President Trump’s meandering speech on the Iran war late Wednesday — in which he paired promises of a swift exit with new threats of escalated bombing and denied responsibility for the Strait of Hormuz — did little to assuage U.S. allies and world markets concerned about the conflict’s ongoing disruptions to the global oil supply.

Stocks dropped after markets opened Thursday and oil prices soared, with the price of U.S. crude oil jumping more than 10%, to above $110.

In the wake of the speech, diplomats from more than 40 nations — not including the U.S. — met to strategize on how to lift Iran’s continued stranglehold on the strait, the vital oil corridor that the U.S.-Israeli war drove Iran to restrict but which Trump on Wednesday said wasn’t his problem.

Iranian officials remained unbowed, asserting the U.S. and Israel “know nothing” of its remaining capabilities, that “not a single life will be spared” if either attempts a ground incursion into its territory, and that “every last” Iranian would become a soldier if necessary.

“Iranians don’t just talk about defending their country. They bleed for it,” Iranian parliament Speaker Mohammad Qalibaf, a pugilistic figure and one of Iran’s most prominent wartime voices, wrote on X. “You come for our home… you’re gonna meet the whole family. Locked, loaded, and standing tall. Bring it on.”

Meanwhile, remarks Trump made earlier Wednesday about leaving NATO elicited subtle rebukes from both international and domestic allies, including French President Emmanuel Macron and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.), while the president’s comments about the U.S. not being able to focus on social services like Medicare or other domestic needs such as child care as it wages its foreign war sparked outrage at home.

Far from a call for a unified push to end the war alongside allies, Trump’s speech — his first formal address to the nation since the war began a month ago — further isolated the U.S. and the Trump administration on the global stage.

Trump firmly asserted in his speech that reopening the Strait of Hormuz to oil tanker traffic was not the responsibility of the U.S., despite it causing the war, because it receives less oil from the corridor than other nations.

“The countries of the world that do receive oil through the Hormuz Strait must take care of that passage. They must cherish it. They must grab it and cherish it. They could do it easily. We will be helpful, but they should take the lead in protecting the oil that they so desperately depend on,” Trump said.

“To those countries that can’t get fuel, many of which refuse to get involved in the decapitation of Iran — we had to do it ourselves — I have a suggestion: No. 1, buy oil from the United States of America. We have plenty. We have so much,” Trump continued. “And No. 2, build up some delayed courage.”

He said those nations should have been better assisting the U.S. in its war effort already, but should now “go to the strait and just take it, protect it, use it for yourselves.”

“Iran has been essentially decimated,” he said. “The hard part is done, so it should be easy.”

Trump has consistently downplayed the threat Iran continues to pose in the region. And securing the strait — which runs along Iran’s mountainous coast, full of strategic locations from which Iranian forces can threaten ship traffic — is not an easy task, as was acknowledged by the foreign diplomats meeting to solve the issue without the U.S. on Thursday.

“We have seen Iran hijack an international shipping route to hold the global economy hostage,” said U.K. Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper.

Meanwhile, Macron, speaking in South Korea, said the U.S. “can hardly complain afterward that they are not being supported in an operation they chose to undertake alone.”

Macron also slammed Trump’s criticism of NATO, which Trump called a “paper tiger” in remarks prior to his speech Wednesday.

“If you cast doubt on your commitment every day, you erode its very substance,” Macron said.

Trump for weeks has suggested that NATO allies who declined to join the U.S. war had failed to live up to their treaty obligations, and that remaining in the alliance may not be worth it for the U.S., though he made no mention of NATO in his Wednesday evening speech.

Trump has no power to unilaterally withdraw the U.S. from NATO. That power sits with Congress — where Trump’s own allies downplayed the idea.

“We got an awful lot of people who think that NATO is a very critical, incredibly successful post-World War II alliance,” Thune said. “I think in the world today, you need allies.”

Trump’s formal speech appeared to be geared in part toward his allies at home, including his MAGA base, where frustrations with the war have mounted among the cohort of Trump supporters who’d championed his “America First” message and campaign promises to extricate the U.S. from foreign entanglements, not start new ones.

