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The State Department said Monday it will lift Syrian rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham’s designation as a foreign terrorist organization, months after the group’s leader defeated the Assad regime and swept to power as Syria’s president.

The change will take effect on Tuesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement. The group, formerly known as Jabhat al-Nusra, has been on the U.S.’s list of foreign terrorist organizations for more than a decade, dating back to its affiliation with al Qaeda. The terrorist designation makes it harder for the group or its leaders to accept assistance from Americans, work with American banks or travel to the U.S.

Rubio said the revocation of the group’s terrorist status “recognizes the positive actions taken by the new Syrian government under President Ahmed al-Sharaa.”

Led by al-Sharaa, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, helped lead a stunning offensive that swept into Damascus late last year, ending the Assad family’s 54-year grip on Syria. Since then, al-Sharaa has served as Syria’s interim president, and has sought to portray his government as a moderate and inclusive force — and a possible bulwark against Iranian influence.

Al-Sharaa said earlier this year that HTS will be disbanded, along with all the other rebel groups that fought the Assad government during Syria’s bloody 13-year civil war. Rubio cited that move, and the new government’s “commitment to combat terrorism in all its forms,” in his decision to lift the terrorist designation.

President Trump made a surprise announcement in May that he would lift sanctions against Syria, a significant boost to the country’s new government. Syria had faced severe U.S. sanctions for more than a decade, a holdover from the Assad family’s brutal dictatorial rule that restricted Syria’s economy and made it difficult to accept foreign money.

Mr. Trump also met with al-Sharaa in Saudi Arabia in May.

“Young, attractive guy, tough guy, strong past,” Mr. Trump said about the new Syrian leader.

But HTS’s past as a hardline Islamist rebel group has made some observers wary. Al-Sharaa participated in the insurgency against U.S. forces in Iraq in the 2000s, before he was sent to Syria to help lead the al Qaeda-allied Jabhat al-Nusra in the fight against Bashar al-Assad’s government. Jabhat al-Nusra was designated by the U.S. as a foreign terrorist organization in 2014, and al-Sharaa had a $10 million U.S. bounty on his head until last year.

More than a decade ago, the group broke with insurgent leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and refused to merge with his now-infamous organization, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS. Since 2016, al-Sharaa’s group has distanced itself from al Qaeda, and al-Sharaa has said he disagrees with some of the global terrorist organization’s methods. He told PBS’s “Frontline” in 2021, “our involvement with al Qaeda in the past was an era, and it ended.”

President Donald Trump said Tuesday he would like to see facilities like the new so-called “Alligator Alcatraz” migrant detention center in Florida’s Everglades in other states.

“Well, I think would like to see them in many states. Really, many states,” the president said. “And, you know, at some point, they might morph into a system.”

The Trump administration is turning the remote Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport into a facility that officials say will eventually hold up to 5,000 people. Officials say operations will start on Tuesday. The facility is part of Trump’s efforts to ramp up deportations by expanding detention capacity. The president has already sent migrants to Guantánamo Bay and the mega-prison in El Salvador.

Asked by ABC News’ Mary Bruce if the new center could be a new standard for immigration facilities in the U.S. despite criticism for its harsh conditions, Trump said, “It can be.”

“I mean, you don’t always have land so beautiful and so secure. They have a lot of bodyguards and a lot of cops that are in the form of alligators. You don’t have to pay them so much but I wouldn’t want to run through the Everglades for long. It will keep people where they’re supposed to be. This is a very important thing,” he said.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump’s visit would be a chance for the president to tout the funding for more detention facilities and efforts to enact Trump’s mass deportation policy that are in his megabill that the Senate could vote on Tuesday before sending to the House before Trump’s Fourth of July deadline.

“I think his trip to this detention facility actually underscores the need to pass the One Big, Beautiful Bill because we need more detention facilities across the country,” Leavitt said.

A source familiar with the planning tells ABC it will cost Florida $450 million a year, and officials say some of that money will be reimbursed from FEMA’s Shelter and Services Program.

Leavitt described the facility’s remote location in her briefing on Monday.

“There’s only one road leading in, and the only way out is a one-way flight,” she said. “It is isolated and surrounded by dangerous wildlife and unforgiving terrain. The facility will have up to 5,000 beds to house, process and deport criminal illegal aliens.”

“This is an efficient and low-cost way to help carry out the largest mass deportation campaign in American history,” Leavitt added.

When asked about the remote and dangerous location, Leavitt said that it was a feature of the facility to help prevent detainees from escaping.

