Huang, Musk, Cook Among Billionaire Delegation At Trump’s Xi Meeting

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“A delegation of billionaires, including Elon Musk and Tim Cook, joined President Trump on his trip to China to meet with President Xi Jinping. The summit, delayed from March, will address trade tensions, the war in Iran, and the future of artificial intelligence. Trump aims to strengthen relations with China and has invited Xi to “open up” China for American businesses.

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Sara DornMay 13, 2026, 03:53pm EDT

Topline

A group of billionaires—worth a combined $1.07 trillion, according to our estimates—joined President Donald Trump on his trip to China this week to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping, their first summit of Trump’s second term, which comes amid tensions over trade, the war in Iran and the future of artificial intelligence.

Tesla and SPaceX CEO Elon Musk and US President Donald Trump shake hands as they attend the men's NCAA wrestling competition at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on March 22, 2025. (Photo by BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images)

AFP via Getty Images

Key Facts

Tesla’s Elon Musk (worth $829.8 billion), Nvidia’s Jensen Huang ($195.5 billion), Blackstone’s Stephen Schwarzman ($39.9 billion), Apple’s Tim Cook($2.9 billion), General Electric’s Larry Culp ($1.8 billion) and BlackRock’s Larry Fink ($1.3 billion) are among the billionaires who traveled to Beijing with Trump.

Other high-profile CEOs joining the trip include Boeing’s Kelly Ortberg, Goldman Sachs’ David Solomon and Citigroup’s Jane Fraser, among 17 total executives attending the summit.

Trump arrived in China late Wednesday local time and will meet with Xi on Thursday morning.

Several of the executives have pending deals with China—Nvidia has been seeking approval from both Washington and Beijing to sell its advanced artificial intelligence chips to China, and while Trump approved the sale of an older model of chips, Beijing has blocked them from being purchased.

Bloomberg reported in March that Boeing was close to finalizing a 500-aircraft order for 737 Max jets to coincide with Trump’s meeting with Xi, according to unnamed sources, while Fraser told Bloomberg in November investors were showing renewed interest in China.

Trump said on Truth Social he would ask Xi to “‘open up’ China so that these brilliant people can work their magic,” referring to the executives.

What Other Executives Are In China With Trump?

Meta’s Dina Powell McCormick, Cargill’s Brian Sikes, Micron’s Sanjay Mehrotra, Qualcomm’s Cristiano Amon, Visa’s Ryan McInerney, Mastercard’s Michael Miebach, Illumina’s Jacob Thaysen and Coherent’s Jim Anderson are among the other executives invited. Cisco’s Chuck Robbins was also on the initial invite list, but the company said he was not able to attend, according to The New York Times.

Tangent

Trump called Huang and extended a last-minute invite Tuesday in the wake of reports that he was not invited, multiple outlets reported, citing unnamed sources. Huang and Musk traveled to China on Air Force One with Trump.

Key Background

Trump is set to meet with Xi on Thursday for a two-day summit that was delayed from its original date in March amid the U.S. war with Iran. The war is expected to be a prominent topic at the meeting, as China is Iran’s largest oil customer and Trump has urged China to help the U.S. reopen the Strait of Hormuz. The two sides are also considering restarting official talks about artificial intelligence, the Wall Street Journal reported last week, citing unnamed sources, as they race to establish dominance in the rapidly growing sector. Both Beijing and Trump have expressed a desire to strengthen relations and avoid any hostility, with Trump writing in April on Truth Social he expected a “big, fat, hug” from Xi. The Chinese Embassy wrote Monday on X that Xi and Trump will discuss “major issues concerning bilateral relations and world peace and development,” adding, “China and the U.S. need to expand cooperation and manage differences in the spirit of equality, respect and mutual benefit.”

 

Trump says 'I don't think about Americans' financial situation' in Iran negotiations

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President Trump stated that preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon is his sole focus in Iran negotiations, dismissing concerns about the impact on Americans’ financial situation. Despite a recent report showing inflation at a three-year high, Trump emphasized that the potential threat of a nuclear Iran outweighs economic concerns. Democrats criticized Trump’s handling of the economy, citing high inflation and gas prices.

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ABC News

President Donald Trump said Americans' financial situation was "not even a little bit" of a motivating factor for him reaching a deal to end the war in Iran, despite a new report that inflation rose for a second consecutive month and hit a three-year high.