Trump said he has promised since his first foray into politics in 2015 that he would never let Iran develop a nuclear weapon. He told Americans listening that the war “is a true investment in your children, and your grandchildren’s future,” because it was making the world safer.

However, Trump exacerbated frustrations over the war’s distraction from domestic priorities with separate comments he made earlier on Wednesday at a private Easter luncheon, video of which the White House posted online and then deleted.

In those remarks, Trump said U.S. military needs had to take priority over social services and other major costs for Americans, such as child care, which maybe states could pay for by increasing taxes.

“It’s not possible for us to take care of daycare, Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things,” Trump said. “They can do it on a state basis. You can’t do it on a federal. We have to take care of one thing: military protection. We have to guard the country.”

The president’s political opponents leaped on the remarks as out of touch.

“Trump says we can pay for war in Iran but can’t afford childcare,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Fremont) wrote on X, before asserting that the billions of dollars the U.S. has spent in Iran could have been used to offset Americans’ daycare costs.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, in response, accused Democrats and the media of taking Trump’s remarks “out of context,” and claiming he was only talking about “stopping the scams” and rooting out fraud in such programs.

Democrats also took broader swipes at Trump’s framing of the war.

“Donald Trump’s month-long war with Iran has come at a big cost to taxpayers and has tragically taken the lives of 13 American service members. He dragged our country into a conflict that rattled markets, drove up gas prices, squeezed working families, and further destabilized the Middle East,” Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) wrote on X. “With his poll numbers falling to record lows, Trump is now trying to cut and run with little to show for it. He started this unauthorized war with no clear or consistent justification and the consequences of his choices won’t disappear when he walks away.”

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres on Thursday said the war was “inflicting immense human suffering and already triggering devastating economic consequences,” and called directly on the U.S. and Israel to end it. He also called on Iran to “stop attacking their neighbors” and “respect navigational rights and freedoms along critical maritime routes, including the Strait of Hormuz.”

“Conflicts do not end on their own,” Guterres said. “They end when leaders choose dialogue over destruction.”

In addition to defending NATO, Macron and other French politicians on Thursday were also reacting to Trump mocking Macron in his remarks Wednesday. He mimicked a French accent while accusing Macron of only wanting to aid the U.S. war effort once the battle had been “won” and referenced a moment last year when Brigitte Macron was caught on video pushing her husband’s face, which he said was them joking with each other.

“There is too much talk, and it’s all over the place,” Macron said, according to French newspaper Le Monde. “We all need stability, calm, a return to peace — this isn’t a show!”

Yaël Braun-Pivet, president of France’s lower house of parliament, told the French broadcaster franceinfo that the Iran war is “having consequences for the lives of millions of people, people are dying on the battlefield, and we have a president who is laughing, who is mocking others.”

Times staff writer Nabih Bulos in Beirut contributed to this report.

The House is primed to end the record-breaking Homeland Security shutdown, but Republicans are still fuming over a “s— sandwich” deal from the Senate. 

The Senate again advanced its partial Department of Homeland Security (DHS) funding bill on Thursday after being derailed by a House GOP rebellion. The frustration among House Republicans hasn’t gone anywhere, however, with lawmakers railing against House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., during a members-only call on Thursday afternoon.

The simmering anger comes after Johnson made a swift reversal, spurred by President Donald Trump, and backed Senate Majority Leader John Thune’s, R-S.D., on a two-track approach Wednesday that would pass the Senate’s partial DHS bill while funding Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) in a forthcoming party-line reconciliation package.

A senior GOP aide told Fox News Digital that House Republicans wanted to see action from their Senate counterparts on reconciliation and were frustrated with how the upper chamber handled the DHS deal, which the source said amounted to a “s— sandwich.”

BEHIND THE SCENES OF CONGRESS’ ELEVENTH-HOUR RUSH TO FUND THE DHS

House Republicans are incensed at the Senate plan, which carves out funding for ICE and CBP. Still, the bill is expected to pass with bipartisan support.

