Saturday’s attack was the first with fatalities since the fall of Syrian President Bashar Assad a year ago.

The United States has had troops on the ground in Syria for over a decade, with a stated mission of fighting IS. While not part of its official mission, the U.S. presence has also been seen as a means to hinder the flow of Iranian and Iran-backed fighters and weapons into Syria from neighboring Iraq.

The number of U.S. troops in the country has fluctuated and currently stands at around 900. They are mainly posted in the Kurdish-controlled northeast and at the al-Tanf base in the southeastern desert near the borders with Iraq and Jordan.

Here’s the back story and present situation of the U.S. military force in Syria:

What U.S. forces are doing in Syria

In 2011, mass protests in Syria against the Assad government were met by a brutal crackdown and spiraled into a civil war that lasted nearly 14 years before he was ousted in December 2024.

Wary of getting bogged down in another costly and politically unpopular war in the Middle East after its experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, Washington sent support to rebel groups but at first avoided direct military intervention.

That changed after the rise of the IS, which carried out sporadic attacks in the U.S. and Europe, while in Iraq and Syria, it seized territory that was at one point half the size of the United Kingdom. In the areas the group controlled, it was notorious for its brutality against religious minorities, as well as Muslims whom it considered to be apostates.

In 2014, the administration of then-U.S. President Barack Obama launched an air campaign against IS in Iraq and Syria. The following year, the first U.S. ground troops entered Syria, where they partnered with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces in the country’s northeast.

By 2019, IS had lost control of all the territory it once held, but sleeper cells have continued to launch attacks.

The US military and Syrian forces

Before Assad’s ouster, Washington had no diplomatic relations with Damascus and the U.S. military did not work directly with the Syrian army.

That has changed over the past year. Ties have warmed between the administrations of U.S. President Donald Trump and Syrian interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa, the former leader of an Islamist insurgent group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham that used to be listed by Washington as a terrorist organization.

In November, al-Sharaa became the first Syrian president to visit Washington since the country’s independence in 1946. During his visit, Syria announced its entry into the global coalition against the Islamic State, joining 89 other countries that have committed to combating the group.

While the entry into the coalition signals a move toward greater coordination between the Syrian and U.S. militaries, the Syrian security forces have not officially joined Operation Inherent Resolve, the U.S.-led military mission against IS in Iraq and Syria, which has for years partnered with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces in northeast Syria.

The future US footprint in Syria

The number of U.S. troops posted in Syria has changed over the years.

Trump tried to withdraw all forces from Syria during his first term, but he met opposition from the Pentagon because it was seen as abandoning Washington’s Kurdish allies, leaving them open to a Turkish offensive.

Turkey considers the SDF a terrorist organization because of its association with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, which has waged a long-running insurgency in Turkey.

The number of U.S. troops increased to more than 2,000 after the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas in Israel, as Iranian-backed militants targeted American troops and interests in the region in response to Israel’s bombardment of Gaza.

The force has since been drawn back down to around 900, but Trump has given no indication that he is planning a full withdrawal in the near future.

After Saturday’s attack, U.S. envoy to Syria Tom Barrack posted on X: “A limited number of U.S. forces remain deployed in Syria solely to finish the job of defeating ISIS once and for all.”

The U.S. presence “empowers capable local Syrian partners to take the fight to these terrorists on the ground, ensuring that American forces do not have to engage in another costly, large-scale war in the Middle East,” he said, adding, “We will not waver in this mission until ISIS is utterly destroyed.”

The National Trust for Historic Preservation, a privately funded group, is asking the U.S. District Court to block Trump’s White House ballroom addition, which already has involved razing the East Wing, until it goes through comprehensive design reviews, environmental assessments, public comments and congressional debate and ratification.

The project has prompted criticism in the historic preservation and architectural communities, and among his political adversaries, but the lawsuit is the most tangible effort thus far to alter or stop the president’s plans for an addition that itself would be nearly twice the size of the White House before the East Wing’s demolition.

“No president is legally allowed to tear down portions of the White House without any review whatsoever — not President Trump, not President Biden, and not anyone else,” the lawsuit states. “And no president is legally allowed to construct a ballroom on public property without giving the public the opportunity to weigh in.”

Additionally, the Trust wants the court to declare that Trump, by fast-tracking the project, has committed multiple violations of the Administrative Procedures Act and the National Environmental Policy Act, while also exceeding his constitutional authority by not consulting lawmakers.

No more work should be done, the Trust argues, until administration officials “complete the required reviews — reviews that should have taken place before the Defendants demolished the East Wing, and before they began construction of the Ballroom.”

White House maintains that Trump has ‘full legal authority’ over the building

Asked questions about the lawsuit, White House spokesman David Ingle responded with a blanket assertion that Trump is within his “full legal authority to modernize, renovate and beautify the White House — just like all of his predecessors did.”

