More than halfway to the moon: See where Artemis II is right now

In the nearly three days since thefirst crewed lunar mission in 50 years launched, Artemis II astronauts have made it over 160,000 miles away from Earth and are closing the distance to the moon every second.

Artemis II launched on April 1 at about 6:35 p.m. ET with NASA's Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Hammock Koch, and Canadian Space Agency's Jeremy Hansen on a 10-day mission to take the crew farther into space than anyone has ever gone.

On April 4, the crew was preparing to make a lunar flyby, the next phase of the Artemis II mission that will bring the spacecraft around the moon and back to Earth. Artemis IIwon't be landing on the moon; that's planned for Artemis IV in 2028.

"We can see the Moon out of the docking hatch right now. It's a beautiful sight," Koch said, according to a NASA update at midnight on April 4.

The Space Launch System rocket Artemis II begins its journey from the Vehicle Assembly Building to Pad 39B March 19, 2026.

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Inside NASA's Artemis mission to the moon

Where is the Artemis II mission right now?

At about 9:30 a.m. on April 4, the spacecraft carrying four astronauts was about 161,700 miles away from Earth and gaining distance by the second. It was traveling at a velocity of 2,510 mph, and was about 116,600 miles away from the moon.

You can follow along on the crew's exact movements usingNASA's Artemis II tracker.

The tracker, called the "Artemis Real-time Orbit Website" (AROW), shows how far the Orion capsule is from Earth, its distance from the moon and how fast it's traveling.

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More:Artemis II astronauts among 1st to take smartphones to space

The tracker uses data collected in real time by sensors on Orion that are sent to the Mission Control Center in Houston. The website is being constantly updated, and users can see moment-by-moment updates to the space mission's position.

What are the astronauts doing on April 4?

On April 4, Orion is more than halfway on its journey to the moon, NASA said.

The crew will work on preparations for the lunar flyby, which is set for Monday, April 6. Early the morning of April 4, the astronauts were sleeping, having started a napping period at about 4 a.m. ET. The ground team will wake them up at about 12:35 p.m.

In the last day, crew members have been "exercising, practicing medical response procedures, and testing the spacecraft's emergency communications system in deep space," NASA said.

More:NASA shares 1st images of Earth from Artemis II's Orion. Take a look

On the evening ofApril 3, a planned trajectory projection burn, which would have fine-tuned Orion's velocity and trajectory, was cancelled because the trajectory was on the correct flight path, NASA said. Two more course-correction burns are still scheduled.

Preparations for the lunar flyby phase include stowing equipment in the cabin, setting up cameras and "practicing the choreography of moving in microgravity within a space about the size of two minivans," NASA said. The flyby on April 6 will be about a six-hour period when the sun, moon and Orion will be aligned so that the astronauts will be able to see about 20% of the moon's far side, which is not visible from Earth, lit by the sun. They will see features of the moon that have never been seen by unaided human eyes.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY:More than halfway to the moon: See where Artemis II is right now

byCristiano Ronaldo

in

April 04, 2026

More than halfway to the moon: See where Artemis II is right now

In the nearly three days since thefirst crewed lunar mission in 50 years launched, Artemis II astronauts have made it ove...

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Artemis II astronauts are more than halfway to the moon as they seek to break Apollo 13's record

Now more than halfway to the moon, theArtemis II astronautswere toasted by Canada on Saturday as they prepared for their historic lunar fly-around topush deeper into spacethan even the Apollo astronauts.

NASA Artemis Moonshot

Thethree Americans and one Canadianwill reach their destination Monday, photographing the mysterious lunar far side as they zoom around. It's thefirst moonbound crewin more than 53 years, picking up whereNASA's Apollo programleft off.

Artemis II was poised to set a distance record for humans, traveling more than 252,000 miles (400,000 kilometers) from Earth before hanging a U-turn behind the moon and heading home without stopping or entering lunar orbit. The record is currently held by Apollo 13.