“People are mad at Johnson,” one source familiar with the call told Fox News.

But for now, House Republicans are in no hurry to return to Washington, D.C., to end the 48-day shutdown. The House is next scheduled to return on April 14. A source familiar with the call told Fox News Digital that leadership is not expected to ask members to return to Washington early to vote on the measure. 

A source told Fox News that there was “a lot of frustration” with the situation.

“Does feel like whiplash,” the source said.

“Not happy,” another person familiar with the call said. “Not willing to vote for anything that defunds law enforcement absent tangible action from Senate. Thune should call Senate back today.”

Some House Republicans argued the chamber must fund the president’s immigration and border security efforts through reconciliation before considering the Senate bill — despite the budget reconciliation process expected to take months.

This viewpoint was expressed by a broad group within the conference, not just the conservative flank, according to a source familiar with the call.

If Johnson proceeded first with the Senate bill, conservative opposition could determine how he brings the legislation to the floor. In the event he lacks conference-wide support for the upper chamber’s partial DHS bill, he could be forced to call up the Senate bill under suspension of House rules.

That strategy — requiring a two-thirds majority to pass — risks upsetting conservatives if the DHS bill relies on Democratic votes to clear the chamber.

HOUSE REPUBLICANS PASS RIVAL DHS PLAN, SETTING UP SENATE FIGHT AS SHUTDOWN SET TO BECOME LONGEST IN HISTORY

House lawmakers could have used the same fast-track process Thursday to pass the DHS bill that was done in the Senate, but opted not to. 

Thune said Thursday that he didn’t know when the House would move on the bill, but noted that when they did, Republicans would begin a sprint to complete the budget reconciliation process.

“My assumption is, at some point, hopefully they’ll move it,” Thune said. “And you know, [with] the understanding that we’re going to come behind it with the Recon bill. I mean, I think this whole — where we are is just a regrettable place.” 

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s, D-N.Y., demanded that the House GOP immediately take up the bill and accused them of now owning “the longest government shutdown in history.” 

“The deep division and dysfunction among House Republicans is needlessly extending the DHS shutdown and hurting federal workers who are missing another paycheck,” Schumer said. “The Senate did its work twice to fund key parts of DHS without funding the lawlessness of ICE and Border Patrol.”

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But Trump has already teed up a counter, and plans to pay DHS employees through an executive order.

“Because the Democrats are fully and 100% committed to the Radical Left Policy of Open Borders and Zero Immigration Enforcement (which will hopefully cost them dearly in the Midterms!), allowing Murderers and Criminals of all types into our Country, totally unchecked and unvetted, I will soon sign an order to pay ALL of the incredible employees at the Department of Homeland Security,” Trump said on Truth Social.

WASHINGTON — President Trump fired Pam Bondi as attorney general on Thursday, ending a tumultuous 14-month tenure marked by mass firings of career prosecutors, a bungled handling of Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking investigation and a string of investigations into the president’s political foes, including prominent California Democrats.

Trump announced the ouster of the former Florida attorney general in a Truth Social post, praising her as a “Great American Patriot.” It caps months of controversy surrounding Bondi’s leadership, which critics called an unprecedented assault on the independence of the nation’s top law enforcement agency.

Deputy Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche, Trump’s former personal criminal defense attorney, will serve as acting attorney general until a permanent replacement is named. Blanche, like Bondi, has been a loyal backer of Trump while at the Justice Department.

Blanche has denounced past criminal cases against Trump as baseless and politically motivated, even while championing new criminal cases against Trump’s own political opponents. He has also echoed Trump’s sharp criticisms of the federal judiciary, declaring the Justice Department is at “war” with a cadre of “rogue activist judges.”

Bondi’s dismissal quickly drew sharp reactions from California Democrats, including Reps. Robert Garcia (D-Long Beach) and Ro Khanna (D-Fremont), two lawmakers who put immense legislative pressure on Bondi to release the Epstein files and accused her of overseeing a “cover-up.”

