Closing summary
With the conclusion of the president’s unusually brief remarks, delivered in a half-hearted manner, we are wrapping up our live coverage for the night. Here are the latest developments:
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Donald Trump abruptly canceled the signing of a housing bill into law, in a bid to pressure his party to back his restrictive voting bill. He reportedly told the House speaker, Mike Johnson, “no one gives a shit about housing.”
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Bill Cassidy, a Republican senator who just lost his party’s nomination to a Trump-backed challenger, got into a shouting match with Trump over the Iran war at a closed-door meeting.
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Mark Rutte, the Nato secretary general, just started an Oval Office meeting with Trump by praising the US president for confronting Iran as “the leader of the free world”, reinforcing Trump’s claim that the central issue was preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. (As recently as last year, before Trump bombed enrichment facilities in Iran, US intelligence agencies assessed that Iran had stopped pursuing nuclear weapons in 2003.)
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Trump claimed on Wednesday that he had not seen the results of the Pentagon investigation into the deadly strike on a girls’ elementary school in the Iranian town of Minab on the first day of US and Israeli strikes that killed at least 175 people, mostly children.
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Trump once again devoted a large portion of an Oval Office event to insisting, without evidence, that his troubled renovation of the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool, plagued by algae blooms and a peeling polyurethane liner, was sabotaged by vandals.
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Trump concludes low-energy rally speech on National Mall, leaving before military band rendition of YMCA concludes
Donald Trump just concluded a very brief, for him, recital of his typical rally remarks, speaking for just 27 minutes, before departing the stage so quickly that a US military band rendition of YMCA was still not complete when he disappeared from the stage and the live feed from the White House faded out.
The president’s speech included a handful of mentions of the nation’s founders, but otherwise could have been assembled by feeding transcripts from his rallies over the past year into AI and reading just the first third out loud.
One of the few new bits of material was when he claimed that his renovation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool “is so incredible” but has “been gruesomely vandalized by thugs”. The use of the word “gruesomely” being the only innovation.
Otherwise, there were some good examples of the president’s habit of stumbling over words in his prepared remarks and then trying to cover the flubs by pausing to say the same thing in a slightly different way, as if ad-libbing.
“To serve every future president and first lady, we are building the most beautiful ballroom anywhere in the world right at the White House,” Trump said at one point, casting the demolition of the East Wing of the White House to make way for his vanity project as a monument to celebrate the country’s 250th anniversary. “And just across the bridge in front of Arlington Cemetery, we’re building a magnicif– neh, really beautiful, this is really something you’re gonna like, a totally magnificent triumphal arc,” he continued, managing to pronounce the word “magnificent” at the second attempt.
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To honor America's founding, Trump delivers deeply partisan remarks to supporters on National Mall
Donald Trump is now speaking to supporters, aides and cabinet members on the National Mall in Washington DC, delivering deeply partisan remarks, touching on all his familiar boasts and grievances, at what is supposed to be a non-partisan celebration of the 250th anniversary of the nation’s founding.
“As you know, a short time ago, we were a dead country. We were dead. Now we’re the hottest country anywhere in the world,” Trump said, as he has many dozen times over the past 17 months since he returned to office, in a typical passage.
He also repeatedly criticized the administration of his predecessor, Joe Biden, and boasted about forcing the homeless Americans whose presence used to irk him as he passed them in his motorcade en route to his golf course, out of the capital.
He went on to suggest that his 2024 election victory was responsible for inspiring volunteers to join the military, and touched on many familiar grievances, including a crackdown on tolerance for transgender Americans, bullying Google and other map-makers into changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.
The notable Americans Trump saluted in the crowd were all Republicans, starting with the House speaker, Mike Johnson, and multiple cabinet members, including the acting attorney general, the interior secretary, the secretary of agriculture, the labor secretary, the transport secretary, the education secretary and the homeland security secretary.
Trump even pointed out that his newly installed acting director of national intelligence, Bill Pulte, was on hand, along with FBI director Kash Patel, CMS administrator Dr Mehmet Oz, and the former rightwing pundit turned protocol chief, Monica Crowley.
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Trump 'Great American State Fair' looks very like a Republican convention
We are waiting for Donald Trump to address what looks to be a modest crowd gathered on the National Mall in Washington DC on the first night of his Great American State Fair, designed to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the United States.
So far, the performers, and the front rows of the audience, have had a distinctly partisan cast, with FBI director Kash Patel’s partner, Alexis Wilkins, singing the national anthem and the transport secretary Sean Duffy delivering remarks that could have been made to a Republican convention, or on an extended version of Fox & Friends, which is hosted by his wife, Rachel Campos-Duffy.
Duffy was joined on stage by his wife and his many children and he began by praising the military bands and singers as “way better than those libtards that canceled on us”.
The rally was thrown together in recent weeks to replace the concert series announced last month, which was cancelled after nearly all the performers dropped out within days, after realizing that the shows were organized by a semi-private organization created by Trump.
“You should look for love, get married and have lots of kids,” the transport secretary told the crowd. “I met Rachel on a reality TV show.”
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Senate Democrats ask US Postal Service to rescind proposed rule to not deliver mail ballots in states that do not let Trump administration vet voter lists
Faced with Donald Trump’s unprecedented effort to decide who can and cannot vote by mail, Senate Democrats have written a strongly worded letter to the postmaster general, David Steiner, demanding that the United States Postal Service not proceed with a proposed rule change, which would allow the USPS to refuse to deliver mail ballots to voters in states that do not allow the Trump administration to vet their lists of eligible voters.
The senators noted that they are writing now because they “received no response” to a previous letter to the Trump-appointed head of the USPS advising him that the executive order directing the postal service to not deliver ballots in states that refused to let the federal government decide who is eligible to vote by mail in their states is unconstitutional.
“We write for a second time regarding the unconstitutional and illegal attempt to transform the United States Postal Service (USPS) into an election administration agency controlled by the White House and President Trump,” the senators wrote.
“Ultimately, the proposed rule seeks to create a centralized national absentee voter database with individualized barcodes connected to the voters’ names under the control of the President that contains the voting information of millions of Americans,” they added. “That information would be ripe for potential abuse or improper disclosure potentially imperiling the integrity of American elections.”
“Accordingly, we insist that the Postal Service abandon this proposed regulation and return to its core mission of providing universal postal services to every American. The Constitution and federal law demand nothing less,” the Democrats concluded.
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Democratic congressman Frank Pallone calls for 'a national AI datacenter moratorium'
The most senior Democrat on the House energy and commerce committee, New Jersey congressman Frank Pallone, called on Wednesday for “a national AI datacenter moratorium, until we can find a way to ensure they don’t harm our nation’s air, water and power bills”.
Speaking during a subcommittee meeting, Pallone pointed out that datacenter electricity consumption doubled between 2017 and 2023 and could account for more than 15% of all US electricity demand by 2030.
The growth of AI infrastructure, he said, is driving up utility bills for consumers and straining the nation’s power grid.