Ingle did not specifically address an Associated Press question asking whether the president would consult Congress at any point.

The White House response correctly notes that essentially every president makes some changes to the White House. But Trump’s efforts are the most sweeping since a nearly complete gutting of the decaying interior of the oldest portion of the mansion during President Harry Truman’s tenure. Truman sought and received explicit authorization from Congress, along with appropriations. Further, he consulted the American Society of Engineers and the Commission on Fine Arts, and he appointed a bipartisan commission to oversee the project.

Trump, a Republican, has emphasized since announcing the project that he’s doing it with private money, including his own. But that would not necessarily change how federal laws and procedures apply to what is still a U.S. government project.

The president already has bypassed the federal government’s usual building practices and historical reviews with the East Wing demolition. He recently added another architectural firm to the project.

Trump has long said a White House ballroom is overdue, complaining that events were held outside under a tent because the East Room and the State Dining Room could not accommodate bigger crowds. Trump, among other complaints, said guests get their feet wet if it rains during such events.

The White House is expected to submit plans for Trump’s new ballroom to a federal planning commission before the year ends, about three months after construction began.

Will Scharf, who was named by Trump as chairman of the National Capital Planning Commission, said at the panel’s monthly meeting last week that he was told by colleagues at the White House that the long-awaited plans would be filed in December.

“Once plans are submitted, that’s really when the role of this commission, and its professional staff, will begin,” said Scharf, who also is one of the Republican president’s top White House aides.

He said the review process would happen at a “normal and deliberative pace.”

Besides being too late, the Trust argues, that’s not nearly enough.

Federal law cites ‘express authority of Congress’ over D.C. projects

The Trust asserts that plans should have been submitted to the National Capital Planning Commission, the Commission of Fine Arts and Congress before any action. The lawsuit notes that the Trust wrote to those entities and the National Park Service on Oct. 21, after East Wing demolition began, urging a stop to the project and asking the administration to comply with federal law.

“The National Trust received no response,” the lawsuit said.

The lawsuit cites a litany of federal statutes and rules detailing the role the planning and fine arts commission and lawmakers play in U.S. government construction projects.

Among them is a statute: “A building or structure shall not be erected on any reservation, park, or public grounds of the Federal Government in the District of Columbia without express authority of Congress.”

The Trust notes also that the range design and environmental reviews, along with congressional deliberation, would involve public input.

“This public involvement, while important in all preservation matters, is particularly critical here, where the structure at issue is perhaps the most recognizable and historically significant building in the country,” the complaint says.

Besides the president, the lawsuit names as defendants the National Parks Service, the Department of the Interior, and the General Services Administration, along with leaders of those federal agencies.

Maine is home to a few thousand of the distinctive black-and-white waterbirds — the East Coast’s largest loon population — and conservationists said efforts to protect them from threats helped grow the population. An annual count of common loons found more adults and chicks this year than last, Maine Audubon said this week.

The group said it estimated a population for the southern half of Maine of 3,174 adult loons and 568 chicks. Audubon bases its count on the southern portion of Maine because there are enough bird counters to get a reliable number. The count is more than twice the number when they started counting in 1983, and the count of adults has increased 13% from 10 years ago.

“We’re cautiously optimistic after seeing two years of growing chick numbers,” said Maine Audubon wildlife ecologist Tracy Hart. “But it will take several more years before we know if that is a real upward trend, or just two really good years.”

Maine lawmakers have attempted to grow the population of the loons with bans on lead fishing tackle that the birds sometimes accidentally swallow. Laws that limit boat speeds have also helped because they prevent boat wakes from washing out nests, conservation groups say.

It’s still too early to know if Maine’s loons are on a sustainable path to recovery, and the success of the state’s breeding loons is critical to the population at large, Hart said. Maine has thousands more loons than the other New England states, with the other five states combining for about 1,000 adults. The state is home to one of the largest populations of loons in the U.S., which has about 27,000 breeding adults in total.

Minnesota has the most loons in the lower 48 states, with a fairly stable population of about 12,000 adults, but they are in decline in some parts of their range.

While loons are not listed under the U.S. Endangered Species Act, they are considered threatened by some states, including New Hampshire and Michigan. The U.S. Forest Service also considers the common loon a sensitive species.

The birds migrate to the ocean in late fall and need a long runway to take off, meaning winter can be a treacherous time for the birds because they get trapped by ice in the lakes and ponds where they breed, said Barb Haney, executive director of Avian Haven, a wildlife rehabilitation center in Freedom, Maine.

“We’re getting a lot of calls about loons that are iced in,” Haney said, adding that the center was tending to one such patient this week.