Trump made the comment on Tuesday as he took questions from reporters as he left the White House for a high-stakes trip to China.

"Not even a little bit," the president said when asked to what extent Americans' financial situations were motivating him to make a deal with Iran, as the war stretches into its 11th week.

"The only thing that matters when I'm talking about Iran, they can't have a nuclear weapon," Trump continued. "I don't think about Americans' financial situation. I don't think about anybody. I think about one thing: we cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon. That’s all."

ABC News White House Correspondent Karen Travers pressed Trump to clarify whether he was considering the financial impact of the war on Americans. He doubled down.

"The most important thing, by far, is Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon," Trump said.

"What about the pressure on Americans and prices, right now?" ABC's Travers asked.

"Every American understands," Trump said.

He added, "They understand that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. If Iran has a nuclear weapon, the whole world would be in trouble because they happen to be crazy."

President Donald Trump speaks to the press as he departs the White House, May 12, 2026 in Washington.

Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

Democrats quickly responded to Trump's comment. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer reshared a video of Trump's comments on X and captioned his post "We can tell."

When pressed on his 2024 campaign promise to bring down inflation in light of Tuesday's report showing prices rose 3.8% in April compared to last year, Trump insisted his policies are "working incredibly."

A recent poll from ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos found about two-thirds of Americans (65%) disapproved of how Trump is handling the economy. About three-quarters of Americans disapprove of how Trump is handling the cost of living in the U.S. (76%) with just about a quarter approving (23%). Nearly as many disapprove of how he's handling inflation (72%), up from 65% who disapproved in February. 

Several of the poll's participants spoke to ABC News about the financial strain they're experiencing because of soaring gas prices.

As of Tuesday, the national average for a gallon of gas in the U.S. was $4.50, according to data from AAA, up more than $1.50 since the war began in late February.

Trump, who on Monday floated a gas tax holiday to bring some financial relief to Americans, reiterated on Tuesday his belief that prices will go back down once the conflict comes to an end.

"When it’s over, you’re going to have a massive drop in the price of oil," Trump told reporters.“

Do We Have Free Will? with Robert Sapolsky & Neil deGrasse Tyson

 

Trump gets RUDE AWAKENING as China RUINS HIS ARRIVAL!!!

 

Trump gets RUDE AWAKENING as China RUINS HIS ARRIVAL!!! 

 

This Is Getting Dangerous

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“The Supreme Court’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais allows Republican-led states to dismantle majority-minority districts, potentially disenfranchising Black voters. This decision, coupled with partisan gerrymandering, threatens American democracy by creating a system where political parties can maintain power indefinitely. To restore democracy, Democrats must win power and implement reforms like a stronger Voting Rights Act, banning partisan gerrymandering, and potentially expanding the House or moving towards proportional representation.

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May 13, 2026

Jesse Rieser for The New York Times

The immediate consequence of the Supreme Court’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais is that Republican-led states in the South can destroy their majority-minority districts and, in turn, deprive their Black residents of federal representation by politicians of their choosing.

Within days of the ruling, in fact, lawmakers in Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee and Alabama rushed to do just that, practically gloating over the opportunity to purge Democrats — most of them Black — from their congressional delegations.

“For too long, Tennessee politics has been dominated by cosmopolitan communists and race hustlers imposing their corrupt will on a deeply rural and conservative state,” Representative Andy Ogles of Tennessee wrote on X last week. “The General Assembly’s constitutional redrawing of Federal Districts affirms a foundational truth: Tennessee must be represented by Tennesseans, not socialist democrats.”

In a similar vein, Shad White, the Mississippi state auditor, also posted on X: “We’re fighting so that Bennie Thompson” — who represents the state’s 2nd District — “and Hakeem Jeffries are not in charge. We’re fighting for a country that is safe, where our taxes don’t go up, where our border is secure.”

To watch this whole spectacle is to put the lie to the idea — seen in the court’s opinion as well as among the court’s apologists — that the South has changed so much since 1965 that a strong Voting Rights Act is no longer necessary. As Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg observed in her dissent in the Supreme Court’s decision in Shelby County v. Holder — in which Chief Justice John Roberts took his first swing at the law — to look at the fruits of federal protection and conclude that this protection is outmoded amounts to “throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.”

But this, again, is the immediate consequence of the court’s ignominious decision. The main consequence, however, might be to undermine American democracy altogether and push this nation’s politics to an even more dangerous place of high partisan tension and ideological Balkanization.