“Americans across the county have expressed concern and opposition to the rampant construction of AI datacenters and Congress should take this political groundswell seriously with a datacenter moratorium,” Pallone said. “Democrats have been clear: families around the country should not see their power bills rise by a single cent because of datacenters.”
Pallone noted that residents and local officials in the part of New Jersey he represents have taken the lead in trying block datacenter construction.
“Towns in my district are way ahead of this Congress in seeking a moratorium. Asbury Park, Red Bank, Old Bridge and Sayreville all have taken this bold step. The city of New Brunswick put a stop to a datacenter plan after the community stood together to oppose the project. We need to follow in their footsteps here in Congress,” Pallone said.
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As Europe melts in a heatwave, Trump urges the UK to scrap wind turbines and drill for more oil
As is so often the case, Donald Trump, in his 40 minutes of remarks on Wednesday in the Oval Office, said so very many things that were entirely or partly untrue or just baffling that it can be hard to keep up with the task of debunking or decoding what he said.
To take one example, when the president was asked about the resignation of the UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, and his likely replacement, Andy Burnham, Trump admitted that he knew close to “nothing” about the new man, but quickly turned the question into an opportunity to air one of his most longstanding grievances with the policies of his late mother’s homeland: the UK’s embrace of wind energy and its move away from drilling for North Sea oil.
In a week when much of Europe is struggling with a heatwave, and temperatures reached 29.4C even in the Scottish city of Aberdeen, Trump reminisced fondly about the days of the North Sea oil boom, when, he said “Aberdeen … was the hottest city in the the whole continent. It was the oil city.”
Under Starmer’s leadership, the UK Labour party was elected in 2024 promising to make the UK “a green energy superpower”, moving away from North Sea oil and embracing renewable energy, which Trump has hated for more than a decade, since he lost his quixotic battle to stop the installation of 11 turbines off the coast of an Aberdeenshire golf course he owns.
On Wednesday, Trump told reporters: “I have had every oil company come to see me. ‘Sir, could you give us access to the UK? We would do anything to drill in the North Sea,’” he said, recounting conversations with US oil executives who, for some reason, suggested he could grant them the licenses to drill the UK refuses to issue.
“UK is dying,” Trump added. “So they should open up the North Sea. And it’s an easy one. And a lot of good things are going to happen.”
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While Donald Trump has indefinitely suspended signing a bipartisan bill aimed at lowering housing costs for Americans, it’s worth mentioning that the Trump Organization, the conglomerate privately owned by the president, has recently or is currently in the process of developing over a dozen luxury properties, the majority of which are residential, in foreign countries.
At a time when many Americans are struggling to afford housing, the Trump-run real estate group announced the development of a new $2bn project in Tbilisi, Georgia, the centerpiece of which will be a new Trump Tower. This skyscraper will measure approximately 70 stories and hold the record as the “tallest building in Georgia” upon completion, the Trump Organization boasts.
According to data from the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, the self-proclaimed “America First” president will have developed around 24 Trump-branded luxury building projects in other countries during his time as president, with most costing between $1bn and 2bn.
Trump has also made no effort to separate these business moves from his political maneuvers; quite the contrary, his luxury resorts are often used to host elected leaders from all over the world. A Guardian analysis of campaign finance records from earlier this year found that US political campaigns and committees spent at least $1.3m at Trump properties since January 2025. But foreign governments and private corporations are not required to disclose their spending, so this figure likely represents a very small slice of the gold-plated pie.
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Trump insists 'there's pictures' no one else has seen of a vandal cutting the lining of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool
Donald Trump once again devoted a large portion of an Oval Office event to insisting, without evidence, that his troubled renovation of the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool, plagued by algae blooms and a peeling polyurethane liner, was actually caused by vandals.
Asked by a reporter if the repairs to the pool would be completed by the Fourth of July, Trump said, “It’s in great shape,” before launching into a 1,300-word monologue on how the project was done perfectly, but then sabotaged by “thugs” who “went down with probably a box cutter, or a very sharp razor of some kind, or knife, and they cut and … started ripping it up. You know why? Because they’re sick people.”
Trump then repeated his claim that there is visual evidence, in the form of photographs or video, of at least one vandal engaged in this attack on the polyurethane liner the president had installed, at a cost of over $14m – images, which, for some reason, no one else but him appears to have seen.
“They have pictures”, the president insisted. “They took razor blades and they cut patches like that 350ft long. A lot of them are like a foot, a foot, a foot. They cut the lining and there’s pictures of the guy bending over. I don’t know if anybody saw that, but there are pictures of the guy.” Despite repeated requests from journalists to see these supposed pictures the president continues to say exist, the White House, the parks department and the interior department have so far failed to produce even one such image.
Instead, there are multiple video clips of curious local residents or tourists being arrested by large numbers of federal officers for merely dipping their hands into the pool to retrieve floating bits of debris or just mocking the heavy security presence along the water’s edge.
Trump, of course, has form for insisting that there is visual evidence to support his false claims that things that never happened did happen.
As a candidate for the presidency in late 2015, Trump told his supporters that he had “watched” television images on 11 September 2001 that showed “thousands and thousands” of Arabs in New Jersey “cheering” as “the World Trade Center came tumbling down”.
In what was, briefly, a central concern of the Republican primary campaign, Trump refused to retract that false claim, continuing to insist that he had seen such scenes that day even after it became apparent that there was simply no footage, for the good reason that televised mass celebrations had not taken place.
In an early example of his brazen disregard for the truth being impervious to factchecking by journalists, Trump instead continued to insist the spectacle he fabricated “was well covered at the time”, and journalists, and his rivals for the Republican nomination, simply moved on.
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Trump claims US has still not determined who bombed girls school in Minab on first day of Iran strikes
Donald Trump claimed on Wednesday that he had not seen the results of the Pentagon investigation into the deadly strike on a girls’ elementary school in the Iranian town of Minab on the first day of US and Israeli strikes that killed at least 175 people, mostly children.
Video evidence acquired by news organizations revealed that a US-made Tomahawk missile was fired into the school, Trump falsely said that Iran also had access to the cruise missiles. It does not.
Pressed as to why he had not seen the report, nearly four months after the strike, Trump said: “I have to wait for it to be complete. I don’t know that they’re ever going to solve that problem … in terms of whose fault was it, because there were missiles flying all over the place.”
“It’s horrible what happened, but there were missiles flying all over the place,” the president added.
“What do you think, Pete?” Trump then asked his defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, seated to his left.
“We’ve taken the investigation very seriously,” Hegseth said, adding that the outcome would be revealed “when the appropriate time is right”.
“I don’t think it was us,” Trump said.
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Asked what he knows of Andy Burnham, Trump says he we was 'mayor of a town' but too far left
In the Oval Office, after Donald Trump complained to the Nato secretary general, Mark Rutte, about Nato allies Italy, Spain and the UK refusing to let the US use airbases on their territory to launch offensive strikes on Iran, the president opened the floor to questions from reporters, starting by calling on a series of correspondents from partisan, pro-Trump outlets.
