The Latest: Pentagon asks Congress for roughly $80 billion to cover cost of Iran war

The Pentagon has told senators it needs roughly $80 billion, mostly to cover the cost of the U.S. war against Iran, adding to an already sizable military spending boost sought by President Donald Trump. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has been making the rounds on Capitol Hill ahead of a formal request as Iran’s president is in Pakistan to facilitate negotiations on ending the war.

Trump will visit a Mack Truck facility in a battleground district in swing state Pennsylvania Tuesday, shifting attention to the U.S. economy in his first major public event beyond the capital since he signed an interim agreement to end the Iran war.

National Guard members and U.S. Park Police have been patrolling around the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool as the Trump administration faces a self-imposed deadline to fix a botched renovation before the nation’s 250th anniversary celebration.

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The Cisco and ExxonMobil rulings, issued the same day, open U.S. courts in one case involving a foreign government while shutting the door in another. But they involved very different statutes.

The Cisco decision was the latest to rule against plaintiffs seeking to use U.S. courts as a venue to seek justice over the acts of foreign governments, especially those that took place abroad. Falun Gong members sought unsuccessfully to overcome that skepticism by arguing that a substantial portion of Cisco’s activities involving China took place in the United States.

The Cuba case hinged on whether the 1996 Helms-Burton law removes the shield from lawsuits in U.S. courts that typically cover foreign countries and state-owned businesses. The justices reversed a lower-court ruling that found that the Cuban state-owned companies are immune from lawsuits in U.S. courts.

The Supreme Court has ruled that ExxonMobil can sue Cuban state-owned companies in American courts over property on the island nation that was seized after Fidel Castro took power.

The 6-3 decision was the second in as many months in favor of U.S. owners of Cuban property confiscated by the Communist government more than 65 years ago.

The outcome in the two cases could be an additional lever for the Trump administration to exert pressure on Cuba, which is already being squeezed by a U.S. oil embargo.

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The Supreme Court on Tuesday granted tech giant Cisco’s bid to shut down a lawsuit that claimed the company’s technology was used to persecute members of the Falun Gong spiritual movement in China.

The justices ruled that American courts are the wrong forum, rejecting plaintiffs’ attempts to litigate under the 18th-century Alien Tort Statute (ATS) and the Torture Victim Protection Act (TVPA), first enacted in 1991.

An Associated Press investigation last year showed that American tech companies, to a large degree, designed and built China’s surveillance state, encouraged by both Republican and Democratic administrations, even as activists warned such tools were being used to quash dissent, persecute religious groups and target minorities. Last month, AP won the Pulitzer Prize in international reporting for its stories.

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Futures for the S&P 500 fell 1.2% before the opening bell Tuesday, while futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average retreated 0.4%. Futures for the technology-heavy Nasdaq tumbled 2.6% following a 1.3% loss Monday. The Nasdaq has suffered heavy selling for days as investors grow anxious over massive spending by artificial intelligence companies and looming interest rate hikes in the U.S., which will make it more expensive for companies to fund growth through borrowing.

Chip companies were among the biggest losers in overnight trading, with Micron and Intel both down more than 7%. Qualcomm fell 6.3%. Companies that specialize in memory and data storage were also taking a beating. Sandisk fell nearly 9% and Seagate was down 7.2% early.

And Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which owns xAI, slipped another 1% before the bell after a 16.4% tumble to start the week.

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Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi also joined the delegation in Masoud Pezeshkian’s first visit to Islamabad since the conflict started with the U.S. and Israeli attack on Iran on Feb. 28.

Iran’s talks Tuesday with officials mediating negotiations between Tehran and Washington on a permanent end to the war come as discrepancies emerge on what has been agreed to so far, and as more violence broke out in Lebanon.

Technical teams have been working on details of the deal following high-level negotiations in Switzerland Monday led by Vance and Iran’s parliamentary speaker, Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf.

Iran Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei told reporters that no visits were scheduled for the U.N. watchdog — the International Atomic Energy Agency — to examine Iranian nuclear sites bombed by the United States last year. Vance previously said the negotiations in Switzerland won an agreement for the inspectors to visit the sites.

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Following the high-level talks in Switzerland, Vice-President JD Vance had said if Iranian financial assets were unfrozen, they “would actually go to buy American soy, American corn and American wheat for the benefit of the Iranian people.”

However, Iran has no current demand for U.S. crops, and Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei said on Tuesday that Tehran’s decisions on what to import would be based on “prices and quality.”

“It is interesting that the philosophy and goal of the war, which was the destruction of the Iranian civilization and the collapse of Iran, has become enriching American farmers,” Baghaei said in Tehran.

Iran’s ambassador in Geneva, Ali Bahreini, also questioned Vance’s contention that the U.S. and Qatar would have to approve how Iran uses unfrozen funds. “Iran is the only country who decides what to do with those assets,” he told reporters.

Trump has heralded the peace talks with Iran as a win for U.S. farmers, saying that the unfreezing of sanctioned Iranian money will be tied to that country buying American-grown corn, soybeans and wheat.

