It seems President Donald Trump may have spoken too soon when he boasted about low gas prices during his State of the Union address last week. As expected, his attack on Iran appears to have disrupted the global energy market -- and Americans will be paying for it at the gas pump.

Fuel market expert Patrick De Haan, who runs the gas price tracker Gas Buddy, noted that gas prices have been "ramping up" on Monday, with the national average surpassing $3 a gallon. This is the first time since December that the national average has been that high.

By the end of the week, De Haan posted on X, the average price could be as high as $3.20 a gallon. Diesel prices will likely hit $4 a gallon.

Even before this sudden spike, gas prices weren't as low as Trump claimed during his national address. While he touted that gas prices were “now below $2.30 a gallon in most states and in some places, $1.99 a gallon," Oklahoma was the only state offering gas at $2.30 a gallon, a Guardian fact check found.

The Supreme Court on Monday blocked California from enforcing a policy that restricted schools from informing parents if their child expresses gender nonconformity or attempts to change their name or pronouns.

The ruling in Mirabelli v. Bonta, a case on the court’s emergency, or “shadow,” docket, centered on children’s expressions of gender in schools. In an unsigned opinion, the court reinstated a lower court’s ruling that would allow schools to inform parents about their child’s gender expression.

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The U.S. embassy in Riyadh was hit by two drones, resulting in a limited fire and some material damage, the kingdom’s defence ministry said in a post on X on Tuesday, citing an initial assessment.

The drone attack came amid ongoing Iranian missile and drone strikes on Gulf states that host U.S. bases, following U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran on Saturday.

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The potential for an attack from Iran, which the Trump administration has presented as part of its justification for launching a war on the country, was not aimed at the U.S. but at Israel, according to the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) shared that view of the basis for the expanding war on Monday evening, after receiving a briefing on Iran from Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

"There was no imminent threat to the United States by the Iranians. There was a threat to Israel. If we equate a threat to Israel as the equivalent of an imminent threat to the United States, then we are in uncharted territory," Warner said.

The assessment is significant for the question of who sparked the conflict, especially when the toll is spiraling and extending to deaths among civilians and American soldiers.

Rubio told reporters that Israel was about to attack Iran, which would likely respond by hitting American forces, so the U.S. launched its offensive alongside the Israelis. There was no indication that Washington attempted to prevent an Israeli strike.

Criticism of President Donald Trump's judgment about the war and the role of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a longtime proponent of attacking Iran, has already reached significant levels.

It is notable and rare for centrist figures like Warner to highlight Israel's responsibility and suggest its interests and security concerns diverged from those of the U.S.

President Donald Trump said he will attend the White House Correspondents' Association dinner this year, ending his boycott of the event which began during his first term and continued into his second.

“In honor of our Nation’s 250th Birthday, and the fact that these ‘Correspondents’ now admit that I am truly one of the Greatest Presidents in the History of our Country, the G.O.A.T., according to many, it will be my Honor to accept their invitation, and work to make it the GREATEST, HOTTEST, and MOST SPECTACULAR DINNER, OF ANY KIND, EVER!” he wrote in a Truth Social post on Monday.

Trump also said the WHCA had asked him to be an honoree.

“Because the Press was extraordinarily bad to me, FAKE NEWS ALL, right from the beginning of my First Term, I boycotted the event, and never went as Honoree. However, I look forward to being with everyone this year. Hopefully, it will be something very Special,” he added.

Rep. Angie Craig (D-Minn.) said she now regrets voting for the Laken Riley Act, a law signed by President Donald Trump in Jan. 2025 that requires Immigration and Customs Enforcement to detain undocumented immigrants accused of certain crimes, even if they haven’t been convicted.

In a Monday opinion piece in The Minnesota Star Tribune, Craig, who is running for Senate, said she’s been “reflecting on the past few years of immigration debate” as the Trump administration winds down its months of sweeping raids in Minnesota that have brutalized immigrants, terrified children and left two Americans -- Renee Good and Alex Pretti -- dead.

Part of that reflection, she said, was whether “I made the right call” in backing the bill, which was named for a University of Georgia nursing student who was killed by an undocumented immigrant.

It has “become clear that supporting any bill that gives ICE new authority in this administration was the wrong decision,” Craig wrote. “And I regret my vote.”

Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan (D), who is running against Craig for the Senate seat, has been condemning Craig for months over her support for the Laken Riley Act. In a statement, Flanagan criticized Craig for waiting more than a year to have a change of heart about her vote.

“Angie Craig was the only Minnesota Democrat to vote with Donald Trump to empower ICE and stood by that vote for over a year,” Flanagan said in a statement. “No amount of regret can reunite families, save children from indefinite detention, or make our communities whole again.”