After one reporter praised him for being “so transformative vis a vis Nato”, Trump called on a correspondent from GB News, the rightwing British broadcaster, who asked him what he knows about Andy Burnham, the likely next prime minister of the UK.
“I don’t know anything,” Trump answered. “I see that he was, I guess, the mayor of a town,” he added, apparently vaguely aware that Burnham was the mayor of greater Manchester.
“I hear he’s extremely liberal,” Trump continued. “So that means he probably won’t open up the North Sea. You know, I gave, I gave Keir Starmer some pretty good advice. I said, ‘Open up the North Sea,’” the US president said in reference to his horror at the Labour party’s manifesto commitment to not award new licenses to drill for oil in the North Sea.
A few minutes later, Trump returned to the subject, even claiming, incorrectly, that Starmer’s refusal to abandon wind energy and turn to oil exploration had cost him his prime ministership.
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Nato secretary-general praises Trump's war on Iran in Oval Office
Mark Rutte, the Nato secretary general, just started an Oval Office meeting with Donald Trump by praising the US president for confronting Iran as “the leader of the free world”, reinforcing Trump’s claim that the central issue was preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. (As recently as last year, before Trump bombed enrichment facilities in Iran, US intelligence agencies assessed that Iran had stopped pursuing nuclear weapons in 2003.)
Rutte, a former center-right prime minister of the Netherlands, then moved on to trying to gently correct Trump’s claims that Nato allies in Europe had not supported the US strikes on Iran, pointing to 5,000 of US air force flights that took off from airports in Romania and elsewhere in Europe.
He then moved on to praising Trump for pressing Nato allies in Europe to ramp up defense spending, using a chart headlined “The Trump Trillion” to show what he said was increased spending by the allies since Trump took office in 2017.
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Israel says IDF is staying in southern Lebanon, undermining US-Iran peace talks
Israel’s defence minister, Israel Katz, has said that the IDF would not withdraw from southern Lebanon, further complicating US-Iran peace talks as fighting in Lebanon continues to be an obstacle to permanent peace.
Speaking on stage in an interview in Tel Aviv, Katz said Israeli troops would remain in south Lebanon – echoing sentiments from Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
“The IDF is prepared … and we are not retreating. We announced that in any case we are not withdrawing, and as of this moment – and this is a political achievement – there is no American demand for Israel to withdraw from Lebanon,” Katz said.
The US and Iran signed an accord last week extending a fragile ceasefire and setting the stage for 60 days of talks meant to lead to a permanent peace. The first hiccups to the memorandum of understanding (MOU) came last week after Israel continued its campaign in south Lebanon, leading Iran to threaten closure of the strait of Hormuz.
The US and Iran’s interpretation of the MOU has significantly differed, particularly over Lebanon. Iran has insisted that Israel needed to stop its war there and withdraw its troops in the south of the country. Israel has occupied large swathes of southern Lebanon in what it calls a “security zone”.
The Israeli and Lebanese governments are engaged in US-mediated talks, which, among other things, seek to arrange an Israeli withdrawal from Lebanese territory.
Israel is seeking a phased approach whereby it will hand off territory to the Lebanese army, tasked with keeping the area free of Hezbollah fighters. These talks do not involve Hezbollah, however, calling into question how effective they can be.
Iran, which is not a part of the Israel-Lebanon talks, has worked hard to link a ceasefire with Iran to an end to fighting in Lebanon.
“For us, a ceasefire in Lebanon is as important as a ceasefire in Iran and, further, an end to the war in Lebanon is as important as an end to the war in Iran,” Iran’s parliamentary speaker, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, said on Wednesday.
Israeli strikes have killed more than 4,200 people and displaced at least 1.3 million in Lebanon since the eruption of renewed hostilities on 2 March.
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The US army’s commander of its forces in Europe and Africa – who was memorably the last American soldier to leave Afghanistan in 2021 – is unexpectedly stepping down from his post after just 18 months in the job, the army confirmed late last night.
Gen Christopher Donahue, commanding general of US Army Europe and Africa and commander of Nato’s Allied Land Command, will relinquish his command on 2 July, according to an army statement provided to the Associated Press.
He is the latest in a line of nearly two dozen top military leaders to either retire or depart their jobs early under the leadership of the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, who has undertaken an effort to thin the ranks of the military’s top brass with the mantra “less generals, more GIs”.
Donahue’s deputy, Maj Gen Christopher Norrie, will perform his duties in the meantime, the statement added.
An army official who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to talk about sensitive discussions told the Associated Press that Donahue’s departure comes as the army is discussing downgrading US Army Europe and Africa from a four-star to a three-star command.
This move would come amid ongoing criticism from Hegseth about European allies.
Last week, Hegseth told Nato allies he would be conducting a six-month Pentagon review of American forces in Europe that is “designed to ensure that Nato is moving fast and irreversibly toward Europe leading, stepping up to take primary responsibility for the defense of Europe”.
“It’s a review that some countries will fail and others will pass with flying colors,” he added.
The Pentagon did not immediately comment on the news of Donahue’s departure, which was first reported by the Atlantic.
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Earlier, the National Republican Congressional Committee delivered flowers (from Whole Foods!) and a sympathy card to the office of the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, today after the House candidates he endorsed lost to those backed by New York City’s mayor, Zohran Mamdani, in last night’s Democratic primaries.
“Three losses in one night is tough. We wanted so-called ‘Leader’ Jeffries to know our thoughts are with him, his candidates, and whatever remains of his influence in the Democrat Party,” said NRCC spokesperson Mike Marinella.
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Donald Trump spoke only briefly to reporters before and after his lunch with Republican senators, but offered no indication he was changing course on a series of policy decisions that have upended Congress.
The president is demanding that the Senate pass the Save America Act, a bill to tighten voting regulations nationwide that has no path to passing the upper chamber. Earlier, he cancelled a signing ceremony for a major housing bill, saying he wanted Save America approved first, and has similarly tied its approval to the renewal of a key foreign surveillance bill.
Addressing the press after the lunch, Trump made a point to note that “we like our leader”. That seemed to be an endorsement of John Thune, the Republican Senate majority leader whose job he has made more difficult by demanding he shepherd through the chamber legislation that does not have the votes to clear the Democrats’ filibuster.
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And one GOP senator described the meeting with Donald Trump as “more of a venting session for the president”.
That and these are from Punchbowl News’s Andrew Desiderio:
Trump and Cassidy just went at each other over Iran during the Senate GOP lunch, per source in room. Trump was interrupting Cassidy as Cassidy was calling the war a ‘blunder.’ Other senators tried to jump in but Cassidy & Trump kept going back & forth, source said.
In addition to the below, another GOP senator (who asked to be referred to as ‘disgruntled’) said Trump was in a sour mood from the start, and that was only exacerbated by his interaction with Cassidy over Iran, which came as Trump was berating R’s who voted for war powers res
Per multiple people in the room: – Cassidy came in guns blazing, at one point stopped calling Trump ‘Mr President’ and referred to him as ‘brother’ —Trump repeated what he’s said on social media about the housing bill, SAVE Act & the filibuster, but nobody pushed back
I’m also told that there were no direct interactions between Trump and Thune during the meeting.
