video shows Japanese’s leader’s distress as Trump equates US attack on Iran to Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor
As our colleague David Smith reports, Donald Trump created an extremely awkward moment for Japan’s prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, in the Oval Office on Thursday when he responded to a question from a Japanese reporter about why the US attacked Iran without warning allies like Japan, by joking about Imperial Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.
“We didn’t tell anybody about it because we wanted surprise,” Trump answered. “Who knows better about surprise than Japan, okay? Why didn’t you tell me about Pearl Harbor, okay? Right?”
Video of the moment shows the visible discomfort on Takaichi’s face as Trump’s remark was met with stunned silence from the Japanese delegation, and laughter and guffaws from the claque on the other side of the room where US officials including the commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, were gathered.
Trump’s comment was bizarre as well as undiplomatic, since he seemed to equate the US attack on Iran last month to the 7 December, 1941 attack on the US that his predecessor Franklin Delano Roosevelt was considerably less positive about at the time, when he memorably called it “a date which will live in infamy”.
To make matters worse, Trump then added a racist element to his riff, when he went on to suggest that Japanese people, including the reporter, “believe in surprise much more so than us”.
“We had to surprise them, and we did,” Trump said, before boasting of the military success of the initial attack.
Japan’s surprise attack on the US naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii was also a military success, but ultimately led to comprehensive defeat in the second world war.
Senator Thom Tillis comes out against eliminating filibuster to change election law as Trump demands
Senator Thom Tillis, the North Carolina Republican who has shown a willingness to cross Donald Trump since he announced that he will not run for re-election, said on Thursday that he will not vote to eliminate the filibuster to force changes to US election law as the president has demanded.
In a statement, Tillis noted that he helped pass a state-level voter ID law when he was Speaker of the North Carolina statehouse, and supported a previous version of the legislation Trump backs, called the SAVE Act, but has reservations about the current version, called the SAVE America Act, because it would limit vote-by-mail.
“While I support strengthening mail-in ballot integrity, many states like Utah, Florida, Alaska, and Montana rely on the use of mail-in ballots to conduct their elections, and we should not be completely upending how states already securely conduct their elections,” Tillis said, pointing out that four Republican-dominated states conduct their election by mail.
He added that the current Senate bill “will not have the 60 votes required to pass it”, even if it was altered to remove the crackdown on mail balloting Trump wants.
That means, the senator said, that the only way to make the bill law is for “Republicans to substantially weaken or eliminate the filibuster altogether.”
“I have made it crystal clear that I will never vote to do this. Eliminating the filibuster is a foolish and lazy idea pushed by politicians seeking short-term gain at the expense of causing irreparable long-term harm to our nation,” Tillis said.
Netanyahu denies that Israel ‘dragged’ US into war with Iran
My colleague, Lucy Campbell, notes that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu touted his country’s “historic” cooperation with the US at a press conference today. “We have brought our friend the US to a cooperation never seen in history,” Netanyahu said. “The great collaboration between myself and my good friend Trump is unprecedented.”
He added that he wanted to dispel the “fake news … that Israel somehow dragged the United States into conflict with Iran”. He said:
Does anyone really think that someone can tell President Trump what to do? Come on.
This comes after the US’s top counter-terrorism official, Joe Kent, resigned this week – claiming that Iran posed no imminent threat ahead of the initial strikes on Tehran at the end of February.
Kent also said that the US started this war “due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby”.
Lucy is covering the latest out of the Middle East at our dedicated live blog here:
As I noted earlier, the price of oil continues to rise amid disruption in the strait of Hormuz, and Iran’s retaliatory strikes on energy sites across Gulf states. Since the start of the war on Iran three weeks ago, the price of fuel has risen steadily in the US, and is now one of the conflict’s most tangible impacts on American consumers.
The national average for a gallon of gasoline is now $3.88 – up 32% from a month ago – according to the American Automobile Association (AAA).
Here’s a recap of the day so far
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As he welcomed Japan’s prime minister to the White House, Donald Trump confirmed that the Pentagon is going to ask Congress for an additional $200bn to fund the war on Iran. Despite routinely claiming the war is “almost over” Trump kept things (typically) vague – noting the US needed more funding for a “lot of reasons”. He also denied that the military was running out of weaponry, and said he’s been “judicious” about spending. However, recent tallies visualized by the Guardian paint a different picture, indicating that the first six days of war cost the US $12.7bn.
