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(WASHINGTON) — Strikes continued across the Middle East on Tuesday amid uncertainty over the state of talks between the U.S. and Iran, after President Donald Trump touted progress on negotiations while Tehran denied any dialogue.

Just days after he insisted there was no leadership left to talk to in Iran, Trump on Monday announced the U.S. and Iran held discussions over the weekend and as a result he was postponing major attacks he’d threatened on Tehran’s energy infrastructure.

“We have had very, very strong talks,” Trump told reporters. “We’ll see where they lead. But we have … major points of agreement.”

Steve Witkoff, White House special envoy, and Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, led the talks for the U.S. side, according to Trump. Trump did not identify who the U.S. was negotiating with in Iran, but said it is not the new supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei.

Trump said a meeting would take place “soon.”

Iran, on the other hand, publicly denied any talks have taken place. Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran’s speaker of Parliament, said Trump’s claims were an attempt to influence markets suffering from Iran’s stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz.

The Trump administration is not confirming if and when in-person talks will take place between U.S. and Iranian officials in the coming days.

“These are sensitive diplomatic discussions, and the United States will not negotiate through the press. This is a fluid situation, and speculation about meetings should not be deemed as final until they are formally announced by the White House,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement provided to ABC News.

Pakistan has positioned itself as a mediator between the U.S. and Iran.

A Pakistani official familiar with the negotiations told ABC News that there are “several proposals” floating around regarding the next steps for talks and said an in-person meeting in Islamabad is on the table.

Trump on Tuesday shared to his social media platform a post from Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, who wrote on X: “Pakistan welcomes and fully supports ongoing efforts to pursue dialogue to end the WAR in the Middle East, in the interest of peace and stability in region and beyond.”

“Subject to concurrence by US and Iran, Pakistan stands ready and honoured to be the host to facilitate meaningful and conclusive talks for a comprehensive settlement of the ongoing conflict,” Sharif’s post read.

The Pakistani official said Turkey and Egypt are also helping to facilitate the talks between the U.S. and Iran.

The official said the talks would likely take place within the next five days in accordance with Trump’s social media post — suggesting military strikes on Iranian power plants were “paused” for the next five days as Tehran and Washington engage in diplomatic negotiations. The official cautioned nothing is final as of yet.

A spokesperson for the Embassy of Pakistan in Washington declined to comment. The Egypt and Turkish embassies have not responded to requests for comment.

The Turkish foreign minister said last Thursday that his country was talking to both the U.S. and Iran to understand where the two nations stand.

The State Department referred to the White House when asked if Witkoff, Kushner and Vice President JD Vance were expected to travel to Islamabad later this week to meet with Iranian officials, as Reuters has reported. Vance’s office has not responded to a request for comment.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday said he had spoken with Trump, and said Trump believes there “is an opportunity to leverage the tremendous achievements we have attained with the U.S. military to realize the war’s objectives in an agreement — an agreement that will safeguard our vital interests.”

In the meantime, Netanyahu said Israel will “continue to strike both in Iran and in Lebanon. We are crushing the missile program and the nuclear program, and continue to inflict severe blows on Hezbollah.”

President Trump earlier Monday said that Israel would be “very happy” when asked if he believed Israel would abide by a negotiated peace deal.

Meanwhile, thousands more U.S. Marines and several Navy ships are heading to the Middle East, and the Pentagon is seeking $200 billion in supplemental funding.

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(WASHINGTON) — Senators on both sides of the aisle as well as the White House seem to be increasingly optimistic that a deal to fund the Department of Homeland Security is on the horizon — as Transportation Security Administration lines grow at airports and lawmakers feel the pressure.

Republican Sen. Katie Britt, a key negotiator for the GOP, told reporters Monday evening that there was a solution on DHS funding. Her comments came after she and other GOP negotiators — Sens. Markwayne Mullin (who was later confirmed to be the DHS secretary), Lindsey Graham, Bernie Moreno and Steve Daines — met with President Donald Trump at the White House Monday.

The atmosphere on Capitol Hill appears ripe for a DHS funding deal — as the partial shutdown of the department stretches into its 39th day.

Some Senate Republicans are beginning to coalesce around a proposal to fund every agency inside DHS — except immigration enforcement and removal operations. Components of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, like Homeland Security Investigations, which handles things like human smuggling investigations, could still be funded.