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Asked about what the president told Cassidy when he raised his voice at him, the senator recalled that Trump made note of his recent re-election defeat, a remark he described as meant to “demean another person”.
“If the president and his team shares with the Senate and the House and shares with the American people what is going on, then that satisfies my demand. But if you say everything’s fine, but on the outside it doesn’t look like everything’s fine, it is my responsibility to the people of the United States to ask for answers,” Cassidy said.
The president offered his Republican Senate allies few opportunities to talk to him at the lunch, Cassidy said.
“The president just kind of talked and talked and talked and talked and talked,” he said.
MSNOW’s Mychael Schnell also has this on the shouting match between Trump and Cassidy:
Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) confronted President Trump over the Iran memorandum of understanding, a source familiar with the lunch conversation tells me @MSNOWNews.
Cassidy was ‘yelling’ at Trump, the source said.
This source also tells me that Trump went after Sen. Dave McCormick (R-Pa.) for missing yesterday’s war powers vote, which was successful, 48-50.
But worth noting: McCormick was with Trump at a Pennsylvania rally. And even if he were at the Capitol, the resolution still would’ve been successful because McConnell was absent.
We got Trump’s version of how the closed-door lunch with Senate Republicans went earlier (“really great”).
Burgess Everett, Semafor’s congressional bureau chief, reports:
The Senate GOP meeting with Trump is not going well. ‘A total cluster f#ck,’ one person said
Trump is mad about the war powers resolution passing yesterday and he and [Bill] Cassidy are going after each other
Cassidy was the only senator who clashed with Trump today, per Sen Cramer. No one argued with him about filibuster: there was seemingly nothing new to say
Trump not happy there were absences during yesterday’s war powers vote
no clarity on how housing bill will be resolved
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Republican senator Bill Cassidy describes shouting match with Trump over Iran
The Republican senator Bill Cassidy, who just lost re-election to a primary challenger backed by Donald Trump, told reporter he argued with the president over the war with Iran when he visited the US Capitol today.
Speaking to reporters after the president’s lunch with the Senate GOP, Cassidy, who on Tuesday was one of four Republicans who helped pass a war powers resolution intended to prevent the president from resuming hostilities with Iran, said Trump asked: “Why would anybody vote for the War Powers Act?”
“Is that a rhetorical question, or would you like to really know?” Cassidy said he replied.
When the president demanded an answer, the Louisiana senator said he stood up and said he wanted answers from the president, noting that a conflict Trump said would last four weeks has instead lasted four months without achieving the US objectives. After Cassidy reiterated that he would vote for war powers resolutions until he received a briefing that answered his questions, the senator said: “He did not particularly care for my comments [and] raised his voice. I lost my temper. That’s not appropriate, it’s the Irish in me. But I again matched his tone and his volume, and it went back and forth. But at some point my gut said, ‘OK, I’ll sit down’, and so I sat down and tried to de-escalate.”
Cassidy, who placed third in Louisiana’s Republican Senate primary after Trump endorsed one of his opponents, said: “I make no apologies for standing up to the president, if you will, trying to demand that more information be shared with the Senate, and more information be shared with the American people. I make no apologies for that, whatever. And if someone tries to bully me into not asking that question, I’m not going to accept that either. I am sticking up for the American people, even if I’m speaking to the president.”
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Retiring senator Thom Tillis was another Republican dumbfounded over Donald Trump’s abrupt cancellation of the housing bill signing this morning.
“I don’t know why you’re holding the bill … hostage over a bill that will never pass in this Congress. Makes no sense to me,” he told reporters earlier. “We’ve got to get our act together and stop surprising people and having conflicting messages.”
If you need a refresher on what is in the so-called Save America Act, here’s my colleague Rachel Leingang’s explainer from last month.
The bill would upend voting for all Americans in the middle of a federal midterm election year and create costly, chaotic changes for elections workers, Rachel writes.
It is a rebranded and expanded version of last year’s Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (Save) act, which passed in the House but didn’t get a vote in the Senate. This year’s version includes expansive documentary proof of citizenship requirements and criminal liability for election officials from the initial Save act, in addition to a very strict voter ID requirement for casting a ballot and a provision that requires states to regularly turn their voter rolls over to the Department of Homeland Security.
Every voter would be affected by the Save America Act, Xavier Persad, senior policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union, told Rachel, “regardless of political affiliation, all across the country”. It could disenfranchise potentially tens of millions of valid US voters, he said, as people would face more barriers to voting at every step of the process.
“It is a sweeping effort to solve a problem that doesn’t exist that would require a vast, expensive new bureaucracy to be built in a short few months before a major election,” said David Becker, director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research. “It’s a recipe for disaster.”
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Here’s what the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, who is on maternity leave, had to say in support of the housing bill last night that Trump abruptly shelved and called “of minor importance” this morning.
Posting it full as I think it illustrates really well why many – from both parties – have found the president’s decision today pretty baffling.
Tomorrow at 12PM on Capitol Hill, President Trump will sign into law the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, one of the most significant pieces of housing affordability legislation in American history.
This bipartisan bill includes policies long championed by the President. It cuts unnecessary red tape, helps increase housing supply, and limits the ability of large institutional investors to purchase single-family homes.
As the President has said, homes should be owned by American families, not large corporations.
President Trump promised to lower housing costs, and he is delivering, making it easier for every family to achieve the American Dream of homeownership.
Tomorrow’s historic bill signing is another promise made, promise kept.
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Trump touts 'great' meeting with GOP lawmakers – but doesn't mention housing or voting bills
Donald Trump emerged from the closed-door lunch with Senate Republicans rambling about oil prices and talks with Iran in brief remarks to the press – but said nothing on the housing bill he was supposed to sign this morning, or the controversial voting bill he shelved it for.
“We had a really great meeting, and we’re very proud of the party, we like our leader, we like everybody, really, in the room. I don’t like a few people, but that’s OK. I think you know who they are,” the president said.
He added that the GOP is a “well-unified party” and went on to claim, as he often does, that the US is the “hottest country in the world”.
We have more factories being built right now than we have at any point at any time in the history of our country, and all of those factories are opening up soon. It’s all jobs, and our job numbers are incredible. Anyway, I see that oil just broke the $70 number. Who would have thought that was going to happen? And that’s during a war, and Iran is being very nice. They’re agreeing to everything that I want, and they have to.
But is the Republican party agreeing to everything he wants and do they have to? That is the question and on that, Trump gave nothing away.
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Federal judge orders Trump administration to explain tarp obscuring Kennedy Center facade
A federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to explain why it placed a tarp over the Kennedy Center’s facade after the president’s name was removed from the building under a court order.
The US district judge Christopher Cooper said the administration must report by 31 July “the purpose and status of the tarp and scaffolding” now in place at the iconic building.
The tarp was installed as workers stripped Donald Trump’s name in a predawn operation earlier this month following an order from Cooper that the administration had unlawfully added his name to the facade in December.
The White House and Kennedy Center did not immediately respond to Reuters’ requests for comment.