The Canadian Space Agency celebrated the country's role in the mission, speaking from Quebec with astronaut Jeremy Hansen as he headed toward his lunar rendezvous. Hansen is the first non-U.S. citizen to fly to the moon.

"Today he is making history for Canada," said Canadian Space Agency President Lisa Campbell. "As we watch him taking this bold step into the unknown, let his journey remind us that Canada's future is written by those who dare to reach for more."

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In the live televised linkup, Hansen said he's already witnessed "extraordinary" views from NASA's Orion capsule.

Hansen, Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch are the world's first lunar astronauts since Apollo 17's crew of three in 1972. Koch and Glover are the first female and first Black astronauts to the moon, respectively.

Their nearly 10-day mission — ending with a Pacific splashdown on April 10 — is the first step in NASA's bold plans for a sustainable moon base. The space agency is aiming for a moon landing by two astronauts near the lunar south pole in 2028.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

byCristiano Ronaldo

in

April 04, 2026

Artemis II astronauts are more than halfway to the moon as they seek to break Apollo 13's record

Now more than halfway to the moon, theArtemis II astronautswere toasted by Canada on Saturday as they prepared for their ...

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Downed planes raise new perils for Trump as Tehran hunts for missing US pilot

By Phil Stewart and Enas Alashray

WASHINGTON/CAIRO, April 3 (Reuters) - Two U.S. warplanes were downed over Iran and the Gulf, Iranian and U.S. officials said on Friday, with two pilots rescued and a third still missing and being hunted by Tehran's forces.

The incidents show the risks still faced by U.S. and Israeli aircraft ‌over Iran despite assertions from U.S. President Donald Trump and his Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that their forces had total control of the skies.

The first plane, a two-seat ‌U.S. F-15E jet, was shot down by Iranian fire, officials in both countries said.

The second plane, an A-10 Warthog fighter aircraft, was hit by Iranian fire and crashed over Kuwait, with the pilot ejecting, two U.S. officials said.

Two Blackhawk ​helicopters involved in the search effort for the missing pilot were hit by Iranian fire but made it out of Iranian airspace, the two U.S. officials told Reuters.

The degree of injuries among the crew of the aircraft remained unclear. The status and whereabouts of the missing F-15E crew member was not publicly known.

Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps said it was combing an area near where the pilot's plane came down in southwestern Iran and the regional governor promised a commendation for anyone who captured or killed "forces of the hostile enemy."

Iranians, who have been pummeled by American air power for weeks, posted ‌gleeful messages celebrating the plane downings. Iran's Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer ⁠Qalibaf said on X that the U.S. and Israel's war had been "downgraded from regime change" to a hunt for their pilots.

Trump has been in the White House receiving updates on the search-and-rescue operation, a senior administration official told Reuters. The Pentagon and U.S. Central Command did not immediately respond ⁠to requests for comment.

NO SIGN OF END TO WAR

The prospect of a U.S. service person being alive and on the run inside Iran raises the stakes for Washington in a conflict with low public support and no sign of an imminent end.

Iran has officially told mediators it is not prepared to meet with U.S. officials in Islamabad in coming days and that efforts to produce a ceasefire, led by Pakistan, ​have ​reached a dead end, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.

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The U.S. and Israel opened the campaign with ​a wave of strikes that killed Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ‌on February 28. The war has killed thousands and threatened lasting damage to the global economy.

So far, 13 U.S. military service members have been killed in the conflict and more than 300 have been wounded, according to the U.S. Central Command.

Iran has rained drones and missiles down on Israel. It has also taken aim at Gulf countries allied to the U.S., which have so far held back from joining the war directly for fear of further escalation.

In a security alert on Friday, the U.S. embassy in Beirut said Iran and its aligned armed groups may target universities in Lebanon and urged U.S. citizens in the country to leave while commercial flights are still available.

Israel has been waging a parallel campaign against Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon after the ‌militant group fired at Israel in support of Iran.

TRUMP THREAT TO STRIKE BRIDGES, POWER PLANTS

On Friday, as Trump ​threatened to hit its bridges and power plants, Iran struck a power and water plant in Kuwait, underlining ​the vulnerability of Gulf states that rely heavily on desalination plants for drinking water.

