The Latest: Trump convened his Cabinet as talks to end Iran war remain in flux

President Donald Trump convened his Cabinet Wednesday at a precarious moment for talks aimed at ending the war with Iran, saying "things are going very well" days after insisting a settlement was "largely negotiated." Republican allies may find closure of his war of choice unsatisfactory, putting off critical issues to be resolved later.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth celebrated the U.S. military's strength, even as a new analysis shows it could take three years for defense contractors to replenish the key weapons systems used in the Iran war. Trump also praised his administration's work to stamp out fraud, saying his administration is "bringing our country back to honesty."

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The president devoted a long stretch of his Cabinet meeting to a recap of the vice president's anti-fraud task force, which officials see as a winning issue ahead of midterm elections.

Vance highlighted efforts to stop fraud and misuse in social programs from Medicare and Medicaid to federal student aid. Vance said officials have found tens of billions of dollars in Medicaid and Medicare fraud, adding that "we're going to find a lot more."

Trump congratulated officials on the effort, saying it's a "tremendous amount of money."

The Trump administration "cannot and will not allow any cases of Ebola to enter the United States" amid the ongoing outbreak overseas, Rubio said in the Cabinet meeting.

Rubio said the State Department and other agencies are working "very, very hard to contain this crisis to the countries where it's currently located, particularly the Democratic Republic of the Congo."

The comments come as the Trump administration has said it is setting up a facility in Kenya where Americans exposed to Ebola can be sent for quarantine and treatment.

The secretary of state said "Cuba's in a lot of trouble" and being run by "incompetent communists."

He didn't offer any details on U.S. actions related to the island, including a possible intervention, which Trump has hinted might be coming.

But Rubio said of Cuba: "Having a failed state 90 miles from our shores is a threat to the national security of the United States."

Asked to give an update on negotiations, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he felt "there's been some progress" on discussions with Iran and said the "next few hours and days" would yield more information.

Seated at Trump's right hand, the country's chief diplomat stressed that, while the president has "other options" if talks don't yield the U.S.' desired outcome, Rubio added, "We prefer the negotiated, diplomatic route, and we're going to give it every chance to succeed."

Trump said Rubio had been "all over the place" in recent days. The secretary of state returned to the U.S. last night after a five-day trip that included stops in Sweden and India.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has written to Trump and Congress asking for more American-made air defense ammunition to counter intensifying Russian ballistic missile attacks, Kyiv said Wednesday.

Meanwhile, Russian lawmakers have backed a bill to draft bank employees to fight against Ukraine's long-range drones that strike deep inside Russia - with trained bank staff shooting down the unmanned aircraft.

As aerial attacks by both sides escalate in the more than four-year war, Anne Keast-Butler, head of U.K.'s intelligence agency GCHQ, asserted that Russian President Vladimir "Putin is going backwards on the battlefield," and new data shows "almost half a million Russian soldiers have now been killed since the conflict began."

Zelenskyy's letter, obtained by The Associated Press, says deliveries of Patriot PAC-3 missiles and other air defense systems are falling dangerously short as the Iran war diverts U.S. stocks.

The president said he'd limit speaking roles in the Cabinet meeting to Vance, Attorney General Todd Blanche, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Kelly Loeffler, small business administrator.

"And maybe, if you have some questions, we'll go to others," he told reporters.

"But everybody around here has got a lot to say," Trump said. "But we did that once, and it lasted for like four or five hours. It was a little much."

Trump's Cabinet meetings often feature top officials spending long periods of time praising him. That's led to marathon sessions, though not quite as long as he suggested.

Last summer, one such meeting exceeded three hours.

The U.S. president said at his Cabinet meeting that Social Security payments will be rescued by the crackdown on fraud by a task force led by Vice President JD Vance - a claim undermined by the numbers for the social insurance program.

"I think we have a chance to save Social Security without doing anything to it," Trump said. "We're going to make our Social Security so strong."

The government said last year that Social Security's trust funds - which cover old age and disability recipients - will be unable to pay full benefits beginning in 2034. That's because the cost of the benefits for an aging population are exceeding payroll tax revenues.

There is no sign that stopping improper payments would be sufficient to close the gap, as the government estimated they were 3.8% of Social Security expenditures in fiscal 2025.

Despite Social Security's deteriorating finances under his watch, Trump said it "would be bankrupt" if Democrats were in power.