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Trump also confirmed that he spoke to Benjamin Netanyahu about Israel’s attack on Iran’s South Pars field, and told the Israeli prime minister not to carry out further attacks on Iran’s oil and gas facilities. Yesterday, Trump said in a post on Truth Social that Washington “knew nothing about this particular attack”, while Israel, has claimed that the attack was coordinated with the US. Today, Trump tried to mitigate the soaring price of oil, as Brent Crude reach $105 at the time of writing this recap. “It’s not bad, and it’s going to be over with pretty soon,” the president said in the Oval Office.
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Darren Indyke, Jeffrey Epstein’s longtime lawyer, told US House lawmakers on Thursday that he “had no knowledge whatsoever of Jeffrey Epstein’s wrongdoings” during his employment. During his closed-door deposition with members of the House oversight committee, Indyke maintained that he did not socialize with Epstein. “I reject as categorically false any suggestion that I knowingly facilitated or assisted Mr Epstein in his sexual abuse or trafficking of women,” he said in his prepared opening remarks provided to the Guardian.
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In a hearing before the House intelligence committee today, Tulsi Gabbard did not say whether she agreed with claims made by her former top counter-terrorism official, Joe Kent, that Iran posed no imminent threat, and the US was ultimately pressured to start a war by Israel. However, when Gabbard was asked whether Kent’s statements blaming Israel for America’s involvement in the war concerned her, she replied plainly: “Yes.”
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At that same hearing, FBI director Kash Patel fielded questions about the firings of several agents as part of the Trump administration’s alleged campaign of political retribution. Last month, at least 10 FBI employees – connected to an investigation of Donald Trump’s handling of classified documents found at his Mar-a-Lago estate after he left office – were reportedly dismissed. Today, Patel maintained that the agents were fired for “for violating their ethical obligations”, without elaborating further. Democratic lawmakers on the House intelligence committe probed Patel about whether the terminations were politically motivated.
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The Senate committee that held a confirmation hearing for Markwayne Mullin to lead the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), approved Trump’s nomination, creating a glide path for his confirmation when the full chamber casts its votes in the coming days. Notably, Republican senator Rand Paul, who chairs the Senate homeland security committee voted against Mullin’s confirmation, after they continued to clash during Wednesday’s hearing. Democratic senator John Fetterman, however, supported Mullin’s nomination.
FBI director says fired agents were dismissed for ‘ethical violations’ but declines to comment further
During a hearing in the US House today, FBI director Kash Patel fielded questions about the firings of several agents as part of the Trump administration’s alleged campaign of political retribution.
Last month, at least 10 FBI employees – connected to an investigation of Donald Trump’s handling of classified documents found at his Mar-a-Lago estate after he left office – were reportedly dismissed. This came after revelations that the justice department subpoenaed personal records of the current FBI director, Kash Patel, and White House chief of staff, Susie Wiles, in the years before Trump returned to office.
At the time, CBS News reported that most of the FBI agents fired by Patel worked on counterintelligence cases, including those pertaining to Iran.
Today, Patel maintained that the agents were fired for “for violating their ethical obligations”, without elaborating further. Democratic lawmakers on the House intelligence committe probed Patel about whether the terminations were politically motivated.
“I’m asking about whether those people were fired because they were involved in the investigation of the document handling by president Trump, not for any behavior issues,” congresswoman Chrissy Houlahan said.
The FBI director evaded the questions. He noted that and saying he couldn’t comment due to “pending litigation”. There are several active lawsuits filed by dismissed FBI officials that are working their way through the courts.
“I just am worried that we are taking really good, really qualified people and picking fights with one another, across party lines, rather than making sure that we protect ourselves and keep ourselves safe,” Houlahan said.
My colleagues Will Craft, Andrew Witherspoon and Joseph Gedeon have been digging into how much the war on Iran has cost the US so far.
Using estimates compiled by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, they note that the first six days war totalled $12.7bn.
This includes $1.2bn for over 300 Tomahawk missiles, and $4.3bn for other offensive strike munitions.
To put this price-tag in perspective, they’ve also provided a list of what else $12.7bn could afford. Some examples …
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Paying 9% of the US’s elementary school teachers
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1.5 million public housing units
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Medicaid for 3.6m children
Their full findings are here:
In response to Indyke’s testimony today, the lawyer representing several survivors of Jeffrey Epstein, James Marsh, said that Indyke’s “claimed ignorance of Jeffrey Epstein’s widespread abuse of women and girls is deeply troubling, especially given his role as Epstein’s longtime attorney”.
Marsh added that Indyke’s remarks underscores how much “still remains hidden about the vast network of enablers that allowed these crimes to persist for decades”.
“Survivors – and the American people – deserve the full undistorted truth about who knew what,” he said in a statement.
Anna Betts
Darren Indyke, Jeffrey Epstein’s longtime lawyer, told US House lawmakers on Thursday that he “had no knowledge whatsoever of Jeffrey Epstein’s wrongdoings” during his employment.