In Callais, Justice Samuel Alito framed partisan gerrymandering as a legitimate state interest — that state lawmakers had the right to shape their political communities as they saw fit. A state, he writes, may “target partisan distribution of voters, a specific margin of victory for certain incumbents, or any other goal not prohibited by the Constitution.” In his view, as well as that of the rest of the Republican majority on the court, there is no underlying principle of democracy or fair play in the Constitution that would compel a state legislature not to embrace the most egregiously partisan gerrymander imaginable.

As we’ve seen in the South post-Callais, Republicans have done that very thing, under the theory that representation is a gift the political majority bestows on the minority, not a fundamental right of democracy. On top of that, they seem to treat partisan identity as an immutable quality of the state, separate from the voters.

It is not, to look back to Representative Ogles’s comments, that Tennessee voters are represented in the House and many of them happen to be Republicans, but that Tennessee is Republican. The delegation must match the supposed general will of the state, even if large parts of the voting public back the other side.

Democrats may not believe the same of the states they lead, but they have followed suit regardless. To do otherwise would be to put themselves at the mercy of the Republican Party as it uses extreme partisan gerrymandering to give itself a durable structural advantage in the House of Representatives. As my news-side colleague Nate Cohn notes, Republicans could eventually give themselves a roughly 4-point advantage in the House, meaning that Democrats would need to win the national House popular vote by at least 4 points to win a bare majority in the chamber.

The effect of this arms race is a House that looks something like the Electoral College. If you can win control of a state capitol, no matter how narrow the victory or how slim the majority, then you can immediately redraw congressional and state legislative maps to lock your party in power. Republicans will lose representation in blue states, Democrats in red ones. It is true that, in theory, a Republican lawmaker could represent a majority-Democratic city just fine. In practice, not so much; rigid partisanship does not usually select for the kind of person who might try to represent the entire community.

A system in which political parties can rewrite the rules to keep themselves in power indefinitely — a system in which, barring a tsunami of opposition, they cannot lose — is not a democracy in any meaningful sense. But that is where the United States is headed, if it’s not already there, thanks in large part to John Roberts and his majority, which has enabled the worst tendencies of their co-partisans in the Republican Party. For his part, Roberts sees his work as fundamentally apolitical. “We’re not simply part of the political process, and there’s a reason for that, and I’m not sure people grasp that as much as is appropriate,” Roberts said last week.

In this world, Congress is even less capable than it already is. Not only would we see fewer opportunities for the kind of cross-partisan and ideological cooperation that is the engine of the most practical work of the House and Senate, but specific communities will lose their voice in Congress. In a post-Callais world, who will stand up for Americans living in the Black Belt — named so for the soil, by the way — of Alabama or the Gulf Coast of states like Mississippi and Louisiana? What about the cities of Nashville and Memphis in Tennessee? Or on the other side of the partisan divide, the rural communities of New York and California or of Maryland and Virginia?

It is also important to consider the way this state of affairs might heighten the sense that red states and blue states are fundamentally different — separate countries, really — forced together in a crumbling marriage.

In 1820, Thomas Jefferson observed that “a geographical line, coinciding with a marked principle, moral and political, once conceived and held up to the angry passions of men, will never be obliterated; and every new irritation will mark it deeper and deeper.” He was writing about the Missouri Compromise and the mounting sectional conflict over the expansion of slavery. But it is not hard to see in our moment the outline of a firm and intractable partisan divide, the kind of line that breeds animosity and leaves the nation pregnant with the danger of disunion.

What is to be done? To those who hope to restore — or perhaps we should say bring — a measure of democracy to American politics, the first truth to realize is that you fight in the system you have, not the one you might want to have. This makes the Democratic Party the only plausible vehicle for serious reform, given the state of the Republican Party and the absence of a viable third-party movement.

And Democrats must do everything they can to win power, including retaliatory gerrymandering, so that they can actually build a more equitable political system and trim the authority of institutions, like the Supreme Court, that stand in the way of greater democratization.

Fighting in the system as it exists also means that, if they manage to win majorities in the House and, especially, the Senate, Democrats must abolish both the filibuster in the Senate and any other procedural obstacle to a more majoritarian Congress.

