Connect with us

Politics

Column: Are Republicans who got pandemic debt relief hypocrites for complaining about student debt relief? Yes

Published

on

Column: Are Republicans who got pandemic debt relief hypocrites for complaining about student debt relief? Yes

You may have noticed over the last few days that the political world is in an uproar over President Biden’s dispensing of student debt relief.

It’s not so much that Biden implemented the relief program at all; what got politicians and pundits in a tizzy was that he called out the GOP naysayers in the House by pointing out that many of them had received business loans via the pandemic-era Paycheck Protection Program, or PPP, that had never been paid back.

The White House tweeted out the forgiven PPP balances of 13 GOP House members critical of student loan relief, under the heading, “This you?”

The PPP helped people remain employed while the government literally shut down much of the economy,. Only an intellectual clown would compare that to what Biden is doing now with student loans.

— Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., recipient of $616,241 in pandemic relief

Advertisement

That’s a really unfair comparison, the argument goes, because the PPP loans were never intended to be paid back. Under the program’s terms, the loans would be forgiven if the money was used to support the workers of a small business that had been forced to close or curtail operations because of pandemic restrictions.

In other words, it’s said, the PPP money was never expected to be repaid. By contrast, student loans were taken out in full expectation that they would be repaid — if not for the handouts being distributed by the White House.

“The PPP helped people remain employed while the government literally shut down much of the economy,” Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), tweeted back in 2022, the first time Biden made this purportedly invidious comparison. “Only an intellectual clown would compare that to what Biden is doing now with student loans.”

Norman received $616,241 from the PPP, according to the White House.

Advertisement

There’s something to be said for the distinction made by the PPP-pocketing student relief critics, but not nearly as much as they claim. More on that in a moment.

This is just another example of how our political press is incapable of telling the forest from the trees, or how it’s perennially distracted by a shiny object. (Insert your own pertinent metaphor here.)

In this case, the shiny object is the idea that it’s Biden who is the hypocrite for comparing the PPP loans to student debt. This misses the bigger picture of how America’s economy is structured to benefit corporations and the wealthy — that is, the patrons of the Republican political establishment — at the expense of average Americans. The pundits who are flaying the White House for making the connection are merely buying a GOP talking point.

Not only right-leaning commentators are committing this error. Not a few progressive-minded writers are complicit. Here, for instance, is Jordan Weissmann of Semaphor, usually a percipient analyst of economics and finance: “The thing about this talking point is that I know everybody in the White House, including the [communications] shop, is smart enough to know how disingenuous it is.”

Let’s take a closer — and a broader — look.

Advertisement

The comparison between student debt relief and the PPP loans first emerged in 2022, when Biden first announced his plan to forgive up to $20,000 in student debt for households with incomes of up to $125,000. The White House then issued a series of tweets targeting GOP critics of student debt relief whose PPP loans had been forgiven.

The Supreme Court invalidated Biden’s original proposal in 2023. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for a 6-3 conservative majority that although the law gave the secretary of Education the authority to “waive or modify” the terms of student loans, the White House had gone too far.

After that, the administration implemented a new program, the SAVE plan, that limited monthly repayments on student debt for most borrowers to as little as 5% of their income and ended payments for borrowers living near or below the federal poverty standard. After as little as 10 years, the balance on loans originally totaling $12,000 or less will be permanently forgiven.

The White House issued this roster of GOP politicians who criticized Biden’s student debt relief program but got their pandemic relief loans forgiven

(White House)

Advertisement

The issue erupted again a few days ago when Biden announced new features of his student relief program. They included waiving some accrued interest for borrowers whose balances had grown higher than their original debt, generally because their payments hadn’t covered the accumulated interest — an issue that affects more than one-third of all student borrowers, and two-thirds of Black borrowers.

For the record:

12:22 p.m. April 17, 2024An earlier version of this column incorrectly identified Rep. Andrew S. Clyde (R-Ga.) as a Democrat.

Critics, again mostly Republicans, weighed in again with tendentious lectures on social media about the moral imperative of meeting one’s obligation to pay back a loan.