On ​Thursday, Trump posted footage on social media showing dust and smoke billowing up as U.S. strikes hit the newly constructed B1 bridge between Tehran and ‌nearby Karaj, which was due to open this year, and said more ​attacks would follow.

"Our Military, the greatest and most powerful (by ​far!) anywhere in the World, hasn't even started destroying what's left in Iran. Bridges next, then Electric Power Plants!" he wrote in a subsequent post.

On Friday, a drone hit a Red Crescent relief warehouse in the Choghadak area of Iran's southern Bushehr province.

Kuwait Petroleum Corporation said its Mina al-Ahmadi refinery had been hit by drones. Other attacks ​were also reported to have been intercepted in Saudi Arabia and ‌Abu Dhabi. Missile debris landed near the Israeli port of Haifa, site of a major oil refinery.

Oil markets were closed after benchmark U.S. crude prices gained 11% ​on Thursday following a speech by Trump that offered no clear sign of an imminent end to the war.

(Reporting by Phil Stewart in Washington, Reuters bureaux; ​Writing by James Mackenzie and Sharon Singleton; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne, Bill Berkrot and David Gregorio)

byCristiano Ronaldo

in

April 04, 2026

Downed planes raise new perils for Trump as Tehran hunts for missing US pilot

By Phil Stewart and Enas Alashray WASHINGTON/CAIRO, April 3 (Reuters) - Two U.S. warplanes were downed over Ir...

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Fossils from China show complex life evolved millions of years earlier than once thought

Goblet-shaped sea jelly relatives with miniature "arms." A plump, legless creature resembling a sausage. Long, wormlike animals tipped with flat "holdfast" discs for anchoring to the seafloor.

Newfound fossils from a site in southwestern China, preserved in exquisite detail, offer a peek at a time in Earth's distant past called the Ediacaran (635 million to 542 million years ago). The discovery suggests that complex animals — perhaps even ancestors of all vertebrates — were around millions of years earlier than once thought.

A few types of creatures were previously known from the Ediacaran, but the evolution of complex animal life has long been associated with the Cambrian, a later period from 542 million to 488 million years ago when fauna diversity and complexity were booming.

During theCambrian explosion, animals with a wide range of bizarre structures and adaptations emerged. Some groups died out, but others eventually gave rise to modern animal groups such as chordates, crustaceans and mollusks. Because the Cambrian fossil record preserves so much animal diversity, scientists have long hypothesized that complex animal life didn't yet exist during the Ediacaran.

However, the fossils from China tell a different story. These boneless organisms fossilized as biofilm — they were rapidly buried and compressed between layers of rock, leaving behind two-dimensional impressions of their organic tissues. Animals' entire bodies were preserved. Feeding structures, delicate limbs and even traces of internal organs, which are typically lost during fossilization, are still visible.

For the first time, scientists have highly detailed examples of animals from the latter part of the Ediacaran. What an international team of researchers saw suggests that complex animal life arose around between 554 million and 539 million years ago — at least 4 million years before the Cambrian, they reported Thursday inthe journal Science.

"We found what's been long hoped for, which is a Cambrian-like preservation in the Ediacaran," said study coauthor Ross Anderson, an associate professor of natural history at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. "We actually start to see some of the Cambrian-like organisms appearing in the Ediacaran when you have the right kind of preservation."

A fossil trove

Researchers found the fossils at the Jiangchuan Biota fossil site in what's now China's Yunnan province. The site measures just 518 square feet (50 square meters), covering roughly the same area as a dozen king-size mattresses. Scientists from China and then the UK excavated approximately 700 fossils during multiple visits between 2022 and 2025. About 200 of these specimens represented animals, many measuring less than an inch (2.5 centimeters) long.

"I'm amazed that during so few field seasons they found that much," said Jo Wolfe, an associate of the department of organismic and evolutionary biology at Harvard University who was not involved in the new research.

