By Brian Stelter, Kit Maher, CNN

(CNN) — No senior Trump administration officials or cabinet members appeared on the Sunday show television circuit a day after the US and Israel began a major military operation in Iran, killing Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The absence of any Trump officials was noteworthy because many administration officials recognize the steep task they have in explaining the reasoning behind and the overall objective of the Iranian attacks to the American public.

The major TV networks requested representatives from the Trump administration for interviews. Such requests are standard practice but are considered especially important right now.

The White House’s communications operation indicated that it would let allies on Capitol Hill do the talking, three people familiar with the discussions said.

And many Republican Senators did just that, defending the President’s actions on CNN and other networks.

Sens. Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz, Dave McCormick, James Lankford, Rick Scott and Tom Cotton all appeared on Sunday morning news shows.

Graham told NBC’s “Meet the Press,” “The goal of this operation is to change the threat, not the regime.” McCormick told “Fox News Sunday” that the Trump administration’s actions in Iran are “totally justified,” citing intelligence that Iran was continuing to work on its nuclear program and calling it “an imminent threat to Americans around the region and around the world.”

The White House’s Rapid Response social media account has been reposting clips from many of the lawmakers.

They also clipped comments from Democrats, including from Sen. John Fetterman, who argued Trump’s actions didn’t violate the War Powers resolution and Sen. Mark Warner, who told CNN’s Dana Bash that Khamenei’s death is “good for the region, good for the world.”

However, they left out that Warner said Trump “started a war of choice” and he should make the case to Congress and the American people.

CBS “Face the Nation” moderator Margaret Brennan alluded to the administration’s absence from the airwaves when she concluded her interview with Cotton by saying, “We have more questions, and we would love to put them to the administration as well.”

As the operation continues, Trump remains with his national security team in Palm Beach, Florida, where he is staying at his private club, Mar-a-Lago, for the weekend. Photos released on Saturday showed Trump alongside chief of staff Susie Wiles, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino.

Other than a video address posted to Truth Social early Saturday morning, Trump has yet to be seen publicly since the combat operations began.

But he has been picking up the phone. Trump has exuded confidence about the military campaign in brief phone interviews with reporters from Axios, ABC, NBC, CBS, The Atlantic, Fox News and other outlets.

Reporters, in some cases, have been calling the president on his cell phone, hoping to land an interview without coordinating with the White House press office.

While top officials have yet to appear in TV interviews, senior administration officials held a background call with reporters on Saturday.

And Trump’s United Nations ambassador, Mike Waltz, appeared at the UN Security Council, presenting justification for the administration’s military action, emphasizing how Iranians have celebrated the killing of Khamenei.

After the US struck Venezuela and captured Nicolás Maduro, Trump held a press conference alongside Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Rubio also appeared on three Sunday shows the next day.

Sunday morning on “Face the Nation,” when Cotton praised Trump’s social media video announcing the attack, Brennan followed up and

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By John Fritze, CNN

(CNN) — A major Second Amendment case pending at the Supreme Court is firing up marijuana legalization advocates who fear the Trump administration’s defense of a 1968 gun ban could expose millions of recreational pot users to prosecution, even as a growing number of states relax their cannabis laws.

The 6-3 conservative court will hear arguments Monday over a federal law that makes it a crime for any American who is an “unlawful user” of a drug to own a gun. The appeal has again put President Donald Trump on the opposite side of the National Rifle Association, and created an unusual alliance between Second Amendment groups and advocates for easing state and federal regulations for marijuana.

“Cannabis users, by and large, are probably some of the least violent people in the country,” said Joseph Bondy, a prominent criminal defense attorney who co-wrote a brief for the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. “There’s something deeper and more invidious about attempting to disarm an entire class of people — millions and millions and millions of people who consume cannabis.”

The case centers on Ali Danial Hemani, a dual citizen of the United States and Pakistan, who was indicted in 2023 on a single count of violating the federal anti-guns-and-drugs law. Though the Justice Department accused Hemani of many things in its appeal last year — dealing drugs, using cocaine and sympathizing with Iran — his indictment dealt only with an FBI search that turned up a Glock 9mm pistol and 60 grams of pot.

President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, was convicted in 2024 of the same law at issue in the Hemani case, though that case involved his addiction to crack cocaine. He was later pardoned by the president during his final days in office.

Roughly half of US states have legalized small amounts of marijuana for recreational use and an even higher share of states allow the drug to be used medicinally. Trump signed an executive order in December to expedite the reclassification of marijuana, a move that would not legalize it but would increase research on medical uses.

But the unwinding of pot prohibitions has not been free from controversy, and some of that debate has slipped into the Supreme Court appeal.
Several anti-marijuana groups submitted a brief asserting that as pot has become a more commercialized product “its potency has soared” and thus become more “deleterious to mental health.”

The idea that certain people regularly using marijuana could become violent is geared to a 2024 decision from the Supreme Court that found that laws intended to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people are likely to be consistent with the Second Amendment.

“It’s a completely different drug these days,” said Kevin Sabet, president of Smart Approaches to Marijuana, which filed an amicus brief in the case supporting the Trump administration. “This is an intoxicating drug, and weapons and intoxication just don

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