Mahmoud Khalid allowed to hold newborn son for first time – as it happened

Detained Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil was allowed to hold his one-month-old son for the first time Thursday after a federal judge blocked the Trump administration’s efforts to keep the father and infant separated by a Plexiglass barrier.

The visit came before a scheduled immigration hearing for Khalil, a legal permanent resident and Columbia University graduate who has been detained in a Louisiana jail since 8 March.

Khalil was the first person to be arrested under Donald Trump promised crackdown on protesters against the war in Gaza and is one of the few who has remained in custody as his case winds its way through both immigration and federal court.

Federal authorities have not accused Khalil of a crime, but they have sought to deport him on the basis that his prominent role in protests against Israel’s war in Gaza may have undermined US foreign policy interests.

His request to attend his son’s 21 April birth was denied last month by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The question of whether Khalil would be permitted to hold his newborn child or forced to meet him through a barrier had sparked days of legal fighting, triggering claims by Khalil’s attorneys that he was being subject to political retaliation by the government.

The Associated Press is reporting that the North Dakota governor Kelly Armstrong accidentally vetoed $35m for the state’s housing budget.

When Armstrong took up an agency budget bill approved by the legislature, he thought he vetoed a couple of line items. But he vetoed millions for North Dakota’s housing budget. Now the state is figuring out how to deal with the unusual problem of a mistaken veto.

“I have no recollection of anything like this happening in the 37 years I’ve been here,” John Bjornson, legislative council director, said Thursday. “So, yeah, I’d say it’s a little extraordinary.”

In North Dakota, the governor’s staff called his veto of the housing budget in Senate Bill 2014 a markup error. Armstrong’s staff met with the legislative council Thursday morning to discuss options.

“This was an honest mistake, and we will fix it,” a statement from the governor’s office read.

Donald Trump announced on Truth Social that Bernie Navarro, the founder of the Miami lender Benworth Capital, will be the ambassador to Peru.

Navarro is an ally and donor to secretary of state, Marco Rubio. Benworth was sued last year by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. The Miami Herald reported in July 2024:

Benworth Capital approved more than $4 billion of the forgivable federal loans designed to keep small businesses afloat during the COVID-19 pandemic, which earned Benworth more than $680 million in fees. The lender was sued earlier this month by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, which provided Benworth with the money it used to make its PPP loans. The Federal Reserve bank said that Benworth is in breach of its contract with the bank and is demanding that Benworth immediately repay nearly $67 million the bank says it is still owed.

The suspect in the attack that killed two young Israeli embassy staff members, Elias Rodriguez, was once affiliated with a far-left group in Chicago, the Party for Socialism and Liberation, according to a post from the group on X.

The group said that Rodriguez had a brief association with a PSL branch that ended in 2017 and that they knew of no contact with him in more than seven years.

“We have nothing to do with this shooting and do not support it,” the organization posted on X.

Rodriguez was also identified in a 2018 local news report as a member of the Chicago branch of a national group called Answer, an acronym for Act Now to Stop War and End Racism, which has organized demonstrations in solidarity with Palestinians.

Rodriguez worked at the healthcare non-profit American Osteopathic Information Association, the organization confirmed in a statement expressing sympathy for the victims.

“We were shocked and saddened to learn that an AOIA employee has been arrested as a suspect in this horrific crime,” the statement said.

The supreme court declined to reinstate independent agency board members fired by Donald Trump.

The court’s action extended an order chief justice John Roberts issued in April that had the effect of removing two board members whom Trump fired from agencies that deal with labor issues, including one with a key role for federal workers as the president aims to drastically downsize the workforce.

Neither agency has enough appointed members to take final actions on issues before them, as Trump has not sought to appoint replacements.

The decision Thursday keeps on hold an appellate ruling that had temporarily reinstated Gwynne Wilcox to the National Labor Relations Board and Cathy Harris to the Merit Systems Protection Board.