Six goblet-shaped specimens resembled a type of Ediacaran animal called Haootia quadriformis, known fromfossils in Newfoundlanddating to 565 million years ago. The wormlike fossils with "holdfast" discs — 56 fossils in all — were unlike any other ancient animal. Another type of animal resembled a segmented, tentacled sea creature called Herpetogaster, which was previously known only from the Cambrian. To Wolfe, that detail stood out.

"It's a fairly unusual situation to have a mixture of Ediacaran-style and Cambrian-style organisms in a single locality," she said. "It's blurring the boundaries between what are Ediacaran and Cambrian life-forms."

The presence of a preserved, visible gut in the sausage-shaped worm was also quite a rare sight in an Ediacaran fossil, as most fossils from this period are impressions of an organism's body or movement, Wolfe added.

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Many of the fossils demonstrate bilateral symmetry, in which the right and left sides of the body mirror each other. Most modern animals possess this trait, and the fossils provide abundant evidence that it evolved before the Cambrian.

"It really is a treasure trove of bilateral fossils, something that we did not have before," Anderson said.

Perhaps the most intriguing fossils are the ones that potentially represent deuterostomes, the animal group that includes vertebrates, as well as starfish and sea urchins. Previously, the earliest known deuterostome fossils dated to the Cambrian, so this pushes back the emergence of the group to the Ediacaran.

"It shows that our vertebrate ancestors were around at this pretty early stage in animal evolution," Anderson said. "I think that's really exciting."

However, classifying extinct animals that have never been seen before based on a handful of fossilized characters can be tricky, especially when scientists have only a single fossil to work from, Wolfe noted. In the crabs that she studies, different species often share features that represent convergent evolution — when the same characters evolve independently in different lineages — which only becomes apparent through analysis of modern animals' DNA. For animal fossils that lack preserved DNA and don't resemble anything alive today, teasing out their relationships to known animal groups can be significantly harder.

"The biggest difficulty with the Ediacaran organisms is that you have to hang your interpretation on very few characters," she explained.

Much to discover

While the findings suggest that complex animals were already evolving by the end of the Ediacaran, the Cambrian explosion nonetheless still produced new and important animal phyla — the taxonomic classification below kingdom — such as mollusks and arthropods, and introduced unprecedented species diversification.

"In that sense, I still think the Cambrian is quite unique," Anderson says. Still, the fossil finds support a growing body of evidence that the evolutionary boom associated with the Cambrian had an earlier start, "perhaps stretching back into the Ediacaran."

This study is just the start of scientific investigation into these hundreds of fossils, Anderson added. Researchers will explore the conditions at Jiangchuan Biota that led to the fossils' exceptional preservation, and plenty of questions remain about the biology, habits and interactions of these animals — among whom were our earliest evolutionary ancestors.

"What were their ecologies? Where were they living? What kinds of organisms were they? I think that will inform us a lot about our own ancestry. That's something I'm quite excited about from this deposit."

Mindy Weisberger is a science writer and media producer whose work has appeared in Live Science, Scientific American and How It Works magazine. She is the author of "Rise of the Zombie Bugs: The Surprising Science of Parasitic Mind-Control" (Hopkins Press).

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byCristiano Ronaldo

in

April 04, 2026

Fossils from China show complex life evolved millions of years earlier than once thought

Goblet-shaped sea jelly relatives with miniature "arms." A plump, legless creature resembling a sausage. Long, ...

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Death toll from Afghan quake rises, including 8 members of refugee family returned from Iran

ITTEFAQ, Afghanistan (AP) — For several minutes after the earthquake struck, he could hear their screams. Then there was silence.

Afghanistan Earthquake

Mohibullah Niazi, a neighbor who helped in the rescue efforts, said Saturday that the eight people killed on the outskirts of Kabul after a5.8 magnitude earthquakestruck northern Afghanistan the previous night were a refugee family recently returned from neighboring Iran.

There was only one survivor: a boy of around 3 years old, who was injured and has been hospitalized in Kabul.

