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Flights grounded at D.C.-area airport due to security concerns for Iraqi leader

▶ Watch Video: More details emerge on D.C.-area ground stop that left thousands of travelers stranded

Flights were halted at Ronald Reagan National Airport for several hours on Tuesday, leading to over 100 canceled flights and cascading delays, due to security measures meant to protect the Iraqi prime minister during his visit to Washington, D.C., during the war with Iran, sources familiar with the situation told CBS News. 

Commercial flights were postponed from taking off or landing at the D.C.-area airport from 11 a.m. ET until around 3 p.m. Over 300 flights were delayed and at least 126 flights were canceled, according to the flight tracking site FlightAware.

The disruptions took place in one of the most congested and tightly controlled airspaces in the country, where hundreds of daily commercial flights contend with military traffic and snake around federal buildings in Washington and northern Virginia.

Helicopter flights in the D.C. airspace have been limited since the deadly 2025 mid-air collision between an American Airlines passenger jet and an Army Black Hawk helicopter conducting a training mission. 

Since the collision, which killed 67 people, helicopter routes near the airport have been restricted and new rules have been put in place for helicopters taking off from the Pentagon for the transport of high-ranking military officials. 

White House and Federal Aviation Administration officials shared timing updates during Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi’s visit in an effort to minimize the impact, a senior administration official said. They allowed some of the planes that were holding in the air to land at DCA and those on the ground to depart, the official said. 

Spokespeople for the FAA and Department of Transportation declined to comment.

President Trump hosted al-Zaidi, who was elected in May, to discuss the future of U.S.-Iraqi relations during his first visit to the United States. 

Mr. Trump extended their meeting by inviting the Iraqi leader to lunch. “It wasn’t scheduled, but we are going to do it on the fly because we have a tremendous chemistry together,” Mr. Trump said Tuesday morning.

Al-Zaidi’s motorcade left the White House for the Pentagon at 1:30 p.m., later than expected, with a security helicopter circling overhead, traveling through DCA airspace.

He became prime minister after Mr. Trump threatened to pull U.S. support for Iraq if a candidate who was seen as overly close to Iran won. The Iraqi leader has a delicate relationship with neighboring Iran, which has significant influence within Iraq. The country’s government has pushed for Iraq’s powerful pro-Iranian militias to disarm by Sept. 30, when U.S. troops are scheduled to leave.

The U.S. war with Iran, now in its fourth month, has prompted security concerns both in the Middle East and domestically. Some counterterrorism experts have cautioned that Iran has sought to take action in the U.S. in the past, sometimes tapping into a network of U.S.-based surrogates to attempt kidnappings and murder-for-hire plots against regime opponents.

The federal government has also warned of non-Iran-related threats, particularly in light of the recent assassination attempts against Mr. Trump. 

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth invited certain members of Congress to the Pentagon Tuesday night to brief them on the military’s proposed budget, sources familiar with the matter told CBS News. The $1.5 trillion budget includes money for weapons and military capabilities, which supporters argue would help the U.S. deal with critical threats. 

Last month, the FBI said it foiled a plot to attack a UFC fight at the White House using snipers and explosive-laden drones, later indicting eight people. Sources told CBS News last month that no actual drones had been recovered, and the idea of using drones in the alleged plot was believed to still be in the discussion-and-research phases.