Harris and Wilcox have been repeatedly fired and reinstated since Trump’s inauguration following contradictory rulings.

Lauren Gambino and David Smith are reporting the latest on the killing of two Israeli embassy staff members:

Jeanine Pirro, the interim US attorney for Washington, said at a press conference on Thursday afternoon that authorities were also investigating as a “hate crime and a crime of terrorism” the killings that left the US capital in shock as world leaders condemned the “horrible” and “antisemitic” shootings.

The man accused of killing two staff members of the Israeli embassy in DC was charged with murder of foreign officials and other crimes, the AP reports.

The killings occurred shortly after 9pm on Wednesday evening, outside the Capital Jewish Museum, where, according to officials, a gunman approached a group leaving an event hosted by the American Jewish Committee and opened fire at close range.

We’ll have more details as they come in.

A federal judge in California blocked the Trump administration from terminating the legal status of international students at universities across the US, reports the Associated Press.

District Judge Jeffrey S White also barred the administration from arresting or detaining foreign-born students based on their immigration status while a legal challenge to earlier terminations proceeds through the courts.

In the injunction, White said that the Trump administration has “wreaked havoc” on the lives of the plaintiffs as well as other international students.

“At each turn in this and similar litigation across the nation, Defendants have abruptly changed course to satisfy courts’ expressed concerns,” the judge said. “It is unclear how this game of whack-a-mole will end unless Defendants are enjoined from skirting their own mandatory regulations.”

Some more factchecking of yesterday’s chaotic Oval Office meeting in which Donald Trump repeated baseless claims of white “genocide” in South Africa to its president Cyril Ramaphosa – this time from Reuters.

During the meeting, Trump showed Ramaphosa and the media a screenshot of Reuters video taken in the Democratic Republic of Congo as part of what he falsely presented as evidence of mass killings of white South Africans.

“These are all white farmers that are being buried,” said Trump, holding up a print-out of an article accompanied by the picture during the contentious meeting.

In fact, the video published by Reuters on 3 February and subsequently verified by the new agency’s fact check team, showed humanitarian workers lifting body bags in the Congolese city of Goma. The image was pulled from Reuters footage shot following deadly battles with Rwanda-backed M23 rebels.

The blog post showed to Ramaphosa by Trump during the White House meeting was published by American Thinker, a conservative online magazine, about conflict and racial tensions in South Africa and Congo.

The post did not caption the image but identified it as a “YouTube screen grab” with a link to a video news report about Congo on YouTube, which credited Reuters.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

Andrea Widburg, managing editor at American Thinker and the author of the post in question, wrote in reply to a Reuters query that Trump had “misidentified the image”.

The footage from which the picture was taken shows a mass burial following an M23 assault on Goma, filmed by Reuters video journalist Djaffar Al Katanty.

“That day, it was extremely difficult for journalists to get in ... I had to negotiate directly with M23 and coordinate with the ICRC to be allowed to film,” Al Katanty said. “Only Reuters has video.”

Al Katanty said seeing Trump holding the article with the screengrab of his video came as a shock.

In view of all the world, President Trump used my image, used what I filmed in DRC to try to convince President Ramaphosa that in his country, white people are being killed by Black people.

A federal judge blocked has blocked the Trump administration from carrying out his executive order to dismantle the Department of Education and ordered it today to reinstate employees terminated in a mass layoff, Reuters reports.

US district judge Myong Joun in Boston at the behest of a group of Democratic-led states, school districts and teachers’ unions issued an injunction blocking the department from moving forward with a mass termination announced in March of over 1,300 employees, which would cut its staff by half.

“The record abundantly reveals that defendants’ true intention is to effectively dismantle the department without an authorizing statute,” wrote Joun.

Lawyers with the justice department argued that the mass terminations were not an effort to shutter the agency but a lawful effort to eliminate bureaucratic bloat while fulfilling its overall statutory mission more efficiently.