Afghanistan's deputy government spokesman Hamdullah Fitrat on Saturday increased the overall death toll from the quake to 12, with another four people injured. Fitrat said five homes were destroyed and another 33 significantly damaged, affecting 40 families in the provinces of Kabul, Panjshir, Logar, Nangarhar, Laghman and Nuristan.

The Afghanistan Disaster Management Authority put the overall death toll at nine. The reason for the discrepancy was not immediately clear.

The family near Kabul was among themillions of Afghan refugeeswho have recently returned from Iran and Pakistan, afterboth countries launched crackdownsin 2023 on foreigners — particularly Afghans — living in their countries.

They had arrived 15 days ago and were living in a tent on land next to Niazi's home. The family head, Najibullah, who was about 50 years old, "had no other shelter," Niazi said. "He was a very poor person."

'We tried our best'

The family had set their tent up next to a wall separating the plot of land from Niazi's home, which stood on higher ground, in the village of Ittefaq on the eastern outskirts of the Afghan capital.

Heavy rainsover the past several days, which have led to deadly floods in many parts of Afghanistan, had left the ground sodden and soft. When the earthquake struck, the wall collapsed on the family.

"My daughter shouted to me that a wall had fallen on them. The whole family ran, but there were so many big rocks," Niazi recounted Saturday as he stood at the scene. "We tried our best."

On Saturday morning, piles of bricks and mud were all that were left, along with blankets, cooking utensils and other personal belongings salvaged from the rubble and set into a pile.

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"For about three minutes, I could hear the voices of these people," Niazi said. "But we couldn't do anything. There were two or three of us, but this was not the work of three people."

Neighbors soon rushed to help, digging through the mud and rubble with spades and their hands. They alerted the local Taliban police checkpoint, which sent rescuers and ambulances.

The young boy, Aarash, was pulled out alive but injured, and rushed to the hospital. Health Ministry spokesperson Sharafat Zaman, who visited the boy Saturday, said he was being treated for a severe head injury.

For the rest of the family — the father and mother, four daughters aged between 12 and 23, and two sons — it was too late. The rescuers could only recover their bodies.

Niazi said he had hosted the family in his own home one night. On Friday, just half an hour before the earthquake struck, he had renewed the offer, telling the family they could spend the night in his own guest room to shelter from the cold and rain. "But they did not come with me," he said.

A string of deadly quakes

Friday night's quake had an epicenter in the Hindu Kush mountain range, about 150 kilometers (90 miles) east of the northern city of Kunduz, according to the Euro-Mediterranean Seismological Center and the U.S. Geological Survey. The area is roughly 290 kilometers (180 miles) northeast of Kabul.

Afghanistan lies in ahighly seismically activepart of the world, and quakes have caused thousands of deaths in recent years.

Last August,a 6.0 earthquakethat struck a remote, mountainous part of eastern Afghanistan killed more than 2,200 people. Most casualties were in Kunar province, where people typically live in wood and mud-brick houses along steep valleys.

In November,a 6.3 earthquakestruck Samangan province in northern Afghanistan, killing at last 27 people and injuring more than 950. It also damaged historical sites, including Afghanistan's famed Blue Mosque in the city of Mazar-e-Sharif, and the Bagh-e-Jahan Nama Palace in Khulm.

On Oct. 7, 2023,a 6.3 quakefollowed by strong aftershocks in western Afghanistan killed thousands of people.

Associated Press writer Abdul Qahar Afghan in Ittefaq, Afghanistan, contributed to this report.

byCristiano Ronaldo

in

April 04, 2026

Death toll from Afghan quake rises, including 8 members of refugee family returned from Iran

ITTEFAQ, Afghanistan (AP) — For several minutes after the earthquake struck, he could hear their screams. Then there was ...

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In A Funk? Why Experts Say Sunshine Could Be The Cure

What if your doctor's next prescription didn't come in a bottle? What if, instead, it came with sunglasses, in the form of a vacation?

According to experts, getting out into the sunshine, whether it's during spring break, a summer getaway or even a mid-winter escape, can have powerful effects on both mental and physical well-being.