“These are things that are desperately needed by Iran,” Trump posted on social media. “This is a humanitarian crisis, and I feel it is necessary to help.”

But Iran is unlikely to start buying a vast amount of U.S. farm products.

“I don’t expect that trade would be very large in the short run,” said Joseph Glauber, a research fellow emeritus at the International Food Policy Research Institute.

Glauber noted that Iran was “unlikely” to abandon its other trade partners on food for America. He said Iran’s major suppliers include Brazil, India, Turkey, the European Union, Canada, Australia and Argentina and that Trump’s demand to buy from the U.S. would “create some hard feelings with some of our competitors.”

Two more people in Missouri and Washington state have been arrested in connection with what authorities say was a planned attack targeting Trump’s UFC cage-fighting show at the White House earlier this month.

Law enforcement officials disrupted the plan a few days before the June 14 White House event, according to court documents.

William Lee Spartacus Falkner of Belfair, Washington, was arrested Friday and charged with conspiracy to commit murder, according to court documents filed Monday in the Western District of Washington. Jordan W. Rincker, 28, was arrested Sunday and charged with conspiracy to commit murder in the Western District of Missouri. A defense attorney appointed to represent Falkner did not immediately respond to an email requesting comment, and court records do not reveal if Rincker has obtained an attorney. Neither man has had the opportunity to enter a plea.

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A federal judge on Monday ruled that a recently revamped version of a federal tool central to the Trump administration’s efforts to nationalize elections can no longer be used.

U.S. District Court Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan sided with advocacy groups that argued the recent upgrades to the program, called Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, aggregated Americans’ sensitive personal data in a way that could result in voters being wrongly purged from voter rolls.

She said Congress had expressly prohibited the government from centralizing Americans’ personal identifying information and that the federal agencies that created the SAVE program “knew that the database violates those statutory protections.”

The decision is a major legal setback for Trump in his efforts to use federal agencies to encourage a nationwide crackdown on having noncitizens illegally on state voter rolls. The modified SAVE system had been a key pillar of the second election executive order the Republican president signed earlier this year. The ruling leaves its future uncertain.

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National Guard members and U.S. Park Police patrolled the deck around the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool on Monday as President Donald Trump’s administration faces a self-imposed deadline to fix a botched renovation before the nation’s 250th anniversary celebration.

The patrols came two days after Trump said authorities had made “multiple arrests” of people he insisted were responsible for damage to the peeling coating after an algae bloom occurred. The liner was installed as part of his $14 million-plus project.

The president has confirmed the problems most likely require draining the pool again for liner repairs and he promised a quick fix. Without offering substantiation, he also said vandals dumped fertilizer in the pool and slashed the coating with a box cutter.

But the timeline was not clear Monday, with the White House saying damaged areas are still being assessed. Contractors and federal workers in recent days have been using chemicals and ozone nanobubbles to combat the algae.

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Trump is going to a Mack Truck facility in a battleground district in swing state Pennsylvania Tuesday, shifting attention to the U.S. economy in his first major public event beyond the capital since he signed an interim agreement to end the Iran war.

Trump’s trip to the Allentown-area business comes as he works to try to put the conflict — and the higher gasoline prices it caused — in the rearview mirror as November midterm elections draw closer.

It’s the president’s fifth second-term visit to Pennsylvania, a key state whose support in 2016 and 2024 helped him to the White House. The Macungie, Pennsylvania, facility is in the 7th Congressional District, where incumbent Republican Rep. Ryan Mackenzie faces Democratic challenger Bob Brooks in November.

The visit comes amid rising prices that could color the verdict voters render on Trump’s stewardship in the fall. About one-third of U.S. adults approved of Trump’s approach to the economy, according to a June Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll. That’s in line with last month for Trump on the issue.

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The Pentagon has told senators it needs roughly $80 billion, mostly to cover the cost of the U.S. war against Iran, adding to what is already a sizable military spending boost being sought by President Donald Trump.

The White House Office of Management and Budget has yet to make a formal request to Congress. But Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has been making the rounds on Capitol Hill, including Monday evening. A top deputy defense secretary told senators about the Iran funding request last week, according to two people familiar with the situation but not authorized to discuss it publicly.

The Wall Street Journal first reported on the developments.

The push for billions of dollars in Iran war funding comes at a fraught political moment. Lawmakers are skeptical of the deal Trump struck with Iran to bring an end to the war, and wary of next steps. The White House has requested a remarkable $1.5 trillion for the Pentagon — a nearly 50% increase over the current fiscal year’s funding levels.

