By TRAVIS LOLLER

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Attorneys for Kilmar Abrego Garcia will try to persuade a federal judge in Tennessee on Thursday to throw out human smuggling charges against him.

Abrego Garcia, whose mistaken deportation has galvanized both sides of the immigration debate, claims that the criminal prosecution is vindictive, pushed by officials from President Donald Trump’s administration to punish him after they were forced to bring him back to the United States.

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While Abrego Garcia is a Salvadoran citizen, a court order from 2019 prevents him from being deported to that country. That’s because an immigration judge determined he faced danger in El Salvador from a gang that had threatened his family. Abrego Garcia, 30, immigrated to the U.S. illegally as a teenager but has an American wife and child. He has lived and worked in Maryland for years under the supervision of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

After he was deported to El Salvador last year, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the Trump administration had to work to bring him back. He was eventually returned to the U.S. only to face criminal charges of human smuggling based on a 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee. He has pleaded not guilty.

Body camera footage from a Tennessee Highway Patrol officer shows a calm exchange with Abrego Garcia after he was pulled over for speeding. There were nine passengers in the car, and the officers discussed among themselves their suspicions of smuggling. However, Abrego Garcia was eventually allowed to continue driving with only a warning.

U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw previously found some evidence that the prosecution against Abrego Garcia “may be vindictive.” The judge said many statements by Trump administration officials “raise cause for concern.” He cited a statement by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche that seemed to suggest the Department of Justice charged Abrego Garcia because he won his wrongful-deportation case.

Abrego Garcia’s attorneys have been sparring with prosecutors for months over whether officials like Blanche would be required to testify at Thursday’s hearing and what emails Department of Justice officials would have to turn over to them. First Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee Rob McGuire has argued that he alone made the decision to prosecute, so the motives of other officials were irrelevant.

Crenshaw reviewed many of the disputed documents. In an order that was unsealed in late December, he wrote, “Some of the documents suggest not only that McGuire was not a solitary decision-maker, but he in fact reported to others in DOJ and the decision to prosecute Abrego may have been a joint decision.”

By ILLIA NOVIKOV

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia launched a barrage of 420 drones and 39 missiles at Ukraine overnight, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Thursday, as U.S. and Ukrainian envoys prepared to hold more talks in Geneva on ending the war that is now in its fifth year.

The bombardment, which included 11 ballistic missiles, targeted critical infrastructure and residential areas across eight regions of Ukraine, Zelenskyy said. Dozens of people, including children, were injured, officials said, though authorities did not immediately publish a confirmed total.

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Zelenskyy said late Wednesday he had spoken by phone with U.S. President Donald Trump and thanked him for his “efforts and engagement” in pursuing peace negotiations.

The U.S.-brokered talks between Moscow and Kyiv are continuing but are deadlocked on the issue of the future of Ukrainian territory that Russia claims as its own.

Zelenskyy has pushed for a summit with Russia’s President Vladmir Putin, saying a face-to-face meeting could be decisive in unlocking an agreement, but the Kremlin has rebuffed that proposal beyond inviting the Ukrainian president to Moscow, which Zelenskyy refused.

Trump representatives Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, who were also discussing nuclear negotiations with Iran in Geneva before turning to the war in Europe, were due to meet with Rustem Umerov, the head of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council. They also joined Trump’s call with Zelenskyy.

Washington is looking to keep momentum in its yearlong push to stop the fighting and overcome deep enmity between the warring countries.

Ukrainian and European officials have accused Putin of feigning interest in peace negotiations, hoping to avoid punitive U.S. measures such as additional sanctions while pressing forward with the invasion.

Thursday’s talks between the American and Ukrainian envoys were to address details of a possible postwar recovery plan for Ukraine and discuss preparations for an upcoming trilateral meeting with Moscow officials, perhaps next week, according to Zelenskyy.

He said he has also tasked Umerov with discussing a possible prisoner exchange.

Russia returned 1,000 bodies of fallen soldiers to Ukraine, and got back 35 bodies of its fallen troops, Vladimir Medinsky, the head of the Russian delegation at previous talks with Ukraine, said Thursday. He did not say when the exchange happened.

Ukraine’s Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War later confirmed the return, though it referred to “bodies which, according to preliminary information provided by the Russian side, may belong to Ukrainian defenders.”

Russia struck gas infrastructure in the Poltava region and electrical substations in the Kyiv and Dnipropetrovsk regions, Zelenskyy said. Emergency crews responded in five other regions, as well as in the capital.

Ukraine’s air defenses shot down most of the Russian missiles, Zelenskyy said, crediting Western partners for timely delivery of additional air defense interceptors. Ukraine needs foreign help to sustain its fight against Russia’s bigger forces.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha urged allied countries to provide more military aid.

“When the whole world demands Moscow to finally stop this senseless war, Putin bets on more terror, attacks and aggression,” Sybiha said in a post on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs website.