So How Does It Work?

Many people immediately think of vitamin D when they think of sunshine. But Dr. Allison Edwards, family physician and medical director for the telemedicine platform Sesame, says the most important benefit actually starts in the brain.

"Sunny days, and being exposed to outdoor sun, are associated with so much positive energy, like reductions in depression, anxiety, rumination, all of those sort of negative thoughts that you can harbor when it gets kind of cold and you're holed up all winter," she said.

There's also a biological reason spending time in the sunshine feels so energizing.

(MORE:What To Pack For Vacation In Any Weather)

"The sun is so important to give us cues as to how we should go about our day," she said. "Your eyes actually have special sensors that receive sunlight in a specific way that help regulate circadian rhythms, that sort of sleep and wake cycle."

That's why waking up to sunshine can feel dramatically different than waking up in the dark. A few days in a sunny environment can help reset sleep patterns, improve energy levels and even make mornings feel easier.

For people who live in places where winter drags on, or where spring is still cloudy and cold, Edwards says planning a sunny trip can make a real difference.

"Use it as a good excuse to go somewhere warm and sunny because it will definitely boost your mood," she said. "That has been borne out in study after study."

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(MORE:Avoid Skin Whiplash After A Warm Weather Trip)

In other words, a warm-weather trip isn't indulgent. It can genuinely help reverse the emotional and physical effects of months without sunlight.

Sun Safety Still Matters

One of the biggest misconceptions, Edwards says, is that people have to sit directly in the sun for hours to get the benefits. In reality, simply being exposed to good weather for short periods of time can be enough.

That means a shaded patio, a beach umbrella or a breezy walk along the boardwalk can still deliver the mood-boosting benefits without increasing your risk ofsun damage.

(MORE:Gift Ideas For The Traveler In Your Life)

Edwards emphasizes that a "prescribed" sunny vacation doesn't mean ignoring sun safety.

"Some of the best sun protection you could get is aUV protective shirt. Get a light-colored one so it's not super hot, and a super wide-brim hat," she said.

The key idea is to enjoy the sunshine without overdoing it.

As Edwards puts it, sunshine is "important on so many levels for mood, for your sleep, for your circadian rhythm. It is so wonderful to have a sunny day. You should really lean into it."

Which is why, for some patients, a sunny vacation might be exactly what the doctor ordered.

weather.com lead editorJenn Jordanexplores how weather and climate weave through our daily lives, shape our routines and leave lasting impacts on our communities.

byCristiano Ronaldo

in

April 04, 2026

In A Funk? Why Experts Say Sunshine Could Be The Cure

What if your doctor's next prescription didn't come in a bottle? What if, instead, it came with sunglasses, in th...

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Trump weighs broader cabinet shake-up as Iran war pressure grows

By Nandita Bose, Jana Winter, Gram Slattery and Andrea Shalal

WASHINGTON, April 4 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump is considering a broader cabinet shake-up in the wake of Attorney General Pam Bondi's removal this week, as he grows increasingly frustrated with the political fallout from the war with Iran, five people familiar with internal White House discussions said.

Any potential reshuffling could serve as a reset for the White House ‌as it confronts a politically challenging stretch: The five-week-old war has driven up gas prices, dragged down Trump's approval ratings and intensified anxiety about the consequences for Republicans heading into November's midterm elections.

Some allies said his televised ‌speech to the nation on Wednesday - which one senior White House official described as an attempt to project a sense of control and confidence about the direction of the war - fell flat, adding to the sense that changes in messaging or personnel were needed.

"A shake-up to show action is not a ​bad thing, is it?" another White House official said.

Three White House officials and two other sources with knowledge of administration dynamics spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive personnel matters.

The sources did not consistently describe any single cabinet member as certain to lose their job in the near term. But multiple officials are in some degree of danger, they said.

Several of the sources said Tulsi Gabbard, Trump's director of national intelligence, and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick are among those potentially on the chopping block, after Trump ousted Bondi and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in recent weeks.

