Hegseth and Caine play dueling roles as key architects of Iran strike
CNN
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine took contrasting approaches to advising President Trump on whether to bomb Iran.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine approached a pair of lecterns in the Pentagon briefing room Sunday morning to detail the most significant military operation of President Donald Trump’s tenure in office. Hegseth spoke first, lavishing praise and congratulations on his boss in a made-for-television moment, a pressed American flag pocket square tucked into his lapel. He described Operation Midnight Hammer as an “overwhelming success” that “devastated the Iranian nuclear program” and “achieved destruction of capabilities” at the Fordow nuclear site. Caine, dressed in military uniform, offered sober and meticulous details and a timeline of the strikes targeting Iranian nuclear facilities. He urged patience, saying the battle damage assessment “is still pending, and it would be way too early for me to comment on what may or may not still be there.” The moment underscored their dueling approaches as Trump’s top military officials and what sources have described as a core difference between the two men. Trump, a connoisseur of stagecraft, has long heralded the importance of having top officials straight out of “central casting.” Hegseth, a former Fox News anchor, has played a visible role as the president deliberated US involvement, an opportunity that came after his first months in the job were marred by the Signal group chat scandal and upheaval among his staff. At the same time, Caine has emerged as a subtle, but trusted adviser behind the scenes. And as Trump weighed the biggest decision of his presidency, it was the qualities Caine demonstrated Sunday that he valued behind closed doors.
Repeatedly this year, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has flown to the United States to praise President Donald Trump as Israel’s greatest champion — and to quietly press him on taking more aggressive action against Israel’s enemies.
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito has a remarkable record of transforming his old dissenting opinions into the new majority view and setting the direction of the law in America.
(CNN) — One person was killed and another was left critically injured after two helicopters crashed in southern New Jersey on Sunday, officials said.
Pipe bomb suspect told FBI he targeted US political parties because they were ‘in charge,’ memo says
The man accused of placing two pipe bombs in Washington, DC, on the eve of the January 6, 2021, riot at the US Capitol told investigators after his arrest that he believed someone needed to “speak up” for people who believed the 2020 election was stolen and that he wanted to target the country’s political parties because they were “in charge,” prosecutors said Sunday.
The train’s main line only came into service in 2023, under a new program aiming to create an alternative to the Panama Canal.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky traded freezing, missile-tormented Kyiv on Sunday for the frescoed dining room at Mar-a-Lago, where he hoped to gain President Donald Trump’s sign-off on a revised 20-point peace plan to end the war in his country.
More than 30 million people are under winter weather alerts across the Midwest and Northeast early this week with another storm threatening to upend travelers’ plans on what is expected to be one of the busiest travel days this holiday season.
The night was warm and muggy over New Castle Air Force Base in Delaware, the kind of heat that clung to the metal skins of the alert fighter jets lined along the runway.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky arrives here Sunday as his frozen capital of Kyiv comes under assault by Russian missiles and drones, a deadly reminder from the war’s aggressor that its attacks would continue even amid accelerated peace talks.
A Cuban immigrant who had built a new life working at a Kentucky scrapyard died on Christmas Day from severe burns suffered in last month’s UPS cargo plane crash, raising the death toll to 15, officials said.
At least 15 people were killed and 19 injured after a passenger bus plunged into a ravine on the Inter-American Highway in western Guatemala, authorities said on Saturday.
A reform-minded mayor is taking charge of New York City just as the largest police department in the country is finding its stride in its stability, touting a drop in gun violence and homicides while its current leadership stays intact.
When patients come to Eric Frankenfeld’s chiropractic practice with insurance woes, his wife, Lisa, the office manager, tells them not to worry because she’ll work with them to keep care affordable.