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(WASHINGTON) — After announcing the Strait of Hormuz is “completely open” and saying a deal can soon be secured with Iran, a triumphant-sounding President Donald Trump told ABC News he believes he can trust the Iranians.

“I think they’ve had it,” Trump said in a phone interview on Friday. “I think they’ve had enough. That can happen to anybody. Even people like you and I can say, ‘I’ve had enough.'”

Trump said that the United States will be working with Iran to remove their enriched uranium, what he calls “nuclear dust,” and that it will be brought to the United States.

The president said it will be done with the Iranians in a “very peaceful manner.”

Trump also told ABC News the Iranians will be receiving no money for the exchange, saying that reports of a $20 billion payment are “fake news.” 

Trump said this will all be resolved “very soon,” and that the U.S. blockade on ships coming to and from Iran will not come down until the agreement is finalized.

When asked if he thinks he can trust the Iranians to fulfill their commitments here, Trump said yes.

On his negotiating team, Trump told ABC News, “Steve [Witkoff] and Jared [Kushner] will be going out, and maybe J.D. [Vance]. Haven’t spoken to J.D. about that yet.”

The president said talks would take place in “Islamabad only. I’m not interested in going to countries that didn’t help.” Trump said a second round of talks could happen as soon as this weekend, though no formal announcement has been made.

“They want to make a deal. They want to make some money, you know. … They’re not making any money as long as I have the blockade,” Trump said.

Trump also said NATO called him, though he didn’t say specifically who, and offered to help.

“NATO called me and said, ‘Is there anything we can do?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, stay away,'” he said.

The president also spoke at length about Lebanon. On Thursday, Israel and Lebanon agreed to a 10-day ceasefire. The Israeli military action in Lebanon targeting Hezbollah, an Iran-backed militia group, had been an obstacle in talks between the U.S. and Iran.

Trump said that’s a separate peace deal, and he reiterated what he has said on his social media platform: “I am going to prohibit him [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu] from bombing Lebanon.”

When asked how, Trump said he’ll tell Netanyahu “he cannot do it.”

Regarding Lebanon, Trump said that he is going to involve the president of Syria in the final deal, and that he’s going dealing with Hezbollah.

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(WASHINGTON) — Data collected by the State Department that has not previously been made public indicates that the number of people receiving treatment through the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) has remained steady despite dramatic cuts to foreign aid funding under the Trump administration, according to an internal department memo sent to Secretary of State Marco Rubio and seen exclusively by ABC News. 

The memo, which is marked sensitive but unclassified, says that even though overall spending on the initiative fell by roughly 30%, 20.6 million people living with HIV in more than 50 countries received anti-retroviral treatment through U.S. government programs during the 2025 fiscal year — the same number government data shows were receiving the therapy in 2024. 

However, the memo did not provide information on the number of individuals who had received testing and counseling services through PEPFAR, which was 84.1 million in 2024. Global health experts estimate that figure could have fallen by more than 15 million in 2025, due in part to an interruption to some testing programs during the Trump administration’s freeze on most foreign aid in early 2025. 

But Jeremy Lewin, the State Department’s senior official for foreign and security assistance, reports that the data collected in 2025 shows progress towards other Trump administration goals, including ending mother-to-child transmission of HIV. 

Lewin wrote to Rubio that the number of pregnant and breastfeeding mothers who began pre-exposure prophylaxis through PEPFAR more than doubled. He said it climbed from 43,000 in 2024 to 103,000 in 2025, ” showing early progress on any early focus area of yours and President Trump’s.” 

Additionally, Lewin said the 2025 data demonstrates “an important shift toward country self-reliance,” indicating that treatment programs for 3 million people with HIV/AIDS were now being managed by national governments rather than organizations working on behalf of PEPFAR. 

Lewin said the department expected to see “further progress” toward country self-reliance as it further shifts toward its new global health strategy based on bilateral agreements that mandate a level of co-investment from participating nations. 