The president suggested that Iranian leaders think upcoming U.S. elections give them leverage over Trump because of his lagging approval ratings. If so, they're flat wrong, Trump said.

"They thought they were gonna out-wait me. You know, 'We'll out-wait him. He's got the midterms," Trump said. "I don't care about the midterms."

The president alluded to his preferred Texas GOP Senate nominee, Ken Paxton, trouncing Sen. John Cornyn.

"That was the prelude to the midterms," the president insisted.

To be clear, Trump's hold over the GOP is unquestioned at this point. But that doesn't seamlessly translate to November victories - and even many Republicans are nervous that Trump's standing and GOP nominees like Paxton will drag the party down in the fall as Democrats try to flip control of Capitol Hill.

Early in his Cabinet meeting, the president was trying to downplay the war in Iran, saying, "I don't call it a war. I call it a conflict."

"Despite the conflict with Venezuela, who no longer has a navy, no longer has an air force, no longer has a lot of people that were leading the country into very bad places," Trump said, mixing up that South American country with Iran.

U.S. forces ousted Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to face drug charges. before the U.S. and Israel began airstrikes on Iran.

He later added of Iran and talks about the ongoing ceasefire, "They're negotiating on fumes," but also renewed threats to renew major U.S. attacks, "Maybe we have to go back and finish it, maybe we don't."

It's the first meeting of the president's Cabinet since Tulsi Gabbard announced that she would step down as director of national intelligence, effective June 30, due to her husband's health.

Gabbard is the fourth Cabinet member to depart during Trump's second term, all of them women.

The meeting also comes at a precarious moment for talks aimed at ending the war with Iran, just days after Trump insisted that his administration and Tehran had "largely negotiated" a settlement but with the negotiations still in a state of flux.

Alabama on Wednesday asked the Supreme Court to allow it to use a congressional map favoring Republicans in this year's elections, despite a court ruling that the redistricting plan intentionally discriminates against Black people.

The state's Republican leadership filed an emergency appeal with the justices a day after a three-judge court refused to let the state use a map it adopted three years ago that has a majority Black population in just one of its seven congressional districts.

The judges instead required Alabama to continue using a court-ordered map put in place for the 2024 elections that includes two districts where Black residents comprise a majority or close to it.

The appeal is the latest development in the fallout from last month's Supreme Court ruling that struck down a Black-majority district in Louisiana and weakened the federal Voting Rights Act. That ruling has led Republicans in several Southern states, including Alabama, to take steps to reshape voting districts with large minority populations that have elected Democrats.

The South African government and advocacy groups for its Afrikaner white minority on Wednesday rejected the Trump administration's position that there's a humanitarian emergency affecting white people in the country.

The argument served as the administration's rationale for raising the U.S. refugee cap, but only for white Afrikaners. The Trump administration said Tuesday that it will admit an additional 10,000 white South Africans into the U.S. as refugees this year, while blocking refugees from other countries.

Trump blamed the government for "recent increases in the incitement of racially motivated violence," without providing details that could be fact-checked. AfriForum, a lobbying organization for Afrikaners with more than 300,000 members, said it "does not have information" regarding the assertion of an emergency refugee situation.

Advocates say Trump's decision has stranded people fleeing war and strife around the world.

Kenya's health minister has confirmed discussions with the United States and other international partners amid growing public concern about Ebola.

Aden Duale's statement Wednesday did not confirm, however, that the talks involve the U.S. establishing Ebola treatment facility in Nairobi.

"The Government of Kenya notes ongoing discussions with the US government and other global partners regarding international collaboration on strengthening preparedness and response mechanisms for Ebola Virus Disease and other emerging public health threats," Duale said.

"Any arrangements regarding international health cooperation will be guided by Kenya's national laws, public health regulations, biosafety and biosecurity standards, and the government's responsibility to safeguard the health and welfare of Kenyans," said Duale. "Protection of Kenyan citizens, frontline health workers and communities remains paramount."

The new facility is meant to help American patients who have been exposed to Ebola avoid an hourslong medical evacuation to the U.S., an administration official said Wednesday.

The quarantine and treatment center being set up by the Departments of Defense, State and Health and Human Services will be designed for Ebola patients who need to get out of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and receive care quickly, said the official who requested anonymity to share the administration's plans.

It wasn't immediately clear where in Kenya the new facility will be built, or whether the Kenyan government has signed off on the plan.