The Russian Defense Ministry said its air defenses shot down 17 Ukrainian drones overnight over a number of Russian regions, as well as the Black and Azov Seas.

Ukraine’s domestically developed long-range drones have struck oil refineries, fuel depots and military logistics hubs deep inside Russia.

Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

By STEPHEN GROVES

WASHINGTON (AP) — Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is testifying before House lawmakers in New York on Thursday as part of a congressional investigation into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, starting off two days of depositions that will also include former President Bill Clinton.

The closed-door depositions in the Clintons’ hometown of Chappaqua, a typically quiet hamlet north of New York City, come after months of tense back-and-forth between the former high-powered Democratic couple and the Republican-controlled House Oversight Committee. It will be the first time that a former president has been forced to testify before Congress.

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Yet the demand for a reckoning over Epstein’s abuse of underage girls has become a near-unstoppable force on Capitol Hill and beyond.

President Donald Trump, a Republican who has expressed regret that the Clintons are being forced to testify, bowed last year to pressure to release case files on Epstein, who killed himself in a New York jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial. The Clintons, too, agreed to testify after their offers of sworn statements were rebuffed by the Oversight panel and its chairman, Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., threatened criminal contempt of Congress charges against them.

“We have a very clear record that we’ve been willing to talk about,” Hillary Clinton said in an interview with the BBC earlier this month. She added that her husband had flown with Epstein for charitable trips and that she did not recall meeting Epstein but had interacted with Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s former girlfriend and confidant, at conferences hosted by the Clinton Foundation.

“We are more than happy to say what we know, which is very limited and totally unrelated to their behavior or their crimes, and we want to do it in public,” Hillary Clinton said.

Bill Clinton, however, has emerged as a top target for Republicans amid the political struggle over who receives the most scrutiny for their ties to Epstein. Several photos of the former president were included in the first tranche of Epstein files released by the Department of Justice in January, including a number of him with women whose faces were redacted. Clinton has not been accused of wrongdoing in his relationship with Epstein.

Comer has also pointed to Hillary Clinton’s work as secretary of state to address sex trafficking as another reason to insist on her deposition. The committee’s investigation has sought to understand why the Department of Justice under previous presidential administrations did not seek further charges against Epstein following a 2008 arrangement in which he pleaded guilty to state charges in Florida for soliciting prostitution from an underage girl but avoided federal charges.

Yet conspiracy theories, especially on the right, have swirled for years around the Clintons and their connections to Epstein and Maxwell, who argues she was wrongfully convicted. Republicans have long wanted to press the Clintons for answers.

“I mean if you’re the wife of Bill Clinton, aren’t you going to have some questions about your husband’s activities?” said Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., a member of the House Oversight Committee. “We only go where the facts take us. We didn’t put the president and the secretary in this position. They put themselves in it.”

Democrats, now being led by a new generation of politicians, have prioritized transparency around Epstein over defending the former leaders of their party. Several Democratic lawmakers joined with Republicans on the Oversight panel to advance the contempt of Congress charges against the Clintons last month. Several said they had no relationship with the Clintons and owed no loyalty to them.

Rep. Robert Garcia of California, the top Democrat on the Oversight panel, said that both Republican and Democratic administrations “have failed survivors in not getting more information out to the public.” He also said he wanted to ask about Epstein’s possible ties to foreign governments.

Democrats are also coming off an effort this week to confront Trump about his administration’s handling of the Epstein files by taking women who survived Epstein’s abuse as their guests to Trump’s State of the Union address. Even senior Democrats, such as former Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California, said it was appropriate for the committee to interview anyone, including the former president, who was connected to Epstein.

“We want to hear from everyone,” Pelosi said, adding that she did not see why Hillary Clinton was being interviewed and that it was important to “believe survivors.”

Follow the AP’s coverage of Jeffrey Epstein at https://apnews.com/hub/jeffrey-epstein.

By JAMEY KEATEN, JON GAMBRELL and MELANIE LIDMAN

GENEVA (AP) — Iran and the United States began indirect talks Thursday in Geneva over Tehran’s nuclear negotiations viewed as a last chance for diplomacy as America has gathered a fleet of aircraft and warships to the Middle East to pressure Tehran into a deal.

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President Donald Trump wants a deal to constrain Iran’s nuclear program, and he sees an opportunity while the country is struggling at home with growing dissent following nationwide protests last month. Iran meanwhile has maintained it wants to continue to enrich uranium even as its program sits in ruins, following Trump ordering an attack in June on three of the Islamic Republic’s nuclear sites, part of a bruising 12-day war last year.

If an American attack happens, Iran has said all U.S. military bases in the Mideast would be considered legitimate targets, putting at risk tens of thousands of American service members. Iran has also threatened to attack Israel, meaning a regional war again could erupt across the Middle East.

“There would be no victory for anybody — it would be a devastating war,” Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told India Today in an interview filmed Wednesday just before he flew to Geneva.