But Joun said the cuts were having the opposite effect, as the “massive reduction in staff has made it effectively impossible for the department to carry out its statutorily mandated functions.” “This court cannot be asked to cover its eyes while the department’s employees are continuously fired and units are transferred out until the department becomes a shell of itself,” the judge wrote.

He ordered the administration to not just reinstate the workers but also to halt implementation of Trump’s 21 March directive to transfer student loans and special needs programs to other federal agencies.

The administration swiftly appealed the decision, which education department spokesperson Madi Biedermann said came from “an unelected judge with a political axe to grind”.

White House spokesperson Harrison Fields called the ruling “misguided.” “The president and his secretary of education have the legal authority to make decisions regarding the agency’s reorganization, and a leftist judge’s ruling cannot change that reality,” Fields said in a statement.

Skye Perryman, whose liberal legal group, Democracy Forward, represented the school districts and unions, said today’s ruling means “disastrous mass firings of career civil servants are blocked while this wildly disruptive and unlawful agency action is litigated”.

A new report led by health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr lays out a dark vision of American children’s health and calls for agencies to examine vaccines, ultra-processed foods, environmental chemicals, lack of exercise and “overmedicalization”.

Kennedy has made combatting the chronic disease “epidemic” a cornerstone of his vision for the US, even as he has ignored common causes of chronic conditions, such as smoking and alcohol use.

The 69-page report is the result of a February executive order by Donald Trump that established a “Make America Healthy Again” (Maha) commission and required it to report on children’s health.

While the report broadly summarizes scientific evidence about nutrition, mental health, chemical exposures and children’s mental health, it ignores the leading causes of death for children – firearms and motor vehicle accidents – and one of the most common chronic conditions: dental cavities.

​​“We will save lives by addressing this chronic disease epidemic head-on. We’re going to save a lot more money in the long run – and even in the short run,” Kennedy said in a press call on Thursday about the report.

Notably, the report reflects some of Kennedy’s bugbears where science is unsettled, but argues research “demonstrates the need for continued studies”, such as on fluoride in water and electromagnetic radiation.

The report also criticizes the growth in the childhood vaccine schedule. The vaccine schedule is widely accepted in the medical community as safe and effective. Additions are publicly debated in meetings with both career government scientists and outside expert advisers.

It also points to research that the report argues “raise[s] important questions” about medications – such as antidepressants, stimulants, GLP-1 weight-loss drugs and gender-affirming care – which are widely considered safe and even standard care.

The flavor of the report is well-represented in a section on “medicalization”, which describes the potential for “undetected but potentially major long-term repercussions”. The portion describes “established harms” as “the tip of a potentially vast iceberg representing both detectable short term negative effects, and potentially hidden negative effects with long term implications”.

The US supreme court on Thursday blocked an attempt led by two Catholic dioceses to establish in Oklahoma the nation’s first taxpayer-funded religious charter school in a major case involving religious rights in American education that challenged the constitutional separation of church and state.

The 4-4 ruling left intact a lower court’s decision that blocked the establishment of St Isidore of Seville Catholic virtual school. The lower court found that the proposed school would violate the US constitution’s first amendment limits on government involvement in religion.

The conservative justice Amy Coney Barrett recused herself from the case, leaving eight justices rather than the full slate of nine to decide the outcome. Barrett is a former professor at Notre Dame Law School, which represents the school’s organizers.

When the supreme court is evenly divided, the lower court’s decision stands. The justices did not provide a rationale for their action in the unsigned ruling. It was not disclosed how each member of the bench voted, though it is likely that the three liberal-leaning justices favored upholding the block and if that was indeed the case it poses the intriguing question of which conservative-leaning justice joined them.

Harvard University has said that the Department of Homeland Security’s move to revoke its ability to enrol international students is “unlawful” retaliatory action that threatens serious harm to the university.

In a statement, the university said: “The government’s action is unlawful. We are fully committed to maintaining its ability to host international students and scholars from more than 140 countries and enrich the university. This retaliatory action threatens serious harm to the Harvard community and our country, and undermines Harvard’s academic and research mission.”