Advertisement

Rep. Andrew S. Clyde (R-Ga.), for instance, tweeted that Biden’s latest initiative, which will relieve student borrowers of about $7.4 billion in principal and interest, would “transfer millions more in student debt onto the backs of hardworking taxpayers.” Clyde called it “nothing more than a desperate attempt to buy votes with Americans’ hard-earned money.”

Clyde’s $156,597 PPP loan was forgiven.

That brings us back to the hypocrisy issue. It’s true that students who took out education loans are expected to repay them, and that businesses that took out PPP loans were led to believe that they would be forgiven — as long as they were used to support their payrolls through business closings and cutbacks.

But things are not so simple. Critics of Biden’s plan argue that the PPP loans were designed to address an acute economic disaster, which isn’t the case with student loans.

The student loan burden, however, has become an economic disaster. The total amount of outstanding student loans for higher education has ballooned over the last two decades to almost $1.8 trillion today, up from about $300 billion in 2000. Those loans are carried by about 43 million borrowers.

Advertisement

The burden has grown in part because the cost of higher education has exploded. That’s so even at public institutions: In 1970, the average tuition at public four-year universities was $358, or about $2,958 in today’s money. Since then, public university tuition and fees have grown to the point that working families can’t afford them without borrowing.

At UCLA and UC Berkeley, those annual costs come to $13,401 and $14,395 for state residents, respectively. It’s proper to note that the University of California was free to Californians until tuition charges were introduced under Gov. Ronald Reagan in the 1970s. Among the beneficiaries of the old system were former governor and U.S. Chief Justice Earl Warren, diplomat Ralph Bunche, L.A. Mayor Tom Bradley, and writer Maxine Hong Kingston, all children of low-income families.

Public university students today accumulate an average of $32,637 to receive a bachelor’s degree. The overall average of student debt reached $37,600 in 2022, more than double the average in 2007.

The economic implications of this burden are inescapable. Households burdened by high student debt often delay or forgo homeownership and face difficulties in starting a family or building up savings. The debt load also contradicts Americans’ cherished assumptions about the value of higher education.

“The whole premise of the main higher education industry is that a college degree pays off,” Marshall Steinbaum, an expert in higher education finance at the Jain Family Institute, told me in 2022. When some people are still paying off their student loans as they approach retirement, that premise loses some of its oomph.

Advertisement

As for the PPP, it was nothing like the unalloyed boon that its GOP defenders portray. The members of Congress who snarfed up loans by the six or seven figures (Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.) tops the list of those called out as hypocrites by Biden with $4.4 million in forgiven loans) are beneficiaries of a program they themselves voted for.

Of the 13 on Biden’s list, three (Marjorie Taylor Greene and Clyde of Georgia and Pat Fallon of Texas) hadn’t yet been elected when the PPP came up for a vote in April 2020; another, Mike Kelly of Pennsylvania, didn’t cast a vote. All the others on the White House roster voted in favor. The measure passed the House 388 to 5. Representatives and senators could have exempted themselves from the PPP benefits, but they didn’t. Then they lined up for the goods.

Were the PPP funds invariably used as they were supposed to? There’s reason to be skeptical. Greene, who received a $182,300 PPP loan in April 2020 for her family construction business, donated $250,000 to her own congressional campaign the following June and August. The government subsequently forgave $183,500, including interest.

Did any of those donations come from the PPP? We’ll never know, because days before Biden took office, the Small Business Administration deleted almost all the database red flags designating potentially questionable or fraudulent loans subject to further review. That’s according to the Project on Government Oversight, a watchdog group that based its findings on a government database.

As many as 2.3 million loans, including 54,000 loans of more than $1 million each, thus may have received a free pass. The red flags included signs that a recipient company had laid off workers or were ineligible to participate in the program.

Advertisement

The SBA’s inspector general’s office later disclosed that it had “substantiated an unprecedented level of fraud activity” in the PPP program, but said the mass closeout, as well as the SBA’s habit of forgiving loans before reviewing them for potential fraud, would hamper the agency’s ability “to recover funds for forgiven loans later determined to be ineligible.”