Flanagan's campaign noted that Craig hasn’t said whether she also regrets her vote last June to express “gratitude” for ICE, making her the only Democrat in the Minnesota congressional delegation to support the resolution. That vote came at a time when ICE was raiding Los Angeles neighborhoods, arresting dozens of people and spurring large anti-ICE demonstrations.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) echoed Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s key points after meeting with him and other members of Congress for an Iran briefing on Monday, suggesting that the GOP is still straightening out its messaging about the attack.

Like Rubio, Johnson said that the U.S. military was anticipating an Iranian strike, and that if it had allowed Iran to strike first, administration officials would have been “hauled in here by, uh, members of Congress and asked them why in the world they waited.”

“The objective was not regime change; the objective was to take out those missiles,” Johnson said.

Two days after President Donald Trump launched an all-out bombing campaign in Iran, reportedly killing dozens of children at a girls’ elementary school in the south of the country, his wife presided over a UN Security Council meeting purportedly about helping children escape conflict.

"The U.S. stands with all of the children throughout the world. I hope soon peace will be yours,” first lady Melania Trump told members of the global delegation, without a hint of self awareness.

The meeting was titled, "Children, Technology, and Education in Conflict."

In comments relayed by Reuters, Iranian UN envoy Amir Saeid Iravani called Melania’s message “deeply shameful and hypocritical.”

The U.S. Embassy in Amman, Jordan, has been evacuated after staff were told earlier in the day to shelter in place amid fears they would be targeted.

“Out of an abundance of caution, all personnel at the U.S. Embassy have temporarily departed the Embassy compound due to a threat,” read a statement.

No reason was given, but undoubtedly the threat stems from Iran’s regional response to the Trump administration's attack.

Newly-released footage shows the extraordinary moment that an exasperated Hillary Clinton learns during her House Oversight Committee deposition that Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) had taken photos of her, in violation of the committee's own rules.

While the Clintons had initially wanted to give public testimony, they agreed to speak about their ties to Jeffrey Epstein in closed-door depositions with the committee's members last week in Chappaqua, New York.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, about to step into a meeting with members of Congress, contradicted what some of those members had been told over the weekend about President Donald Trump’s strikes on Iran.

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), one of the "Gang of Eight," said Sunday he was told that there had been no intelligence indicating Iran was just about to strike U.S. assets.

On Monday, Rubio told reporters: “There absolutely was an imminent threat, and the imminent threat was that we knew that if Iran was attacked — and we believed they would be attacked — that they would immediately come after us.”

He added that the Defense Department had assessed that “if we waited for them to hit us first after they were attacked by someone else … we would suffer more casualties and more deaths.”

Rubio also echoed the president when he said that “the hardest hits" against Iran "are yet to come.”

As critics on both sides of the aisle accuse the administration of failing to fully explain why it needs to bomb Iran now, Secretary of State Marco Rubio framed the operation as one aimed solely at crippling the Iranian ballistic missile program and the Iranian navy.

He pushed back when asked whether the U.S. was aiming for regime change.

“[To be] abundantly clear,” he said, “we would love for there to be an Iran that’s not governed by radical Shia clerics. ... The leadership of that country does not reflect the people of Iran, and I think that’s pretty apparent in the protests that you’ve seen."

“The objective of this mission is the destruction of their ballistic missile capabilities," Rubio said.

He continued: “That’s the objective of this mission, is to deny them the ability to use ballistic missiles to threaten their neighbors, to threaten our bases, to threaten our presence in the region, and ultimately, as a shield behind which they can do whatever they want with their nuclear weapons ambition. We were not going to let them hide behind that. And that’s why this was such a critical mission to undertake now, when they were at their weakest point, and not a year from now, when they could inflict even more damage, and perhaps already be behind that point of immunity.”

The U.S. military said Monday that as of 4 p.m. ET, six service members have been killed in action in the ongoing war with Iran. An additional 18 have been wounded.

"U.S. forces recently recovered the remains of two previously unaccounted for service members from a facility that was struck during Iran's initial attacks in the region," U.S. Central Command said in a statement.

"Major combat operations continue. The identities of the fallen are being withheld until 24 hours after next of kin notification."

The House Oversight Committee on Monday released videos of last week's depositions with Bill and Hillary Clinton about their relationship with sex predator Jeffrey Epstein.

Both the former president and former first lady denied any knowledge of Epstein's crimes. Hillary Clinton said she'd never even met Epstein, while Bill Clinton acknowledged he'd repeatedly flown on Epstein's private jet.

Though he resisted the subpoena and issued scathing statements about committee chair James Comer (R-Ky.), Bill Clinton struck a conciliatory tone at the start of the hearing.