Some Republicans have pushed for tackling immigration funding in separate legislation down the road — potentially in another reconciliation bill, which only requires a simple majority to pass.

“Conversations are ongoing but this deal seems to be acceptable,” a White House official said Tuesday.

As the partial shutdown drags on, ICE has money to continue its operations, following a $75 billion cash infusion over five years in the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” that Trump signed into law last summer. ICE agents continue to be paid, while their other DHS colleagues are not.

Democrats — who are blocking DHS funding and demanding ICE reforms following the shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal law enforcement in Minneapolis — still haven’t publicly agreed to anything, although they’ve been open to this piecemeal funding approach for weeks.

Democratic senators on Monday expressed sentiments that talks were trending in a positive direction. 

“Democrats and Republicans have been trying to come to some negotiation, and I’m hearing that there is a potential solution,” Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock said.

It’s not yet clear how an emerging deal factors in Trump’s demand over the weekend that Republican not make a deal with Democrats on DHS funding without also passing his voting and gender-affirming care legislation, the SAVE America Act. 

The legislation would restrict mail-in ballots, require photo ID at polling places and mandate that states obtain proof of citizenship before registering a person to vote in a federal election. Trump has tacked additional provisions onto the list of things he would like to see in the law: banning transgender women from playing in women’s sports and gender-affirming surgeries for minors.

SAVE America Act provisions could also be included in a future reconciliation bill, although nothing is set in stone, and the legislation may not meet strict budget rules to be included in a reconciliation package.

Pressure on lawmakers is mounting as lines grow at airports across the country and tens of thousands of workers, including TSA officers, go without pay. Senators continue to get paid.

ICE agents sent by Trump are now stationed at more than a dozen airports across the nation to assume some of the duties of TSA officers affected by the partial shutdown.

While these recent developments mark the most progress on a DHS funding deal in weeks, it’s still a long way from a done deal. Even if the Senate agrees on a deal and passes it, it would still need to go back to the House.

ABC News’ Michelle Stoddart contributed to this report.

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(WASHINGTON) — Public records show that President Donald Trump voted by mail in the special election occurring Tuesday for the statehouse district that includes his Mar-a-Lago estate in spite of his longstanding rhetoric against voting by mail and his efforts to push through the SAVE America Act, which includes restrictions on mail-in voting.

According to public records available on the Palm Beach County elections website, Trump voted by mail ballot in the special election for Florida’s 87th House district.

Trump has spoken critically about voting by mail for years. As recently as Monday, during remarks in Memphis, Tennessee, the president said that “mail-in voting means mail-in cheating — I call it mail-in cheating — and we got to do something about it all.”

A White House spokesperson, in response to a request for comment, said that Trump has supported “commonsense exceptions” to allow Americans to use mail-in ballots, including for “illness, disability, military, or travel,” but that he opposes universal voting by mail due to it being “highly susceptible to fraud.”

An analysis from the Brookings Institution from November 2025 found that voter fraud is rare in voting by mail.

“As everyone knows, the President is a resident of Palm Beach and participates in Florida elections, but he obviously primarily lives at the White House in Washington, D.C.,” spokesperson Olivia Wales wrote in a statement.

Trump frequently visits his Mar-a-Lago estate and was there as recently as Monday morning.

The SAVE America Act, promoted by Trump, would place some new requirements and restrictions on voting by mail.

Florida’s 87th House district special election was scheduled after Mike Caruso, who previously represented the district, was appointed to a county role. Democrats have been eyeing the district as one they could potentially flip, with an eye toward the irony of flipping the president’s home district. Trump and Republicans, meanwhile, have been promoting Republican candidate Jon Maples in an effort to keep the seat in GOP hands.

This is not the first time Trump has voted by mail while president. He voted by mail in the 2020 Florida presidential primary — after he switched his formal place of residence from New York to Florida in September 2019.

Other presidents have voted in elections in their home states while in office. Then-President Joe Biden, for instance, flew to Delaware to vote in the 2022 primaries.

ABC News’ Michelle Stoddart contributed to this report.

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(WASHINGTON) — The Supreme Court’s conservative majority on Monday appeared sympathetic to arguments by the Republican National Committee seeking to limit the counting of mail-in ballots that arrive after Election Day, even if they were postmarked on or before.