A larger problem in the haste by politicians and pundits to flay Biden for his defense of student loan relief is that their view is too narrow. As I reported in 2022, many of the politicians wringing their hands over how student loan relief burdens ordinary taxpayers received their higher education courtesy of ordinary taxpayers — by attending public institutions at a time when they were overwhelmingly tax-supported.

That’s not all. Republican fiscal policies are almost invariably aimed to benefit corporations and wealthier Americans. The 2017 tax cuts are a perfect example. The richest 20% of Americans received nearly 64% of the tax benefits. The top 1% received a reduction in their average federal tax rate of 1.5 percentage points, worth an average $32,650 a year; the lowest-income 20% got a tax rate reduction of 0.3 of a percentage point, worth $40 a year.

Student debt relief, however, overwhelmingly favors low-income borrowers. According to a 2022 study done for Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), $10,000 in student debt cancellation would reduce the share of people with debt by one-third among the lowest-income 20% and by one-fourth for households among the next 20%. But it would make almost no difference for the richest 10%.

Debt cancellation also would reduce racial gaps in household economics. A $10,000 debt reduction would zero out loan balances for 2 million Black families, the study said, reducing the share of Black individuals with student loans to 17% from 24%.

Advertisement

In other words, student debt relief is a boon for the most economically vulnerable American households. That can’t be said of the PPP program, and certainly not for the GOP tax cuts.

The debate over whether it’s “fair” to juxtapose student debt relief with the millions pocketed by GOP representatives and their patrons is, indeed, a story of hypocrisy. But the hypocrisy is not where our political press has claimed to find it. They should pay attention to what really drives conservatives to hate student debt relief so much.

Advertisement

Politics

Fearing GOP win, California’s Democratic leader urges unviable party candidates for governor to drop out

Published

on

Fearing GOP win, California’s Democratic leader urges unviable party candidates for governor to drop out

Fearing the prospect of a Republican winning California’s gubernatorial race, state Democratic Party Chair Rusty Hicks on Tuesday urged his party’s candidates who lack a viable path to victory to drop out.

“It is imperative that every candidate honestly assess the viability of their candidacy and campaign,” Hicks wrote in an open letter to the politicians vying to replace termed-out Gov. Gavin Newsom. “I recognize my suggestions are hard for many to contemplate and may be even viewed as overly harsh by some.”

Hicks did not name the Democrats he wants out of the race, but such a public admonishment by a party leader is a rarity in California politics.

Even though the odds are relatively low, California cannot risk having a Republican elected as the next governor at a time when President Trump is in the White House, Hicks said.

“[S]o much is at stake in our Nation and so many are counting on the leadership of California Democrats to stand up and speak out at this historic moment,” Hicks wrote. “California’s leadership on the world stage is significantly harder if a Democrat is not elected as our next Governor.”

Advertisement

Hicks urged Democrats languishing at the bottom of the field of candidates to drop out before the Friday deadline to officially file to run for governor — to ensure their names do not appear on the June primary ballot.

Under California’s top-two primary system, the two candidates who receive the most votes in the June primary advance to the November general election, regardless of party.

With nine top Democrats running, the fear is that the candidates will splinter their party’s vote and allow the top two Republicans in the race to finish in first and second place. This is despite Democratic registered voters outnumbering Republicans in the state by almost 2 to 1, and no GOP candidate winning a statewide election since 2006.

Having two Republicans competing in the November election would be devastating to Democratic voter turnout and could hurt party candidates in pivotal down-ballot races.

“The result would present a real risk to winning the congressional seats required and imperil Democrats’ chances to retake the House, cut Donald Trump’s term in half, and spare our Nation from the pain many have endured since January 2025,” Hicks said in his letter. “We simply can’t let that happen.”

Advertisement

A recent poll by the Public Policy Institute of California found that five candidates lead the contest — former Rep. Katie Porter, Rep. Eric Swalwell and hedge fund founder Tom Steyer among Democrats and conservative commentator Steve Hilton and Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, both Republicans. Hilton and Bianco have led all candidates in other polls over the last few months. No other candidate received the support of more than 5% of likely voters.