Ultimately, political reform will take the shape of a partisan project — a specific, party-driven gambit and not a broad bipartisan compromise. This could be passage of a stronger, revitalized Voting Rights Act along with a national ban on partisan gerrymandering and mid-decade redistricting — in other words, some combination of the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the stillborn For the People Act — or it could be something more radical, like expanding the size of the House (which has been capped at 435 members for nearly a century), legalizing electoral fusion or moving the country toward proportional representation.

Whatever Democrats do, they must do something. If the aim of our political system is fair and meaningful representation for all Americans, then we are far from the target and receding even further.

You could even, to paraphrase the words of an old socialist saying, argue that American society stands at a crossroads: either transition to democracy or regression into barbarism.

Which will we choose?

Jamelle Bouie became a New York Times Opinion columnist in 2019. Before that he was the chief political correspondent for Slate magazine. He is based in Charlottesville, Va.“

 

The Iran War Worsens America’s Democratic Erosion

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“The New York Times editorial board’s Autocracy Index tracks 12 markers of democratic erosion in the United States. The index places the U.S. on a scale of 0 to 10 for each category, with 0 representing pre-Trump levels and 10 representing a true autocracy. The board has moved the assessment of “bypassing the legislature” up one notch due to President Trump’s actions, including the war with Iran, which he undertook without congressional authorization.

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May 12, 2026

The Autocracy Index

The editorial board tracks 12 markers of democratic erosion

By The Editorial Board

The editorial board is a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding values. It is separate from the newsroom.

President Trump’s war with Iran is the most significant military action in American history that a president has undertaken without any form of congressional authorization.

Yes, past presidents have often pushed the bounds of their constitutional authority in using the military. Nonetheless, they have typically involved Congress for anything more than a brief attack. Sometimes, Congress passed a bill formally approving action, as was the case in Iraq in both 2002 and 1991, Afghanistan in 2001 and Vietnam in 1964. In other instances, such as Korea in the 1950s, Congress offered de facto approval by passing bills that provided additional resources for the military action. Mr. Trump has received no approval whatsoever from Congress, the only branch of government with the constitutional authority to declare war.

The New York Times editorial board is tracking 12 categories of democratic erosion in the United States, based on historical patterns and interviews with experts. Our index places the United States on a scale of 0 to 10 for each category. Zero represents the United States before Mr. Trump began his second term — not perfect, surely, but one of the world’s healthiest democracies. Ten represents the condition in a true autocracy, such as China, Iran and Russia. Based on the war with Iran, we are moving our assessment of one of the categories — bypassing the legislature — up one notch, to Level 5:

Bypassing the legislature

Mr. Trump’s Justice Department has become an enforcer of his personal interests, targeting people for legally dubious reasons while creating a culture in which his allies can act with impunity. The targets include Jerome Powell, the Federal Reserve chairman, and several Democratic. True authoritarians go much further, but Mr. Trump has already undone the post-Watergate depoliticization of the Justice Department.

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Over the past two and half months, Mr. Trump has ordered thousands of strikes against another country and killed its leader. The war has roiled global energy markets and drained American munitions stockpiles. Yet despite its scope and stakes, the president continues to show disdain for members of Congress who ask questions about the war and has not even provided a coherent rationale for it.

Congressional Republicans deserve significant responsibility for the situation. They could and should do much more to constrain him. Congress could pass a resolution expressing its disapproval of the war and hold hearings investigating it, raising the political pressure on the White House. It could refuse to confirm nominees or fund Mr. Trump’s military priorities until he adheres to his constitutional duty to work with the legislature. Otherwise, members of Congress are participating in America's slide from democracy.

The Autocracy Index

12 markers of democratic erosion

Bypassing the legislature

When a democracy slides toward autocracy, the leader often finds ways to neuter the legislature. Mr. Trump has done so in many ways: by usurping Congress’s power of the purse and imposing widespread tariffs (which courts have often deemed illegal; gutting congressionally authorized agencies like the U.S. Agency for International Development; withholding approved funds for schools, libraries and scientific research; using private donations to pay for his White House ballroom during a government shutdown; attacking boats in the Caribbean and invading Venezuela; and more.

Stifling speech and dissent

Modern authoritarian takeovers often do not start with a military coup. They instead involve an elected leader who uses the powers of the office to consolidate authority and make political opposition difficult. The repression of speech and dissent is central to this process. Mr. Trump cracked down on anti-ICE demonstrations in Minnesota, which culminated in federal agents killing two protesters. The Trump administration has also pursued F.B.I. investigations against journalists, punished law firms that had opposed him, revoked the visas of foreign students who criticized Israel’s war in Gaza and contributed to intimidation campaigns against federal judges.

