Trump weighing up an early, limited strike, reports say, after giving Iran two week deadline
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. I’m Tom Ambrose and I’ll be bringing you all the latest news lines over the next few hours.
We start with reports that Donald Trump is considering an early strike to force the Iranians to the negotiating table. An early strike could likely target specific government buildings or military sites and may be limited enough so as not to provoke a full-scale retaliation from Iran, according to the Wall Street Journal.
One unnamed official told the Journal that aides had also discussed large-scale operations, which could involve increasingly larger strikes with an eventual aim of ending the Iranian regime’s nuclear work or the collapse of the government.
The reports come after Trump publicly told Iran that it has “10 to 15 days” to cut a deal over its nuclear program, as the US continues its vast military build up in the region.
“We’re either going to get a deal, or it’s going to be unfortunate for them,” Trump told reporters on board Air Force One yesterday.
He added that negotiations could be allowed to continue for another 10 to 15 days, a deadline the president described as “pretty much” the “maximum”.
“I would think that would be enough time,” Trump said.
The US has kept the option of military action against Iran on the table, as it continues to amass the greatest buildup of forces since the Iraq invasion 23 years ago, Bloomberg reported.
It has moved two aircraft carriers, fighter jets and refueling tankers in the region since the start of the year, giving the US the option of a sustained campaign last several days in co-operation with Israel.
In other developments:
-
Donald Trump, who is definitely not mad that his more popular predecessor Barack Obama got a lot of attention for saying last weekend that aliens “are real, but I haven’t seen them”, announced that he is directing the defense department and other agencies to release whatever files they have on the search for alien life.
-
Sky Roberts, the brother of the late Virginia Giuffre, told CNN that Trump “is potentially implicated” by the Epstein files, “and he may have to answer some questions”. The US president has denied any wrongdoing and yesterday claimed he was “exonerated” by the Epstein filed.
-
The English far-right activist Tommy Robinson, who was repeatedly denied entry to the US in the past, spent Thursday in Washington DC, meeting people close to Trump according to images and video posted on his social media accounts.
-
FBI director Kash Patel has jetted off to Italy to watch the men’s ice hockey medal matches, sticking taxpayers with a bill as high as $75,000, according to multiple reports.
-
The husband of Trump’s labor secretary, Lori Chavez-DeRemer, has reportedly been barred from the labor department’s headquarters in Washington DC after at least two female staff members accused him of sexually assaulting them, the New York Times reports.
-
Trump told supporters in Georgia that there had been less media coverage of the cost-of-living crisis in the past weeks “Because I’ve won, I’ve won affordability.”
Key events
US economic growth slowed in Q4 2025
Graeme Wearden
Growth in the US economy has slowed sharply, new data shows.
US gross domestic product (GDP) increased at an annual rate of 1.4% in the fourth quarter of 2025, he U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) has reported – the equivalent of expanding by 0.35% in the quarter.
The BEA says:
The contributors to the increase in real GDP in the fourth quarter were increases in consumer spending and investment.
These movements were partly offset by decreases in government spending and exports. Imports, which are a subtraction in the calculation of GDP, decreased.
That’s down from annualised growth of 4.4% in the third quarter of last year, and may be a sign that the US government shutdown at the end of last year hit growth.
My colleague, Graeme Wearden, is covering the latest developments on GDP figures:
Donald Trump is in Washington today. We’re expected to hear from him at 9.45am when he hosts a working breakfast for several US governors in the State Room of the White House. It’s part of two events traditionally hosted at the White House, which includes a dinner on Saturday, as part of the National Governors Association’s (NGA) annual conference.
The NGA normally facilitates the bipartisan events, but backed out after claiming that Trump initially invited only Republican governors to the weekend’s events at the White House, as part of the conference’s itinerary.