The move comes after Harvard refused to provide information homeland security secretary Kristi Noem had previously demanded about some foreign student visa holders who attend the university, the DHS said.

It marks a significant escalation of the Trump administration’s campaign against the elite Ivy League university, which has emerged as one of Trump’s most prominent institutional targets.

In a statement, the Department of Homeland Security confirmed that Kristi Noem has ordered it to terminate Harvard University’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP) certification.

The statement repeats the Trump administration’s claim that “Harvard is being held accountable for collaboration with the [Chinese Communist party], fostering violence, antisemitism, and pro-terrorist conduct from students on its campus”.

It goes on to say that as a result Harvard can no longer enroll foreign students and existing foreign students must transfer or lose their legal status.

The statement reads:

Harvard’s leadership has created an unsafe campus environment by permitting anti-American, pro-terrorist agitators to harass and physically assault individuals, including many Jewish students, and otherwise obstruct its once-venerable learning environment. Many of these agitators are foreign students. Harvard’s leadership further facilitated, and engaged in coordinated activity with the [Chinese Communist party], including hosting and training members of a CCP paramilitary group complicit in the Uyghur genocide.

On April 16, 2025, secretary Noem demanded Harvard provide information about the criminality and misconduct of foreign students on its campus. Secretary Noem warned refusal to comply with this lawful order would result in SEVP termination.

This action comes after DHS terminated $2.7m in DHS grants for Harvard last month.

Harvard University brazenly refused to provide the required information requested and ignored a follow-up request from the Department’s Office of General Council. Secretary Noem is following through on her promise to protect students and prohibit terrorist sympathizers from receiving benefits from the US government.

Homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, has said that by halting the university’s ability to enroll international students, the Trump administration “is holding Harvard accountable for fostering violence, antisemitism and coordinating with the Chinese Communist party on its campus”.

In a post on X she continued:

It is a privilege, not a right, for universities to enroll foreign students and benefit from their higher tuition payments to help pad their multibillion-dollar endowments.

Harvard had plenty of opportunity to do the right thing. It refused.

They have lost their Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification as a result of their failure to adhere to the law.

Let this serve as a warning to all universities and academic institutions across the country.

In a major escalation in the Trump administration’s bid to pressure Harvard University to fall in line with Donald Trump’s agenda, the administration has halted Harvard University’s ability to enroll international students, the New York Times reports.

The Times writes that the Trump administration “notified Harvard about the decision after a back-and-forth in recent days over the legality of a sprawling records request as part of the Department of Homeland Security’s investigation, according to three people with knowledge of the negotiations”.

“I am writing to inform you that effective immediately, Harvard University’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification is revoked,” according to a letter sent to the university by Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, a copy of which was obtained by the Times.

Spokespeople for the Department of Homeland Security and Harvard did not immediately respond to the Times’ requests for comment.

No. The BBC – and others – have factchecked the footage Trump showed to the South African president, Cyril Ramaphosa, yesterday in a chaotic Oval Office meeting. Here’s what they found.

The footage played by Trump in the Oval Office showed rows of white crosses stretching off into the distance along a rural road. Trump claimed: ‘These are burial sites right here. Burial sites. Over a thousand of white farmers.’

However, the crosses do not mark graves. The video is from a protest against the murder of white farming couple Glen and Vida Rafferty, who were ambushed and shot dead on their premises in 2020. The clip was shared on YouTube on 6 September, the day after the protests.

“It’s not a burial site, but it was a memorial,” Rob Hoatson, one of the organisers of the event, told the BBC. He said the crosses were erected as a “temporary memorial” to the couple.

Hoatson said the crosses have since been taken down.

BBC Verify has geolocated the footage to an area in KwaZulu-Natal province, near the town of Newcastle. Google Street View imagery captured in May 2023 – almost three years after the footage first appeared online – shows that the crosses were no longer standing.