After Hicks issued his directive, two influential leaders in California Democratic politics said they shared his concerns.

Lorena Gonzalez, the head of the California Federation of Labor Unions, said she worries that Democratic candidates who are drawing low single-digit support in the polls and remain in the race could tilt the election.

“You’re in a situation where a candidate who pulls 2 or 3% could make all the difference whether there’s two Republicans and anti-union folks in the runoff or if there’s not,” she said.

Gonzalez said that while she believes the legislature, where Democrats hold super majorities in both chambers, would be a check if a Republican was elected the state’s leader, that might not be enough protect Californians from Trump’s destructive policies.

Advertisement

“We are seeing with Trump how much damage an executive who wants to ignore normal rules of engagement or the Constitution can do,” she said. “We can’t afford that.”

The federation began its endorsement process last week, and there were difficult conversations with gubernatorial candidates not only about their political beliefs, but also about their viability. The umbrella group of unions is expected to make an announcement about any potential endorsement on March 16.

Jodi Hicks, CEO and president of Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California, said it was imperative to block the “real possibility” of two Republicans advancing to the general election because of the deep cuts that the Trump administration has made to health care, including access to abortion.

“Given the severity of this moment, we urge candidates to consider how continuing their candidacy may put California’s values and reproductive freedom at risk,” Jodi Hicks said. “The stakes are too high for all of us, but especially for immigrant communities, transgender individuals, the over 15 million patients enrolled in Medi-Cal, and the over 25,000 patients a week who access essential health care at Planned Parenthood health centers.”

Discussions about the need for some Democrats to exit the race took place at last weekend’s California Democratic Party convention.

Advertisement

But a politically thorny issue is that nearly all of the Democrats lagging in the polls are people of color, as former U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra noted at a candidate forum Monday evening.

“There are people who are calling for candidates to get out of the race,” he said at the gathering hosted by Equality California and the Los Angeles LGBT Center at the Renberg Theatre in Hollywood. “Isn’t it interesting that the candidates they are asking get out of the race are the candidates of color?”

Rusty Hicks, asked about the effect on minority candidates who have spent years or decades of their lives in public service, did not directly answer the question but lauded the field’s accomplishments.

“We have a number of strong candidates. They have incredible stories, and they are reflective of the diversity of our party. That being said, there are some political realities of where we are at at this particular moment,” he said in an interview. “I’m not calling on any specific candidates to move in one direction or the other. I’m just calling on them to assess their campaign and determine if they have a viable [path] and if they don’t, to not file.”

During Monday evening’s gubernatorial forum, Porter said she is concerned about the prospect of two Republicans making the top two.

Advertisement

“I hear people say to me, it could never happen, but everybody said that about Trump too,” she said at the forum. “And I look at how much harm we’re suffering, and I think about all the political risks that people are facing every day, the risk of an immigrant to leave their home and walk on our streets, the risk of a kid who’s trans to try to play sports even in this state. And I just don’t think we can take any more political risks.”

Times staff writer Phil Willon contributed to this report.

Continue Reading

Politics

How President Trump’s Image Permeates the White House and Beyond

Published

on

How President Trump’s Image Permeates the White House and Beyond

Since moving back in, President Trump has significantly altered the “People’s House.” East Wing: gone. Oval Office: maximalized. Rose Garden: Mar-a-lago-ified. And the art? Lots of Trump.

Advertisement

Over the last year, The New York Times has captured at least nine paintings, posters, memes, and even a mugshot outside the Oval Office, that Mr. Trump added throughout the historic space.

Many of the selections are gifts from his supporters that highlight his political stature and reinforce the idea that Mr. Trump is invincible.

Advertisement

All presidents or first ladies add to and shuffle the art in the White House.

Barack Obama brought in abstract paintings.

Advertisement

Family Dining Room, 2015. Gabriella Demczuk for The New York Times

George W. Bush decorated with images from his Texas roots.