Trump has in recent months expressed displeasure with Gabbard, said one senior White House official. Another source with direct knowledge of the matter said Trump had asked allies about their thoughts on potential ‌replacements for his intelligence chief.

Some high-profile Trump allies, meanwhile, are privately pushing for the ⁠removal of Lutnick, a close personal friend of the president who has faced renewed scrutiny in recent months for his relationship with late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

New files released earlier in the year revealed that Lutnick had lunch with Epstein on his private island in the Caribbean in 2012. Lutnick has said he "barely had anything to do with" Epstein and that the lunch took place ⁠only because he was on a boat near the island.

White House spokesman Davis Ingle said Trump maintained "total confidence" in Gabbard and Lutnick.

"The President has assembled the most talented and impactful Cabinet ever, and they have collectively delivered historic victories on behalf of the American people, from Director Gabbard's role in ending the Maduro narcoterror regime to Secretary Lutnick's role securing major trade and investment deals," Ingle wrote in an email when asked for comment.

A spokesperson for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence pointed Reuters to a Thursday post by the ​White ​House on X in which White House communications director Steve Cheung is quoted as saying Trump has "total confidence" in Gabbard.

The Commerce Department did not ​immediately respond to a request for comment.

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'BONDI IS NOT THE LAST ONE'

Trump could ultimately decide, ‌however, not to make any changes to his administration's senior ranks. Several others close to Trump have said the president is reluctant to overhaul his cabinet too frequently, after recurrent staffing changes during his first term dominated headlines and created the impression of chaos at the White House.

One of the White House officials said to expect a "targeted churn," rather than a "big, dramatic reset."

Still, after his disappointing speech on Wednesday, doing nothing could be just as politically dangerous as making a significant change that, for better or for worse, would dominate news headlines, one White House official said.

Trump worked with his speechwriting team and top advisers on this week's prime-time address, one official said, after aides had urged him for weeks to speak directly to the nation about the U.S. role in Iran.

During the speech, the president declined to lay out an off-ramp for the war, which began on February 28, leaving the impression that the conflict was open-ended. And instead of offering solutions to voters' economic anxieties, he said ‌the pain would be short-lived and that Tehran was to blame.

"The speech did not accomplish what it was supposed to," the official said, ​adding that while Trump's core supporters still backed him on the war, they are broadly under economic strain.

"Voters tolerate ideological messaging, but they feel fuel ​prices immediately," the official said.

Just 36% of Americans approve of Trump's overall job performance, according to the latest Reuters/Ipsos ​survey, the lowest figure of his current term. The war with Iran is particularly unpopular, with 60% of respondents disapproving of the U.S.-Israeli decision to start the conflict.

Two of the White House ‌officials said Trump is extremely frustrated with what he perceives to be unfair media coverage of ​the war in Iran, and he has made clear to ​his team he wants more positive news accounts. He has not indicated, however, that he is interested in adjusting his own messaging strategy.

Such pressures notwithstanding, multiple cabinet members have shown remarkable staying power despite drawing negative headlines or consternation from the White House over their actions.

Some outside allies, for instance, have pushed for Lutnick's ouster since April of last year, when he rolled out a set of global tariffs that puzzled allies and experts during "Liberation Day."

Gabbard, ​a longtime critic of U.S. military interventions abroad, upset the White House as early as last ‌June, when she released a video criticizing "political elite warmongers" in the lead-up to Trump's first military action against Iran.

Still, the sources said the possibility of a shake-up had grown decidedly more serious in recent weeks. ​One senior White House source said Trump wants to make any big changes now, well ahead of the midterms.

"Let's just say, based on what I have heard, Bondi is not the last one," another ​White House official said.

(Reporting by Nandita Bose, Jana Winter, Andrea Shalal and Gram Slattery; Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Edmund Klamann)

byCristiano Ronaldo

in

April 04, 2026

Trump weighs broader cabinet shake-up as Iran war pressure grows

By Nandita Bose, Jana Winter, Gram Slattery and Andrea Shalal WASHINGTON, April 4 (Reuters) - U.S. President D...

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