The deposition before the House oversight and reform committee on Thursday morning is behind closed doors, but according to a copy of Indyke’s opening statement provided to the Guardian by his attorney, Indyke told lawmakers that that his primary role “was to provide corporate, transactional and general legal services to Mr Epstein and his companies, and I did so”.
Indyke, who began working for Epstein in the 1990s, is testifying under subpoena as the panel continues its investigation into the late disgraced financier.
“I did not socialize with Mr Epstein, and I reject as categorically false any suggestion that I knowingly facilitated or assisted Mr Epstein in his sexual abuse or trafficking of women, or that I was aware of Mr Epstein’s actions while I provided legal services to him,” Indyke said.
“Had I known that he was abusing or trafficking women, I would have quit working for him at once and severed all ties to him,” he said.
Indyke said that after Epstein pleaded guilty in 2008 to state charges in Florida of solicitation of prostitution and of solicitation of prostitution with a minor, Epstein appeared to him “to be devastated and extremely contrite”.
Indyke also serves as co-executor of Epstein’s estate alongside Richard Kahn, Epstein’s longtime accountant, who testified before the same committee on 11 March. Kahn similarly told lawmakers in his opening statement that he was “not aware of the nature or extent of Epstein’s abuse of so many women until after Epstein’s death”.
Read the full report:
Asked by a reporter why he didn’t tell US allies like Japan about plans to strike Iran, Trump responded with an attempt to joke about Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor during the second world war.
One thing, you don’t want to signal too much. You know, when we go in, we went in very hard, and we didn’t tell anybody about it because we wanted surprise.
Who knows better about surprise than Japan? Why didn’t you tell me about Pearl Harbor? OK?
Japanese prime minister Sanae Takaichi took a deep breath and remained composed. You can watch the clip here.
Imperial Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 killed more than 2,400 Americans and spurred the US to join the war.
‘I told him don’t do that’: Trump confirms he told Netanyahu to stop attacks on Iranian energy facilities
Asked about Israel’s attack on Iran’s South Pars gasfield, Trump confirmed that he spoke to Benjamin Netanyahu about it – though he was not explicit about when exactly they spoke – and said he told the Israeli prime minister not to carry out further attacks on Iran’s oil and gas facilities.
Yeah I did, I told him don’t do that … And he won’t do that … We’re independent. We get along great. It’s coordinated. But on occasion, he’ll do something, and if I don’t like it … So, we’re not doing that any more.
It suggests that the US and Israel’s war aims are somewhat diverging.
Yesterday, Trump said in a post on Truth Social that Washington “knew nothing about this particular attack” and that Israel would not attack the gasfield further unless Iran again attacked Qatar. In that case, he said, the US would “massively blow up” the gasfield.
His defense secretary Pete Hegseth, also earlier claimed that Trump knew nothing about the attack on the South Pars gasfield, the world’s largest natural gas reserve.
Israel, meanwhile, has claimed that the attack was coordinated with the United States. Israeli sources have told Reuters and CNN that that Israel had carried out the attack in coordination with the US, contradicting the president’s claim. A US source also told CNN that the US was “aware” of the strike.
The Wall Street Journal also reported yesterday that Trump supported the attack as a message to Tehran over its blocking of the strait of Hormuz, but is now against any further attacks on Iran’s energy infrastructure – but could be open to targeting more Iranian energy facilities, depending on whether Tehran impedes traffic in the critical waterway.
‘A small price to pay’: Trump confirms he will ask Congress for $200bn to fund war on Iran
Trump is asked by a reporter why, if the war on Iran is almost over, the Pentagon is going to ask Congress for an additional $200bn.
Trump says the US needed more funding for a “lot of reasons” amid the Iran war.
He’s vague on those reasons, saying only that he wants to make sure the military has “vast amounts of ammunition”.
He also denied that the military was running out of weaponry, claiming he’s been “judicious” about spending.
After grossly exaggerating (lying) about the amount spent funding Ukraine by the Biden administration, Trump adds:
We want to be in the best shape, the best shape we’ve ever been in. It’s a small price to pay to make sure that we stay tippy top.
Last night the Washington Post reported that the Pentagon has asked the White House to approve a more than $200bn request to Congress to fund the war in Iran, citing a senior administration official.
Per the Post’s report: “President Donald Trump campaigned on ending American adventurism abroad and frequently hammered the Biden administration for the amount of money approved to finance the war in Ukraine. By December, Congress had approved roughly $188 billion in spending for the war in Ukraine, according to the U.S. special inspector general for Operation Atlantic Resolve.”
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