With U.S. forces leaving Iraq on September 30, Kurdish leaders warn their region will be left exposed to Iran-backed militias and ISIS without American air defenses and support.

On September 30, the last U.S. troops are scheduled to leave Iraq, closing a U.S. military chapter that began with the 2003 invasion. The departure completes a two-phase plan Washington and Baghdad announced in a September 2024 joint statement. The first phase ended the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS’s military mission in Iraq no later than the end of September 2025.

The second allowed the coalition to continue supporting operations in Syria from Iraq until at least September 2026, subject to conditions on the ground and consultations between Washington and Baghdad. U.S. forces pulled out of federal Iraq, and the remaining troops became concentrated at Harir Air Base in Erbil Governorate. During a July White House meeting, Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi confirmed the end-of-September date, and President Donald Trump said, “We don’t think we need the military there anymore.”

In August, after meeting U.S. Central Command commander Brad Cooper, al-Zaidi called the deadline “fixed and final.” His office said October 1 will mark “a new day” for Iraq, which will be free of any foreign military presence. The U.S. presence, which peaked above 170,000, is now down to the hundreds of remaining troops. On September 24, the U.S. signed an agreement handing Iraq the U.S. Embassy’s Diplomatic Support Site at Baghdad International Airport, a hub that Iran-backed groups repeatedly targeted during the war.

Iraq’s Foreign Ministry said the handover was part of efforts to end the coalition’s mission and the foreign military presence in Iraq. The Cabinet declared a four-day holiday, September 30 through October 3, to mark “Sovereignty Days.” Baghdad says the coalition will be replaced by bilateral cooperation in the economic, development, energy and security fields.

Kurdish leaders have warned that the withdrawal will leave their region exposed. In a televised interview with Al Sharqiya TV, Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) President Masoud Barzani said the pullout could recreate the security vacuum that followed the 2011 U.S. departure and preceded the rise of ISIS. “I am afraid of the same scenario,” Barzani said.

Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) Prime Minister Masrour Barzani told Al-Monitor that the region has been unable to acquire effective air defenses and has relied on the Americans, who intercepted most incoming missiles and drones. “Withdrawal of these air defense systems will definitely put us at risk,” he said. The U.S. has already moved eight Patriot batteries to Jordan, and Britain has moved its Rapid Sentry system to Cyprus.

Security threats have continued in the final days before the withdrawal. On Sunday, Iraqi forces confronted an ISIS cell in Altun Kupri, between Erbil and Kirkuk. Two militants wearing explosive belts were killed, and a third, who transported ISIS members, was wounded and arrested.

A civilian was killed and two counterterrorism personnel were wounded. Early Monday morning, three drones struck Azadi Camp in Koya, east of Erbil, between 1:40 and 2:10 a.m., without causing casualties. The camp houses families of Iranian Kurdish opposition Peshmerga fighters. A senior official of the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI) told local media that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) carried out the strike with three Hadid-110 drones.

Monday’s strike was one of more than 1,000 attacks on the Kurdistan Region since February 28, when the U.S.-Iran conflict began. The KRG’s Department of Media recorded 809 attacks between February 28 and April 20, resulting in 20 civilian deaths and 123 injuries.

Erbil Governorate was hit hardest, with 477 attacks, including 419 drone strikes and 58 missile strikes, which killed 10 civilians and injured 83. By Rudaw’s tracking, the total had passed 950 attacks by Iran and allied Iraqi armed groups as of early August, with 32 people killed and 154 wounded. In the first weeks of the war, Iran carried out most of the strikes on Iranian Kurdish opposition parties, while Iran-backed Iraqi groups claimed most attacks on other targets in the region.

The deadliest attack came on March 24, when six Iranian ballistic missiles struck two Peshmerga positions in Soran, killing six Peshmerga and wounding 30, according to the KRG Peshmerga Ministry. On April 7, a drone struck a home in Zargazawi village, Erbil province, killing a Peshmerga member and his wife. The couple, Musa Anwar Rasool and Mujda Asaad Hassan, left behind two children.

Erbil Governor Omed Khoshnaw said Baghdad had remained silent about the attacks. Coalition troops have also been hit: in March, a drone attack in Erbil wounded six French soldiers, and Italy temporarily pulled its personnel from a base after a separate strike. On August 17, two Hadid-110 drones launched from across the Iranian border struck Masrour Barzani’s private office and the home of the head of the region’s Security and Intelligence Agency.

