This is an on-site version of the White House Watch newsletter. You can read the previous edition\u00a0here<\/a>. Sign up for free here<\/a> to\u00a0get it on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Email us at\u00a0[email\u00a0protected]<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Good morning and welcome to White House Watch. In today\u2019s edition, we\u2019ll be looking at:<\/p>\n Growing alarm over the lack of an Iran endgame<\/p>\n<\/li>\n Whether the Supreme Court ruling will help tariff challenges in the Court of International Trade?<\/p>\n<\/li>\n How JD Vance is navigating the Iran war <\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n The US Senate yesterday rejected a resolution to compel Donald Trump to stop military action against Iran without congressional authorisation. <\/p>\n But the victory for the White House on Capitol Hill belied the reality of deepening concern in Washington that Trump has launched a spiralling war in the Middle East without any vision for what comes next. <\/p>\n \u201cThis is madness and we don\u2019t even know what the administration\u2019s plan is,\u201d Chuck Schumer, the top Democrat in the upper chamber of Congress, said in a speech on Wednesday. \u201cWe still don\u2019t know how long we\u2019ll be there, we still don\u2019t know what Donald Trump is trying to accomplish.\u201d <\/p>\n Speaking to the FT for this piece by Abigail Hauslohner and Lauren Fedor, Mark Warner, the Virginia Democrat and vice-chair of the Senate intelligence committee, issued a stark warning about the lack of a \u201cphase two\u201d plan.<\/p>\n \u201cI have never had, from any of the briefings, any description of what phase two would be,\u201d he said. \u201cOne of the concerns that we\u2019ve had is not having a lot of visibility into the Iranian resistance.\u201d <\/p>\n One Republican senator added: \u201cI don\u2019t know that the administration could have possibly thought it through.\u201d<\/p>\n The worry about the lack of any post-war vision for Iran comes as the administration is already facing pressure to explain why it went to war in the first place. Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, insisted that Trump acted based on a \u201cfeeling\u201d that Tehran was going to strike US interests first, and had to be pre-empted, an explanation that raised plenty of eyebrows. <\/p>\n Meanwhile, the FT\u2019s Steff Ch\u00e1vez reports that Pete Hegseth, the US defence secretary, refused to put any timeline on the war. \u201cIran cannot outlast us\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009you can say four weeks, but it could be six, it could be eight, it could be three. Ultimately, we set the pace and the tempo,\u201d Hegseth said in a briefing. Elbridge Colby, the senior Pentagon official, added during a conference yesterday that Trump was \u201cnot going to be bound by the sort of conventional wisdom parameters\u201d when it came to implementing any plan to follow the end of hostilities. <\/p>\n So far, Trump has been very cagey about identifying any Iranian leader, whether a regime moderate or an exiled opposition chief, that he would like to run the country\u2019s government once the US stops bombing. The US president has also said that some of the top candidates for the job had been killed in the US and Israeli strikes. <\/p>\n The Trump administration has said US troops on the ground in Iran are not \u201cpart of the plan\u201d for now, but when asked how Trump viewed America\u2019s role in post-conflict Iran, Leavitt on Wednesday said it was still being debated.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s something the president is actively considering and discussing with his advisers and his national security team. But, again, right now, the focus, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day is on ensuring the quick and effective success of Operation Epic Fury,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n In our Thursday newsletter, Ian Hodgson\u2019s Datapoint gives readers a visual representation of the issues driving US politics, from trade to the economy, political donations and beyond.<\/em><\/p>\n\n
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