Advertisement

Oval Office, 2007. Doug Mills/The New York Times

Advertisement

In Mr. Trump’s first term, Melania Trump added a sculpture by Isamu Noguchi to the Rose Garden.

Rose Garden, 2020. Pool photo by Chris Kleponis

Advertisement

But never before has a sitting president displayed so much of his own image on the White House walls.

There is an “assertion of symbolic power that he wants to be on view essentially everywhere in that space,” said Cara Finnegan, a communication professor at the University of Illinois and author of “Photographic Presidents: Making History from Daguerreotype to Digital.”

Advertisement

Even outside his current residence, Mr. Trump’s visage has proliferated in unexpected places — on banners hanging from government buildings, on National Parks passes and on social media, where he has been likened to a king. There has also been talk of a U.S. Treasury-minted coin with Mr. Trump on both sides.

Break with tradition

In recent decades, each president’s official White House portrait has been unveiled in a ceremony hosted by his successor.

Advertisement

The Carters hosted the Fords:

Advertisement

East Room, 1978. Associated Press

The Clintons hosted the Bushes:

Advertisement

East Room, 1995. Stephen Crowley/The New York Times

And the Bushes hosted the Clintons:

Advertisement

East Room, 2004. Tim Sloan/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The mood has often been lighthearted, with political party tensions melting away.

Advertisement

“I am pleased that my portrait brings an interesting symmetry to the White House collection,” George W. Bush joked in a ceremony hosted by the Obamas. “It now starts and ends with a George W.”

In a break with tradition, Mr. Trump did not schedule a ceremony for the unveiling of the Obamas’ portraits during his first term. Joe Biden later did, in a ceremony with a “Welcome Home!” vibe.

Advertisement

Typically, the latest available presidential portrait — often a realistic oil painting — hangs in the main entrance hall, where heads of state are welcomed.

The Obama portrait was in the spot until April …

Advertisement

Cross Hall in the Executive Residence, 2024. Tom Brenner for The New York Times

… when Mr. Trump replaced it with this painting by Marc Lipp, a Florida pop artist, last April.

Advertisement

Cross Hall in the Executive Residence, 2025. Doug Mills/The New York Times

It depicts a striking moment in 2024 when a bloodied Mr. Trump pumped his fist in defiance, soon after being shot at by a would-be assassin during a campaign event.

Advertisement

Presidential historians have criticized the departure from convention.

Though Mr. Trump had a portrait commissioned for the Smithsonian’s American Presidents collection after his first term, none was confirmed for the permanent White House collection, and the White House said that this is where that portrait would have hung.

Advertisement

It is not totally unprecedented for a president to hang a painting of himself in the White House during his term. Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft and Grover Cleveland all did, according to the White House Historical Association. But more often than not, paintings of presidents and first ladies are hung after they have left office, historians said.

Flags, fists and faith from fans

In what has become something of a muse for many of the president’s artistic supporters, there are at least three other depictions of the fist-pumping scene in the White House.

Advertisement

The image “is in people’s garages when I walk around my neighborhood,” said Leslie Hahner, a Texas resident and communication professor at Baylor University, who studies visual political culture. “People love that image.”

Behind the Oval Office, one is in a small room that houses Trump merchandise:

Advertisement

Oval Office study, 2025. Doug Mills/The New York Times

Another was seen in the West Wing next to a “Still Life with Fruit” painting from 1850:

Advertisement

West Wing, 2025. Doug Mills/The New York Times

Advertisement

A statue form was spotted in the Oval Office:

Oval Office, 2025. Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times

Advertisement

The sculptor, Stan Watts, told a Utah TV station last year that he believes the president was saved by God that day. Many of Mr. Trump’s Christian supporters have echoed that sentiment.

At least two works by a self-described “Christian worship artist,” Vanessa Horabuena, are among Mr. Trump’s White House collection. He has called Ms. Horabuena, who often paints live in front of an audience, “one of the greatest artists anywhere in the world.”

Advertisement

In 2022, she painted a portrait of Mr. Trump at a booth at the Conservative Political Action Conference. When he saw it, he asked to meet her, Ms. Horabuena’s representative said. She most recently painted Mr. Trump live at a New Year’s Eve party at Mar-A-Lago.

