‘A devastating blow’: NAACP says supreme court ruling is ‘a major setback for our nation’
Meanwhile, Derrick Johnson, president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the nation’s oldest civil rights group, said the high court’s decision in Louisiana v Callais delivers “a devastating blow to what remains of the Voting Rights Act”.
The ruling is “a license for corrupt politicians who want to rig the system by silencing entire communities,” Johnson said in a statement today.
He went on:
The Supreme Court betrayed Black voters, they betrayed America, and they betrayed our democracy.
This ruling is a major setback for our nation and threatens to erode the hard-won victories we’ve fought, bled, and died for. But the people still can fight back. Our democracy is crying for help.
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“You call it a quagmire, handing propaganda to our enemies? Shame on you for that statement,” Hegseth told Democrat John Garamendi, claiming that that language “undermines the mission”.
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Garamendi had said Trump’s war strategy was one of “astounding incompetence”, describing it as a “serious self-inflicted wound to America” and highlighting the thousands of civilians and 13 US service members killed.
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The blocking of the strait of Hormuz was “foreseeable”, he added, telling the defense secretary:
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n
You have been lying to the American public about this war from day one, and so has the president.
n
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He noted that the Iranian regime is intact, along with Iran’s missile and drone systems, and that the war has strengthened Iran’s coordination with China, Russia and North Korea. Trump is “stuck in a quagmire” of another war in the Middle East, Garamendi said.
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Hegseth lambasted Garamendi’s statement as “reckless”. “Your hatred for President Trump blinds you,” he said.
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Meanwhile, Derrick Johnson, president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the nation’s oldest civil rights group, said the high court’s decision in Louisiana v Callais delivers “a devastating blow to what remains of the Voting Rights Act”.
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The ruling is “a license for corrupt politicians who want to rig the system by silencing entire communities,” Johnson said in a statement today.
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He went on:
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n
The Supreme Court betrayed Black voters, they betrayed America, and they betrayed our democracy.
n
This ruling is a major setback for our nation and threatens to erode the hard-won victories we’ve fought, bled, and died for. But the people still can fight back. Our democracy is crying for help.
n
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The White House has hailed the supreme court’s decision to effectively demolish a key Voting Rights Act that prevented racial discrimination in a landmark decision that Louisiana will have to redraw its congressional map.
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“This is a complete and total victory for American voters,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said.
n “The color of one’s skin should not dictate which congressional district you belong in. We commend the court for putting an end to the unconstitutional abuse of the Voting Rights Act and protecting civil rights,” she said.
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Answering questions from ranking Democrat Adam Smith, defense department official Jules Hurst told the committee that the federal government has spent about $25 billion on the war so far, providing the first official estimate of the war’s cost.
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“Most of that is in munitions, there’s part of that that’s obviously O&M [operations and maintenance] and equipment replacement” as well, said Hurst, who is performing the duties of the comptroller.
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“I’m glad you answered that question because we’ve been asking for a hell of a long time and no one’s given us the answer,” Smith replied.
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The US supreme court has ruled that Louisiana will have to redraw its congressional map, in a landmark decision that effectively guts a major section of the Voting Rights Act.
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In a 6-3 decision along partisan lines, the court rendered ineffective section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, the last remaining powerful provision of the 1965 civil rights law that prevents racial discrimination in voting. Section 2 specifically has long been used to ensure minority voters are treated fairly in redistricting.
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“Allowing race to play any part in government decision-making represents a departure from the constitutional rule that applies in almost every other context,” Justice Samuel Alito, a conservative, wrote for the majority opinion. “Compliance with section 2 thus could not justify the state’s use of race-based redistricting here. The state’s attempt to satisfy the Middle District’s ruling, although understandable, was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.”
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In a dissenting opinion, Justice Elena Kagan wrote the court had now accomplished a “demolition of the Voting Rights Act”.
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wait to cast their ballot for the presidential election as early voting begins in New Orleans, Louisiana, on 16 October 2020.”,”caption”:”People wait to cast their ballot for the presidential election as early voting begins in New Orleans, Louisiana, on 16 October 2020.”,”credit”:”Photograph: Kathleen Flynn/Reuters”}},{“_type”:”model.dotcomrendering.pageElements.TextBlockElement”,”html”:”
At the heart of the case, Louisiana v Callais, was a thorny question of how much lawmakers are allowed to consider race when they redraw districts to ensure that Black voters are adequately represented. The supreme court initially heard oral arguments in the case last March, but took the unusual step of asking lawyers to re-argue the case last fall. In setting the case for a re-argument, the justices raised the stakes of the case, asking lawyers to focus on whether section 2 of the Voting Rights Act was constitutional.
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The decision comes after years of legal wrangling over the boundaries of the map.
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Here’s Sam’s full report:
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US supreme court oral arguments have begun in a case that will ultimately decide whether the Trump administration can strip temporary protected status (TPS) from hundreds of thousands of Haitians and Syrians living in the United States.
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The hearing was supposed to begin at 10am ET, but it started late as the court released decisions, including a major ruling that Louisiana will have to redraw its congressional map (more on that to follow).