Many justices voiced concerns about a Mississippi law being challenged by the RNC for allowing tabulation of absentee ballots that arrive as late as five days after polls close. “Both sides agree there needs to be a final decision by the voter and receipt [of the ballot] — by somebody — by Election Day,” said Justice Neil Gorsuch. “I think the disagreement is receipt by whom.”

For more than a century, Congress has established the Tuesday after the first Monday in November as the day for election of members of the House, Senate, and presidential electors, in specified years.

Republicans argue that the term “election” means both “ballot submission and receipt” by state election officials. Mississippi and several voter advocacy groups defending the state law insist “election” means when voters make their “choice” by marking and submitting their ballots to a mailbox, drop box, or polling place.

“I think if you were looking at the text in isolation — day for the election — your first instinct might be in-person voting on that day, is what that text literally meant,” posited Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who sounded skeptical of the state law.

Thirty states plus D.C. have measures providing a grace period for voters, including military service members overseas, who rely on the Postal Service or other commercial letter carriers, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Justice Samuel Alito suggested that allowing each state to set its own policy for late -arriving ballots has created challenges for administering a national election. “We don’t have Election Day anymore. We have election month or we have election months,” he said, skeptically.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett raised the potentially thorny prospect of states allowing voters to recall — or, change — their ballots once mailed. “Would that be illegal?” she asked Mississippi Solicitor General Scott Stewart. He said he was unaware of any instance of that happening.

The court’s three liberal justices were largely united in support of states’ ability to develop their own voting guidelines, pushing back on claims by lawyers for the RNC and Trump administration, which has advocated for “getting rid of mail-in ballots” altogether.

“The Constitution vests the issue of elections in states, unless superseded by Congress,” said Justice Sonia Sotomayor. “If there is a policy he people who should decide this issue is not the courts.”

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson noted that, despite decades of precedent of states counting some timely-cast but late-arriving ballots, Congress has never sought to override the laws. “The idea of votes being cast and counted after an election is not new,” she said.

Justice Elena Kagan warned that the Republicans’ rationale for eliminating some mail-in ballots could also implicate early voting. “How are you not taking issue with early voting?” she asked RNC attorney Paul Clement. “You say casting and receipt [of ballots] has to be on Election Day.”

“These things have to be consummated by Election Day,” Clement replied.

“Once we go down this road,” said Kagan, “where are we going to end up?”

Most Americans, 58%, support allowing any voter to cast a ballot by mail, according to a Pew Research Center survey late last year. But there is sharp division among parties, with 83% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters favoring mail-voting with 68% of Republicans and Republican-leaning voters opposed.

In March 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that attempted to cut federal election funding to states that have mail ballot receipt grace periods, but it has largely been blocked by federal courts for now.

Trump has also been pushing Republicans in Congress to approve the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE America) Act, which would — in part — outlaw voting by mail for anyone without a legitimate excuse, such as military service, illness, or disability, making it impossible to vote in person.

In a nod to Trump and fraud concerns raised by many conservatives, Justice Kavanaugh suggested late-arriving ballots might “open up a risk of what might destabilize election results” — namely, a swing in election outcome as tardy votes are tabulated.

“Is that a real concern?” Kavanaugh asked Stewart. “Does that factor into how we think about how to resolve the scant text and the maybe conflicting or 21 evolving history here?”

“I certainly respect the perception,” replied Stewart, a Republican. “I think one thing notable in this case and I think helpful is that there has not been much of a showing about actual fraud from post-Election Day ballot receipt itself.”

Hundreds of thousands of mail-in ballots in the 2024 general election arrived after Election Day but were still legally counted that year across 22 states and territories with a post-election grace period, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commssion.

Data on which party benefitted more from those ballots is not clear, neither is the impact of any possible changes to mail ballot rules following a Court decision.

Voting rights advocates warn that an abrupt change in policy could lead to widespread rejection of ballots that were properly cast by well-intended voters but experienced unintended delivery delays by the Postal Service or other circumstances.

Republicans insist there is ample time to educate the public on timely submission of mail-in ballots ahead of the November vote and that limiting late-arriving ballots could bolster election integrity.

A decision from the high court is expected by the end of June.

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