However, Trump said that the NGA chair, governor Kevin Stitt of Oklahoma, had “incorrectly stated” the president’s position over the “very exclusive” breakfast meeting and dinner. Trump added that he invited all governors bar Democrats Wes Moore of Maryland and Jared Polis of Colorado – who he feels “are not worthy of being there” amid ongoing feuds with the leaders.
Several other Democratic governors have since pulled out of the events at the White House in response to the move.
The Trump administration announced on Friday it will roll back air regulations for power plants limiting mercury and hazardous air toxics at an event in Kentucky, a move it says will boost baseload energy but that public health groups say will harm public health for the US’s most vulnerable groups.
Donald Trump’s EPA has said that easing the pollution standards for coal plants would alleviate costs for utilities that run older coal plants at a time when demand for power is soaring amid the expansion of data centers used for artificial intelligence, Reuters reported.
But environmental groups have said that weakening standards for mercury, a neurotoxin that can impair babies’ brain development, and other air toxics will lead to higher health-related costs.
The Biden-era Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, which updated standards set in 2012 under the Obama administration, had still been in force after the supreme court declined to put the rules on hold after a group of mostly Republican states and industry groups led a legal challenge to suspend it.
Jamie Wilson
A rookie congressional candidate in a nine-way Texas primary has received the imprimatur of wealthy hard-right donors including tech billionaire Peter Thiel, Claremont Institute board chair Thomas Klingenstein and Charles Haywood, who once expressed a desire to be a “warlord”, according to new Federal Election Commission filings showing early donations to his campaign.
In a recent candidate forum, Jace Yarbrough unapologetically staked out a series of extremist positions, saying that critics may call his approach to politics “bigoted and backward and oppressive and Nazi-ish”, but that he is “past trying to placate that in any way, shape or form”.
Following the flood of donations in December, Yarbrough was endorsed by Donald Trump on Truth Social.
Yarbrough’s remaining donors include others with ties to the Claremont Institute and the secretive far-right Society for American Civic Renewal (SACR), including Nate Fischer, a venture capitalist with documented links to JD Vance; and Andrew Beck, Claremont’s vice-president for communications and an admitted SACR member.
Current and former employees of Beck-founded agency Beck & Stone are also among the donors.
John Bellamy Foster, professor of sociology at the University of Oregon, said: “Jace Yarbrough is among the most militant figures in the Maga political movement in the United States, and a major recipient of Maga-billionaire donations in his run for a congressional seat in North Texas.”
Foster added: “If it can be said that there is a neofascist political movement in the United States, Yarbrough is certainly one of its chief would-be ‘lawgivers’.”
Rubio to meet UK foreign minister amid tensions over joint air base
Secretary of state Marco Rubio will meet with Britain’s foreign minister Yvette Cooper today, after Donald Trump renewed his criticism of London for ceding sovereignty of the Chagos Islands, which is home to a US-UK air base.
Last year British prime minister Keir Starmer agreed a deal to transfer sovereignty of the Indian Ocean islands to Mauritius, while keeping control of one – Diego Garcia – through a 99-year lease that preserved US operations at the base.
Washington last year gave its blessing to the agreement, but Trump has since changed his mind several times. In January, Trump described it as an act of “great stupidity“, but earlier this month said he understood the deal was the best Starmer could make, before then renewing his criticism this week.
The Diego Garcia base has recently been used for operations in the Middle East against Yemen’s Houthis and in humanitarian aid to Gaza.
Although on Tuesday Rubio’s state department said it backed the Chagos accord, the next day Trump said Britain was making a big mistake.
“DO NOT GIVE AWAY DIEGO GARCIA!” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social, saying the base could be called upon in any future military operation to “eradicate a potential attack” from Iran.
Under the conditions for using the joint base, Britain would need to agree in advance to any operations out of Diego Garcia.
Second carrier strike group heads for region as US weighs up early attack
Dan Sabbagh
Experts say there are already sufficient US military assets in the Middle East to begin an aerial bombing campaign against Iran, potentially in conjunction with Israel, though it is less clear what this would achieve.
The USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier and other warships in a strike group have been in the Arabian Sea for nearly a month, with nine squadrons of aircraft including F-35 Lightning IIs and F/A-18 Super Hornets.
A second carrier strike group, led by the USS Gerald R Ford, was last confirmed to be in the Atlantic west of Morocco on Tuesday. It is expected to head through the strait of Gibraltar and towards the eastern Mediterranean, a voyage of several days.
The Ford, the world’s largest aircraft carrier, sailed from the Caribbean Sea, where last month the warship was involved in the seizure of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro from a fortified compound in a night raid.
Together, the carrier strike groups could generate “several hundred strike sorties a day for a few weeks, an intensity greater than during the 12-days war”, said Matthew Savill, the director of military sciences at the Royal United Services Institute.
Even without the Ford, planes flying from the Lincoln could fly 125 or more bombing missions a day, giving the US the means to start attacking government and military sites in Iran in an aerial campaign if Trump chooses to attack.
Aviation experts have tracked a large movement of military planes to the Middle East as the US ramps up pressure on Iran. Six E-3 Sentry Awacs, critical for real-time command and control operations, are now deployed at Prince Sultan airbase in Saudi Arabia, having been moved from the US and Japan.
Read the full story here:
Trump weighing up an early, limited strike, reports say, after giving Iran two week deadline
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. I’m Tom Ambrose and I’ll be bringing you all the latest news lines over the next few hours.
We start with reports that Donald Trump is considering an early strike to force the Iranians to the negotiating table. An early strike could likely target specific government buildings or military sites and may be limited enough so as not to provoke a full-scale retaliation from Iran, according to the Wall Street Journal.
One unnamed official told the Journal that aides had also discussed large-scale operations, which could involve increasingly larger strikes with an eventual aim of ending the Iranian regime’s nuclear work or the collapse of the government.
The reports come after Trump publicly told Iran that it has “10 to 15 days” to cut a deal over its nuclear program, as the US continues its vast military build up in the region.
“We’re either going to get a deal, or it’s going to be unfortunate for them,” Trump told reporters on board Air Force One yesterday.
He added that negotiations could be allowed to continue for another 10 to 15 days, a deadline the president described as “pretty much” the “maximum”.
“I would think that would be enough time,” Trump said.
The US has kept the option of military action against Iran on the table, as it continues to amass the greatest buildup of forces since the Iraq invasion 23 years ago, Bloomberg reported.
It has moved two aircraft carriers, fighter jets and refueling tankers in the region since the start of the year, giving the US the option of a sustained campaign last several days in co-operation with Israel.
In other developments:
-
Donald Trump, who is definitely not mad that his more popular predecessor Barack Obama got a lot of attention for saying last weekend that aliens “are real, but I haven’t seen them”, announced that he is directing the defense department and other agencies to release whatever files they have on the search for alien life.
-
Sky Roberts, the brother of the late Virginia Giuffre, told CNN that Trump “is potentially implicated” by the Epstein files, “and he may have to answer some questions”. The US president has denied any wrongdoing and yesterday claimed he was “exonerated” by the Epstein filed.
-
The English far-right activist Tommy Robinson, who was repeatedly denied entry to the US in the past, spent Thursday in Washington DC, meeting people close to Trump according to images and video posted on his social media accounts.
-
FBI director Kash Patel has jetted off to Italy to watch the men’s ice hockey medal matches, sticking taxpayers with a bill as high as $75,000, according to multiple reports.
-
The husband of Trump’s labor secretary, Lori Chavez-DeRemer, has reportedly been barred from the labor department’s headquarters in Washington DC after at least two female staff members accused him of sexually assaulting them, the New York Times reports.
-
Trump told supporters in Georgia that there had been less media coverage of the cost-of-living crisis in the past weeks “Because I’ve won, I’ve won affordability.”