US Is Preparing for Possible Strike on Iran in the Coming Days

Senior US officials are preparing for a possible strike on Iran in the coming days, according to people familiar with the matter. Some of the people pointed to potential plans for a weekend attack. President Donald Trump, who for years called for the US to stay out of foreign conflicts, has in recent days mused about a possible strike.
Markets, already on edge after the Fed downgraded its growth estimates for the year and projected higher inflation, turned cautious. Stocks fell in Asia and Europe, while S&P 500 futures were down 0.5%. The CEO of Shell, one of the biggest traders of oil and natural gas, warned that a potential blockage of the Strait of Hormuz, which links the Persian Gulf to the Indian Ocean, could deliver a substantial shock. 'If that artery is blocked, for whatever reason, it has a huge impact on global trade,' CEO Wael Sawan said at an industry event in Tokyo.

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President Trump says US 'may' or 'may not' strike Iran | The Excerpt On Thursday's episode of The Excerpt podcast: President Donald Trump is weighing U.S. actions amid Israel and Iran's ongoing strikes. Plus, MAGA infighting grows on the issue. And there are risks for Trump of 'regime change' in Iran: Just ask George W. Bush. USA TODAY Supreme Court Correspondent Maureen Groppe breaks down the high court's move to uphold Tennessee's ban on transgender minors using puberty blockers and hormone therapy. The Social Security crisis is coming a year earlier than we thought. Karen Read has been acquitted of murder in the death of her police officer boyfriend. The FDA approves a new twice-yearly HIV shot. USA TODAY Chief Political Correspondent Phillip M. Bailey discusses the importance of Juneteenth and how some communities are marking the day. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending an email to podcasts@ Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text. Podcasts: True crime, in-depth interviews and more USA TODAY podcasts right here Taylor Wilson: Good morning. I'm Taylor Wilson, and today is Thursday, June 19th, 2025. This is USA TODAY's The Excerpt. Today, the latest on Trump's decision-making with regards to Iran and Israel strikes. Plus what a Supreme Court decision means for youth gender-affirming care. And today is Juneteenth. ♦ As Israel-Iran strikes continue, President Donald Trump weighing US involvement said he may or may not strike the country. Some conservatives have urged Trump to support Israel more forcefully and use the American military to help destroy Iran's nuclear facilities. Drawing pushback from leading MAGA figures, including Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, Tucker Carlson, and former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon sparking increasingly growing MAGA infighting on the issue. As for what US involvement would potentially mean for those in the military, the country has some 40,000 troops stationed around the Middle East. Iran Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei responded yesterday to President Trump's call for the country to surrender. Warning that any US strike will have serious irreparable consequences. The President had this to say. President Donald Trump: Well, I don't want to get involved either, but I've been saying for 20 years, maybe longer, that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. I've been saying it for a long time. And I think they were a few weeks away from having one maybe longer, and they had to sign a document. I think they wish they signed it now. It was a fair deal. And now it's a harder thing to sign. It's a lot of water over the dam. Taylor Wilson: The decision now facing President Donald Trump on Iran over whether to try to overthrow a government seen as unfriendly to the US is one that previous commanders in chief have wrestled with in countries from Iraq to Cuba, often with catastrophic consequences. As our own Washington Bureau Chief Susan Page writes, we have a link to her piece in today's show notes. Israel struck a key Iranian nuclear site earlier today and Iran hit an Israeli hospital. You can stay with throughout the day and the week for the latest from the Middle East. ♦ The Supreme Court has upheld Tennessee's ban on gender-affirming care for minors. I spoke with USA TODAY Supreme Court Correspondent Maureen Groppe for a closer look at the decision. Hey, Maureen. Maureen Groppe: Hey. Taylor Wilson: So starting to hear just what did the justices decide and how did we get to this point? Maureen Groppe: Well, they decided that Tennessee's ban on gender-affirming care for minors does not violate the Equal Protection Clause at the 14th Amendment, which requires the government to treat people in similar situations the same. And that means that the law is subject to the lowest level of judicial review. And it passed that review. As Chief Justice John Roberts put it in the opinion, which he authored, the court is leaving it up to Tennessee's elected officials and the democratic process to decide whether the policy is a good one. That decision was in line with an appeals court decision, which had allowed the 2023 law to take effect after a district judge had ruled against it. Taylor Wilson: This week's decision came five years after the court ruled that transgender people and gay and lesbian people are protected by a landmark civil rights law barring sex discrimination in the workplace. Did that, Maureen, factor into this decision? Maureen Groppe: It did not. Roberts said that that decision hadn't gone beyond the civil rights law issue in that case, and the court didn't have to decide whether it should in this case, and that's because the majority of the court did not find that Tennessee's law treated people differently based on their sex. Instead, they said that the ban is based on the patient's age and what the treatment is being used for. Taylor Wilson: And what did we hear from the dissenting opinion? Maureen Groppe: The three liberal justices dissented. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who wrote a very lengthy dissent read part of it from the bench, and that's done in rare occasions when a justice really wants to emphasize their dissent. And she said that the court had retreated for meaningful judicial review exactly where it matters the most and had abandoned transgender children and their families to, quote, political whims. Taylor Wilson: And Maureen, who cheered this decision this week? Maureen Groppe: Well, Tennessee's Attorney General called it a landmark victory in defense of America's children. He also said the Democratic process prevailed over what he called judicial activism, meaning that the court deferred to the judgment of Tennessee's lawmakers who he said voted to protect kids from irreversible decisions that they can't yet fully understand. Taylor Wilson: All right. And how were transgender advocates reacting? Maureen Groppe: Well, they called it a painful setback, and it came at a time when transgender people are increasingly under fire in both conservative states and from the new Trump administration. But they did take some solace in the fact that the decision was not as broad as it could have been. They said that means they still have ways to fight some restrictions on medical care as well as other actions taken against transgender people. Taylor Wilson: What do medical experts say about these treatments? Maureen Groppe: This type of care that was banned in Tennessee is supported by every major medical organization in the United States, including the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Psychiatric Association. Those groups say this care is appropriate in certain circumstances and the decision about whether to use it should be left to families and their doctors. But the courts' majority, they focus more on the fact that some European countries have tightened restrictions on these treatments. Taylor Wilson: Of course, the focus here was on Tennessee, but what's the broader significance of this move from the high court beyond Tennessee? Maureen Groppe: About half the states have similar bans and this decisions means that they're more likely to be upheld if they're challenged. But transgender rights advocates say they think they can still fight some of them. Taylor Wilson: All right, Maureen Groppe covers the Supreme Court for USA TODAY. I appreciate the insight as always, Maureen. Maureen Groppe: Thanks for having me. ♦ Taylor Wilson: Social Security may run dry sooner than expected. New federal projections released yesterday show that the combined Social Security Trust funds will pay 100% of benefits until 2034 before becoming depleted. That date is one year earlier than the Social Security Administration reported a year ago. That administration faces a funding crisis in the not so distant future. Trustees say The projected shortfall in retirement benefits has risen to $25.1 trillion through 2099, up from $22.6 trillion a year ago. Retirement advocates sounded alarm at the findings. You can read more with a link in today's show notes. ♦ Massachusetts jury found Karen Read not guilty of the most serious charges and guilty on a lesser charge related to the 2022 death of her Boston police officer boyfriend John O'Keefe. The decision ends a weeks long trial that has drawn intense attention from true-crime fans across the country. The jury convicted Read of operating a vehicle under the influence but not on charges of second degree murder and leaving the scene of a collision resulting in death. Read was sentenced to one year probation. Prosecutors accused Read of backing into O'Keefe with her Lexus SUV in a drunken rage and leaving him to die in the snow after a night out drinking with friends in 2022. Her defense team claimed she was framed for the death by police who beat O'Keefe, let a dog attack him, threw him in the snow, and then purposefully botched the investigation. ♦ The Food and Drug Administration has approved Gilead's HIV prevention drug, a twice a year injectable medication that clinical trials show prevents new infections. Advocates say the long-acting medication is promising because it's more convenient than existing HIV prevention drugs that must be taken daily. Will sell for an annual price of around $28,000. The company said that price is comparable to existing HIV prevention drugs and that it will work with insurers to obtain broad coverage of the drug. ♦ Today is Juneteenth marking events that took place 160 years ago in Galveston, Texas where Union troops arrived to proclaim that more than 250,000 enslaved Black people in the state were free two and a half years after President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. I caught up with USA TODAY, Chief Political Correspondent Phillip M. Bailey, to discuss how several communities keep emancipation stories alive and what Juneteenth means this year. Well, thanks for joining me, sir Phillip M. Bailey: Taylor, how are you? Taylor Wilson: I'm well. Thanks for wrapping on Phillip from Texas to New England, Concord, Massachusetts is seen in some ways as the home of the American Revolution. But tell us about some of the efforts there to push back really on the whitewashing of American history. Phillip M. Bailey: Look, when you think of New England and the birthplace of the American Revolution, right alongside that are Black patriots, Black Americans at the founding of the country who are really calling out the contradiction of slavery, but at the same time embedded in the fight that ultimately created the United States. And I think that was important to show it in these vignettes and these different communities that we touched on and reported on. The Robbins House, which is