Yamiche Alcindor, a White House correspondent for NBC News, addresses yesterday’s Oval Office ambush of South African president Cyril Ramaphosa, contending that a video played by Trump did not in fact show a burial site of murdered Afrikaner farmers.

Leavitt snaps back:

The video showed images of crosses in South Africa about white farmers that have been killed and persecuted because of the colour of their skin. Those crosses are representing their lives.

As Alcindor challenges further, Leavitt insists:

It showed white crosses representing people who have perished because of political persecution.

Alcindor volleys back:

The president said it’s a burial site and it’s not.

Leavitt lambasts the “ridiculous line of questioning”. Meanwhile, the White House’s rapid response X account immediately tagged Alcindor with two photos with captions from the Associated Press.

The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, is briefing the media now She starts by saying Donald Trump is “saddened and outraged” by the fatal shooting of the two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington DC last night.

She adds:

The department of justice will be prosecuting the perpetrator of this to the full extent of the law.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (Cair), the US’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, has condemned political violence as “completely unacceptable” after a deadly attack on Israeli embassy employees in Washington DC, and said that the crime does not reflect or represent the millions of Americans peacefully advocating for an end to US support for the Israeli government’s genocide in Gaza.

In a statement, Cair said:

We condemn last night’s deadly attack on Israeli embassy employees in Washington DC.

While millions of Americans feel extreme frustration at the sight of the Israeli government slaughtering Palestinian men, women and children on a daily basis with weapons paid for with our taxpayer dollars, political violence is an unacceptable crime and is not the answer.

Such violence only undermines the pursuit of justice. Peaceful protest, civil disobedience and political engagement are the only appropriate and acceptable tools to advocate for policy change in our nation, including an end to US support for the Israeli government’s genocide in Gaza.

A Republican push to dismantle clean energy incentives threatens to reverberate across the US by costing more than 830,000 jobs, raising energy bills for US households and threatening to unleash millions more tonnes of the planet-heating pollution that is causing the climate crisis, experts have warned.

A major tax bill moving through the Republican-held House of Representatives will, as currently written, demolish key components of climate legislation signed by Joe Biden that has spurred a record torrent of renewable energy and electric vehicle investment in the US.

Under the reconciliation bill, tax credits for cleaner cars will end this year, with incentives for wind, solar and even nuclear energy projects scaled down and then eliminated by 2032. Clean energy manufacturing tax credits will be axed by 2031, while Americans seeking to upgrade their homes to cleaner or more energy efficient appliances will get no further subsidy after the end of this year.

“This bill is worse than what people envisioned – it pulls the rug out from facilities banking on these incentives, it raises everyday household costs by hundreds of dollars and undercuts any sort of action on climate change,” said Robbie Orvis, senior director at Energy Innovation, a non-partisan climate policy thinktank.

“You can’t overstate how significant this will be in weakening the US’s position. With inflation, tariffs and rising electricity use, it really couldn’t come at a worse time. It’s a really damaging bill.”

Facing a barrage of false claims from Donald Trump that white people were being persecuted in South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa remained composed, pushed back politely and even tried to joke with Trump, earning him praise back home, reports Reuters.

Ramaphosa may have drawn on his experience as the African National Congress’s lead negotiator in talks that led to the peaceful end of apartheid in 1994 during yesterday’s chaotic televised confrontation, in which he managed to avoid a Zelenskyy-level bust-up in the Oval Office. The ANC said of the South African president:

His conduct was in keeping with the proud diplomatic tradition of President Nelson Mandela.

Repeatedly interrupted by Trump, Ramaphosa calmly challenged claims that minority Afrikaners were the targets of a “white genocide”, the once fringe theory has been exponentially amplified by Trump and his South African-born ally Elon Musk.

The way he handled Trump’s onslaught was mostly drawing praise back home on Thursday. Author Pieter du Toit said:

President Ramaphosa did well to maintain a calm demeanour and he did well to stick to the facts as close as possible.