“Well look, when you have illegal murderers and rapists and heinous criminals in a detention facility surrounded by alligators, yes, I do think that’s a deterrent for them to try to escape,” she said. “We do know that some of these illegal criminals have escaped from other detention facilities, like one in New Jersey, which I know was recently reported on. So, of course, we want to keep the American people safe, and we want to remove these public safety threats from our streets, and we want to effectively detain them as best as we can.”

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier posted on X that the facility is a “one stop shop” to carry out Trump’s mass deportation agenda, claiming the location saves money on security since it’s surrounded by dangerous animals.

“You don’t need to invest that much in the perimeter. People get out, there’s not much waiting for them other than alligators and pythons. Nowhere to go, nowhere to hide,” Uthmeier posted.

Among officials who will join Trump at the facility are Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Florida Congressman Byron Donalds.

In a statement released Monday, Noem said, “Alligator Alcatraz, and other facilities like it, will give us the capability to lock up some of the worst scumbags who entered our country under the previous administration. We will expand facilities and bed space in just days, thanks to our partnership with Florida. Make America safe again.”

DeSantis touted the facility last week as “as safe and secure as you can be.”

Environmental groups are suing to stop construction, alleging the government violated the Endangered Species Act by building on protected land.

Protesters gathered along the highway that cuts through the Everglades to demonstrate on Saturday. They included environmental activists and Native Americans advocating for their ancestral homelands. Others demonstrated against the treatment of migrants.

After three days of debate and drama, the Senate narrowly passed President Donald Trump’s giant tax and immigration bill on Tuesday.

Vice President JD Vance cast the tie-breaking vote after a 50-50 tally, with three Republicans voting against the sprawling measure.

The bill must now go to the House for final approval. But it could face some issues there, especially among GOP fiscal hawks, as the Senate version is projected to add roughly $1 trillion more to the deficit than what the House passed back in May.

Speaker Mike Johnson and top Republican leaders announced in a statement that the House will consider the bill “immediately for final passage” — with renewed intent to put the measure on President Trump’s desk by July 4.

“The House will work quickly to pass the One Big Beautiful Bill that enacts President Trump’s full America First agenda by the Fourth of July. The American people gave us a clear mandate, and after four years of Democrat failure, we intend to deliver without delay,” the leaders said.

“This bill is President Trump’s agenda, and we are making it law. House Republicans are ready to finish the job,” they added.

The House Rules Committee will convene at 1:30 p.m. ET on Tuesday to markup the bill and set parameters for floor debate and consideration of the bill.

Trump tells ABC he believes bill will ‘go very nicely’ in House

ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Mary Bruce pressed President Trump on House Republicans who say they are unhappy with the changes the Senate made to the bill.

“What is your message to those holdouts?” Bruce asked the president.

“Well, I just heard that about the Senate, and the bill just passed, and it tells you there’s something for everyone,” Trump said. “I mean, we have — it’s a great bill. There is something for everyone, and I think it’s going to go very nicely in the House. Actually, I think it will be easier in the House than it was in the Senate.”

ABC’s Bruce also followed up with asking Trump about the cuts to Medicaid that the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects would cause 11.8 million Americans to lose their insurance.

Trump said he believed the amount of people who would lose coverage would be less than projected, but did not say where he was getting such data or analysis from.

“I’m saying it’s going to be a very much smaller number than that and that number will be waste, fraud and abuse,” he said.

‘Wow’: Trump reacts in real time to Senate passing his legislation

President Trump learned about the Senate passage of his domestic policy bill during a roundtable event as he toured the so-called “Alligator Alcatraz” migrant detention center in Florida.

“I was also wondering how we doing, because I know this is prime time, it shows that I care about you, because I’m here and I probably should be there, but we do care,” Trump said.

Trump said that he will be going back to Washington to celebrate.

“We’re gonna finish over here, and then we’ll go over there. We’ll go back and celebrate the big, beautiful bill,” Trump said. Though notably, Democrats had the title “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” stricken just before the final vote.

“You sure that’s right?” Trump asked the reporter when informed of the results.

“Wow,” was Trump’s response when he was told the information was correct.

President Donald Trump told ABC News on Tuesday morning he is “not happy” with either Israel or Iran after the opening hours of a nascent ceasefire between the two combatants were marred by reported exchanges.

Trump said Iran and Israel both “violated” the ceasefire that he announced late on Monday, in comments made as he departed the White House.

On Wednesday morning, the president and his administration continued to push back on an early intelligence report suggesting that the U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities likely only set Tehran’s nuclear program back by months.