Persecuting political opponents

Autocrats use the immense power of law enforcement as a political tool, and Mr. Trump’s Justice Department has become an enforcer of his interests. It has targeted his perceived enemies, as it did with Jerome Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, on shaky grounds while dropping legitimate investigations of Mr. Trump’s allies or pardoning them. In recent months, Mr. Trump has fired his attorney general for not going even further, and the Justice Department secured an indictment against James Comey, the former F.B.I. director, for a second time on spurious charges. If judges and grand juries had not pushed back against Mr. Trump so effectively, this measure would probably be at a higher level.

Would-be authoritarians recognize that courts can keep them from consolidating power, and they take steps to weaken or bypass judges. At times, the Trump administration has accepted court rulings, including its rejection of his tariffs. At other times, the administration has openly defied federal judges. A judge in Minnesota excoriated Immigration and Customs Enforcement for disobeying nearly 100 orders in January alone. On other occasions, the administration has engaged in gamesmanship, ignoring the spirit of judicial orders.

Declaring false emergencies

Autocrats often curtail democracy by declaring an emergency and arguing that the threat requires them to exercise unusual degrees of power. Mr. Trump’s recent predecessors were not perfect on this issue, but he has reached another level. His tariffs were one example. Justifying deportations by claiming that a Venezuelan gang had taken over American cities was another example.

Using the military at home

Authoritarians frequently and performatively use the military for domestic control. Mr. Trump deployed the National Guard in Los Angeles to crack down on protests. He has also treated the military as an extension of himself, firing high-ranking officials without good reason and giving overtly political speeches to military leaders. ICE is not part of the military, but it acted largely as a paramilitary force in Minnesota and elsewhere. Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, has raised the chilling prospect of sending ICE agents to polling places.

Vilifying marginalized groups

Authoritarians tend to demean minority groups, trying to turn them into perceived threats that provide justification for a leader to amass power. Mr. Trump has vilified immigrants and transgender Americans. His appointees and political allies have made blatantly racist, Islamophobic and antisemitic statements. Mr. Trump has denigrated Somalis in outrageous ways, such as saying: “They contribute nothing. I don’t want them in our country.”

Democratic governments prize accurate information. Authoritarians seek to suppress inconvenient truths. The Trump administration has sought to manipulate government information by, among other things, sidelining scientific experts. The administration has also taken steps to control the media, using the threat of regulatory punishment to silence criticism.

Trying to take over universities

Authoritarians, recognizing that universities are hotbeds of independent thought and political dissent, often single them out for repression. A signature policy of Mr. Trump’s second term has been his attack on higher education. He has cut millions of dollars of research funding, tried to dictate hiring and admissions policies and taken steps to dictate what colleges can teach, sometimes suing them to force their compliance.

Creating a cult of personality

Emperors and kings often glorified themselves by displaying their portraits everywhere. The American tradition rejected that hagiography for living presidents — until Mr. Trump. Among recent examples: He is adding his signature to the dollar. He turned the Kennedy Center into the Trump Kennedy Center. He created a new commemorative passport with his face on it. And the government now sells a so-called gold card, with his face on it, that costs $1 million and offers legal residency to immigrants.

Using power for personal profit

Authoritarians often turn the government into a machine for self-enrichment. Mr. Trump glories in his administration’s culture of corruption. He rewards foreign governments that bestow gifts on him (like a 747 airplane) and approve deals with his company. His family has made hundreds of millions of dollars from crypto. In some cases, he has later helped his benefactors, including by giving pardons.

Manipulating the law to stay in power

Authoritarians change election rules to help their party, and they rewrite laws to ignore term limits. In Mr. Trump’s second term, he has shown worrisome signs of trying to entrench the power of the Republican Party. He has pressured Republican-led states to gerrymander congressional districts even more extremely than they had, and his campaign — aided by the Supreme Court — has won several recent victories. He has also made alarming efforts to intimidate election workers. In May, his Justice Department demanded the identities of all workers who staffed the 2020 election in Fulton County, Ga., which could chill participation in future elections.

Background and methodology: The clearest sign that a democracy has died is that a leader and his party make it impossible for their opponents to win an election and hold power. Once that stage is reached, however, the change is extremely difficult to reverse. 