Political analyst Ralph Mathekga said Ramaphosa kept sight of the bigger picture and did not take the bait.

There was never a sense of arrogance on the side of Ramaphosa. He managed his emotions in a tactful way.

Ramaphosa’s extensive network was evident in the Oval Office, where he was accompanied by luxury goods billionaire Johann Rupert, South Africa’s richest man, and by champion golfers Ernie Els and Retief Goosen. “It was pragmatic of him to bring the golfers and Rupert, they are the sort of people Trump likes to speak with,” said Mathekga.

That pragmatism extended to inviting the three men and agriculture minister John Steenhuisen, all of whom are white, to address Trump, who listened to them without interrupting - in contrast to how he treated Ramaphosa.

At the start of the meeting, Ramaphosa complimented Trump on his changes to the Oval Office decor, offered him a 14-kg book on South African golf courses and joked about having worked on his own golf so he could take on Trump, who loves the sport.

Even after Trump began his attacks and played a video that falsely purported to show thousands of graves of white farmers in South Africa and flipped through printouts of news stories he claimed were of white people killed in the country, Ramaphosa tried to defuse tensions with humour.

With Trump raging at a reporter for asking about a luxury jet he has accepted as a gift from Qatar, Ramaphosa interjected: “I am sorry I don’t have a plane to give you.” Trump appeared unamused. “I wish you did,” he said, before resuming his attacks.

Mahmoud Khalil, the detained Palestinian activist, was allowed to hold his one-month-old son for the first time after a federal judge blocked the Trump administration’s efforts to keep the father and infant separated by a plexiglass divider, reports the Associated Press.

The visit today came ahead of a scheduled immigration hearing for Khalil, a legal permanent resident and Columbia University graduate who has been held in a Louisiana jail since 8 March.

His request to attend his son’s 21 April birth was denied last month by Ice. The Trump administration then aimed to block Khalil from a “contact visit”, only permitting him to meet with his wife and son from behind a barrier. The government claimed that allowing the trio to meet in the same room could present a security risk.

After days of legal fighting, triggering claims by Khalil’s attorneys that he is being subject to political retaliation by the government, a federal judge in New Jersey, Michael Farbiarz, intervened last night, allowing the meeting to go forward on Thursday morning.

Farbiarz is currently considering Khalil’s petition for release as he appeals a Louisiana immigration judge’s ruling that he can be deported from the country.

Federal authorities have not accused Khalil of a crime, but have sought to deport him on the basis that his prominent role in protests against Israel’s war in Gaza may have “undermined US foreign policy interests”.

Khalil is scheduled to appear before that immigration judge, Jamee Comans, for a routine hearing later today. His attorneys said it was unclear whether the baby would be permitted to attend the hearing.

A federal judge has blocked Donald Trump’s executive order to shut down the Department of Education and ordered the agency to reinstate employees who were fired in mass layoffs.

US district judge Myong Joun in Boston granted a preliminary injunction stopping the Trump administration from carrying out two plans announced in March that sought to work toward Trump’s goal to dismantle the department.

The injunction was requested in a lawsuit filed by the Somerville and Easthampton school districts in Massachusetts and the American Federation of Teachers, along with other education groups.

The groups argued that the layoffs amounted to an illegal shutdown of the education department. They said it left the department unable to carry out responsibilities required by Congress, including supporting special education, distributing financial aid and enforcing civil rights laws.

Authorities believe the suspect in last night’s fatal shooting of two Israeli embassy staffers acted alone, the US attorney general, Pam Bondi, has said.

She called the attack “horrific” and said security has been increased in many areas following the shooting.

Security guards opened fire on Thursday on a person outside the gates of the CIA’s headquarters and then took the suspect into custody, the intelligence agency said.

A CIA spokesperson said security staff “engaged a person” outside the main gates, and a source familiar with the matter told Reuters the suspect was a woman.