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rally for immigrants’ rights outside the US supreme court as justices hear arguments on whether the administration can end the Temporary Protected Status of Syrian and Haitian nationals.”,”caption”:”A rally for immigrants’ rights outside the US supreme court as justices hear arguments on whether the administration can end the Temporary Protected Status of Syrian and Haitian nationals.”,”credit”:”Photograph: Nathan Howard/Reuters”}},{“_type”:”model.dotcomrendering.pageElements.TextBlockElement”,”html”:”
As my colleague José Olivares wrote in this preview, people with TPS are given the permission to live and work in the US because the government has deemed their home countries to be unsafe due to war, political instability or natural disasters.
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In the past year, the Trump administration has attempted to cut the program for various countries, opening the door to the removal of hundreds of thousands of protected immigrants in the US.
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Last year, the supreme court allowed the administration to strip TPS status for more than 300,000 Venezuelans under the court’s emergency docket. Now, the court will hear arguments challenging the Trump administration’s efforts to remove the same protections from Syrians and Haitians.
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If the supreme court sides with the Trump administration in its effort to cut the program for Syrians and Haitians, analysts say the administration would likely seek to end the TPS program for all countries. Nearly 1.3 million people were TPS holders at the start of the second Trump administration.
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In his opening statement, Pete Hegseth defended the war on Iran, saying of the US-Israeli war:
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n
Iran cannot have a nuclear bomb. We are proud of this undertaking.
n
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“The biggest challenge, the biggest adversary we face at this point are the reckless, feckless and defeatist words of congressional Democrats and some Republicans,” he added.
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Hegseth speaking into a microphone and flipping a page in his notebook.”,”caption”:”This is Pete Hegesth’s first time testifying before lawmakers since the US-Israeli war on Iran began over two months ago.”,”credit”:”Photograph: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images”}}],”attributes”:{“pinned”:false,”keyEvent”:true,”summary”:false},”blockCreatedOn”:1777473275000,”blockCreatedOnDisplay”:”10.34 EDT”,”blockLastUpdated”:1777474519000,”blockLastUpdatedDisplay”:”10.55 EDT”,”blockFirstPublished”:1777473469000,”blockFirstPublishedDisplay”:”10.37 EDT”,”blockFirstPublishedDisplayNoTimezone”:”10.37″,”title”:”Pete Hegseth defends war on Iran as he appears before House armed services committee”,”contributors”:[],”primaryDateLine”:”Wed 29 Apr 2026 12.21 EDT”,”secondaryDateLine”:”First published on Wed 29 Apr 2026 05.51 EDT”},{“id”:”69f212158f08e0584d89b471″,”elements”:[{“_type”:”model.dotcomrendering.pageElements.TextBlockElement”,”html”:”
In his opening remarks, ranking member Adam Smith praised the US military before expressing concern about the Pentagon’s budget request given the state of the national debt.
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The Democrat then went on to call Pete Hegseth’s past comments about how the US military strategy is based on realism “absurd”. “It is the exact opposite of realism,” he said.
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n
Starting wars in the Middle East that get out of control and lead us to have far greater costs with the benefits, is one of the cornerstones of the unrealistic strategy that this administration has criticized over and over and over again. And yet, here we are in a full scale Middle East war, and we’ve seen the costs of that.
n
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Running through some of those costs, Smith underlined the human cost in thousands of civilian deaths, the deaths of 13 US service members, other countries being “dragged into the war”, gas prices at home, and the cost of fertilizer.
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He then moved to a big question for Hegesth today, which is what is the US’s endgame in Iran, given that fundamentally nothing has changed in Iran despite the war?
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n
One of the big questions that we need to get answered today is, where is this going? What is the plan to achieve our objectives? We’ve seen the cost, and the cost is very, very high. All we keep hearing on the objectives is we keep seeing all of the targets that we have struck …
n
We’re in this to fundamentally change Iran. And as we sit here today, Iran’s nuclear program is exactly what it was before this war started. They have not lost their capacity to inflict pain. They still have a ballistic missile program. They’re still able to blockade the strait of Hormuz and have the ships that are capable of doing that. What is the plan to get that to change? And most disturbingly, the president keeps telling us that it’s over.
n
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Smith also criticized the administration’s harsh treatment of Nato for not joining the war, highlighting that Nato supported the US by invoking article 5 after 9/11 and adding:
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n
There’s nothing realistic about starting a war in the Middle East, going it alone and pushing aside all diplomacy.
n
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In his final point, Smith stressed the need for answers regarding the strike on the Iranian girls’ school that killed at least 175 people, most of them children:
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n
There is absolutely no question at this point what happened. We made a mistake and that happens in war. We identified this target based on earlier charts. And yet two months after it happened, we refuse to say anything about it, giving the world the impression that we just don’t care.
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Pete Hegseth is finally due to appear before the House armed services committee at 10am ET, giving lawmakers their first opportunity to publicly question the defense secretary since the US and Israel launched war on Iran over two months ago.
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Since the war began, Hegseth and General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have only given press conferences and haven’t testified before Congress. Caine is also set to testify today. They are both also due to appear before the Senate armed services committee tomorrow.
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Today’s appearance is formally billed as a routine hearing on the Pentagon’s budget request (the administration is requesting a record $1.5tn in defense spending, and the request was put together before the war), and comes amid intensifying questions over the rate at which the department is depleting weapon stockpiles.
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Hegseth is also likely to face scrutiny over civilian casualties in the war on Iran – not least the horrendous strike on an Iranian girls’ school that killed at least 175 people, most of them children. We can also expect questions on the US’s strategic rationale for the war, the effectiveness of the US-Israeli bombing campaign, the US’s preparedness for retaliatory strikes from Tehran, the strait of Hormuz crisis, his abrupt firings of senior defense officials, and more.