Iranian Kurdish opposition groups based in the region have been targeted repeatedly. The Komala party said more than 108 missiles and drones had struck its headquarters and camps since the war began.

Even before the U.S.-Iran conflict began, the Kurds were subjected to frequent attacks. Between July 14 and 16, 2025, drones struck five oil fields in the Kurdistan Region, damaging the region’s energy production. On November 26, 2025, two explosive-laden drones launched from the outskirts of Tuz Khurmatu hit the Khor Mor gas field, the 11th attack on the site since 2022. The strike cut up to 80 percent of the region’s electricity supply. Local officials blamed Iran-backed militias, while Iraq’s investigation named no group.

ISIS remains active in territories disputed between the Kurdistan Regional Government and the federal government in Baghdad. In January, Peshmerga forces repelled an attack on a frontline position in Tuz Khurmatu. In December 2021, ISIS struck a Kurdish village in Makhmur, 60 kilometers southwest of Erbil, killing 13 Peshmerga and civilians.

The withdrawal is also going ahead without the disarmament of the militias. Al-Zaidi had tied disarmament to the U.S. exit, but he has pushed the deadline to June 30, 2027, beginning with a 90-day period in which the militias would halt attacks in exchange for a U.S. commitment not to strike them. The most powerful Iran-aligned militias, Kataib Hezbollah, Harakat al-Nujaba, and Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhada, have rejected disarming or set conditions the government is unlikely to meet.

Masrour Barzani said the Kurdistan Region supports the withdrawal but hopes it will not leave a security vacuum.

The post Iraqi Kurds Alarmed by U.S. Troop Withdrawal as Iran-Backed Militias Refuse to Disarm appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

FBI Deputy Director Andrew Bailey resigned after one year on the job, according to The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and MSNOW.

Andrew Bailey had been overseeing election matters.

Last August, then-Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel tapped then-Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey to serve as Co-Deputy Director of the FBI.

It is unclear why Bailey resigned.

Later Monday morning, Andrew Bailey thanked President Trump, AG Blanche and Kash Patel for the opportunity to serve in the FBI.

“I want to thank President Trump, AG Todd Blanche, and FBI Director Kash Patel for the opportunity to serve in the FBI. Under President Trump’s leadership, we have delivered historic results in our mission to Make America Safe Again,” Bailey said.

“With great pride in what we have accomplished, I am announcing that I am stepping down to return to my family in Missouri. I am confident Director Patel will continue to reform the FBI, combat violent crime, defend the homeland, ensure strong organizational accountability, and restore public trust in this institution of excellence,” Bailey added.

I want to thank President Trump, @AGToddBlanche, and @FBIDirectorKash for the opportunity to serve in the FBI. Under President Trump’s leadership, we have delivered historic results in our mission to Make America Safe Again. With great pride in what we have accomplished, I am…

— Andrew Bailey (@AndrewBaileyMO) September 28, 2026

Kash Patel thanked Bailey for his service.

“I want to thank Andrew Bailey for his dedicated service to return the FBI to its core mission and fulfill President Trump’s promise to make America safe again,” Kash Patel said.

“Although Andrew is leaving the FBI in order to return to his family in Missouri, his fantastic contribution instituting critical reforms which resulted in our historic success will live on. Andrew’s leadership at the FBI will be missed but we are grateful he answered the call to serve! Thanks Andrew for your tremendous dedication to the mission of this FBI,” he said.

I want to thank Andrew Bailey for his dedicated service to return the FBI to its core mission and fulfill President Trump’s promise to make America safe again. Although Andrew is leaving the FBI in order to return to his family in Missouri, his fantastic contribution instituting… https://t.co/df7hNVOq9G

— FBI Director Kash Patel (@FBIDirectorKash) September 28, 2026

Bailey is a staunch Trump supporter and fought against crooked prosecutors targeting Trump with lawfare.

Recall that in 2024, Andrew Bailey filed a lawsuit against the State of New York, accusing it of an unconstitutional attack on the democratic process through its legal actions against President Trump.

In 2023, Bailey filed a brief at the US Supreme Court to halt Special Counsel Jack Smith’s move to circumvent the appellate court in his January 6 case against President Trump.

Bailey also took The Gateway Pundit’s blockbuster First Amendment lawsuit against the Biden Administration (formerly MO v Biden) – with TGP’s founder and Editor-in-Chief Jim Hoft as one of the top five plaintiffs – to the US Supreme Court.