In a lawsuit brought by Democratic representative Joyce Beatty, a Kennedy Center board member, the judge last month ordered the removal of Trump’s name from the complex’s signage and blocked his plans to close it for two years of renovations starting 4 July.
Beatty’s lawyers this week in a filing told the US court of appeals for the District of Columbia circuit that the “semi-permanent tarp” obscuring the late president John F Kennedy’s name from public view at the center appears to be the Trump administration’s “effort to frustrate the restoration of the status quo as it existed prior to the renaming”.
Beatty called the obstruction of the facade an “act of petty defiance”.
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Here’s my colleague Chris Stein’s report as Trump holds up one of the biggest efforts in decades to increase the supply of housing and reduce prices, all to push the Senate to approve a bill that would dramatically change voting regulations by requiring proof of citizenship at voter registration and significantly curtail mail-in voting.
A reminder that while Donald Trump labelled the housing bill “Warren-centric” earlier, it actually cleared both chambers with overwhelming bipartisan support after months of negotiations – not at all a common occurrence in this hyper-partisan congressional era.
Indeed, both parties were excited to celebrate the first major piece of housing legislation to be adopted in more than 30 years as a means to making housing more affordable.
Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, said on the chamber floor after Trump’s announcement:
Any time there’s an opportunity for Trump to help the American people he runs the other way.
And the senator Susan Collins of Maine, among the most vulnerable Republicans running for re-election this year, called the president’s announcement a “complete surprise”, pointing out that the bill “has strong bipartisan, bicameral support”.
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While some hard-line GOP lawmakers are cheering Donald Trump’s decision to delay the bipartisan housing bill over the so-called Save America Act, other Republicans are privately dumbfounded and disappointed, NBC News reports.
“What a s--- show … Crazy crazy crazy,” one House Republican said in a text. “A once in a generation housing bill falls victim to the nuts.”
Another expressed less surprise: “Trump did something outrageous to keep the spotlight focused on him. Shocker.”
And a third House Republican, who represents a district Trump won handily in 2024, warned about the potential consequences for November. “I’m not that safe. No incumbent is safe. People are pissed off that we are not taking care of business.”
Updated
The Democratic senator Chris Murphy has this reaction to Trump’s cancellation of the housing bill signing today:
That Trump is willing to let people stay homeless in order to get his election rigging bill passed is the least surprising thing that’s happened in Washington this month.
Updated
Tenants at apartment complexes operated by Greystar, the largest owner and manager of apartments in the US, don’t just pay rent. They pay a mass of fees that many renters have never heard of before.
These add-ons include “boiler management fees”, “variable refrigerant flow fees”, “solar rebill” fees, even “lifestyle fees”. Tenants and lawsuits in multiple states call many of these fees inflated, illegal, predatory or overwhelming.
Long lists of fees are common at buildings operated by Greystar, a private equity-backed conglomerate that owns or manages more than 1m apartments across the US. According to tenants, housing attorneys, public officials and court claims, this tangle of extra charges fattens the company’s bottom line, increases renters’ risks of eviction and undermines fair competition in the apartment market by muddying the real price they pay for shelter.
The added costs that tenants at Greystar-branded complexes pay are part of a rising tide of fees that have soaked nearly every corner of the US economy. Online and at bricks-and-mortar businesses, Americans are compelled to pay a deluge of extra charges – processing fees, delivery fees, service fees, overdraft fees, activation fees, termination fees, “convenience” fees and more.
Updated
Trump arrives for closed-door Senate lunch amid standoff over voter bill
Meanwhile, Donald Trump has arrived at the US Capitol for a closed-door lunch with Senate Republicans following his abrupt cancellation of a plan to sign a bipartisan bill aimed at lowering the cost of housing.
Trump, who is demanding the Senate approve his Save America Act, which would overhaul US election rules and elections, told reporters:
“Every election is important … They want a lot of communists to come in … The people that they’re pushing are communists and this country is not going to have communists.”
Updated
The New York attorney general, Leticia James, said she was thankful for Judge Denise Casper’s decision to block an “unconstitutional attempt to seize control of our elections”.
“Generations of Americans fought tirelessly for the right to vote, and we honor their legacy by protecting that right against anyone who tries to undermine it,” James added.
Updated
A federal judge has permanently blocked most of Donald Trump’s executive order on elections, including a requirement that voters show proof of citizenship when registering to vote.
The Boston-based judge Denise Casper ruled that the US constitution gives states and Congress – not the president – the authority to set election rules. She also rejected the administration’s argument that the lawsuit was filed too early by several Democratic state attorneys general.
In her ruling, Casper wrote that the constitution “does not grant the President any specific powers over elections”, the Associated Press reports.
Updated
A three-star navy rear-admiral fired by Pete Hegseth last year in the defense secretary’s purge of senior US military officials has won the Democratic primary in a closely watched congressional race.
Nancy Lacore secured the party’s nomination for the US House of Representatives in South Carolina’s first congressional district on Tuesday after defeating Mac Deford, a US Coast Guard veteran, in a runoff.
Lacore’s focus will now turn to November, when she will lead an ambitious Democratic bid to flip the Republican seat in the US midterm elections.
The district is currently represented by the Republican Nancy Mace, who chose to forgo seeking re-election to focus on her failed challenge for South Carolina governor. Jenny Costa Honeycutt, a member of Charleston county council, secured the Republican nomination for the election on Tuesday.
The day so far
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Donald Trump has derailed what should have been a major affordability win for the GOP by abruptly cancelling the signing of a landmark housing bill into law, in a bid to pressure his party to back his restrictive proof-of-citizenship voting bill – despite being told several times they don’t have the votes to get it through.
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The Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren even said of the president: “He could be over here getting a victory lap … He really doesn’t care about American families.” Cancelling its signing shows a “complete indifference to the costs Americans are facing”, she added.
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The president brashly declared the bipartisan bill, aimed at speeding up the construction and availability of more affordable housing, was “of minor importance compared to lower interest rates, and even FISA, pales in comparison to passing THE SAVE AMERICA ACT”. It’s not the first time Trump has dismissed voters’ concerns about the cost-of-living and affordability crisis, and it will be all the more frustrating for his party as it tries desperately to reset to focus on those very issues ahead of November’s crucial midterms.
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Trump made the move before a lunchtime meeting with GOP senators, which he had already made clear was going to be focused on lobbying them to pass the controversial voter ID bill. The meeting was already set to be tense, given they’ve repeatedly butted heads with the president over massive issues from scepticism over his war against Iran, to rejecting funding for his White House ballroom, to Trump blocking them from confirming his own nominee for DNI. Now he’s delaying a major piece of legislation the party is eager to use as a selling point to show voters it is working to bring down costs.
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If Trump fails to sign the housing bill into law within the 10-day window since it passed through the Senate yesterday, it automatically becomes law anyway – unless he vetoes it, but even then, support for the bill is so strong that Congress has the votes to override that.