One of her portraits was spotted in the Cabinet room in January.

It shows Mr. Trump, his eyes closed, in front of a mountain with a small cross on the top:

Advertisement

Cabinet Room, 2026. Doug Mills/The New York Times

Advertisement

Ms. Horabuena hand-delivered it to the White House, according to her website.

Her other painting shows the president walking through a phalanx of flags. It was seen hanging prominently in a hallway leading to the Cabinet Room and the Oval Office:

Advertisement

West Wing, 2025. Doug Mills/The New York Times

“He’s positioned as this embattled warrior in a lot of these images,” Dr. Hahner said.

Advertisement

Historical figures Mr. Trump adulates are co-stars in some of the art he has chosen.

In an image created by the team of White House trade adviser Peter Navarro, Mr. Trump is pictured with William McKinley and Henry Clay, who, like the president, championed the use of tariffs:

Advertisement

West Wing, 2025. Doug Mills/The New York Times

Here, Mr. Trump is with two other Republican presidents, Abraham Lincoln (to whom he has compared himself) and Ronald Reagan (whom he is a fan of):

Advertisement

West Wing, 2025. Doug Mills/The New York Times

Titled “Great American Patriots,” the piece was painted by Dick Bobnick, an illustrator and Trump supporter from Minnesota. He said he mailed several prints to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, but he had no idea his work was on the White House walls until a USA Today reporter called him about it.

Advertisement

“I could hardly believe it,” said Mr. Bobnick. (He said the print is now his best-seller.)

If not in portraits, Mr. Trump’s image is reflected on mirrors that he has added to the White House complex.

Advertisement

Two are in the Oval Office …

Oval Office, 2025. Doug Mills/The New York Times

Advertisement

… making his image visible from the Resolute Desk.

Advertisement

Oval Office, 2025. Doug Mills/The New York Times

The mirrors, the portraits and the gilding mimic the look of his properties, like Mar-a-Lago, his Florida estate.

Advertisement

Mar-a-Lago, 2016. Eric Thayer for The New York Times

“Trump is obsessed with his image,” Dr. Hahner said. “And he is so controlling of his image.”

Advertisement

Trump everywhere, all the time

One portrait seen in the White House has become a communication tool between Mr. Trump and his supporters in the real world.

This is his social media profile picture.

Advertisement

Trump’s Truth Social account, 2025.

Advertisement

It was seen last October hanging between former first ladies Laura Bush and Barbara Bush in the now-demolished East Wing:

Booksellers Hall in the now-demolished East Wing, 2025. Cheriss May for The New York Times

Advertisement

The portrait was painted by Lena Ruseva, an immigrant from the former Soviet Union, who goes by the name MAGALANGELO. Mr. Trump invited her to his Bedminster golf club in 2022, and she gave it to him as a birthday gift.

“Every time social media or the news quotes the president and I see my artwork alongside it, I feel proud and grateful,” she said.

Advertisement

For a time, the same portrait hung next to Hillary Clinton, his political rival and a former first lady.

Booksellers Hall in the now-demolished East Wing, 2025. Alex Brandon/Associated Press

Advertisement

Supporters at that time lauded the placement on social media:

This example of a positive feedback loop demonstrates how Mr. Trump has used social media to redefine the presidency and presidential communication. Ms. Ruseva’s portrait was used on social media, hung up in the real world, then photographed and put back on social media by supporters who praised the president.

Advertisement

When Mr. Trump was elected to his first term in 2016, Dr. Hahner said that scholars referred to him as the first “meme president.”

Mr. Trump and his internet fans are used to a meme culture based on irony, and rehashing, repurposing and remixing existing images. The collection of White House artwork — much of it originating from his supporters — sits in an uncanny valley between realism and meme-ism, Dr. Hahner said.

Advertisement

Like memes that multiply, Mr. Trump’s image has been reproduced in other ways, outside the White House.

