{"id":757881,"date":"2026-06-24T20:49:16","date_gmt":"2026-06-24T20:49:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/757881\/"},"modified":"2026-06-24T20:49:16","modified_gmt":"2026-06-24T20:49:16","slug":"us-politics-iran-war-live-updates-donald-trump-orders-major-oil-investigation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/757881\/","title":{"rendered":"US politics, Iran war live updates: Donald Trump orders major oil investigation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"story-block__standfirst\">This article covers events in the US and Middle East on Wednesday (Australia time). For Thursday\u2019s live updates, click<a class=\"body-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.news.com.au\/world\/middle-east\/us-politics-iran-war-live-updates\/live-coverage\/0e7d1e9e7e77cb529b9f0c0e1e3ba05c\" data-tgev=\"event119\" data-tgev-container=\"bodylink\" data-tgev-order=\"0e7d1e9e7e77cb529b9f0c0e1e3ba05c\" data-tgev-label=\"world\" data-tgev-metric=\"ev\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"> here.<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"standfirst-content\">As critics close in from all angles and approval polls continue to dip, US President Donald Trump is weighing up his options as he attempts to move beyond the Iran catastrophe.<\/p>\n<p>The under-fire leader has now ordered an investigation into major oil companies over fuel prices, accusing them of failing to pass on lower oil costs to American motorists.<\/p>\n<p class=\"standfirst-content\">Meanwhile, senior member of his own party has made it plain that he disapproves of the President\u2019s latest \u201cpurge\u201d inside the federal government.<\/p>\n<p class=\"standfirst-content\">Mr Trump has appointed a businessman and political donor, Bill Pulte, the acting Director of National Intelligence, a job that involves overseeing America\u2019s various intelligence agencies.<\/p>\n<p class=\"standfirst-content\">Mr Pulte does not have any intelligence experience. But he has quickly set about fulfilling Mr Trump\u2019s current wish: mass firings.<\/p>\n<p class=\"standfirst-content\">Speaking to reporters, Republican Senator Thom Tillis compared the move, disapprovingly, to Elon Musk\u2019s actions as the head of DOGE early in Mr Trump\u2019s presidency.<\/p>\n<p class=\"standfirst-content\">He said a normal reduction in the workforce would involve \u201cdoing the analysis\u201d and ensuring \u201cyou retain the most valuable people\u201d.<\/p>\n<p class=\"standfirst-content\">\u201cYou only eliminate the people whose jobs could be automated or never should have been there,\u201d said Mr Tillis.<\/p>\n<p class=\"standfirst-content\">\u201cMy guess is, based on (Mr Pulte\u2019s) previous experience, it\u2019s just going to be another hot, steamy pile of DOGE-s***.<\/p>\n<p class=\"standfirst-content\">\u201cI think he\u2019s an incompetent sycophant, and not the right person to lead DNI.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"poster-img\" src=\"https:\/\/content.api.news\/v3\/images\/bin\/dc1738c190acb5973680026792f20b9f\" data-sctrack=\"op-poster-img\" alt=\"Trump hits out at Starmer over Iran war, energy, immigration\" fetchpriority=\"high\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile yet another senior US military leader is reportedly being \u201cforced\u201d into retirement as Mr Trump\u2019s Secretary of Defence, Pete Hegseth, continues his culling of top positions.<\/p>\n<p>General Chris Donahue has been head of America\u2019s Army forces in Europe and Africa for just 18 months. Before that, he was famously the last American soldier to leave Afghanistan in the withdrawal in 2021.<\/p>\n<p>Read on for more updates. <\/p>\n<p>Read related topics:<a class=\"topic_tag\" href=\"https:\/\/www.news.com.au\/topics\/donald-trump\" data-tgev-container=\"story-topic-links\" data-tgev-label=\"Donald Trump\" data-tgev-order=\"1\" data-tgev-metric=\"npv\" data-tgev=\"event10\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Donald Trump<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This article covers events in the US and Middle East on Wednesday (Australia time). For Thursday\u2019s live updates,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":757882,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[64,63,99],"class_list":["post-757881","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/757881","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=757881"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/757881\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/757882"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=757881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=757881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=757881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}