Missy Ryan

During Donald Trump’s first term, his top advisers attempted to run a traditional process for shaping foreign policy, tapping experts from the White House’s National Security Council, debating recommendations from across the government, and steering the president away from decisions that they feared would damage America’s interests. But Trump was deeply mistrustful of the NSC, which he saw as too big, too cumbersome, and too attached to Republican orthodoxy.

Updated at 4:05 p.m. ET on June 24, 2025
At 1:08 a.m. eastern daylight time, President Donald Trump proclaimed on social media that a cease-fire between Iran and Israel was “NOW IN EFFECT,” potentially ending an intense 12 days of violence and allowing all sides to step back from a wider, more destructive regional war. “PLEASE DO NOT VIOLATE IT!” Trump wrote.
By 6:50 a.m.

By his own account, the military operation that Donald Trump mounted against Iran over the weekend was an unqualified success. Saturday’s covert raid, in which U.S. bombers dropped a series of massive, tailor-made bombs onto fortified Iranian sites, left Tehran’s nuclear capability “completely and totally obliterated,” the president proclaimed in a triumphant White House address late that night.
The reality is more complex.

The last time President Donald Trump tried to send military forces into American streets to put down civil unrest, in June 2020, Pete Hegseth was positioned outside the White House with a Kevlar helmet and riot shield.

This story was updated at 4 p.m. ET on June 5, 2025.
Things were going fine for Pete Hegseth, right up until a chance encounter with the world’s richest man. His pursuit of Donald Trump’s agenda at the Pentagon had made him a star among the president’s advisers. The former Fox News host had moved swiftly to roll back diversity initiatives in the military and to expand U.S. troops’ role in halting immigration at the southern border.