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His allies also seem to think he wouldn’t do that, including the House speaker, Mike Johnson, who said he expected the president to sign the bill within the 10-day timeframe. Johnson, unsurprisingly, defended the president’s decision to hold up the housing bill as leverage for his voter ID legislation. But the Senate majority leader, John Thune, who has tried and said many times that the math isn’t there for the voting bill to go through or to scrap the filibuster in order to push it through, simply laughed and told reporters: “At this point I don’t have any observations about that.”
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Now, House GOP leaders are having to deal with the fallout of the president blindsiding his party. We’ll bring you more as the day (and drama) goes on.
Updated
GOP representative French Hill was touting the bipartisan housing bill as “a real win” and the president’s support for it at the party leaders’ news conference earlier, unaware that Donald Trump had moments ago cancelled his signing it into law.
Hill, who spearheaded the bill, later said “I’m not disappointed” about Trump’s decision to pull the signing.
The president chose, for a reason known to him, about what’s going on in the Senate, chose to delay the signing while he meets with the Senate and works on some other priorities of his. That’s fully in his prerogative to do that. I don’t find that personally offensive.
This is from Meredith Lee Hill, who covers Congress for Politico, on X:
House GOP leaders are CANCELING the rule vote to tee up key bills set for 1:30pm today, per sources
GOP hardliners are threatening to tank it over the housing bill and others are now upset Trump canceled the bill signing
Leadership will recess and decide the way forward
Updated
And more on the Senate majority leader, John Thune, who laughed when reporters asked him about Donald Trump cancelling the signing of the major bipartisan housing legislation.
“I just heard that … I guess I would say at this point I don’t have any observations about that,” he said.
As has been increasingly the case over the last year, that’s a pretty stark contrast to House speaker Mike Johnson’s defence of the president using the housing bill as leverage to push through his voter ID legislation (see my earlier post).
Updated
Adding to the tension is Donald Trump’s increasingly distant relationship with Senate majority leader John Thune, who remains popular in his conference and cordial with the president, but has spent much of his time lately telling Trump what he doesn’t want to hear.
Thune said yesterday that while Trump and some in their conference want to see the voting bill pass, “it’s just not realistic.” He’s repeated several times that Republicans are simply “bound by arithmetic” and don’t have the votes.
But still, Trump continues to push the Senate to eliminate the filibuster and pass the legislation, which would create strict new requirements for voters to prove citizenship and show voter ID at the polls.
“John is a leader and hopefully he can get the votes,” Trump said yesterday in Pennsylvania, ramping up pressure on Thune.
For his part, Thune devoted weeks of floor time to the voting bill earlier this year and has said he supports it. But he has repeatedly said there aren’t enough votes to scrap the filibuster that triggers a 60-vote threshold to pass most bills in the 53-47 Senate. And Democrats are uniformly opposed to the bill.
“Those are just hard realities,” Thune said yesterday. “And I think people at some point have to come to grips with that.”
Thune added that he hoped the GOP Senate meeting with the president is about “sitting down as a family” and figuring out their agenda in the remaining time before the election.
With the Associated Press.
Updated
So, Donald Trump has chosen to ratchet up tensions with Senate Republicans by abruptly cancelling plans to sign a bipartisan bill that could help boost home construction and home-buying – and was meant to be a major affordability win for his party.
Indeed, Republicans had been hoping to use the housing bill as a selling point to voters ahead of critical November midterm elections. But the president declared that he now wants Congress to first pass a bill that would mandate stricter rules for voter identification in federal elections – even though it doesn’t have the votes to pass.
The fresh saga is revealing of the deepening split between Trump and the Senate, raising the possibility that a Capitol Hill which had largely been deferential to the White House could now become much harder for the president to navigate.
Trump has blocked the Senate from confirming one of his own nominees, pressed them to fund security aspects of his White House ballroom project despite opposition and forced them to defend his war on Iran despite several being openly sceptical.
Now, by rejecting a public bill signing, Trump is also further indicating a level of indifference to the very real affordability issues that are a leading concern for voters going into November’s midterm elections (see my earlier post).
It’s also worth noting that Trump shot himself in the foot somewhat by whittling down his own support in the Senate after endorsing primary challengers to two GOP incumbents who were previously reliable votes for his agenda — Texas senator John Cornyn and Louisiana’s Bill Cassidy. Both men lost their primaries and have since become more critical of the president.
With the Associated Press.
Updated
House speaker Mike Johnson defends Trump's decision to cancel housing bill signing
At a GOP leaders’ news conference a short while ago, House speaker Mike Johnson was asked for his reaction to the president’s cancelling a planned signing of bipartisan legislation aimed at speeding up the construction and availability of more affordable housing until his voter ID bill was passed.
He told reporters he had spoken to Donald Trump this morning about the so-called SAVE America Act and defended the president’s decision to hold up the housing bill as leverage.
He and I have talked about this a lot. He has expressed his priority and preference of the SAVE America Act. We share that.
He went on, referring to the controversial Voter ID bill: “We passed it three times in the House ... It has been stuck in the Senate ... He’s laser-focused on the SAVE America Act ... you have to put it under reconciliation bill.”
A reminder that although Republicans control 53 of the Senate’s 100 seats, they lack the 60 votes needed to meet the chamber’s filibuster threshold for most bills, which accounts for five failed votes on the measure or its provisions since mid-March.
Republicans say they also do not have enough votes to meet Trump’s repeated demands to eliminate the filibuster and pass the bill with a simple majority. Some GOP lawmakers, conscious they face re-election battles soon, also feel their time and efforts could be better spent on other issues.
But not the president, evidently. Johnson reiterated that the GOP lunch later will be used by Trump to persuade senators to vote for the Voter ID bill.
And so he decided - and I didn’t announce it, I wanted him to announce it - but we’re delaying this. As you know, he has a window of time before he has to sign a bill. He’s going to use a little bit more of that window of time, and we’re going to go through this together now.
He added that the housing bill was “a great product” and said he was sure the president would see that it was “something that fulfils his promises to bring down costs”.
Asked if Trump was still planning to sign it at a later date, Johnson said: “Yes … My estimation is he’ll do it within that 10-day window.”
Updated
Elizabeth Warren accuses Trump of showing 'complete indifference' to Americans' struggles
Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren, a co-sponsor of the housing bill, has told CNBC that Donald Trump cancelling its signing shows a “complete indifference to the costs Americans are facing”.
She also suggested that the president has failed to take into account that this bill is actually a win for him too.
He could be over here getting a victory lap … he really doesn’t care about American families.
Updated
This is from Eleanor Mueller, White House reporter at Semafor, on X:
To be clear: Trump has no leverage here. If he doesn’t sign the housing bill within 10 days, it becomes law automatically. If, before then, he vetoes, Congress has the votes to override.
Updated
In a post on Truth Social right before he abruptly cancelled signing the major housing bill, Donald Trump once again diminished the very real economic concerns Americans have amid the cost-of-living crisis that has been exacerbated by his war against Iran.
He said the bill was “of minor importance compared to lower interest rates, and even FISA, pales in comparison to passing THE SAVE AMERICA ACT”.