"I did take those plane trips with him and you have a right to ask those questions," Bill Clinton said.

More details are emerging about the intelligence the U.S. used in its strike on Iran over the weekend.

"It just it was amazing that we knew everything we knew," President Donald Trump told Fox News personality Bret Baier, according to quotes he read out on the air Monday.

Trump said U.S. forces caught Iranian leaders off guard by attacking during a breakfast meeting.

"You never attack in the morning," he said, according to Baier. "Having to do with winds and sun and a lot of things."

People familiar with the strikes shared more details with The Financial Times. According to the sources, nearly every traffic camera in Tehran had been hacked for years and was transmitting images to servers in Israel. Hacked phones towers and lengthy dossiers on leaders' security guards also proved useful, according to the report.

“We knew Tehran like we know Jerusalem”, one current Israeli intelligence official told The Financial Times. “And when you know [a place] as well as you know the street you grew up on, you notice a single thing that’s out of place.”

The gunman who opened fire outside a Texas bar and killed two people in an attack that wounded 14 others was not on the radar of authorities before the attack, federal and local investigators said Monday.

Both the FBI and police in Austin said Monday that it’s too soon to identify the motive behind the mass shooting early Sunday.

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Some prominent conservatives normally allied with the Trump administration are questioning the new war on Iran.

Sean Davis, CEO of the Trump-friendly news website The Federalist, said it wasn't clear if the goal was to "free the Iranian people or degrade their nuclear capability or degrade the conventional weapons capability or eliminate their regional hegemony or to cut off their oil supply to China or to help Israel."

"The lack of any coherent message seems to suggest the lack of any coherent objective," Davis said on X.

The podcaster Matt Walsh also noted some contradictions in the administration's messaging.

"So far we’ve heard that although we killed the whole Iranian regime, this was not a regime change war. And although we obliterated their nuclear program, we had to do this because of their nuclear program," Walsh wrote. "And although Iran was not planning any attacks on the US, they also might have been, depending on who you ask."

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt responded that the goal was to end the nuclear program and generally destroy the Iranian regime's military capabilities.

"Their brutal attacks and threats will finally end under President Trump," Leavitt said. "America will win – the terrorists will be defeated."

A handful of Republicans in Congress, meanwhile, are also skeptical of the war. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) labeled it "yet another preemptive war" in the Middle East and Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) indicated he'd vote for a War Powers resolution to stop the conflict.

More surprising, Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio), who is less prone to bucking the party than Massie or Paul, suggested President Trump had wrongly dragged the U.S. into war without congressional authorization.

"Congress declares war. America is at war. Congress did not declare war," Davidson wrote. Though he did not signal he would vote for a resolution ending the war.

The Department of Justice is dropping its appeals in cases that successfully struck down President Donald Trump's executive orders punishing law firms, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal.

The law firms Susman Godrey, Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale & Dorr, Perkins Coie and Jenner & Block all won rulings striking down Trump's orders that restricted their ability to practice law as alleged punishment for DEI policies and employing individuals who were involved in prosecutions or investigations of Trump.

The United States began a war with Iran to re-obliterate Iran’s nuclear weapons program, which purportedly was originally obliterated just eight months ago.

Or maybe it’s because Iran refused to make a “deal.” Or perhaps to replace the hard-line Islamic regime with democracy and freedom. Or replace the current ruler of the hard-line Islamic regime with a different hard-line Islamic ruler.

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President Donald Trump appears to have a new injury to accompany his persistent hand bruise: a gnarly neck rash.

The breakout was on full display Monday during a Medal of Honor ceremony in the East Room of the White House, beginning just behind the president’s right ear, then following his neckline down past his collar.

HuffPost asked the White House about Trump’s apparent new condition. Read more here.

President Donald Trump interrupted an event in which he gave an update about Iran and presented Medals of Honor to discuss the “beautiful building” in which the attendees had gathered.

“See that nice drape? When that comes down right now you’ll see a very, very deep hole, but in about a year and a half from now, you’ll see a very, very beautiful building,” he said, referring to the controversial ballroom he plans to erect where the East Wing once stood.

“And there’s your entrance to it, right there,” Trump went on, gesturing to one side of the East Room. “In fact, it looks so nice, I think I’ll save money on the doors, because it can’t get more beautiful than that. I picked those drapes in my first term.”

“I always liked gold,” he added. “But I think we can save a lot of money. I just saved curtains. But, uh, and it will be, and it will be spectacular.”

The U.S. operation in Iran has led to four service member deaths so far.

Remarking on Trump's pivot to interior design, Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) wrote on X, "It's clear he can't be bothered with the safety of our troops."

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