this 544 square duplex sits in the heart of the Black community in Concord, Massachusetts. We often think of these issues as in the South. But no, in the north it was just as prevalent. And historians there gave us a look inside The Robbins House, inside there that lived the family of Caesar Robbins, who's a Black patriot and enslaved man who probably gained his freedom from fighting during the American Revolution and covering his history and how it sort of works alongside this story of African-Americans fighting for freedom in a country that had not yet recognized their humanity, not yet recognized the contradiction and the hypocrisy of having a country that calls for everyone to be equal while also still having enslaved people within the country. So connecting you to these sort of well-known names like Frederick Douglass, who does the famous, what is 4th of July to the slave? That's perhaps one of the more well-known speeches, but focusing on other sort of lesser-known figures in Black history, in American history who were calling for emancipation long before it occurred at the country's founding Taylor Wilson: Well, and in your home state of Kentucky, Phillip, I know you spoke with some rural Black Americans who also circle another date on the calendar. How do they celebrate emancipation? Phillip M. Bailey: Here in my old Kentucky home, places like Paducah, places like Hopkinsville, and even in parks going deep to Tennessee celebrate a day called the 8th of August. And that's because during the 19th century, it's not like today where you can get a hold of folks instantaneously put yourself back in the mindset and the time period of how long it took to travel from one state, one place to the other. So emancipation really came depending on the geography of where you were and when the Union soldiers got to you when you first heard that, oh, slavery has ended. 8th of August is often associated with future president Andrew Johnson, who was then a military governor for the union in Tennessee. The legend is that this is celebrated because he freed his slaves on August the eighth, 1863. Other folks you talk to will give different attribution to where it comes from, but for many Black families in Western Kentucky, the 8th of August is their Juneteenth. And long before Juneteenth became a national holiday, folks in parts of Kentucky and Tennessee and other parts of the south, they point to the 8th of August and still do as the emancipation day that they're often have more affinity towards. So you might get an earful when going to certain parts of this country when saying, oh, Juneteenth is the day of jubilation. They'll say, no, no, no, no, here it's 8th of August. So we wanted to call attention to that as well. Taylor Wilson: All right, good to know. And we're speaking now in the summer of 2025. What does Juneteenth mean across America right now in this moment? Phillip M. Bailey: Given the aggressive approach that the Trump administration has taken to diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, and not only just that, but executive orders that the President has signed, rolling back some historic civil rights executive orders, really after the Supreme Court case toppling affirmative action, for many Black Americans there is a feeling that we are going backward rather than forward. And I know always going to be some contention over those issues and debates about race in America, but particularly I think after you saw when Harriet Tubman and Jackie Robinson were taken down from some federal government websites, and even though they were later put back up for a lot of folks we spoke to for this package, Taylor, they would point to that as an example. And there's many people who are afraid of what's going to happen next. For example, with the African-American Museum in DC, there are many folks who we spoke to who conveyed not having a trust anymore, that the US government, that white Americans can be trusted with housing Black history. Many of the folks we spoke to, whether it was in Concord, whether it was in Galveston, whether it was in parts of Maryland speaking to, hey, look, this history has always belonged to us, maybe it was wrong to lend it out to others who didn't really appreciate it, who could at any moment's notice, or based upon one or two elections decide to yank that history away. And I think you're going to see more and more of a call to self-sufficiency, doing for self. I think that more conservative voice within the Black community is going to emerge much more in Trump 2.0 than even the first Trump administration. There's a lot of pessimism that US institutions, the federal government, can be trusted to house this history. Taylor Wilson: Phillip M. Bailey is USA TODAY's Chief Political Correspondent joining us here on Juneteenth. Thank you, Phillip. Phillip M. Bailey: Taylor, as always, man, be free. ♦ Taylor Wilson: Despite the fact that trade schools offer a viable path for financial independence, without the burdensome debt of college trade, schools are still often viewed as less prestigious. Steve Klein: So I think there is a bias against working in the trades, and I think that that's one of the pieces that we have to as a society address. Taylor Wilson: Steve Klein, a researcher from Education Northwest, says that there are many benefits of going to a trade school, but it's not for everybody. He sat down with my colleague, Dana Taylor, and parsed through how high school students can make the right career decision for themselves. You can find that conversation later today, beginning at 4:00 PM eastern Time, right here on The Excerpt. ♦ And thanks for listening. You can get the podcast wherever you get your audio, and if you're on a smart speaker, just ask for The Excerpt. As always, you can email us at podcasts@ I'm Taylor Wilson. I'll be back tomorrow with more of The Excerpt from USA TODAY.