Nine of the 10 who killed themselves were Hispanic men. One was a Chinese citizen. The deaths have revealed holes in treatment and oversight across the Immigration and Customs Enforcement system, where the detained population has spiked by 50% to 60,000 during Trump's second term, AP found.

"Something is going profoundly wrong from any kind of public health or mental health perspective," said Dr. Sanjay Basu, a University of California-San Francisco epidemiologist who co-wrote a study documenting the increase in mortality and suicide rates among ICE detainees. "This is one of those alarming, sudden increases."

But Department of Homeland Security acting assistant secretary Lauren Bis said suicide deaths in ICE custody remain "extremely rare."

Bis said detention staff follow protocols to protect detainees who show signs of self-harming and that ICE requires annual suicide prevention training. She said detainees receive comprehensive healthcare, including mental health services.

Detainees in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement are taking their own lives at a pace unprecedented in the agency's two-decade history, highlighting what experts call failures in care and oversight, according to an investigation by The Associated Press.

At least 10 detainees have died by suicide since President Donald Trump returned to office in January 2025 and ordered ICE to increase arrests and deportations, the investigation found. There have been seven such deaths since October, already the most in a fiscal year. ICE typically has recorded just one or no annual suicides.

The increased pace exceeds the growth in ICE's detainee population, where suicides account for nearly 20% of the 51 people who have died in ICE custody since January 2025.

As Trump touts his economic stewardship, The Associated Press' annual CEO compensation survey shows typical CEO compensation rose nearly 6% in 2025 to $17.7 million, as company boards rewarded top executives for bigger profits and higher stock prices, and gave them incentives to stick around and make even more money for shareholders.

The median employee at companies in the S&P 500, meanwhile, earned $89,744, reflecting a 4.7% increase year over year. While that gain outpaced the rate of inflation in 2025, many workers were still feeling pinched by the accumulation of higher prices over the past few years and had to cut corners to make ends meet and run up credit card debt to pay for everyday necessities.

The survey uses data analyzed for The AP by Equilar.

Trump's new policy requiring green card seekers to apply from their home countries instead of in the U.S. has left many immigrants and attorneys confused and concerned.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced the change Friday, affecting hundreds of thousands of applicants each year. But there are apparent exceptions. The agency indicated to The Associated Press that people who provide an "economic benefit" or "national interest" could likely remain in the United States while applying.

For more than half a century, foreign nationals with legal status - including people married to U.S. citizens, holders of work and student visas, and refugees and political asylum-seekers, among others - have been able to remain with their families and at their jobs while completing the process for permanent residency. That has suddenly changed as the Republican administration pivots to targeting legal pathways after focusing mostly on migrants in the U.S. illegally.

An analysis of stockpiles of three key weapons systems used heavily in the Iran war is adding to concerns that American forces would have limited firepower in any future conflict with China.

Tomahawk cruise missiles strike targets deep inside enemy territory. Patriot and THAAD interceptors defend against incoming missiles and drones.

"The depleted inventories have created a window of vulnerability for a potential Western Pacific conflict," the Center for Strategic and International Studies said in its report released Wednesday, which factors in Trump's historic defense budget proposal of $1.5 trillion for 2027. "The problem today isn't money; it's time."

China has a stated goal of being able to take Taiwan by force if necessary by 2027, and Chinese President Xi Jinping warned this month that if Washington mishandles its relations with the self-governing island, it could provoke open conflict.

It's starting to look like an exodus.

Out of 535 voting members of Congress, 73 will not return to their seats next term - the most at this point in the calendar since President Barack Obama's administration, according to an Associated Press analysis of congressional turnover going back to 2013.

Some are seeking other offices. Others are retiring after decades of service. A few are departing instead of running in unfamiliar territory after an unusual flurry of redistricting. Around two-thirds of the outgoing members in both houses are Republicans.

Yet another White House construction project is underway. Crews are erecting a temporary octagon-shaped cage on the South Lawn for next month's UFC bout, timed to mark the nation's 250th anniversary - and President Donald Trump 's 80th birthday.

Online renderings depict what the completed, wire-mesh-fence-ringed fight space is expected to look like ahead of the June 14 event, ringed by a red, white and blue stage under a towering arch featuring stars and stripes patterns and two large screens carrying the action live. Thousands of temporary seats will surround the cage and stage, including ringside space for a full marching band.