Trump says he would bomb Iran again ‘without a question’

President Donald Trump said on Friday he would bomb Iran again “without a question” if intelligence were to find that Iran can enrich uranium to a level higher than what he is comfortable with.

“Without a question. Absolutely,” he told reporters in the White House briefing room.

“They’re exhausted. The last thing they are thinking about is nuclear [weapons],” Trump said of Iran.

Responding to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s claim that Iran won the war, Trump said, “You got beat to hell. Israel was beat up too, they were both beat up.”

Trump doubles down on claim Iran’s nuclear sites were ‘obliterated’

President Donald Trump on Friday doubled down on his claim that Iran’s nuclear sites were “obliterated” and said it would take “years” before the country could restart its program.

“I don’t believe that they’re going to go back into nuclear anytime soon. They spent over $1 trillion on nuclear and they never got it together. And nothing was moved from the site, by the way, to do that is very dangerous. It’s very, very heavy material,” he told reporters in the White House briefing room on Friday.

Trump also said that Iran now wants to meet and negotiate a deal.

“I’ve been saying for 25 years, even as a civilian, you cannot let them have a nuclear weapon and that’s what happened. It’s been obliterated,” he said. “It would be years before they could ever get going. And I really think it’s probably the last thing they have to recover from a hell of a tough war.”

Iran may still be ‘days’ from nuke, Democrats skeptical uranium was destroyed

Following a classified briefing, House Speaker Mike Johnson said that Iran’s nuclear capabilities suffered a “major setback” after the U.S. bombed three sites there last weekend, telling reporters that lawmakers received a “thorough” and “very helpful” closed-door briefing — but Democrats left the briefing worried that Iran’s cache of enriched uranium may have not been destroyed.

Asked about that uranium stockpile by ABC News, Johnson downplayed the significance of an initial intelligence assessment from the Pentagon which showed that Iran’s stockpile was not destroyed.

“We have a sense about that, some of this is classified, but I will tell you that there was a CIA press release, I think it went out yesterday, and they concluded that this is a quote, ‘Iran’s nuclear program has been severely damaged,’ unquote,” Johnson said. “I’ll put that in layman’s terms. I would say it’s a substantial setback.”

But the only PhD nuclear physicist serving in Congress, Rep. Bill Foster, told reporters that he worries Iran’s uranium survived.

“I know this technology pretty well. I was very disappointed that we learned very little about the inventory of high enriched uranium, 60% enriched uranium, and its whereabouts and what that meant for the breakout time to Iran’s first nuclear device,” Foster said. “There is, I think frankly, a very over-optimistic portrayal of what was and was not accomplished by this mission, because we do not have understanding and control of where all of that material is.”

Democrats said there are “massive inconsistencies” remaining — and if the uranium was not destroyed, Foster believes Iran could still be “days” or “a very brief period of time” from building a nuclear bomb.

“We’re talking about 20 or 30 scuba tanks full of material, where any two or so of those scuba tanks provide enough material for a first nuclear weapon,” he said. “That is what we’re trying to understand – where the location is and the disposition in the situation where the intelligence may or may not be complete.”

Foster said “the game was lost” when President Trump withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, also known as the Iran nuclear deal, in 2018.

“Under that under the JCPOA, we had very strict limits and enforced limits on their inventory of enriched uranium at different levels. And when that was lost, the game was lost,” he said. “And now we’re in a situation where they have very large inventories of quite significantly enriched uranium, and unfortunately that implies a very small breakout time to a first nuclear device.”

Former Army Ranger Jason Crow of Colorado, leaving the briefing, said he was “shocked” by the “massive inconsistencies that remain between what Congress has been previously briefed and informed and what we heard today.” The congressman added he is “not convinced whatsoever” that Iran’s nuclear sites have been completely destroyed.

In a lengthy social media post Wednesday evening, President Donald Trump expressed his support for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is currently on trial in his country for bribery, fraud and breach of trust in multiple cases.

Coming to the prime minister’s defense, Trump called him a “warrior” and used similar terminology that he used in his legal battles, calling Netanyahu’s corruption trial a “witch hunt” and a “horror show.”

The post comes as Trump celebrates victory in the ceasefire between Israel and Iran.

“Netanyahu’s trial should be CANCELLED, IMMEDIATELY, or a Pardon given to a Great Hero, who has done so much for the State,” Trump wrote in the Truth Social post. “Perhaps there is no one that I know who could have worked in better harmony with the President of the United States, ME, than Bibi Netanyahu. It was the United States of America that saved Israel, and now it is going to be the United States of America that saves Bibi Netanyahu.”