The post JUST IN: FBI Deputy Director Andrew Bailey Abruptly Resigns appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

(Note: The information provided here or in any related communications is for informational purposes only and should not be considered as financial advice. We do not provide personalized investment, financial, or legal advice. Gateway Pundit benefits from purchases made through our sponsors. We appreciate your support!)

Behind closed doors, the Trump White House has been assembling the most aggressive legal and political offensive in modern American history.

Not one big move. A sequence of them — timed down to the moment… and designed to detonate between now and November 3rd.

Jim Rickards spent 40 years advising four U.S. Presidents, the CIA, and the Pentagon. He’s been up-close for some of the most brutal political climates in modern history. But he says he’s never seen anything like what’s coming.

“Each move will be bigger than the last,” he told us. “And by October, the country will be boiling.”

Rickards believes the turmoil will spill out of Washington and into the markets — with your retirement caught in the middle.

He recorded a briefing walking through the timeline, step by step. In the interest of time, he’s made it free to watch. Click below.

The post Fmr. White House Advisor: “The Chaos Will Start Weeks Before a Single Vote Is Cast” appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

President Trump said late last night that he had 10 pm dinner plans with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei ahead of a second meeting with him this week. 

This comes as the President is scheduled to make an announcement in the Oval Office at 2 pm today. On Tuesday, Trump will also meet with Amodei and other top AI CEOs at the White House with House Speaker Mike Johnson.

When asked about his upcoming announcement just after 9 pm last night, after returning to DC from Chicago, Trump hinted that the announcement will center on AI or “super intelligence,” as he calls it.

“Well, we’re meeting with Anthropic, as you know, on Tuesday. That’s going to be big,” Trump said.

“So these are long days, but I seem to be able to handle it, right? These are long days. People say, ‘Really?’ I said, ‘I’m having dinner at 10 o’clock tonight.’ So, we travel all over the world, and we have dinner, but that’s all right.”

“And we have a couple of unrelated things tonight, and tonight I’m having dinner with the head of Anthropic,” he added.

“So, I’m having dinner with Dario from, as you know, very highly respected, from Anthropic.”

WATCH:

Amodei made headlines earlier this month with a seemingly dire warning about the risks of rapid AI development, suggesting AI could pose “a threat to humanity” and calling for AI regulation.

Trump previously responded, blasting Dario for “pretending to be a ‘perfect little angel’” and engaging in a “SICK conspiracy” against AI and data centers.

This is a developing story.

The post (VIDEO) Trump Says He Had Late Night Dinner with Anthropic CEO Ahead of Announcement Today appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

America’s Mayor just said the quiet part out loud.

Former New York City Mayor and Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani dropped a series of explosive allegations Saturday night during the American Martyrs premiere in West Palm Beach, Florida, telling moderator Lara Logan that by the time he went to bed on January 6, 2021, he believed he knew exactly what had happened.

Giuliani said he did not need Liz Cheney’s television committee, an Obama-era prosecutor, or four years of cable-news sermons to understand January 6.

“It was a very unusual experience for me because, let me begin by telling you, by the time I went to sleep on the evening of January 6th, I knew exactly what was going on,” Giuliani told Logan. “I knew exactly that it was a fixed operation.”

Logan pressed him on the security failures that left the Capitol wide open, the same failures The Gateway Pundit has documented for years while the corporate press screamed “insurrection” and ignored the stand-down.

She told Giuliani she called his former NYPD police commissioner, Bernard Kerik — the 9/11-era commissioner who later worked the 2020 election files with Giuliani — and asked him a simple law-enforcement question, stripped of politics:

If you wanted to secure the Capitol that day, what would you have done?

Kerik’s answer, Logan said, was immediate: put mounted officers around the building. Circle the Capitol on horseback. One mounted officer, Kerik told her, is worth about three men on the ground.

They didn’t do that.

They didn’t do a lot of things a serious police department would have done.

As Fox News reported, leaked footage filmed by Nancy Pelosi’s own daughter captured the then-Speaker admitting, “I take responsibility,” after security collapsed — and the White House later documented Pelosi’s refusal of the 10,000 National Guard troops President Trump offered in advance.

Former Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund has said he made 11 urgent calls for the Guard starting at 12:58 p.m. and waited 71 minutes for approval from the House Sergeant at Arms, who reported to Pelosi.