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“Pete Hegseth’s got a lot to answer to from this disastrous war,” Jason Crow, a Democratic representative on the House committee, told Politico. “How much is this costing? What’s the end game?”
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Pennsylvania Democrat Chris Deluzio told the outlet that Hegseth has been “dodging congressional questions about the Iran war since day one”.
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We’ll be watching the hearing and will you bring you all the key lines here.
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Hegseth and General Dan Caine speak to reporters at the Pentagon on 8 April after it was announced that a temporary ceasefire had been reached between the US, Iran, and Israel.”,”caption”:”Pete Hegseth and General Dan Caine speak to reporters at the Pentagon on 8 April after it was announced that a temporary ceasefire had been reached between the US, Iran, and Israel.”,”credit”:”Photograph: Andrew Harnik/Getty Images”}}],”attributes”:{“pinned”:false,”keyEvent”:true,”summary”:false},”blockCreatedOn”:1777468788000,”blockCreatedOnDisplay”:”09.19 EDT”,”blockLastUpdated”:1777470204000,”blockLastUpdatedDisplay”:”09.43 EDT”,”blockFirstPublished”:1777469921000,”blockFirstPublishedDisplay”:”09.38 EDT”,”blockFirstPublishedDisplayNoTimezone”:”09.38″,”title”:”Hegseth to face questions from lawmakers for first time since US-Israeli war on Iran began”,”contributors”:[],”primaryDateLine”:”Wed 29 Apr 2026 12.21 EDT”,”secondaryDateLine”:”First published on Wed 29 Apr 2026 05.51 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Former FBI director James Comey is expected to self-surrender to law enforcement at federal court in the eastern district of Virginia today, CNN (paywall) is reporting, citing a federal official familiar.
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It comes after the US justice department filed new criminal charges against Comey yesterday, in what appears to be the latest instance of the DOJ wielding its power to target Donald Trump’s political adversaries.
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A reminder that Comey was this time charged over a picture he posted on Instagram last year while on vacation, showing seashells arranged to say “86 47”. The post was read as a threat to Trump, the 47th president, as the number 86 can be used as shorthand for getting rid of something. Comey had captioned the image: “Cool shell formation on my beach walk.”
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Comey then deleted the post and apologized, saying he had not realized the numbers were associated with violence. “It never occurred to me, but I oppose violence of any kind so I took the post down,” he wrote on Instagram.
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The charges against Comey, approved by a grand jury in the eastern district of North Carolina where he allegedly took the photo of the shells, include making a threat against the president and transmitting a threat, via social media, across state lines, according to court documents.
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According to the indictment, the seashell numbers are something a reasonable person “would interpret as a serious expression of an intent to do harm to the President of the United States”.
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Comey published a video of himself yesterday saying:
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n
Well, they’re back. This time, about a picture of seashells on a North Carolina beach a year ago. And this won’t be the end of it, but nothing has changed with me. I am still innocent. I am still not afraid. And I still believe in the independent federal judiciary. So, let’s go.
n
It’s really important that all of us remember – this is not who we are as a country, this is not how the Department of Justice is supposed to be, and the good news is we get closer every day to restoring those values. Keep the faith.
n
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The justice department previously indicted Comey, who has long been the subject of Trump’s wrath, last year and charged him with lying to Congress. That case was thrown out when a judge in the eastern district of Virginia ruled that the prosecutor overseeing the case had been wrongfully appointed.
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FBI director James Comey testifying during a US Senate select committee on intelligence hearing on 8 June 2017.”,”caption”:”Former FBI director James Comey testifying during a US Senate select committee on intelligence hearing on 8 June 2017.”,”credit”:”Photograph: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images”}}],”attributes”:{“pinned”:false,”keyEvent”:true,”summary”:false},”blockCreatedOn”:1777466035000,”blockCreatedOnDisplay”:”08.33 EDT”,”blockLastUpdated”:1777467056000,”blockLastUpdatedDisplay”:”08.50 EDT”,”blockFirstPublished”:1777466607000,”blockFirstPublishedDisplay”:”08.43 EDT”,”blockFirstPublishedDisplayNoTimezone”:”08.43″,”title”:”James Comey expected to self-surrender to law enforcement, CNN reports”,”contributors”:[],”primaryDateLine”:”Wed 29 Apr 2026 12.21 EDT”,”secondaryDateLine”:”First published on Wed 29 Apr 2026 05.51 EDT”},{“id”:”69f1f7c38f08e0584d89b2f2″,”elements”:[{“_type”:”model.dotcomrendering.pageElements.TextBlockElement”,”html”:”
Donald Trump has told aides to prepare for an extended blockade of Iranian ports, the Wall Street Journal (paywall) reported last night, citing US officials.
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Trump has reportedly said in recent meetings that he prefers the blockade over other methods to increase the pressure on Iran as peace talks stall and Tehran keeps the critical strait of Hormuz closed.
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According to the WSJ’s report, Trump believes that his other options, such as resuming bombing or walking away from the war, would carry greater risks than maintaining the blockade.
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The US military has been preventing ships from entering and departing Iranian ports since 13 April, after direct talks with Iran failed to yield results.
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The US Federal Reserve is widely expected to hold interest rates steady on Wednesday after a key policy meeting, likely the last chaired by central bank chief Jerome Powell, a frequent target of president Donald Trump’s ire.