In a letter outlining the plan in September 2025, Rubio said that the U.S. would enter pacts with 71 countries by the end of the year and establish detailed implementation plans with those nations by the end of March 2026 — a timeline the administration has fallen behind. 

In his memo, Lewin said that as of April 7, the U.S had now “signed 30 compacts with nearly $20.6 billion dollars in both U.S. and partner co-investment commitments,” adding that the current data “does not yet show the impact of these historic deals.”

The Bureau of Global Health Security and Diplomacy will confidentially brief members of Congress on the 2025 PEPFAR data before releasing it to the public on Friday, according to the memo.

Since it was launched by former President George W. Bush in 2003, PEPFAR has saved 25 million lives globally, supported 7 million orphans and vulnerable children, and enabled 5.5 million babies to be born HIV-free, according to the State Department. It’s credited as the largest commitment by any country to fight a single disease in history.

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(WASHINGTON) — In the dead of night at 2:09 a.m. on Friday, the House passed a bill to extend FISA through April 30 by unanimous consent, after Republicans tanked procedural votes on the controversial warrantless surveillance law. 

The short-term extension buys GOP leaders more time to continue negotiations amid Republican infighting over the program that was set to expire on Monday.

The program allows the federal government to collect communications of foreigners abroad without a warrant, including when those people are interacting with Americans. 

According to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the U.S. government believes it’s a vital tool for protecting the country against “hostile foreign adversaries, including terrorists, proliferators, and spies, and to inform cybersecurity efforts.”

The Senate approved a 10-day extension of FISA by voice vote Friday morning, giving Congress more time to negotiate reforms on the bill. 

President Donald Trump has urged Republicans to back the measure and hosted a group of hardliners at the White House Tuesday night to find a path forward as the law is set to expire on Monday. 

“I am asking Republicans to UNIFY, and vote together on the test vote to bring a clean Bill to the floor. We need to stick together when this Bill comes before the House Rules Committee today to keep it CLEAN!” Trump wrote on social media on Wednesday.

“Our Military Patriots desperately need FISA 702, and it is one of the reasons we have had such tremendous SUCCESS on the battlefield,” Trump added. “It has already prevented MANY such Attacks, and it is very important that it remain in full force and effect.”

Despite opposition from some GOP hardliners, House Speaker Mike Johnson was this week still trying to determine a path forward to muscle through an 18-month clean extension of the program.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters Friday that Congress can no longer afford to “go dark” on the issue, amid the pushback from some Democrats and hardline Republicans. 

“We can’t wait around for long,” he said. “We’ve got to pivot and figure out what can pass.”

CIA Director John Ratcliffe attended the House Republican closed-door conference meeting on Wednesday and also advocated for a clean extension of the program. 

Some Republicans, who oppose a clean extension of the surveillance tool and demand reforms like a warrant requirement, were not convinced to change their position following the meeting. 

 

Freedom Caucus Chairman Andy Harris of Maryland said “no” when asked if progress was made on FISA during the meeting.

“They have to deal with the FISA court’s objection to the warrantless searches,” Harris said.

There has been a continued debate over Section 702 because it sometimes allows the government to collect Americans’ communications without a warrant.

“Discussions are ongoing still,” Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona said leaving.

Rep. Keith Self of Texas, who attended the White House meeting on Tuesday night, said he does not believe a clean extension will pass. 

“We’ll see … but, I don’t think the clean extension will pass,” he said.

After the meeting, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise suggested some “minor changes” could be made to the legislation to appease the holdouts but did not divulge specifics.

“FISA has been important for our country’s national security,” Scalise said. “We’ve put some important much needed reforms in place the last time it was up for reauthorization and what President Trump has asked is that now we reauthorize it with those reforms in place, and that’s what we’re working to do. So, we’re having some final conversations. Not all of our members are quite there yet.” 

Rep. Chip Roy of Texas said several Republicans “want to see further reforms” to the program. 