Optics over officers. Politics over the perimeter.

That is not a riot that “just happened.” That is a building left unsecured on purpose.

“The Guy Responsible for the Darkest Hours in American History Is Barack Obama”

Logan asked Giuliani what he saw as the indicators that January 6 was an operation.

Giuliani did not hedge.

He said he now agrees “completely with General Flynn” that the man responsible for “the darkest hours in American history is Barack Obama.”

“You know how they talk about an Antichrist? He’s an anti-president,” Giuliani said. “And I believe now all the things that I thought were exaggerated way back then, I believe he was flagrant.”

Giuliani said, “As part of the communist plan… to overthrow us.”

Trump Wasn’t There to “Incite a Riot.” He Was There Because Pence Wouldn’t Do His Job.

Giuliani reminded Logan what he was actually doing that week.

He was still Trump’s impeachment lawyer. He was still trying to get Vice President Mike Pence to pause the count. Four state legislatures had written Pence asking him to wait. Giuliani said two of those packets — Georgia and Pennsylvania — were “ironclad.” Arizona was “very, very cozy.” Wisconsin, he said, was “a completely illegal election.”

On Wisconsin, Giuliani walked through the absentee-affidavit rule the state’s own law imposed: no affidavit, the vote is canceled. “If you canceled all the votes that didn’t have an affidavit, Trump would have won,” he said. The Wisconsin Supreme Court called the penalty “too harsh.” Giuliani’s word for that ruling: “absurd.”

On Pennsylvania, he said the state Supreme Court signed off on roughly 900,000 ballots counted without a Republican inspector able to actually observe the count — because one Republican sitting in a room “the size of a basketball arena” was treated as if he could see a count happening on the other side of the floor.

“One judge, the Republican, voted and said, you’re really reducing him to a potted plant,” Giuliani said. “And it’s an absurd decision.”

That is the context the fake-news networks never give you when they clip “trial by combat” and run it on a loop.

Giuliani said he was not even supposed to speak at the Ellipse rally. He was working the legislatures. The majority leader of the Pennsylvania legislature, he said, started out hostile — stuck Giuliani’s first hearing in the suburbs so “nobody would hear us” — then called him after seeing the evidence.

“This is an outrage,” Giuliani recalled the lawmaker saying. “They stole a million votes.”

“I know. What are you going to do about it?”

“I’m going to write a letter.”

He wrote it. Pence ignored it.

“Pence. The terrible vice president,” Giuliani said. “Pence just disregarded it.”

That morning, Giuliani said, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows called.

President Trump wanted constitutional scholar John Eastman to explain that alternate electors were not some invented coup — they had been used before, including in the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon contest, and flow from a reading of the Constitution “accepted by all the liberal jackass professors at Harvard.”

The problem, Meadows told him: Eastman “doesn’t speak English, he speaks lawyer.” The president wanted Giuliani standing there to interpret.

Giuliani and Eastman went early. They froze on the stage for hours. “Thought we were gonna die of pneumonia like one of those presidents did,” Giuliani said.

Then he gave the line the regime spent years trying to turn into a crime.

“Why don’t we have the machines? I’ll take the machine that I analyzed, you take your machine, Dominion. Let’s have a trial by combat.”

Congress sued him for inciting a riot.

“Believe it or not,” Giuliani said, “an Obama judge dismissed the case against me, saying it was ridiculous.”

He went home, locked down at his compound, and kept working the states with Kerik’s investigative team — six states, still trying to get Pence to give them the kind of delay Thomas Jefferson once used.

Pence never did.

This Is the Story the J6 Committee Was Built to Bury

None of this is new to Gateway Pundit readers. It is new only to people who still get their news from the people who ran the cover-up.

As TGP previously reported, Giuliani asked the questions Pelosi’s committee refused to touch:

• Why did Speaker Pelosi refuse the National Guard President Trump offered?
• Why were Capitol officers seen opening doors?
• What role did the FBI and Antifa play?
• Why did the committee pretend officers were “killed by the mob” when no officer was killed in the way they sold it?
• Why did they ignore the killing of unarmed Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt?

WATCH:

The post America’s Mayor Tells Lara Logan He Knew by Nightfall on January 6 That It Was a “Fixed Operation” — And He Names the Man He Says Owns the Darkest Hours in American History appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.