What Trump’s Supreme Court win means for mail ballots

By CNN
(CNN) — The Supreme Court on Monday permitted President Donald Trump to move forward with a controversial executive order targeting mail ballots, but the decision will almost certainly not be the final word in whether the administration can actually implement its far-reaching plan.At the center of the dispute is an executive order Trump signed in March that gives the US Postal Service an unprecedented role in deciding whether to send mail ballots — a move that has followed years of the president making baseless claims about illegal voting by mail.But the Supreme Court’s order, which came over the dissent of three liberal justices, doesn’t resolve the legality of Trump’s proposal. The president’s plan for the USPS remains blocked on a nationwide basis. And further court action is almost certain to put Trump’s executive order before the justices again, potentially within a few days.For now, no voters who expect to cast their ballots by mail in the midterm elections need to change their plans. Still, the high court’s decision handed the president a procedural win on an issue that has been central to his messaging for years. And it is likely to inject uncertainty for both voters and state election officials who are scrambling to prepare for this year’s high profile midterm elections.What the Supreme Court ruled on mail ballotsThe court’s decision Monday didn’t deal with the legality of Trump’s executive order but rather with the timing of a lawsuit filed by 23 Democratic states that challenged it. The court’s conservatives concluded that the lawsuit had been filed too soon because the Trump administration hadn’t yet taken any steps to actually implement its plans.“The executive order makes no demand of the states,” the high court wrote in an unsigned decision that did not disclose the vote count. To pause the order, the court wrote, lower courts had to “speculate” about the potential harm that would be inflicted on the states that sued.The decision on Monday, the court said, doesn’t mean the president will ultimately be able to implement the provision of the executive order that dealt with USPS.“On that score,” the court wrote, “time will tell.”Trump did score a cleaner win on another section of his executive order. The Department of Homeland Security will be allowed to move forward with a plan to create lists of voters for each state that it has deemed are US citizens and therefore eligible to vote. But Trump’s plan doesn’t require individual states to do anything with those lists.What happens nextTrump’s emergency appeal at the Supreme Court had been pending for nearly a month, an unusually long time. In that span, the on-the-ground dispute over mail ballots has moved far beyond the case the high court decided on Monday.One of the Justice Department’s main arguments for why the states filed their challenge prematurely was that the US Postal Service had not yet formally adopted a required regulation spelling out how it would implement the president’s plan. While the case was pending at the court, the USPS issued that regulation — offering more clarity about how it intended to carry out the executive order.Meanwhile, the same federal district court in Massachusetts that had shut down Trump’s USPS plan in the challenge filed by the Democratic states issued another ruling in a separate case from voting rights groups like the American Civil Liberties Union. In that ruling, Judge Indira Talwani, nominated to the bench by President Barack Obama, issued a ruling that blocked the USPS directives nationwide.That separate ruling is still in effect. And that is why, despite the Supreme Court decision on Monday, the president’s USPS order remains blocked.Talwani is already moving quickly and has ordered a new round of briefing by Tuesday morning. She could hand down another decision as early as Tuesday temporarily blocking Trump’s order once again — and in a way that would tee the dispute up for a fast-track return to the Supreme Court.What the Supreme Court decision means for votersBecause of the ongoing legal maneuvering, it’s not yet clear that the Supreme Court’s decision on Monday will mean anything for this year’s midterm elections. Under the Constitution, states and Congress determine voting procedures, not the White House or federal agencies — a point that will almost certainly be raised at a later stage of the case.That said, for both Trump and the groups challenging him, time is of the essence.If federal courts attempt to shut down Trump’s executive order closer to November, they are likely to run headlong into a wonky judicial doctrine known as the “Purcell principle.” Rooted in a 2006 Supreme Court decision, the principle warns federal courts at all levels against making last-minute changes to voting rules. If the litigation drags out, the Justice Department is almost certain to argue that it’s too late for courts to intervene to stop the administration before this year’s midterm.Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, writing in dissent on Monday, warned that the administration might be able to “game the system.”“The court has held for a while now that even valid election-related legal claims can come too late,” Jackson, the court’s junior liberal, wrote on Monday. “Today’s revelation is that such claims can also come too early — never mind that an election is looming and related harms are presently occurring.”The November 3 election is less than 80 days away.What Trump’s order would doThe president’s March executive order set two major changes in motion.First, it directed DHS to build state-by-state citizenship lists using federal databases, including Social Security data and immigration records. The goal: Identify who may be eligible to vote in federal elections and give states data to compare with their voter rolls. For now, the Supreme Court’s decision allows that effort to move forward.Second, it ordered the Postal Service to change how it manages mail-ballot delivery.Under a final rule published by USPS last week, state and local election officials would have to upload the names and addresses of every mail-ballot recipient to a Postal Service portal before the ballots are sent to voters. They would also have to adopt standardized envelopes and unique, machine-readable barcodes.Ballots not added to the portal would be rejected and returned to election officials. States that refuse to comply would lose USPS ballot-delivery services for federal general elections.That data would become a kind of ballot “manifest” used to flag anomalies — and would be shared with federal law enforcement and election officials for audits and investigations. DHS and the Justice Department could then use it to investigate suspected unlawful voting, an effort this administration has backed with the weight of the federal government for the past 18 months.But there’s a crucial caveat: USPS says it won’t implement the rule before the midterms — or at all — without federal court approval. The White House has made clear it wants the system in place for the November elections.More than 20 states, Democratic Party leaders and nonpartisan voting-rights groups have sued to stop the administration, arguing that the Constitution does not give Trump the unilateral power to change how states carry out their mail voting programs.Election officials, including some Republicans, warn the policy could vastly expand the roles of USPS and DHS in running elections, create major logistical problems and fuel voter confusion. They fear the resulting turmoil could give Trump and his allies fresh grounds to challenge the results.“USPS is no longer merely a carrier of ballots; it is instead transformed into a gatekeeper of voter eligibility,” lawyers challenging the order wrote in one case.USPS downplayed those concerns after receiving more than 200,000 public comments, including warnings about disenfranchisement, errors and confusion.“Despite any logistical or financial difficulties states may face complying with the rule, including some claims that immediate implementation would prove impossible, the visibility and law-enforcement benefits of the rule, including for this election cycle, are such that there is no compelling reason for any delay,” the agency wrote in its final rule.The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
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