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Policymakers will weigh the risks of surging energy prices and snarled supply chains due to the US-Israel war on Iran, with analysts widely expecting a third pause in a row as the effects of the conflict ripple through the world’s largest economy.
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All eyes will be on Powell’s future plans at what could be his final press conference as head of the Fed on Wednesday afternoon, AFP reported.
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While the central bank chief’s tenure as chair ends 15 May, his term as a member of the board of governors continues until January 2028.
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Since returning to power last year, Trump has frequently criticized and insulted Powell for not cutting interest rates – a policy that would turbocharge economic activity but could fuel inflation.
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Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell holds a press conference at the Fed in Washington, D.C., U.S., December 10, 2025.”,”caption”:”U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell holds a press conference at the Fed in Washington, D.C., U.S., December 10, 2025.”,”credit”:”Photograph: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters”}}],”attributes”:{“pinned”:false,”keyEvent”:true,”summary”:false},”blockCreatedOn”:1777458370000,”blockCreatedOnDisplay”:”06.26 EDT”,”blockLastUpdated”:1777463315000,”blockLastUpdatedDisplay”:”07.48 EDT”,”blockFirstPublished”:1777463315000,”blockFirstPublishedDisplay”:”07.48 EDT”,”blockFirstPublishedDisplayNoTimezone”:”07.48″,”title”:”Fed likely to leave rates unchanged at what may be Powell’s last meeting”,”contributors”:[],”primaryDateLine”:”Wed 29 Apr 2026 12.21 EDT”,”secondaryDateLine”:”First published on Wed 29 Apr 2026 05.51 EDT”},{“id”:”69f1da3a8f0832e5f0f91ab9″,”elements”:[{“_type”:”model.dotcomrendering.pageElements.TextBlockElement”,”html”:”
US defense secretary Pete Hegseth will face tough questions from lawmakers about the Iran war on Wednesday during his first testimony to Congress since the start of the conflict.
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Hegseth’s appearance before the House Armed Services Committee – for a hearing on president Donald Trump’s $1.5tn defense budget request – comes with the war still unresolved and the economic fallout from it continuing around the globe.
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Lawmakers from both parties have previously expressed dissatisfaction with the information provided in classified briefings on the war, setting up a potentially fiery public hearing in which top US military officer general Dan Caine is also set to testify, AFP reported.
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“Finally, Secretary Hegseth will come before the House Armed Services Committee this week. It is time to answer for this war of choice,” Representative Maggie Goodlander, a Democratic member of the committee, said in a post on X.
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Secretary of War Pete Hegseth arrives to a state arrival ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House on April 28, 2026 in Washington, DC.”,”caption”:”U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth arrives to a state arrival ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House on April 28, 2026 in Washington, DC.”,”credit”:”Photograph: Andrew Harnik/Getty Images”}}],”attributes”:{“pinned”:false,”keyEvent”:true,”summary”:false},”blockCreatedOn”:1777457722000,”blockCreatedOnDisplay”:”06.15 EDT”,”blockLastUpdated”:1777460971000,”blockLastUpdatedDisplay”:”07.09 EDT”,”blockFirstPublished”:1777460972000,”blockFirstPublishedDisplay”:”07.09 EDT”,”blockFirstPublishedDisplayNoTimezone”:”07.09″,”title”:”US lawmakers to grill Pentagon chief on Iran war”,”contributors”:[],”primaryDateLine”:”Wed 29 Apr 2026 12.21 EDT”,”secondaryDateLine”:”First published on Wed 29 Apr 2026 05.51 EDT”},{“id”:”69f1d9998f08dcbe34a4bcae”,”elements”:[{“_type”:”model.dotcomrendering.pageElements.TextBlockElement”,”html”:”
US president Donald Trump has warned Iran that “they better get smart soon” and sign a non-nuclear deal, in his latest social media post.
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Trump shared an image of himself, wearing sunglasses and carrying a gun, set against the backdrop of – presumably – Middle Eastern towns and villages being bombed, with the caption “No more Mr Nice Guy”.
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He wrote:
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n
Iran can’t get their act together. They don’t know how to sign a nonnuclear deal. They better get smart soon! President DJT
n
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generated picture captioned ‘No more Mr. Nice Guy’ with Trump wearing sunglasses and carrying a machine gun in front of burning buildings”,”caption”:”The image Donald Trump posted on his Truth Social.”,”credit”:”Photograph: Truth Social”}}],”attributes”:{“pinned”:false,”keyEvent”:true,”summary”:false},”blockCreatedOn”:1777457562000,”blockCreatedOnDisplay”:”06.12 EDT”,”blockLastUpdated”:1777461908000,”blockLastUpdatedDisplay”:”07.25 EDT”,”blockFirstPublished”:1777459489000,”blockFirstPublishedDisplay”:”06.44 EDT”,”blockFirstPublishedDisplayNoTimezone”:”06.44″,”title”:”Iran ‘better get smart soon’ warns Trump in social media post”,”contributors”:[],”primaryDateLine”:”Wed 29 Apr 2026 12.21 EDT”,”secondaryDateLine”:”First published on Wed 29 Apr 2026 05.51 EDT”},{“id”:”69f1daf88f0832e5f0f91ac6″,”elements”:[{“_type”:”model.dotcomrendering.pageElements.TextBlockElement”,”html”:”
Britain’s King Charles and his wife Queen Camilla arrive in New York on Wednesday to commemorate victims of the 11 September terror attacks on the city.