The 12 benchmarks in this editorial offer a way to understand how much Mr. Trump is eroding American democracy. The categories are based on interviews with legal scholars, political scientists, historians and other democracy experts. The ratings come from the New York Times editorial board. In our 0-to-10 scales, zero represents roughly where the United States, flawed though it was, had been under presidents of both parties prior to Mr. Trump. Ten represents the condition in a true authoritarian state. Moving even one notch toward autocracy is a worrisome sign.

We first published the index in October. This version is the second update. We plan to publish future updates as events warrant. 

Photograph by Damon Winter/The New York Times“

 

U.S. Intelligence Shows Iran Retains Substantial Missile Capabilities

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“U.S. intelligence assessments reveal that Iran has regained operational access to most of its missile sites, including 30 of 33 along the Strait of Hormuz. Despite public claims from President Trump and Defense Secretary Hegseth that Iran’s military was decimated, the assessments show Iran retains about 70% of its prewar missile stockpile and mobile launchers. This finding raises concerns about the effectiveness of U.S. military actions and the potential strain on U.S. munitions stockpiles if hostilities resume.

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Secret new assessments say Iran has operational access to 30 of its 33 missile sites along the Strait of Hormuz, suggesting that its military remains far stronger than President Trump has asserted.

May 12, 2026

Missile displays in Tehran in 2024. According to classified U.S. intelligence assessments, Iran retains roughly 70 percent of its prewar missile stockpile.Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times

By Adam EntousMaggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan

Adam Entous, who covers national security issues, reported from Washington and Brussels. Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, who cover the White House, reported from Washington.

The Trump administration’s public portrayal of a shattered Iranian military is sharply at odds with what U.S. intelligence agencies are telling policymakers behind closed doors, according to classified assessments from early this month that show Iran has regained access to most of its missile sites, launchers and underground facilities.

Most alarming to some senior officials is evidence that Iran has restored operational access to 30 of the 33 missile sites it maintains along the Strait of Hormuz, which could threaten American warships and oil tankers transiting the narrow waterway.

People with knowledge of the assessments said they show — to varying degrees, depending on the level of damage incurred at the different sites — that the Iranians can use mobile launchers that are inside the sites to move missiles to other locations. In some cases they can launch missiles directly from launchpads that are part of the facilities. Only three of the missile sites along the strait remain totally inaccessible, according to the assessments.

Iran still fields about 70 percent of its mobile launchers across the country and has retained roughly 70 percent of its prewar missile stockpile, according to the assessments. That stockpile encompasses both ballistic missiles, which can target other nations in the region, and a smaller supply of cruise missiles, which can be used against shorter-range targets on land or at sea.

Military intelligence agencies have also reported, based on information from multiple collection streams including satellite imagery and other surveillance technologies, that Iran has regained access to roughly 90 percent of its underground missile storage and launch facilities nationwide, which are now assessed to be “partially or fully operational,” the people with knowledge of the assessments said.

The findings undercut months of public assurances from President Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who have told Americans that the Iranian military was “decimated” and “no longer” a threat.

On March 9, 10 days into the war, Mr. Trump told CBS News that Iran’s “missiles are down to a scatter” and the country had “nothing left in a military sense.” Mr. Hegseth declared at a Pentagon news conference on April 8 that Operation Epic Fury — the joint U.S.-Israel campaign launched on Feb. 28 — had “decimated Iran’s military and rendered it combat-ineffective for years to come.”

The intelligence describing Iran’s remaining military capacity is dated less than a month after that news conference.

An Iranian military parade in Tehran in 2025. Iran has regained access to roughly 90 percent of its underground missile storage and launch facilities nationwide, according to the U.S. assessments.Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times

Asked about the intelligence assessments, a White House spokeswoman, Olivia Wales, repeated Mr. Trump’s previous assertions that Iran’s military had been “crushed.” She said that Iran’s government knows that its “current reality is not sustainable” and that anyone who “thinks Iran has reconstituted its military is either delusional or a mouthpiece” for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.

Ms. Wales pointed to a social media post from Mr. Trump on Tuesday declaring that it was “virtual treason” to suggest that Iran’s military was doing well.

Joel Valdez, the acting Pentagon press secretary, responded to questions about the intelligence by criticizing news coverage of the war. “It is so disgraceful that The New York Times and others are acting as public relations agents for the Iranian regime in order to paint Operation Epic Fury as anything other than a historic accomplishment,” he said in a statement.