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FILE - Tucker Carlson attends a meeting with President Donald Trump and oil executives in the East Room of the White House, Jan. 9, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)

A piece of the blue coating floats among algae at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool Sunday, June 21, 2026, on the National Mall in Washington. (AP Photo/Jon Elswick

In this photo released by Pakistan Prime Minister Office, Iran's President Masoud Pezeshkian, left, shakes hands with Pakistan's Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif during a welcome ceremony in Islamabad, Pakistan, on Tuesday, June 23, 2026. (Pakistan Prime Minister Office via AP)

U.S. Vice President JD Vance before boarding Air Force Two at Emmen Military Air Base, Emmen, Switzerland, Monday, June 22, 2026, after the U.S. and Iran held high-level talks at the Lake Lucerne Summit. (Nathan Howard/Pool Photo via AP)

President Donald Trump holds up a signed executive order about quantum computing, in the Oval Office of the White House, Monday, June 22, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

President Donald Trump sits in his limousine, known as The Beast, after arriving on Marine One at Joint Base Andrews, Md., Sunday, June 21, 2026, following a trip to Camp David. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

Vice President JD Vance speaks to members of the media after the U.S. and Iran held high-level talks at the Bürgenstock Resort in Obbuergen, near Lucerne, in Switzerland, Monday, June 22, 2026. (Nathan Howard/Pool Photo via AP)

President Donald Trump waves as he arrives on Marine One at Joint Base Andrews, Md., Sunday, June 21, 2026, following a trip to Camp David. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — South Carolina voters return to the polls Tuesday to finalize the Republican nominee for governor in a runoff election that has become a bruising grudge match between two of the state's leading politicians.

President Donald Trump initially endorsed Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette over state Attorney General Alan Wilson, and neither candidate came close to securing the majority needed to win the nomination outright in the June 9 primary. But as Wilson seemed to gain momentum heading into the runoff, Trump on Friday said he was endorsing both candidates, throwing a curveball to voters looking to the president for guidance.

Trump's endorsement has been the deciding factor in many primaries this year, but not always in governor races, and his choices in Iowa and Georgia fell short this month. After casting his own ballot Tuesday in Lexington, Wilson said Trump's endorsement was “a huge thing for us to receive” but pointed toward his yearlong grassroots campaign as the foundation of his momentum into the runoff vote.

Voters for months have been inundated with television advertising, mailers and billboards in the contest, which began more than a year ago as candidates clamored for attention in South Carolina's first truly open governor's race in more than a decade. And with Trump remaining popular in the state — despite some nationwide wavering over issues including the economy — proximity to the president has been a campaign feature for all of the Republicans vying for the state's top office.

Just a week before the runoff ended, the contenders faced off in their only debate.

Because each was given time to issue a rebuttal whenever their name was mentioned, the debate’s first half-hour swiftly devolved into a ping-ponging, back-and-forth over allegations of mudslinging and taxpayer-funded salary increases. The audience provided a soundtrack of thunderous jeers and hoots.

Reporters in the debate hall at Coastal Carolina University noted that people began to leave their seats as the shouts continued — sometimes drowning out candidates' responses — with no intervention from moderators or debate organizers.

Wilson went after Evette for skipping previous debates and accused her of lying about signing legislation Gov. Henry McMaster had actually inked. Evette, meanwhile, hammered the longtime prosecutor for being a “career politician” and reminded voters Trump had backed her, not him, in the primary.

At every turn, in every ad and every mailer, Evette has reminded runoff voters that Trump selected her from the Republican field as his anointed gubernatorial contender. She's also been endorsed by McMaster, who chose Evette as his running mate in the 2018 and 2022 governor's races.

Immediately following Trump's double endorsement Friday, Wilson began boasting about it, too. Moments after Trump posted on social media about the race, Sen. Tim Scott said he was supporting Wilson, and a person familiar with Scott's thinking but not authorized to speak publicly about it said the South Carolina Republican had been making calls in support of Wilson, helping raise money and lobbying Trump to back him as well.

Wilson has also drawn backing from some of the other contenders who failed to make the runoff, including U.S. Reps. Ralph Norman and Nancy Mace, as well as state Sen. Josh Kimbrell, who ended his bid just before the primary. On Monday, Sen. Ted Cruz, another Wilson backer, came to South Carolina to stump for his bid.

Competition among Republicans for Trump’s support has seemed more intense than any other facet of the primary campaign.

Even before Evette received the president’s endorsement before the primary, she frequently featured photos and videos of herself with Trump in campaign materials. Mace and Norman also played up their support for Trump's policies and legislative priorities.

Wilson, who has been South Carolina's top prosecutor since 2011, has often mentioned the legal cases on which he's filed briefs supporting the Trump administration. He also traveled to New York City to support Trump as he faced a criminal trial over hush money payments that ended with his conviction.

Meg Kinnard can be reached at http://x.com/MegKinnardAP

South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson, from left, poses for a photo with an attendee and Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, at an ice cream social supporting his gubernatorial campaign ahead of the Republican primary runoff, Monday, June 22, 2026, in Sumter, S.C. (AP Photo/Meg Kinnard)

South Carolina Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette arrives to speak at an election night watch party after advancing to a GOP primary runoff in the governor's race on Tuesday, June 9, 2026, in Greenville, S.C. (AP Photo/Meg Kinnard)

South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson speaks to attendees at an ice cream social supporting his gubernatorial campaign ahead of the Republican primary runoff, Monday, June 22, 2026, in Sumter, S.C. (AP Photo/Meg Kinnard)