This will likely come back to bite the president, potentially taking a place among the greatest hits of Trump-not-reading-the-room-on-the-economy including “I love the inflation” and “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation … even a little bit”, as his party gears up for a very challenging midterm election period where affordability will be front and centre.
Updated
Trump cancels signing of bipartisan housing bill to pressure Congress to pass restrictive voting bill
And just like that, Donald Trump has said he’s cancelled the signing of the major bipartisan housing bill the Senate passed last night in a bid to further pressure Congress to pass his proof-of-citizenship voting bill – which GOP leaders have repeatedly said don’t have a chance of passing.
He just posted on Truth Social:
Today’s Housing News Conference and Signing is hereby cancelled until such time as we pass the desperately needed SAVE AMERICA ACT, which I consider to be a National Emergency.
Considering this bill was a chance for the Republican party to show voters it was making a shift towards a more affordability-focused agenda ahead of November’s crucial midterm elections, Trump abruptly cancelling its signing probably isn’t the best look for the president right now.
It’s also sure to make the Senate GOP lunch he’s due to attend at 1pm ET all the more tense. Trump said of the lunch yesterday: “We’re just going to talk about SAVE America. We have to pass the SAVE America Act. So we’re going to have to talk about that and many other things.”
Updated
Donald Trump is due to sign a major housing affordability bill at noon, aimed at boosting housing supply and home-buying, and cracking down on corporate landlords’ buying up single-family homes.
The House passed the bipartisan bill in a 358-32 vote last night, after clearing the Senate by a vote of 85-5 the day before.
After that he’s heading to Capitol Hill for a showdown with Republican senators who have grown increasingly frustrated with his efforts to divert their agenda ahead of November’s midterms.
The president has pressured senators to focus on his proof-of-citizenship voting bill (the so-called SAVE America Act) and eliminating the filibuster (despite majority leader John Thune consistently stating that they don’t have the votes), blocked them from confirming one of his own nominees (Jay Clayton for DNI) and forced them to defend his war against Iran even as they question the strategy and endgame.
Just yesterday, the Senate voted to curb military action in Iran, delivering the president a significant but symbolic rebuke over a conflict that has proven deeply unpopular with the American public. Trump lashed out at the four GOP “losers” who broke with their party to help advance it, claiming he has Iran “on the ropes”.
It should be interesting, to say the least. I’ll bring you any updates as we get them.
Analysis: Zohran Mamdani has lost none of his political magic
A man or a movement? That was the question being asked when Zohran Mamdani gambled his political capital on Tuesday’s elections in New York.
The answer from voters was emphatic: they prefer Mamdani and his brand of democratic socialism to the Democratic party establishment and its lukewarm version of capitalism. America’s biggest city has swung even further to the left.
The New York Knicks might have won in five, but Mamdani did it in three. The mayor audaciously backed a trio of candidates in Democratic primaries for the US House of Representatives, and all three prevailed over establishment-backed rivals. Two were fellow democratic socialists.
The results demonstrated that Mamdani has lost none of his political magic. He took a risk by intervening in the congressional races, alienating some Black and Latino Democrats and trade unions along the way, but it paid off handsomely.
The mayor-turned-kingmaker had said it was a question of electing “better Democrats” who would “put working people back at the heart of politics”. All three victors are expected to win their safely blue districts, which would send three Mamdani allies into Congress next January.
The outcome was also a recognition of some wider trends in US politics: socialism is no longer a dirty word, criticism of Israel is no longer taboo and dissatisfaction with Democratic leaders in the Donald Trump era runs deep. Voters are thirsty for energy, fight and fresh ideas.
They ask: if Republicans can draw up a Project 2025 and pursue it ruthlessly, why can’t Democrats come up with a Project 2029 that promises universal healthcare, supreme court reform, massive climate investments, a war on the oligarchs and a clear-eyed approach to the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu?
Voters have been sending a message to Democrats: stand for something, rather than nothing, because writing strongly worded letters to Trump is not enough. They regard Congress as lethargic and ineffective against the authoritarian onslaught, in contrast to the energy of Democratic governors and mayors.
Many were incensed by Biden and Harris’s backing of Israel’s war in Gaza, which resulted in the deaths of more than 73,000 Palestinian people. Some were frustrated by a Democratic National Committee election autopsy that pulled punches and failed to mention Gaza at all.
A significant number voters are also sceptical of Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, and Hakeem Jeffries, his equivalent in the House, both New Yorkers and staunch supporters of Israel.
Van Jones, a political commentator and former official in the Barack Obama administration, told CNN:
This is a battle between the establishment and this insurgency. And the roof is collapsing on the Democratic party establishment tonight … This is no longer a movement; this is a movement and a machine at the same time.
Once the midterms are done, Mamdani and his allies will be a powerful force in determining the Democratic presidential nominee in 2028. That could put wind in the sails of yet another New Yorker: the progressive star Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
It is exactly 12 months since Mamdani beat Andrew Cuomo in his own Democratic primary, putting him on course to win the mayoralty. “A year ago, it was not the end of a political movement,” he told supporters on Tuesday. “It was the beginning.”
The polls closed at 9pm in New York last night. It took less than five minutes for Brad Lander, the Zohran Mamdani-endorsed candidate, to be announced the winner in the Democratic primary in the 12th district: a dominant victory that reinforced the power of New York City’s mayor and the durability of the progressive movement.
Cheers rang out at 9.04pm at the bar where Lander held his victory party, as the former city comptroller and former mayoral candidate was declared to have easily defeated Dan Goldman, the district’s two-term incumbent, in the Democratic primary.
It was one of three big wins for Mamdani and his allies last night, as Claire Valdez and Darializa Avila Chevalier, who were also backed by the mayor, won their primaries. Lander and his two fellow victors will all be expected to win election to Congress in November, forming a fresh wave of progressive Democrats in Washington.
“What a glorious time to be a New Yorker,” Lander told the crowd at his victory party in Brooklyn.
Lander was introduced by Mamdani, against whom Lander ran for New York City mayor last year. The pair eventually entered a “cross-endorsement” as they sought to use the city’s ranked-choice voting system to ensure a progressive won the election.
“Brad brings a kindness to this work. He brings a sincerity to this work. He brings a vision of politics that is more than what we’ve seen for so long,” Mamdani said, describing Lander as a “good friend”.
With 92% of the vote counted Lander was 31 points ahead of Goldman, a two-term Democratic congressman with whom Lander had clashed over their stances on Israel’s war on Gaza. Lander, who like Goldman is Jewish, is an outspoken critic of Israel, and has said the country is guilty of genocide in Gaza.
It was an issue that had been key for some voters.
“I know him as someone who shows up, and also because he’s taken a moral stand on Gaza, and that was really important to me,” said Kate Dalton, who had volunteered for Lander’s campaign.
Here’s Adam’s report from the victory party:
In the months leading up to New York’s primary election, 32-year-old political newcomer Darializa Avila Chevalier faced a barrage of negative ads. Super Pacs supporting her opponent – the veteran incumbent Adriano Espaillat – spent millions trying to stop her. And as an endorsement from Avila Chevalier’s fellow Democratic socialist, Zohran Mamdani, boosted her odds, the attacks turned racist, with false accusations suggesting she was lying about her Dominican ethnicity.
