Iran’s Escalating Retaliation, and Takeaways From the Clintons’ Epstein Testimony

0:28I'm David Sanger. From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Tuesday, March 3rd. Here's what we're covering.

0:44As of this morning, the U.S. State Department has closed its embassies in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait after drone attacks, and it's urging Americans to immediately leave from 14 Middle East countries as Iran expands its retaliatory strikes. Explosions have been reported in several countries where there are American military bases, including Iraq and the UAE. There have also been attacks against Dubai's international airport and other infrastructure. Amazon's cloud computing business said two of its facilities in the UAE have also been hit. The attacks come as the Trump administration says it is sending more forces to the Middle East.

1:23As the president warned, an effort of this scope will include casualties. War is hell and always will be. Yesterday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegsess said the toll on U.S. forces could rise. Six U.S. service members have been killed so far. To the media outlets and political left screaming endless wars. Stop. This is not Iraq. This is not endless. Hegsess said the U.S. would continue hitting Iran, quote, surgically, and insisted this would not spiral into a long-term entanglement like other U.S. conflicts in the region. Some U.S. lawmakers have expressed skepticism about the administration's rationale for launching the operation.

2:05While the president has broad authority to respond to specific, time-sensitive threats, going to war requires congressional approval. This week, both the House and Senate are set to weigh in with votes seeking to limit Trump's power to continue to use force against Iran. Meanwhile, the Times has learned new details about the lead-up to Trump's decision to launch the attacks. The prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, had been pushing Trump for months to strike a decisive blow. The two leaders talked about it at the White House in February for hours, even about possible dates for an attack.

2:43Trump also talked about it extensively with his own inner circle of advisers, and there was not much opposition. Even Vice President J.D. Vance, a longtime skeptic of American military intervention in the Middle East, said if the U.S. was going to hit Iran, it should, quote, according to people familiar with the conversation. And while Trump sent a team to negotiate with Iran, his special envoy Steve Witkoff and his son-in-law Jared Kushner, they left the talks last week telling Trump they did not think a deal could be reached on the country's nuclear program. The next day, Trump gave the go-ahead for the strikes.

3:23Quote, Operation Epic Fury is approved. No aborts. Good luck.

3:32Now, two more updates on the Trump administration. Today, the Secretary of Homeland Security, Christy Noem, will testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee. It's the first time she'll face questions in Congress since her department launched its aggressive immigration enforcement operation in Minnesota, which resulted in widespread outrage after agents shot and killed two U.S. citizens. Democrats are expected to press Nome on that. Funding for her department lapsed more than two weeks ago, in part because Democrats have refused to pass a spending bill without new restrictions on DHS agents. Republicans, meanwhile, are pointing to the heightened risk of terrorist threats in the U.S.

4:12following the attacks on Iran and saying Democrats should relent and agree to funding. Noam will also face questions from lawmakers on the House Judiciary Committee tomorrow. And a new Times analysis of the Department of Veterans Affairs has found that the agency has cut thousands of medical positions, even as many of its facilities face a severe shortage of doctors and nurses. All we are doing is taking unfilled and unnecessary positions off the books. VA Secretary Doug Collins has previously said most of the eliminated roles had been vacant for a year or more and that they didn't need to be filled.

4:49But the Times found that more than 70 percent of the jobs did have people working in them last year or this year. The cuts include nearly 5 ,000 jobs in nursing and more than 1 ,500 positions for doctors. That's raised concerns among current and former VA employees who worry it will disrupt patient care. Collins himself has acknowledged the need for more medical providers, but the agency said it's been opening new clinics and offering more appointment times. A spokesman for the VA said the measure of its success should be how well it performs, not how many people it employs.

5:30While on that trip, did you ever witness or become aware of sexual abuse of any kind? I did not. The House Oversight Committee has released the full videos of its depositions with former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as part of its Epstein investigation. The Clintons testified last week, agreeing only after they were threatened with contempt of Congress. They had called the subpoenas to appear invalid and politically motivated. I've never been in his homes, his offices, his anything. Both repeatedly said they had no knowledge of any sex trafficking or sexual abuse by Epstein, or by his close associate, Ghislaine Maxwell, who's serving a 20-year prison sentence.

6:14Hillary Clinton was particularly exasperated with what she said was repetitive questioning. Bill Clinton, for his part, said he'd flown with Epstein a few times and described the relationship as cordial and businesslike, as opposed to being friends. I thought we had an understanding about the airplanes, that he would let me use the airplane to set up my AIDS programs around the world if I'd agreed to talk to him for an hour about economics and politics on every long leg. At one point, Bill Clinton was asked if he thought President Trump should be called to testify before the committee as well.

6:49That's for you to decide, but he did know him well. Clinton said he'd talked to Trump once about Epstein, 20-something years ago, but that nothing about Epstein's criminal behavior came up. Clinton said he remembered Trump telling him he was friends with Epstein and that they'd had a falling out over a property deal.

7:14And finally, a 76-year-old woman got a phone call recently from someone claiming they were an officer with the Department of Criminal Investigations. not a real department. He told her she needed to cooperate with his investigation into money laundering. He knew her address, the name of her late husband. He kept calling. She got scared, paranoid, and then he started asking for money. It was a scam, of course, something that's easy to say from the outside, in hindsight, and the only thing that stopped it was the woman's bank. When she went in and asked for tens of thousands of dollars, a teller flagged the branch manager, who then sat down with the woman, talked it through, and helped her call the police.

7:56As more and more of these scammers target older Americans just like this, banks and tellers are becoming the last line of defense. AARP has been offering a free video program called BankSafe that trains tellers to spot red flags and to intervene. More than 1 ,500 institutions have used the training, including the bank that the woman went to. This kind of practice reflects a shift in approach. Until recently, according to one expert who studies elder abuse, banks had put more emphasis on the autonomy of customers. Essentially, they're adults. They can make poor choices. Now, with some changes in government and industry policies, banks are taking different steps.

8:39About half of states have passed laws allowing financial institutions to deny suspicious transactions or place holds on them, which one fraud expert says can just add a helpful bit of friction, giving the potential scammy a little more time to stop and think. Those are the headlines. Today on The Daily, it is essentially the start of the midterms today. In Texas, voters are heading to the polls for a Senate primary showdown that everyone in U.S. politics is watching closely. You can listen to that in the New York Times app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Tracy Mumford. We'll be back tomorrow.