© Photo by Qian Weizhong/VCG via Getty Images |
Iran now stands without its supreme leader for 36 years, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, after joint strikes from the U.S. and Israel on Saturday killed him and attacked military command posts and missile sites across the country.
President Trump announced the strikes at 2:30 a.m. EST in a video shared on Truth Social. The mission, dubbed "Operation Epic Fury," has resulted in the deaths of at least 200 Iranians and injured about 750 more, Iran's Red Crescent told state media.
News of Khamenei's death initially came from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who claimed an Israeli strike killed the supreme leader in his compound in Tehran. Trump later confirmed his death in a post on Truth Social. |
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BY ELLEN MITCHELL AND FILIP TIMOTIJA |
The ongoing U.S. strikes on Iran could have a ripple effect across the region, triggering a barrage of attacks from Tehran's proxy groups on American troops, allies and interests.
The likes of Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen and various Shiite militias in Iraq could be called on to target U.S. service members, civilians, ships, embassies and frequented hotels in the Middle East, threatening a wider regional war, experts say.
Hezbollah, considered the most powerful of Iran's proxies, is of particular concern to counterterrorism experts given its significant stockpiles of rockets and missiles — even after Israel last year sought to decapitate its leadership. |
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President Trump on Saturday afternoon said Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is dead following U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran that the White House intended to lead to regime change for Tehran.
Trump said the longtime U.S. enemy was dead about an hour after multiple news outlets reported that U.S. and Israel believed he had been killed in an Israeli strike on Saturday as part of the joint U.S., Israel military operation against Iran. "Khamenei, one of the most evil people in History, is dead," Trump wrote in a Truth Social post. |
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BY COLIN MEYN AND FILIP TIMOTIJA |
The United States and Israel launched waves of strikes Saturday morning against Iran after weeks of tensions between Washington and Tehran.
Iran swiftly retaliated, firing drones and ballistic missiles at Israel, along with attacking targets in Gulf countries, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. The joint mission, dubbed "Operation Epic Fury," began shortly after midnight Saturday with strikes aimed at destroying Iran's regime security apparatus and focusing on locations that posed an "imminent threat," the U.S. Central Command (Centcom) said. |
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BY ELLA LEE AND ZACH SCHONFELD |
The fight for tariff refunds following the Supreme Court's decision to void President Trump's sweeping levies is underway.
A Michigan auto parts store and New York wine importer are leading the charge, and they're moving fast.
Hundreds of small businesses and major corporations alike have rushed to court to reclaim the unlawfully collected funds, as the Trump administration awaits instruction on a roadmap for next steps. |
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BY REBECCA BEITSCH AND MIKE LILLIS |
House Republicans won a political victory this week in hauling former President Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton before the Oversight and Government Reform Committee to testify in the case of Jeffrey Epstein.
But Democrats are already warning that the extraordinary development will boomerang on the GOP whenever Democrats win back the House majority — and demand similar testimony from President Trump.
There is some dispute over whether Democrats should pursue Trump's testimony while he remains in office, or wait until afterward. But all sides are warning that the Republicans have set a precedent they might live to regret. |
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Several Democratic primaries in Texas and North Carolina are teeing up generational battles in the party.
Rep. Al Green (D-Texas), 78, is facing a challenge from newly-elected 37-year-old Rep. Christian Menefee (D-Texas) in Texas's redrawn 18th Congressional District in the Houston area.
Rep. Valerie Foushee (D-N.C.), 69, is fending off a primary challenge from 32-year-old Durham County Commissioner Nida Allam in North Carolina's 4th Congressional District. |
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The U.S. strikes on Iran early Saturday has become the latest major issue addressed by candidates running in some of the more competitive Senate races.
Reactions came after the U.S. and Israel carried out joint strikes on Iran overnight, attacking military command and control facilities, ballistic missile and drone launch sites, military airfields and Iranian air defense systems. All of the reactions came before President Trump announced that Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in the attack. |
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The launch of strikes on Iran early Saturday morning sent shockwaves across the globe. The joint operation from the U.S. and Israel follows weeks of negotiations between Iranian and American officials over the terms of a new nuclear deal.
President Trump issued a stark warning to the Iranian regime in a video posted on Truth Social announcing "Operation Epic Fury" at 2:30 a.m. "The United States military is undertaking a massive and ongoing operation to prevent this very wicked and radical dictatorship from threatening America and our core national security interests," Trump said. "We're going to destroy their missiles and raise their missile industry to the ground. It will be totally — again — obliterated." |
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OPINION | I attended many State of the Union addresses as a member of Congress and I know the ritual cold. Normally a president arrives prepared to persuade and engage, to lay out an agenda and make the case for it to the Congress that must enact it and to the broader public.
Tuesday night's address earned better reviews than many expected because the stories worked and the honors bestowed on heroes were genuinely moving. But President Trump did not come to engage Congress. He reduced it to a backdrop, with Republicans as a prop and Democrats as a foil. In Trump's vision of governing, Congress doesn't have a seat at the table. It has a seat in the audience. |
OPINION | Recently, there was an article in Politico magazine that got a great deal of attention from the left, about Vice President JD Vance and why he "Befuddles the World." But it's really not so befuddling after all.
Because so many on the left live in elite-entrenched bubbles floating high above the working classes they purport to lead and lecture, they have absolutely no idea what actually resonates with the people. Should there be an upcoming presidential campaign for Vance as we approach 2028, I suspect those in his "kitchen Cabinet" will be thrilled to bookmark this "hit piece" as a way to demonstrate to the Republican base, independents and Democratic voters that Vance is fighting for precisely what is best for them and their children.
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BY BENAJAMIN WEISER, MATTHEW GOLDSTEIN & MIKE BAKER |
It was early evening on Saturday, July 6, 2019, when Jeffrey Epstein disembarked from a private plane for the final time. Federal agents were waiting at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey to arrest him.
"Is this about sex trafficking?" Mr. Epstein asked as he was being driven to the Federal Bureau of Investigation's offices in Lower Manhattan, according to notes taken by an agent. "Is this about underage?"
Nobody replied, but the answer was yes. Later, as he was being booked into jail, Mr. Epstein remarked: "Oh, this is bad. This is really bad." |
BY KATHERINE BLUNT & JENNIFER HILLER |
Early last year, a cluster of data centers in Virginia suddenly dropped off the power grid, threatening the stability of the already vulnerable system.
The roughly 40 data centers, which had been using enough electricity to supply more than one million homes, simultaneously switched to backup power sources in February 2025, when a high-voltage power line malfunctioned. The sudden plunge in electricity demand forced the grid operator to take quick action to avoid potentially serious damage. |
Barely an hour after the first U.S. and Israeli missiles struck Iran, President Donald Trump made clear he hoped for regime change. "Now is the time to seize control of your destiny," he told the Iranian people in a video. "This is the moment for action. Do not let it pass."
Doesn't sound complicated. After all, with Iran's fundamentally unpopular government weakened by fierce airstrikes, some of its top leaders dead or missing and Washington signaling support, how hard could it be to overthrow a repressive regime?
Possibly very hard. So says history. |
Dive shop owner Bill Cole leaned back in his captain's chair, raised the volume on the Margaritaville radio station and watched six trails of bubbles trickle up through clear blue water.
Fifteen feet beneath the surface, divers drifted through one of the last thriving coral reefs in Florida, spotting juvenile parrotfish and grunts darting between branches of staghorn coral that survived the catastrophic heat waves and disease outbreaks that have rendered their species all but extinct in the continental United States.
But soon, this refuge could also be wiped out — not by hot-tub water temperatures or the mysterious plague of stony coral tissue loss disease, but by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
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