The spokesperson declined to say whether gunfire struck the suspect or to disclose any other details of the incident, except to say the person was now in custody.

NBC News reported earlier that the person was shot, citing a person with knowledge of the matter.

It was not immediately known why security officers opened fire or what the person was doing at the time of the shooting.

The incident occurred around 4am ET, a Fairfax police spokesperson told ABC News.

The CIA closed the main gate at its Langley compound and directed employees to seek alternate routes.

The shooting incident came after two Israeli Embassy staffers were killed by a lone gunman in Washington on Wednesday night. There was no indication the incidents were related.

Israel’s foreign minister, Gideon Sa’ar, has accused unnamed European officials of “toxic antisemitic incitement” he blamed for a hostile climate in which the fatal shooting of two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington took place, Reuters reports.

Israel has faced a blizzard of criticism from Europe of late as it has intensified its military campaign in Gaza, where humanitarian groups have warned that an 11-week Israeli blockade on aid supplies has left the Palestinian territory on the brink of famine.

Sa’ar did not name any countries or officials but said the climate of hostility towards Israel was behind the shooting of the embassy staffers outside a Jewish museum in Washington yesterday.

Sa’ar, at a news conference in Jerusalem, said the attack was a direct outcome of “toxic antisemitic incitement against Israel and Jews around the world” since Hamas militants’ cross-border attack on Israel on 7 October 2023.

“There is a direct line connecting antisemitic and anti-Israel incitement to this murder,” he said. “This incitement is also done by leaders and officials of many countries and organisations, especially from Europe.”

Saar declined to identify which leader or officials he had in mind.

But his remarks came after increasingly tough words from western allies of Israel including France and Britain, which joined Canada this week in warning of possible “concrete action” against Israel over its war in Gaza.

Sa’ar said the “global atmosphere” against Israel had worsened sharply since the 7 October 2023 Hamas attack that killed 1,200 people and saw 251 taken as hostages back into Gaza.

Since then, Israel’s military assault on Gaza has killed more than 53,000 Palestinian people (though the true number is estimated to be much higher) and laid waste to the densely populated territory, drawing mass protests across the world ranging from US university campuses to the streets of European cities.

Last year, the international court of justice ordered Israel to take action to prevent alleged acts of genocide in Gaza after a case brought by South Africa that stirred deep anger in Israel.

Sa’ar claimed: “These libels about genocide, crimes against humanity and murdering babies pave the way exactly for such murders.”

You can follow our latest reporting on the crisis in Gaza here:

Global reactions poured in Thursday in the hours after two staff members of the Israeli embassy in Washington were shot and killed Wednesday evening while leaving an event at a Jewish museum.

Authorities say the suspect yelled, “Free, free Palestine” after he was arrested over the deaths of Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim.

The violence was condemned by world leaders, with US president Donald Trump describing the killings as “horrible”.

“These horrible D.C. killings, based obviously on antisemitism, must end, NOW!” Trump posted on social media early Thursday. “Hatred and Radicalism have no place in the USA.”

Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday that he was “shocked” by the “horrific, antisemitic” shooting.

“We are witnessing the terrible price of antisemitism and wild incitement against Israel,” he said in a statement.

Meanwhile, the British prime minister Keir Starmer said that “antisemitism is an evil we must stamp out wherever it appears. My thoughts are with their colleagues, family and loved ones, and as always, I stand in solidarity with the Jewish community.”

Starmer’s spokesperson said the government has “offered its full support to the Israeli embassy in London.”

French president Emmanuel Macron said he has reached out to his Israeli counterpart in the wake of the killings in what the French leader called “an antisemitic attack.”

German chancellor Friedrich Merz, in a post on X, said he was “shocked” by the news.

“Our thoughts are with their families,” Merz wrote. “At this stage we must assume an anti-Semitic motive. I condemn this heinous act in the strongest possible terms.”