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The king and queen’s scheduled arrival in New York follows a packed day in Washington on Tuesday, when Charles delivered a speech to Congress, held private meetings with president Donald Trump amid tensions between the US and UK over the Iran war and sat down with leaders of the US tech industry, Reuters reported.
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Charles and Camilla will begin their day in New York with a ceremony at the 9/11 memorial in lower Manhattan, where the twin towers of the World Trade Center were destroyed by al-Qaeda suicide bombers on 11 September, 2001. Charles is expected to meet with New York City’s mayor, Zohran Mamdani, at the ceremony.
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The king will then head to Harlem to visit a grassroots community organization that created a sustainable after-school urban farming initiative in an effort to combat food insecurity, according to local media.
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Meanwhile, Camilla will celebrate the 100th birthday of AA Milne’s fictional character Winnie the Pooh on behalf of her charity, The Queen’s Reading Room, which Buckingham Palace is calling a “literary engagement” event.
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The supreme court will hear oral arguments on Wednesday over whether the Trump administration can strip the temporary protected status (TPS) of hundreds of thousands of Syrians and Haitians, under a program that has protected them from deportation due to safety concerns in their home countries.
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People with TPS are given the permission to live and work in the US because the government has deemed their home countries to be unsafe due to war, political instability or natural disasters. In the past year, the Trump administration has attempted to cut the program for various countries, opening the door to the removal of hundreds of thousands of protected immigrants in the US.
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Last year, the supreme court allowed the administration to strip TPS status for more than 300,000 Venezuelans under the court’s emergency docket. Now, the court will hear arguments challenging the Trump administration’s efforts to remove the same protections from Syrians and Haitians.
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If the supreme court sides with the Trump administration in its effort to cut the program for Syrians and Haitians, analysts say the administration would likely seek to end the TPS program for all countries. Nearly 1.3 million people were TPS holders at the start of the second Trump administration.
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The TPS program, established in 1990, does not offer a pathway to citizenship but allows citizens from designated countries to live and work in the US if they are unable to return safely to their home countries. TPS designations can be extended by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
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Haitians have been protected from deportation under the TPS program since 2010 and Syrians have been protected since 2012. Earlier this month, the House passed legislation to extend the protection for Haitian immigrants under the TPS program for three years.
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Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog.
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Britain’s King Charles will use a trip to New York today to showcase cultural and economic ties between the UK and the US at a time when the so-called “special relationship” is under strain.
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It is the third day of a four-day state visit, clouded by tensions over the Iran war, that began in Washington with president Donald Trump greeting the monarch and his wife, Queen Camilla, AFP reported.
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The New York leg will first see the royals take part in a wreath-laying ceremony at the 9/11 memorial to mark 25 years since the terror attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people. The city’s mayor Zohran Mamdani is not expected to meet Charles privately but will join him for the ceremony.
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“This atrocity was a defining moment for America and your pain and shock were felt around the whole world,” Charles told the US Congress on Tuesday.
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“We stood with you then. And we stand with you now in solemn remembrance of a day that shall never be forgotten,” he added in a speech that called for unity among western powers.
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It comes as Trump said Charles agrees with him that Iran should never be allowed nuclear weapons. The president’s comments are likely to cause some embarrassment to royal aides that his views have been made public.
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Trump said in his speech at the white-tie event on Tuesday evening:
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We’re doing a little Middle East work right now … and we’re doing very well. We have militarily defeated that particular opponent, and we’re never going to let that opponent ever, Charles agrees with me even more than I do, we’re never going to let that opponent have a nuclear weapon.
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They know that, and they’ve known it right now, very powerfully.
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A Buckingham Palace spokesperson said:
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The king is naturally mindful of his government’s longstanding and well-known position on the prevention of nuclear proliferation.
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In other developments:
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Todd Blanche, the former defense lawyer for Donald Trump now serving as acting US attorney general, announced two charges against James Comey, the former FBI director and deputy attorney general for allegedly “knowing and willfully making a threat to kill” the president of the United States in a social media post.
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Patrick Fitzgerald, a former US attorney for the northern district of Illinois who now represents James Comey, said that his client, “vigorously denies the charges” filed against him.
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US defense secretary Pete Hegseth will face tough questions from lawmakers about the Iran war on Wednesday during his first testimony to Congress since the start of the conflict.
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President Trump will welcomes the Artemis II astronauts to the White House later today. The capsule returned to Florida’s Kennedy Space Center on Tuesday, almost a month after blasting off on humanity’s first lunar trip in more than a half century.
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The supreme court will hear arguments Wednesday over the Trump administration’s push to end legal protections for migrants fleeing war and natural disaster, one in a series of immigration cases the high court is considering against the backdrop of the president’s far-reaching immigration crackdown.
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The US Federal Reserve is widely expected to hold interest rates steady on Wednesday after a key policy meeting, likely the last chaired by central bank chief Jerome Powell. Policymakers will weigh the risks of surging energy prices and snarled supply chains due to the US-Israel war on Iran, with analysts widely expecting a third pause in a row.
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Key events
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Democratic senator Chris Coons said the supreme court’s ruling in Louisiana v Callais “has told the nation that some voices and votes are worth less than others”.