The new intelligence assessments suggest that Mr. Trump and his military advisers overestimated the damage that the U.S. military could inflict on Iranian missile sites, and underestimated Iran’s resilience and ability to bounce back. The New York Times reported last month that U.S. officials believed that Iran could regain as much as 70 percent of its prewar missile arsenal. The Washington Post reported last week on U.S. intelligence showing that Iran retained about 75 percent of its mobile missile launchers and about 70 percent of its prewar missile stockpile.

The findings underscore the dilemma Mr. Trump would face if the fragile month-old cease-fire in the conflict collapses and full-scale fighting resumes. The U.S. military has already depleted its stocks of many critical munitions, including Tomahawk cruise missiles, Patriot interceptor missiles, and Precision Strike and ATACMS ground-based missiles, and yet the intelligence suggests that Iran retains considerable military capability, including around the vital Strait of Hormuz.

The passageway carries roughly a fifth of the world’s daily oil consumption, and the U.S. Navy now maintains a near-continuous presence transiting and patrolling it. The U.S. military’s Central Command said in a social media post on Sunday that more than 20 American warships were enforcing the blockade against Iran.

If Mr. Trump ordered commanders to launch more strikes to take out or diminish those Iranian capabilities, then the U.S. military would have to dig even deeper into stocks of critical munitions. Doing so would further undercut U.S. stockpiles at a time when the Pentagon and the major arms makers are already struggling to find the industrial capacity to replenish American reserves.

Mr. Trump and his advisers have repeatedly denied that U.S. munitions stocks have been drained to dangerously low levels. In private, Pentagon officials have offered similar assurances to anxious European allies. Those allies have purchased billions of dollars of munitions from the United States on behalf of Ukraine, and they are concerned that those munitions will not be delivered because the U.S. military will need them to replenish its own stocks — a worry that would only intensify if the president orders a return to hostilities with Iran.

In testimony on Tuesday to a House appropriations subcommittee, Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said, “We have sufficient munitions for what we’re tasked to do right now.”

The joint assault on Iran by the United States and Israel inflicted considerable damage on Iran’s defenses and damaged or destroyed many strategic sites around the country. Many of Iran’s senior leaders have been killed, and its economy is staggering under the pressures of the war, leaving questions about how long it can sustain its hard line on a negotiated end to the conflict and the halt on nearly all oil tanker traffic and other shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.

But Iran’s apparent ability to retain substantial military capacity has exacerbated concerns among U.S. allies about the wisdom of the war and generated criticism among Mr. Trump’s anti-interventionist supporters who opposed getting into the conflict in the first place.

The intelligence assessments on Iran’s capabilities point to the consequences of a tactical choice made by U.S. military commanders.

When American forces struck Iran’s hardened missile facilities, the Pentagon, faced with limited stocks of bunker-busting munitions, opted to try to seal off many of the entrances rather than trying to destroy the entire sites with all of the missiles inside, officials said, with mixed results.

Some bunker busters were dropped on Iran’s underground facilities, but officials said military planners faced a difficult choice and needed to be cautious in using them because they needed to preserve a certain number for U.S. operational plans for potential wars in Asia with North Korea and China.

As The New York Times previously reported, the United States expended roughly 1,100 long-range stealth cruise missiles in the war — close to the total supply that remains in the American stockpile. The military also fired more than 1,000 Tomahawk missiles, roughly 10 times the number the Pentagon procures in a year. And it used more than 1,300 Patriot interceptor missiles during the war, which accounts for more than two years of production at 2025 rates.

Replenishing those stockpiles will take years, not months. Lockheed Martin currently produces around 650 Patriot interceptors a year. The company has announced plans to ramp up production of the crucial air defense weapon to 2,000 a year. But doing so will not be easy. And the industry’s ability to produce rocket motors cannot be scaled up as quickly as Mr. Trump has demanded, officials said.

Sean Parnell, the chief Pentagon spokesman, said the military has everything it needs to carry out its mission. “We have executed multiple successful operations across combatant commands while ensuring the U.S. military possesses a deep arsenal of capabilities to protect our people and our interests,” he said in a statement to The Times.

Adam Entous is a Washington-based investigative reporter focused on national security and intelligence matters.

Maggie Haberman is a White House correspondent for The Times, reporting on President Trump.

Jonathan Swan is a White House reporter for The Times, covering the administration of Donald J. Trump. Contact him securely on Signal: @jonathan.941“