Several top Democrats are sounding the alarm after the Gang of Eight met this afternoon behind closed doors with top administration officials in a meeting rumored to focus on President Donald Trump’s intentions for war against Iran — just hours before the State of the Union address.

Trump has been amassing in the Middle East one of the largest collections of military assets since the 2003 Iraq War, and has warned Iran to stop its nuclear program, saying “bad things” or a “very bad day” will follow if Tehran does not agree to a deal.

“I’m very concerned,” U.S. Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT) said after exiting the Gang of Eight intelligence briefing, according to foreign policy reporter Laura Rozen. The Gang of Eight is a small group of top congressional leaders who are entrusted with some of the nation’s most sensitive classified intelligence briefings.

“Wars in the Middle East don’t go well for presidents, for the country, and we have not heard articulated a single good reason for why now is the moment to launch yet another war in the Middle East,” Himes, the Ranking Member on the House Intelligence Committee, added.

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U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio briefed the eight members at the White House, CBS Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent Margaret Brennan reported. CIA Director John Ratcliffe was also reportedly in attendance.

Senate Intelligence Democratic Vice Chairman Mark Warner told reporters, “this is an extraordinary serious time, serious moment in the Middle East, serious moment for America,” according to News Nation’s Kellie Meyer.

He also called on Trump to make the case for “what our country’s goals are, what our country’s interests are and how we’re going to protect American interests in the region.”

Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer commented, “This is serious, and the administration has to make its case to the American people.”

Ominous words from Sen. Schumer after the Gang of 8 briefing on Iran pic.twitter.com/VTiSSBaDK2

— jeremy scahill (@jeremyscahill) February 24, 2026

READ MORE: ‘Orwellian Gaslighting’: Trump CIA Slammed for Retractions of ‘Biased’ Reports

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Neal Katyal — the attorney who successfully argued before the U.S. Supreme Court against President Donald Trump’s sweeping global tariffs — now says it’s time for the federal government to “pay up” and refund Americans the billions of dollars collected through those unlawful tariffs.

In a Washington Post op-ed, Katyal says that in the federal government’s presentation to the courts, it made an explicit commitment: “to give refunds if President Donald Trump’s tariffs were declared illegal,” he writes. “Money collected without authority must be returned, and returned promptly.”

“Across the country,” Katyal argues, “businesses paid billions in unlawful duties. At several points along the way, government lawyers assured judges that there would be no ‘harm’ in allowing tariff collection to continue during the appeal process because duties later invalidated could be refunded — with interest. Businesses would be made whole.”

He adds that lower court judges “relied on the government’s representation that the injury was temporary and repairable. And our small businesses relied on it.”

Katyal says, now that the Supreme Court has ruled against the Trump administration, the president and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent are suggesting that refunds could take years — including possibly having to go through further litigation.

“This is wrong. The government cannot tell courts that refunds are simple and inevitable when seeking relief — and then imply they are complex and distant when the time comes to pay.”

“Those businesses are American,” Katyal concludes. “The money is theirs and should be returned to them without delay.”

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The Central Intelligence Agency has announced it is retracting certain findings that it now deems “biased,” across a range of reports on topics such as white supremacy, anti-LGBTQ attacks, and contraception.

But according to an MS NOW opinion piece, this is a case of the CIA “yet again spurning intelligence that doesn’t align with Donald Trump’s bigoted agenda.”

“Without providing any evidence,” MS NOW’s Ja’han Jones writes, a CIA news release “calls the reports ‘biased’ and gives credit to the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board — a group that is led by Trump ally Devin Nunes and includes people like far-right podcast host Katie Miller, the wife of Trump’s policy director.”

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Jones calls the group “a bunch of handpicked MAGA activists” who are “attempting to discredit analysis about white supremacy as the president presses forward with a racist agenda; they’re trying to discredit analysis about LGBTQ+ abuse and discrimination as he pushes policies that discriminate against some LGBTQ+ people; and they’re undermining an analysis about reproductive rights and health care access after the administration absurdly destroyed nearly $10 million worth of contraceptives for women in low-income countries.”

The CIA’s release stated that Director John Ratcliffe ordered retractions or revisions to 19 intelligence products that did not meet CIA and Intelligence Community “analytic tradecraft standards,” and “failed to be independent of political consideration.”

The release also stated that these now-retracted intelligence reports exhibited “substantial deviations from the President’s expectations that CIA’s workforce remains independent from a particular audience, agenda, or policy viewpoint.”

Ratcliffe said, “There is absolutely no room for bias in our work and when we identify instances where analytic rigor has been compromised, we have a responsibility to correct the record. These actions underscore our commitment to transparency, accountability, and objective intelligence analysis.”

According to Jones, Ratcliffe’s remarks reflect “Orwellian gaslighting.”

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