Last month, a huge banner with Mr. Trump’s face was draped outside the Justice Department headquarters …

Advertisement

Justice Department headquarters, 2026. Eric Lee for The New York Times

Last year, similar signage was strung over the Labor Department building …

Advertisement

Labor Department building, 2025. Eric Lee for The New York Times

… and the Agriculture Department building (this one, alongside Lincoln).

Advertisement

Agriculture Department building, 2025. Eric Lee for The New York Times

Advertisement

At his request, Mr. Trump’s portrait was recently updated at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery:

National Portrait Gallery, 2026. Alyssa Schukar for The New York Times

Advertisement

Still, Mr. Trump wants more. The White House has suggested that the National Portrait Gallery add a separate section for Trump-related art.

Advertisement
Continue Reading

Politics

Trump sends official notification to Congress on strikes against Iran

Published

on

Trump sends official notification to Congress on strikes against Iran

NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!

President Donald Trump on Monday sent an official notification to Congress about the U.S. strikes against Iran, in which he attempted to justify the military action in the now expanding conflict in the Middle East.

In a letter obtained by FOX News, Trump told Senate President Pro Tempore Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, that “no U.S. ground forces were used in these strikes” and that the mission “was planned and executed in a manner designed to minimize civilian casualties, deter future attacks, and neutralize Iran’s malign activities.”

This comes after joint U.S.-Israeli strikes against Iran on Saturday as part of Operation Epic Fury, triggering a response from Tehran and a wider conflict in the region. The strikes killed the Islamic Republic’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and other military leaders.

President Donald Trump on Monday sent an official notification to Congress about the U.S. strikes against Iran. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Advertisement

Trump wrote that it is not yet possible to know the full scope of military operations against Iran and that U.S. forces are prepared to take potential further action.

“Although the United States desires a quick and enduring peace, not possible at this time to know the full scope and duration of military operations that may be necessary,” Trump wrote. “As such, United States forces remain postured to take further action, as necessary and appropriate, to address further threats and attacks upon the United States or its allies and partners, and ensure the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran ceases being a threat to the United States, its allies, and the international community.”

“I directed this military action consistent with my responsibility to protect Americans and United States interests both at home and abroad and in furtherance of United States national security and foreign policy interests,” he added. “I acted pursuant to my constitutional authority as Commander in Chief and Chief Executive to conduct United States foreign relations.”

A general view of Tehran with smoke visible in the distance after explosions were reported in the city, on March 2, 2026, in Tehran, Iran. (Contributor/Getty Images)

Trump said he was “providing this report as part of my efforts to keep the Congress fully informed, consistent with the War Powers Resolution,” as some Republican and Democrat lawmakers attempt to restrain the president’s military action, which they affirm is unconstitutional without congressional approval.

Advertisement

The president also accused Iran of being among the largest state sponsors of terrorism in the world and purported that the “Iranian regime continues to seek the means to possess and employ nuclear weapons,” even after the White House said in June that precision strikes at the time “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities.

US SURGES FORCES TO MIDDLE EAST AS PENTAGON WARNS IRAN FIGHT ‘WILL TAKE SOME TIME’

A person holds an image of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as Iranian demonstrators protest against the U.S.-Israeli strikes, in Tehran, Iran, Feb. 28, 2026.  (Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via Reuters)

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP

“As I previously communicated to the Congress, Iran remains one of the largest, if not the largest, state-sponsors of terrorism in the world,” Trump said in the letter on Monday. “Despite the success of Operation MIDNIGHT HAMMER, the Iranian regime continues to seek the means to possess and employ nuclear weapons. Its array of ballistic, cruise, anti-ship, and other missiles pose a direct threat to and are attacking United States forces, commercial vessels, and civilians, as well as those of our allies and partners.”

Advertisement

“Despite my Administration’s repeated efforts to achieve a diplomatic solution to Iran’s malign behavior, the threat to the United States and its allies and partners became untenable,” he continued.

Fox News’ Tyler Olson contributed to this report.

Related Article

Trump admin warned lawmakers Israel was 'determined to act with or without us' before massive Iran strikes
Continue Reading
Advertisement

Trending