“Since the Americans’ bases are scattered through different places in the region, then unfortunately perhaps the whole region would be engaged and be involved, so it is a very terrible scenario.”

Geneva talks are the third meeting since June war

Araghchi again is passing messages to Steve Witkoff, a billionaire real estate developer and friend of Trump who serves as a special Mideast envoy for the president. The two men held multiple rounds of talks last year that collapsed after Israel launched its war against Iran in June. These latest talks are again being mediated by Oman, a sultanate on the eastern edge of the Arabian Peninsula that’s long served as an interlocutor between Iran and the West.

Araghchi met Oman’s Foreign Minister Badr al-Busaidi after arriving in Geneva on Wednesday night. The men “reviewed the views and proposals that the Iranian side will present to reach an agreement on the Iranian nuclear program, based on the guiding principles agreed upon in the previous round of negotiations,” a report from the state-run Oman News Agency said. Al-Busaidi will pass on Iran’s offer to American officials on Thursday, it added.

The U.S. delegation arrives at the Oman ambassador’s residency, where the indirect nuclear talks between the United States and Iran are taking place in Geneva, Switzerland, Thursday, Feb. 26, 2026. (Martial Trezzini/Keystone via AP)

An Associated Press journalist saw al-Busaidi after he met with the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog. The Omani diplomat flashed a thumbs up to a question about whether he was hopeful for the talks.

Al-Busaidi returned Thursday to the Omani diplomatic residence on the shores of Lake Geneva . A convoy believed to be carrying American diplomats later arrived to the compound, followed by another believed to be carrying Iranian diplomats. Oman later published images of Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, meeting with al-Busaidi at the residence, signaling the start of the talks.

Oman’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Sayyid Badr bin Hamad Al Busaidi, right, holds a meeting with White House special envoy Steve Witkoff, centre, and Jared Kushner, as part of the ongoing Iranian-American negotiations, in Geneva, Switzerland, Thursday Feb. 26, 2026. (Foreign Ministry of Oman via AP)

In this round of negotiations after the June war, Trump has pushed to halt Iran’s enrichment of uranium entirely, as well as address Tehran’s ballistic missile program and its support of regional militant forces. Iran has maintained the talks must remain focused only on nuclear issues.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters Wednesday that Iran is “always trying to rebuild elements” of its nuclear program. He said that Tehran is not enriching uranium right now, “but they’re trying to get to the point where they ultimately can.”

Iran has said it hasn’t enriched since June, but it has blocked IAEA inspectors from visiting the sites America bombed. Satellite photos analyzed by The Associated Press also has shown activity at two of those sites, suggesting Iran is trying to assess and potentially recover material there.

The West and the IAEA say Iran had a nuclear weapons program until 2003. Before the June attack, it had been enriching uranium up to 60% purity — a short, technical step away from weapons-grade levels of 90%.

U.S. intelligence agencies assess that Iran has yet to restart a weapons program, but has “undertaken activities that better position it to produce a nuclear device, if it chooses to do so.” While insisting its program is peaceful, Iranian officials have threatened to pursue the bomb in recent years.

“The principle’s very simple: Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon,” U.S. Vice President JD Vance told reporters at the White House on Wednesday.

Vance said Trump is “sending those negotiators to try to address that problem” and “wants to address that problem diplomatically.”

“But, of course, the president has other options as well,” Vance added.

In this satellite photo from Planet Labs PBC, the headquarters of the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet is seen in Manama, Bahrain, Saturday, Feb. 21, 2026. Ships can be seen at its dock. (Planet Labs PBC via AP)

Threat of military action sparks war fears

If the talks fail, uncertainty hangs over the timing of any possible attack.

If the aim of potential military action is to pressure Iran to make concessions in nuclear negotiations, it’s not clear whether limited strikes would work. If the goal is to remove Iran’s leaders, that will likely commit the U.S. to a larger, longer military campaign. There has been no public sign of planning for what would come next, including the potential for chaos in Iran.

Vehicles drive past the Saint Sarkis church and a painting of the late Iranian revolutionary founder Ayatollah Khomeini in downtown Tehran, Iran, Wednesday, Feb. 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

There is also uncertainty about what any military action could mean for the wider region. Tehran could retaliate against the American-allied nations of the Persian Gulf or Israel. Oil prices have risen in recent days in part due to those concerns, with benchmark Brent crude now about $70 a barrel. Iran in the last round of talks said it briefly halted traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf through which a fifth of all oil traded passes.

Satellite photos shot Tuesday and Wednesday by Planet Labs PBC and analyzed by the AP appeared to show that American vessels typically docked in Bahrain, the home of the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet, were all out at sea. The 5th Fleet referred questions to the U.S. military’s Central Command, which declined to comment. Before Iran’s attack on Qatar in June, the 5th Fleet similarly scattered its ships at sea to protect against a potential attack.

Gambrell reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and Melanie Lidman from Jerusalem. Associated Press writer Will Weissert in Washington contributed to this report.