He wrote in a thread on X:
Generations of Americans marched, served, protested, and died for the promise of our democracy. Today, the Supreme Court continues its steady march to forget that sacrifice and undo that promise.
By restricting Americans’ ability to choose candidates that represent their communities, the Supreme Court has told the nation that some voices and votes are worth less than others.
The Voting Rights Act was a declaration that our democracy belongs to all of us. I still believe in the promise of our democracy, and I will keep fighting to make it real and to make sure your voice and vote matter.
Hegseth attacks Democrat for calling war on Iran ‘a quagmire’
Pete Hegseth further defended the Iran war in fiery remarks to Congress, insisting that the unpopular conflict is not a quagmire.
“You call it a quagmire, handing propaganda to our enemies? Shame on you for that statement,” Hegseth told Democrat John Garamendi, claiming that that language “undermines the mission”.
Garamendi had said Trump’s war strategy was one of “astounding incompetence”, describing it as a “serious self-inflicted wound to America” and highlighting the thousands of civilians and 13 US service members killed.
The blocking of the strait of Hormuz was “foreseeable”, he added, telling the defense secretary:
You have been lying to the American public about this war from day one, and so has the president.
He noted that the Iranian regime is intact, along with Iran’s missile and drone systems, and that the war has strengthened Iran’s coordination with China, Russia and North Korea. Trump is “stuck in a quagmire” of another war in the Middle East, Garamendi said.
Hegseth lambasted Garamendi’s statement as “reckless”. “Your hatred for President Trump blinds you,” he said.
Back at Pete Hegseth’s hearing at the House armed services committee earlier, the defense secretary got into a heated exchange with ranking member Adam Smith when he was asked how the government plans to end the nuclear threat from Iran.
“It is worth noting that every president prior to this one, including President Trump in his first term, also prevented Iran from getting a nuclear weapon without actually having to go to war in Iran,” Smith said.
He then asked Hegseth why the United States attacked Iran in February if the operation last summer had successfully “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program, as Donald Trump claimed, and questioned if there was an imminent threat that made the war necessary.
When Hegseth repeated that claim that Iran’s nuclear facilities were “obliterated” underground, Smith chimed in: “You just said 60 days ago … the nuclear weapon was an imminent threat. Now you’re saying that it was completely obliterated.”
Hegseth said Iran’s nuclear ambitions had not been eliminated but argued that its nuclear program had been.
US senator for Georgia Reverend Raphael Warnock said the decision “further ravaged” the Voting Rights Act and left the country “at a crossroads where politicians are picking their voters”.
“Today’s Supreme Court decision marks a profound defeat for American democracy and will pave the way for partisan politicians to pick their voters,” the Democrat said in a statement.
“Clearly, we are straying further from the core voting principles that helped create the diverse body that people see representing them today. We must restore the Voting Rights Act and ban gerrymandering. Our democracy is on the line.”
US representative Troy Carter, whose predominately black congressional district encompasses New Orleans, said in a statement:
This ruling is about far more than lines on a map — it’s about whether Black Louisianians will have a meaningful opportunity to make their voices heard.
Carter said the consequences of the high court’s decision will be “immediate and severe” and that Louisiana’s two majority-black congressional districts are now at risk of being dismantled.
Without the protections of the Voting Rights Act, there is no evidence to suggest that Black voters in our state will be able to elect candidates of their choice.
This decision will embolden efforts to dismantle majority-Black districts and fracture communities that have finally begun to see themselves reflected in their government. This isn’t just about federal representation. This decision will also impact state and local governments, impacting Black representation in state capitols and city council chambers across the country. It sends a dangerous signal that the progress we have made can be undone under the guise of legal theory.
The mayor of New Orleans, Helena Moreno, a Democrat who represents the largest city in Louisiana’s other predominantly black congressional district, said the supreme court’s ruling was “a step backward”.
For decades, the Voting Rights Act has served as a critical safeguard to ensure every voice, especially those historically marginalized, has a meaningful opportunity to be heard.
Striking down a district that reflected diversity suppresses voices and weakens our democracy. We should be working to expand representation, not roll it back.
Lauren Groh-Wargo, executive director of Fair Fight Action, a Georgia-based voting rights group founded by Democrat and former US representative Stacey Abrams, said the supreme court’s decision “guts” voting rights protection while “pretending to uphold it”.
She said the court rewrote the law to require a showing of intentional discrimination. That’s after Congress in the early 1980s specifically rewrote the Voting Rights Act to overturn an earlier supreme court decision in an Alabama case that tried to do the same thing.
At the time, Chief Justice John Roberts was a justice department attorney advocating for a showing of intentional discrimination.
She said:
It allows states, counties and cities to shield their discriminatory maps by claiming they are advancing their own partisan interests, ignoring that race and party are highly correlated in places across the country, particularly the South.
Indeed, the ruling could open the door for Republican-led states to eliminate Black and Latino electoral districts that tend to favor Democrats and affect the balance of power in Congress. Donald Trump has already sparked a nationwide redistricting battle to boost the GOP’s chances.
‘A devastating blow’: NAACP says supreme court ruling is ‘a major setback for our nation’
Meanwhile, Derrick Johnson, president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the nation’s oldest civil rights group, said the high court’s decision in Louisiana v Callais delivers “a devastating blow to what remains of the Voting Rights Act”.
The ruling is “a license for corrupt politicians who want to rig the system by silencing entire communities,” Johnson said in a statement today.