In separate statements, Garcia and Khanna said that Bondi remains legally obligated to appear before the House Oversight Committee and testify under oath about what they called a “botched” handling of the Epstein investigation.

“Even though she was fired, she must still answer to Congress about the remaining documents, why we have no new prosecutions, and why she participated in a cover-up,” Khanna said.

News outlets pointed to multiple reasons for Trump’s decision to fire Bondi.

Some reported that it had to do with Trump’s ire over Bondi’s handling of the Epstein files. After Congress passed a law forcing their release, Bondi presided over that release — amid criticisms she was slow-walking it, withholding certain records and overly redacting others.

Garcia, the ranking Democrat on the committee, wrote on X that Bondi and Trump “may think her firing gets her out of testifying to the Oversight Committee,” which she is meant to do April 14, but they “are wrong — and we look forward to hearing from her under oath.”

However, that was in question.

“Since Pam Bondi is no longer attorney general, Chairman Comer will speak with Republican members and the Department of Justice about the status of the deposition subpoena and confer on next steps,” a committee spokeswoman said Thursday, referring to Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.).

The announcement led some to question whether Bondi’s ouster was in part an effort by the White House to keep her from testifying.

Others reported Trump was peeved at her for tipping off Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Dublin) that the Justice Department was considering releasing documents from a years-old investigation into his relationship with a suspected Chinese intelligence operative named Christine Fang, or Fang Fang.

Swalwell, a leading California gubernatorial candidate, was not the target of that investigation and cut ties with Fang in 2015 after U.S. intelligence officials briefed him and other members of Congress about Chinese efforts to infiltrate Congress. Swalwell has denied any wrongdoing in the matter, and a release of records from that investigation now would be unusual.

Still other outlets reported that a key factor in Trump’s decision to fire Bondi was her failure to secure criminal indictments and convictions against various Trump political enemies who he has accused with little evidence of wrongdoing and has publicly pushed Bondi and other Justice Department officials to prosecute.

One of those targets is Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), whom Trump accused of committing mortgage fraud by characterizing multiple homes as his primary residence in years-old mortgage documents.

Schiff has denied any wrongdoing and accused Trump of targeting him for political reasons. Justice Department officials have also declined to bring any criminal charges against Schiff to date.

It’s unclear whether that would change under new leadership. Blanche has reportedly been involved in overseeing the Schiff investigation and butted heads with former Justice official Ed Martin, who had zealously investigated Schiff before being removed.

In an X post on Thursday, Schiff cheered Bondi’s ouster but said that she was “merely a symptom of Donald Trump’s chronic allergy to our nation’s laws,” that her being tossed aside “does not mitigate the need for her to answer for her conduct” as attorney general, and that Blanche “should expect to receive the same scrutiny.”

“Pam Bondi oversaw an unprecedented weaponization of the Justice Department that brought our nation’s rule of law to its knees,” Schiff wrote. “Countless and baseless political investigations, hundreds of career law enforcement professionals purged, a massive cover-up of the Epstein files, and a wholesale effort to turn the department into a criminal law firm representing the person of the president instead of the American people.”

Sen. Alex Padilla, a Los Angeles Democrat, said “good riddance” to Bondi in a post on X.

“Bondi dodged transparency on the Epstein files, tried to go after voter rolls to undermine elections, and weaponized the Justice Department against Trump’s enemies,” Padilla said. “Americans deserve accountability, not cover-ups and corruption.”

It was unclear Thursday how long Trump may leave Blanche in the top post. As deputy attorney general, he had a hand in many of the decisions as to the day-to-day operations of the department under Bondi — including on the handling of the Epstein files.

Blanche personally interviewed Epstein’s imprisoned former girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, in a federal prison in Florida, where she was serving a 20-year term for helping Epstein sexually abuse young girls. During that interview, Maxwell said she never witnessed Trump in any “inappropriate setting.”

Blanche’s decision to personally interview Maxwell was highly unusual, given how high ranking he was in the Justice Department.

Within days of the interview, which was perceived in part as a ploy for clemency by Maxwell, she was moved to a minimum-security camp in Texas.