President Donald Trump’s sweeping tax and spending bill passed the Republican-controlled House of Representatives on Thursday, in a political victory for the president after months of Republican infighting over spending cuts and tax policies.

The measure will now be scrutinised by lawmakers in the Senate. More as we get it.

Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. I’m Tom Ambrose and I will be bringing you the latest news lines over the next few hours.

President Donald Trump’s sweeping tax and spending bill cleared a crucial hurdle on Thursday, as the House of Representatives voted roughly along party lines to begin a debate that would lead to a vote on passage later in the morning.

The legislation would extend his signature 2017 tax cuts, create new tax breaks for tipped income and auto loans, end many green-energy subsidies and boost spending on the military and immigration enforcement, Reuters reported. It would also tighten eligibility for food and health programs that serve millions of low-income Americans.

The proposed legislation – which Trump nicknamed “one big beautiful bill” – would also add $3.8tn to the $36.2tn US debt burden over the next decade, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

Lawmakers voted 217-212 to begin a floor debate on the legislation during a rare pre-dawn session that featured choruses of cheers and boos between party members. A single Republican lawmaker, fiscal hawk Thomas Massie, joined Democrats in opposition.

They were due to vote again to pass the measure later in the morning and send it on to the Republican-led Senate, which would probably take weeks to act.

For our most recent story, see here:

In other news:

• Donald Trump ambushed the South African president, Cyril Ramaphosa, by playing him a video that he falsely claimed proved genocide was being committed against white people under “the opposite of apartheid”. Ramaphosa – who earlier said that he had come to Washington to “reset” the relationship between the two countries – refused to take the bait and suggested that they “talk about it very calmly”.

• Ramaphosa expects Trump to visit South Africa during G2o meeting. His spokesperson, Vincent Magwenya, told South African TV station Newzroom Afrika that the Oval Office meeting was “an orchestrated show for the cameras” and that the “real business” of the trip was the bilateral closed-door meeting.

• Trump said he will make a decision in the near future about taking Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac public, a move which he said he is giving “very serious consideration”. In a post on Truth Social, Trump said he will speak with treasury secretary Scott Bessent; commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick; and federal housing finance director, William Pulte, about doing so.

• The Trump administration formally accepted the controversial gift of a Boeing 747 jetliner from the government of Qatar, and directed the air force to assess how quickly the plane can be upgraded for possible use as a new Air Force One. The offer of the jet has set off a firestorm of bipartisan criticism of Trump, particularly following the president’s visit to the country last week to arrange US business deals.

• A federal judge ruled that the Department of Homeland Security’s attempt to deport migrants to South Sudan was “unquestionably violative” of an injunction he had issued earlier. US district judge Brian E Murphy made the remark at an emergency hearing he had ordered in Boston following the Trump administration’s apparent deportation of eight people to South Sudan, despite most of them being from other countries. On Tuesday, Murphy ruled that the administration could not let a group of migrants being deported to South Sudan leave the custody of US immigration authorities.

• The justice department moved to cancel a settlement with Minneapolis that called for an overhaul of its police department following the murder of George Floyd, as well as a similar agreement with Louisville, Kentucky, after the death of Breonna Taylor, saying it does not want to pursue the cases. The move shows how the civil rights division of the justice department is changing rapidly under Donald Trump, dismantling Biden-era work and investigating diversity programs. It also comes amid pressure on the right to recast Floyd’s murder, undermine diversity efforts and define liberal-run cities like Minneapolis as crime-ridden.

• The US army said it has no plans to recognize Trump’s birthday on 14 June when he presides over part of the army’s celebrations of its 250th anniversary. Trump, who is turning 79 on the same day, will play a big role in the celebrations, which will cost between $25m and $45m, will see the army hold a parade down Washington’s Constitution Avenue, one of the main thoroughfares that cuts through the capital. The parade was not part of the original planning for the 14 June celebrations and was added this year, stoking criticism from Democratic lawmakers and others that Trump has hijacked the event.