He went on:
The Supreme Court betrayed Black voters, they betrayed America, and they betrayed our democracy.
This ruling is a major setback for our nation and threatens to erode the hard-won victories we’ve fought, bled, and died for. But the people still can fight back. Our democracy is crying for help.
White House hails supreme court ruling that undermines key provision of Voting Rights Act
The White House has hailed the supreme court’s decision to effectively demolish a key Voting Rights Act that prevented racial discrimination in a landmark decision that Louisiana will have to redraw its congressional map.
“This is a complete and total victory for American voters,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said.
“The color of one’s skin should not dictate which congressional district you belong in. We commend the court for putting an end to the unconstitutional abuse of the Voting Rights Act and protecting civil rights,” she said.
US war on Iran has cost $25bn so far, Pentagon official says
Answering questions from ranking Democrat Adam Smith, defense department official Jules Hurst told the committee that the federal government has spent about $25 billion on the war so far, providing the first official estimate of the war’s cost.
“Most of that is in munitions, there’s part of that that’s obviously O&M [operations and maintenance] and equipment replacement” as well, said Hurst, who is performing the duties of the comptroller.
“I’m glad you answered that question because we’ve been asking for a hell of a long time and no one’s given us the answer,” Smith replied.
Back to the House armed services committee hearing, Pete Hegseth said the president’s request for $1.5tn for the Pentagon “reflects the urgency of the moment”.
This is an “historic” and “warfighting budget”, he said, and his department needed to get back on a “wartime footing” after what he called years of underinvestment under the Biden administration.
In his opening remarks, General Dan Caine called the budget request “a historic downpayment for future security” as he argued that “global risk is scaling”.
All of those ways that are now manifesting themselves on the battlefields around the world require a higher end of capital investment.
Supreme court rules Louisiana must redraw its congressional map in landmark case
Sam Levine
The US supreme court has ruled that Louisiana will have to redraw its congressional map, in a landmark decision that effectively guts a major section of the Voting Rights Act.
In a 6-3 decision along partisan lines, the court rendered ineffective section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, the last remaining powerful provision of the 1965 civil rights law that prevents racial discrimination in voting. Section 2 specifically has long been used to ensure minority voters are treated fairly in redistricting.
“Allowing race to play any part in government decision-making represents a departure from the constitutional rule that applies in almost every other context,” Justice Samuel Alito, a conservative, wrote for the majority opinion. “Compliance with section 2 thus could not justify the state’s use of race-based redistricting here. The state’s attempt to satisfy the Middle District’s ruling, although understandable, was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.”
In a dissenting opinion, Justice Elena Kagan wrote the court had now accomplished a “demolition of the Voting Rights Act”.
At the heart of the case, Louisiana v Callais, was a thorny question of how much lawmakers are allowed to consider race when they redraw districts to ensure that Black voters are adequately represented. The supreme court initially heard oral arguments in the case last March, but took the unusual step of asking lawyers to re-argue the case last fall. In setting the case for a re-argument, the justices raised the stakes of the case, asking lawyers to focus on whether section 2 of the Voting Rights Act was constitutional.
The decision comes after years of legal wrangling over the boundaries of the map.
Here’s Sam’s full report:
Supreme court hearing on whether protected status of Haitians and Syrians can be revoked begins
US supreme court oral arguments have begun in a case that will ultimately decide whether the Trump administration can strip temporary protected status (TPS) from hundreds of thousands of Haitians and Syrians living in the United States.
The hearing was supposed to begin at 10am ET, but it started late as the court released decisions, including a major ruling that Louisiana will have to redraw its congressional map (more on that to follow).
As my colleague José Olivares wrote in this preview, people with TPS are given the permission to live and work in the US because the government has deemed their home countries to be unsafe due to war, political instability or natural disasters.
In the past year, the Trump administration has attempted to cut the program for various countries, opening the door to the removal of hundreds of thousands of protected immigrants in the US.
Last year, the supreme court allowed the administration to strip TPS status for more than 300,000 Venezuelans under the court’s emergency docket. Now, the court will hear arguments challenging the Trump administration’s efforts to remove the same protections from Syrians and Haitians.
If the supreme court sides with the Trump administration in its effort to cut the program for Syrians and Haitians, analysts say the administration would likely seek to end the TPS program for all countries. Nearly 1.3 million people were TPS holders at the start of the second Trump administration.
Pete Hegseth defends war on Iran as he appears before House armed services committee
In his opening statement, Pete Hegseth defended the war on Iran, saying of the US-Israeli war:
Iran cannot have a nuclear bomb. We are proud of this undertaking.
“The biggest challenge, the biggest adversary we face at this point are the reckless, feckless and defeatist words of congressional Democrats and some Republicans,” he added.
‘Where is this going?’: top Democrat on committee slams administration’s strategy on Iran
In his opening remarks, ranking member Adam Smith praised the US military before expressing concern about the Pentagon’s budget request given the state of the national debt.
The Democrat then went on to call Pete Hegseth’s past comments about how the US military strategy is based on realism “absurd”. “It is the exact opposite of realism,” he said.
Starting wars in the Middle East that get out of control and lead us to have far greater costs with the benefits, is one of the cornerstones of the unrealistic strategy that this administration has criticized over and over and over again. And yet, here we are in a full scale Middle East war, and we’ve seen the costs of that.