“We feel like we need improvements. Obviously, we want greater protections for citizens with respect to warrants,” he said. “We want to make sure that there’s greater penalties, for example, for government officials who abuse their authority and power.” 

Scalise said Ratcliffe explained to Republicans how FISA is being “used in the real world to stop bad things from happening.”

As he was leaving, Ratcliffe said the meeting “went great.”

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(WASHINGTON) — Former President Barack Obama, in a video shared exclusively with ABC News, called on Virginians to vote in favor of a redistricting measure that could give Democrats a boost in the 2026 midterms if it passes.

“By voting yes, you can push back against the Republicans trying to give themselves an unfair advantage in the midterms,” Obama said in the video shared with ABC News. “By voting yes, you can take a temporary step to level the playing field. And we’re counting on you.”

Over a million Virginians have voted early already, according to the Virginia Public Access Project, in an April 21 statewide referendum that will decide if the Democratic-controlled legislature should be allowed to redraw the state’s congressional map.

That would allow the legislature to implement a map it already advanced that would reconfigure four congressional seats to favor Democrats, which could be decisive in the midterm elections for the U.S. House of Representatives given Republicans’ current slim majority.

Democrats — including Obama, who previously starred in an advertisement for the “yes” side — have argued that it’s a necessary counterweight to mid-decade redistricting in 2025 that redrew nine seats to favor Republicans.

Republicans and other opponents of the redistricting gambit, which is also still facing a court challenge even as the election was allowed to proceed, have slammed the move as unfair to a large swath of Virginia voters. President Donald Trump received 46% of the vote in Virginia in the 2024 election.

“Virginia is a very purple state, and there’s a wide variety of voices in Virginia,” U.S. Rep. Jen Kiggans, a Republican whose district is redrawn by the proposed new map, told ABC News. “And for one political party to come in and assume that it’s their way or the highway, and to force that down Virginians’ throats — this will come back to bite them.”

The “Yes” side has fundraised and spent millions more on advertisements than the “No” side, according to campaign finance filings and an analysis by AdImpact. It’s also been bolstered by celeb power from figures such as Kerry Washington, John Legend and Pusha T.

Yet polling has still shown a close race, despite the seeming momentum behind the “Yes” efforts. A Washington Post-Schar School poll conducted in late March, after early voting had begun in the state, found that 52% of likely voters in the referendum supported the move, while 47% were opposed — a result just outside the poll’s margin of error.

Why does it appear so close? J. Miles Coleman, a political expert and analyst at the University of Virginia Center for Politics, told ABC News that could be in part because for Democrats, the stakes may not seem as high as they are for Republicans.

“For Democrats, it would be nice to have these four extra seats out of Virginia if this map gets passed,” he said. “But I just think probably something driving enthusiasm on the Republican side is that, from their point of view, this vote probably seems more existential … they lost their statewide seats last year in a drubbing. They could very well stand to lose a lot of their federal representation.”

But Obama, in the video shared with ABC News, framed the stakes as having national importance.

“By voting yes, you have the chance to do something important — not just for the Commonwealth, but for our entire country,” Obama said in the video.

(The video also serves as a way for Obama to reaffirm his support for the ballot measure, after allies of his harshly criticized mailers that used old quotes from Obama about redistricting to portray him as against the initiative.)

Some Democrats are not onboard.

Outside of an early polling site in Virginia on Thursday, Geoff Warrington, who works in tech and identified himself as a Democrat, told ABC News he had chosen to vote no because he believes it is “relatively unfair to essentially have redistricting temporarily to reallocate seats to sway an election.”

But for some Democratic “yes” voters, the referendum is a way for Democrats to be able to strike back while being locked out of power in the White House and Congress.

“I mean, the Republicans have been playing dirty, so I think the Democrats are good to play dirty,” Adan Hernandez, an engineer, told ABC News at a separate early voting site in Virginia on Thursday.

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