"I have never seen anybody want anything so much as people want those tickets," Trump said recently. "That's gonna be something."

In a social media post, Trump congratulated Paxton on a "tremendous win" and promised that "I will do some nice, big, beautiful rallies for Ken. Texas, this will be FUN!

Trump also congratulated Cornyn "for having run a strong and powerful race but, more importantly, having had a truly great career."

In his endorsement of Paxton, Trump said Cornyn "was not supportive of me when times were tough" and that "John was very late in backing me."

But Trump said Wednesday that, "John will remain my friend for a long time to come, as we both watch Ken become a fantastic, common-sense Senator."

Joe Biden sued the Justice Department on Tuesday in an effort to block the release of audio recordings and transcripts of the former president's interview with a ghostwriter that were obtained by the special counsel who investigated his handling of classified documents.

Biden's lawyers said in a lawsuit filed in Washington's federal court that the Justice Department plans to release the files to Congress and a conservative group, the Heritage Foundation, after the department had previously argued that they were exempt from disclosure under the public records law.

Biden's lawyers argued that the disclosure would "constitute an unwarranted invasion of President Biden's privacy."

"Every American, including a sitting or former Vice President, has a right to privacy in the personal conversations he has within his own home," his attorneys wrote. "And when the U.S. Department of Justice obtains that private information through a criminal investigation, the Department bears a particular responsibility to protect it from disclosure."

The Trump administration wants all current and future federal employees to sign nondisclosure agreements, part of a continuing crackdown on leaks to the media.

A proposed notice, announced Tuesday on the Office of Personnel Management website, is expected to be officially published in the Federal Register on Wednesday, seeking comment on a draft NDA to be used by federal agencies for "both new and existing employees."

"The form is intended to document Federal employees' acknowledgment of, and agreement to comply with, current legal obligations to safeguard nonpublic, confidential, or proprietary information, created or obtained through their official duties, while expressly preserving the right to make disclosures authorized by law," the notice said.

The proposed notice seeks comment on several questions, including whether the NDA should cover only unclassified information and what appropriate actions, if any, agencies should consider for new or current employees who choose not to sign the agreement.

Trump is on a winning streak in Republican primaries, but his tightening grip on his party could make it harder to win in the November midterms, when Republicans face a broader electorate that has soured on the president's second term and the economy.

The risk is compounded, Republican operatives say, by how cavalier the billionaire president has been in addressing Americans' financial worries, which have been exacerbated by Trump's trade roller coaster and his ongoing war against Iran.

Republican strategist David Urban, a Trump ally, acknowledged the president's approach is making things harder for his party.

"It's going to be a tough fall unless things dramatically change," Urban said.

He warned that Trump cannot afford a haphazard exit from the war with Iran to resolve a conflict that has created a chokehold on global oil supplies and driven gas prices higher for Americans.

"I think the president wants to help," he said, but "you do not want to give the Iranians a win just because of the midterms."

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton won the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate on Tuesday, easily defeating four-term Sen. John Cornyn in the latest contest where Trump sought to oust an incumbent he saw as insufficiently loyal.

Trump endorsed Paxton last week, calling him a "true MAGA warrior." Paxton's victory in Tuesday's runoff makes Cornyn - who was first elected to the Senate in 2002 - the first Republican senator from Texas to lose the party's nomination for reelection.

Cheers rang through the ballroom at Paxton's election night party when the race was called, and he took the stage to supporters chanting his name. He quickly gave credit to Trump.

"When everyone in Washington told him to abandon me and abandon the people of Texas, he didn't listen," Paxton said. "President Trump is the leader of our party, and his endorsement is the most powerful force in politics."

President Donald Trump will meet with his Cabinet on Wednesday at a precarious moment for talks aimed at ending the war with Iran, just days after insisting that his administration and Tehran had "largely negotiated" a settlement but with the negotiations still in a state of flux.

As he prepares to huddle with his top aides, Trump is projecting confidence that he's closing in on a deal that will reopen the Strait of Hormuz and provide him a credible argument that Iran's nuclear capability has been diminished enough to declare victory, winding down a conflict that's been politically unpopular for Republicans.

But as things stand, Trump also risks finding closure to his war of choice comes with an unsatisfactory ending.

The emerging deal puts off many critical issues to be resolved later and has already exposed the president to fierce criticism - even from some of his own supporters - that Iran's hard-line leaders will emerge from the conflict battered but emboldened.