Running through some of those costs, Smith underlined the human cost in thousands of civilian deaths, the deaths of 13 US service members, other countries being “dragged into the war”, gas prices at home, and the cost of fertilizer.
He then moved to a big question for Hegesth today, which is what is the US’s endgame in Iran, given that fundamentally nothing has changed in Iran despite the war?
One of the big questions that we need to get answered today is, where is this going? What is the plan to achieve our objectives? We’ve seen the cost, and the cost is very, very high. All we keep hearing on the objectives is we keep seeing all of the targets that we have struck …
We’re in this to fundamentally change Iran. And as we sit here today, Iran’s nuclear program is exactly what it was before this war started. They have not lost their capacity to inflict pain. They still have a ballistic missile program. They’re still able to blockade the strait of Hormuz and have the ships that are capable of doing that. What is the plan to get that to change? And most disturbingly, the president keeps telling us that it’s over.
Smith also criticized the administration’s harsh treatment of Nato for not joining the war, highlighting that Nato supported the US by invoking article 5 after 9/11 and adding:
There’s nothing realistic about starting a war in the Middle East, going it alone and pushing aside all diplomacy.
In his final point, Smith stressed the need for answers regarding the strike on the Iranian girls’ school that killed at least 175 people, most of them children:
There is absolutely no question at this point what happened. We made a mistake and that happens in war. We identified this target based on earlier charts. And yet two months after it happened, we refuse to say anything about it, giving the world the impression that we just don’t care.
Hegseth to face questions from lawmakers for first time since US-Israeli war on Iran began
Pete Hegseth is finally due to appear before the House armed services committee at 10am ET, giving lawmakers their first opportunity to publicly question the defense secretary since the US and Israel launched war on Iran over two months ago.
Since the war began, Hegseth and General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have only given press conferences and haven’t testified before Congress. Caine is also set to testify today. They are both also due to appear before the Senate armed services committee tomorrow.
Today’s appearance is formally billed as a routine hearing on the Pentagon’s budget request (the administration is requesting a record $1.5tn in defense spending, and the request was put together before the war), and comes amid intensifying questions over the rate at which the department is depleting weapon stockpiles.
Hegseth is also likely to face scrutiny over civilian casualties in the war on Iran – not least the horrendous strike on an Iranian girls’ school that killed at least 175 people, most of them children. We can also expect questions on the US’s strategic rationale for the war, the effectiveness of the US-Israeli bombing campaign, the US’s preparedness for retaliatory strikes from Tehran, the strait of Hormuz crisis, his abrupt firings of senior defense officials, and more.
“Pete Hegseth’s got a lot to answer to from this disastrous war,” Jason Crow, a Democratic representative on the House committee, told Politico. “How much is this costing? What’s the end game?”
Pennsylvania Democrat Chris Deluzio told the outlet that Hegseth has been “dodging congressional questions about the Iran war since day one”.
We’ll be watching the hearing and will you bring you all the key lines here.
James Comey expected to self-surrender to law enforcement, CNN reports
Former FBI director James Comey is expected to self-surrender to law enforcement at federal court in the eastern district of Virginia today, CNN (paywall) is reporting, citing a federal official familiar.
It comes after the US justice department filed new criminal charges against Comey yesterday, in what appears to be the latest instance of the DOJ wielding its power to target Donald Trump’s political adversaries.
A reminder that Comey was this time charged over a picture he posted on Instagram last year while on vacation, showing seashells arranged to say “86 47”. The post was read as a threat to Trump, the 47th president, as the number 86 can be used as shorthand for getting rid of something. Comey had captioned the image: “Cool shell formation on my beach walk.”
Comey then deleted the post and apologized, saying he had not realized the numbers were associated with violence. “It never occurred to me, but I oppose violence of any kind so I took the post down,” he wrote on Instagram.
The charges against Comey, approved by a grand jury in the eastern district of North Carolina where he allegedly took the photo of the shells, include making a threat against the president and transmitting a threat, via social media, across state lines, according to court documents.
According to the indictment, the seashell numbers are something a reasonable person “would interpret as a serious expression of an intent to do harm to the President of the United States”.
Comey published a video of himself yesterday saying:
Well, they’re back. This time, about a picture of seashells on a North Carolina beach a year ago. And this won’t be the end of it, but nothing has changed with me. I am still innocent. I am still not afraid. And I still believe in the independent federal judiciary. So, let’s go.
It’s really important that all of us remember – this is not who we are as a country, this is not how the Department of Justice is supposed to be, and the good news is we get closer every day to restoring those values. Keep the faith.
The justice department previously indicted Comey, who has long been the subject of Trump’s wrath, last year and charged him with lying to Congress. That case was thrown out when a judge in the eastern district of Virginia ruled that the prosecutor overseeing the case had been wrongfully appointed.
Trump tells aides to prepare for extended blockade of Iran, WSJ reports
Donald Trump has told aides to prepare for an extended blockade of Iranian ports, the Wall Street Journal (paywall) reported last night, citing US officials.
Trump has reportedly said in recent meetings that he prefers the blockade over other methods to increase the pressure on Iran as peace talks stall and Tehran keeps the critical strait of Hormuz closed.
According to the WSJ’s report, Trump believes that his other options, such as resuming bombing or walking away from the war, would carry greater risks than maintaining the blockade.
The US military has been preventing ships from entering and departing Iranian ports since 13 April, after direct talks with Iran failed to yield results.