But yesterday, she defied predictions and seized a stunning win in New York’s 13th congressional district, which spans upper Manhattan, including Harlem, and parts of The Bronx – with more than 49% of the vote. If she wins the general election in November, she will be the first Dominican woman elected to Congress.
During her victory speech, at a jubilant watch party at a popular Puerto Rican restaurant uptown, Avila Chevalier called the result “a new dawn” for her district.
I have faith in the future that I know we are stepping into today. No longer will we accept the politics that throw scraps at us and act like we should be grateful for them.
Avila Chevalier’s win marks a remarkable achievement for an unabashedly pro-Palestinian doctoral student and community organizer with no prior experience in office.
It also cements the role of New York City’s mayor as a formidable kingmaker for the left, and that of the Democratic Socialists of America – which backed both Mamdani and Avila Chevalier – as a surging force in US elections. All three congressional candidates backed by the mayor (in what some observers had viewed as a gamble) won seats yesterday, as did nine out of 10 of DSA’s candidates.
More in Alice’s report:
Trump accuses oil companies of gas price ‘gouging’ and says DOJ will probe
In a late-night post on Truth Social, Donald Trump said he had instructed the justice department to investigate “the big oil companies” for not lowering gas prices at the pump in line with falling prices.
“In other words, customers are being ‘gouged’,” he said, without naming any specific companies.
Here’s the full post:
The big Oil Companies are not dropping their price at the pump commensurate with the sharply lower prices they are paying for Oil. Those prices are dropping like a rock! In other words, customers are being “gouged.” I have instructed the DOJ to immediately start looking into this. Gasoline prices better start going down a lot faster than what I’m seeing!
Per our earlier post, public defence investigator Darializa Avila Chevalier toppled Adriano Espaillat, the powerful five-term incumbent who chairs the Hispanic caucus in Congress, in New York’s diverse 13th congressional district, which covers Upper Manhattan and parts of the Bronx.
Chevalier was backed by New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani, who had a clean sweep with wins from Brad Lander and Claire Valdez meaning all three congressional candidates endorsed by New York’s democratic socialist mayor won closely watched primaries.
Here’s a clip of Chevalier celebrating her win.
Texas anti-ICE protesters convicted of terrorism charges sentenced to at least 50 years in prison
A group of Texas protesters convicted of terrorism charges received unusually harsh sentences of at least 50 years in prison on Tuesday in a closely watched case that was widely seen as a test case of the Trump administration’s efforts to crack down on dissent.
After a three-week jury trial, the nine activists were all found guilty of a slew of criminal charges in March, stemming from a Fourth of July protest at an immigrant detention facility in Alvarado, Texas, south of Fort Worth. The demonstrators arrived late at night with a plan to set off fireworks as part of a noise demonstration to show solidarity with those detained inside. A few of the protesters spontaneously broke off from the main group and vandalized cars in the parking lot, a guard shack, slashed the tires on a government van and broke a security camera. When a police officer arrived on the scene and drew his weapon, one of the activists fired an AR-15 from the woods, hitting the officer in the shoulder. The officer survived.
Benjamin Song, who fired the gun at the police officer, was sentenced to 100 years in prison. Song was convicted of attempted murder of an officer of the United States, as well as firearm and explosives charges. He was also convicted of riot, providing material support to terrorists. He faced anywhere from 20 years to life in prison.
Zachary Evetts, Autumn Hill, Savanna Batten, Elizabeth Soto and Meagan Morris were sentenced to 50 years in prison. Maricela Rueda, another demonstrator, was sentenced to 70 years in prison. All six were convicted of riot, providing material support to terrorist, and explosive charges. Rueda was also convicted of corruptly concealing a document or record.
US Senate passes war powers resolution challenging Trump’s Iran war authority
The US Senate approved a war powers resolution preventing Donald Trump from continuing hostilities against Iran, delivering the president a significant but symbolic rebuke over a conflict that has proven unpopular with the American public.
The resolution passed by a 50-48 vote, with four Republicans – Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Rand Paul of Kentucky – breaking with their party to support its adoption. John Fetterman, of Pennsylvania, was the sole Democrat to vote against the resolution.
The measure, which passed the House of Representatives earlier this month, would require the president to seek Congress’s authorization to use military force against Iran. It comes after Trump dispatched JD Vance to Switzerland to negotiate a settlement that would resolve the conflict the US began alongside Israel in February.
Man arrested near Trump’s reflecting pool plans to fight obscenity charge
A Washington DC resident arrested this week near the National Mall’s reflecting pool told the Guardian he planned to fight the charges, as Donald Trump continues to blame vandals for the botched renovation of the pool.
After the Trump administration spent $14.2m renovating the body of water in front of the Lincoln Memorial to turn it “American flag” blue in time for the US’s 250th birthday next month, the pool has been beset with algae blooms and peeling polyurethane liner. Trump has claimed, without evidence, that the pool had been slashed with a knife.
Earlier this week, Trump said on social media that six people had been arrested “for the damage they did to our country’s now beautiful Reflecting Pool”.
So far, the actual charges filed against people arrested at or near the reflecting pool have not included doing any damage at all.
More here:
Elsewhere in New York, Jack Schlossberg, the grandson of John F Kennedy, was unsuccessful in his bid to revive the political legacy of the US’s most vaunted political family and win in a race dominated by money from AI-focused Super Pacs.
Longtime New York politician Micah Lasher won the primary in New York’s 12th district, beating out Kennedy and George Conway, the Republican turned vocal Trump critic, among others in a crowded field of Democrats hoping to succeed the long-serving representative Jerry Nadler.
Late Tuesday, Donald Trump celebrated on Truth Social the defeat of Conway while also commenting on the “Communists running in badly failing Blue States”.
“America the Beautiful will NEVER be a Communist Country!!!” Trump posted early Wednesday.
Mamdani-backed candidates win big in New York primary
Hello and welcome to our US politics liveblog.
Three congressional candidates endorsed by Zohran Mamdani, New York’s democratic socialist mayor, won their closely watched primaries on Tuesday, beating out incumbents or incumbent-backed candidates supported by the Democratic establishment.
Brad Lander, the former New York City comptroller who also ran for mayor last year before endorsing Mamdani, defeated the two-term incumbent Democrat Dan Goldman in NY-10.
Political newcomer Darializa Avila Chevalier won against five-term incumbent Democrat Adriano Espaillat in NY-13 in a stunning upset.
And in NY-7, Claire Valdez beat out Brooklyn borough president Antonio Reynoso – the handpicked successor of Nydia Velázquez, the first Puerto Rican woman to serve in Congress who is considered a progressive giant of New York City politics.
This clean sweep for Mamdani is a clear indicator of his growing influence – and that of his ascendant progressive movement – over the Democratic party.
“The old politics that got us into this crisis is not the politics that’s going to get us out of this crisis,” Mamdani said at a watch party for Valdez.
In other developments:
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In Maryland, Adrian Boafo won the extremely crowded primary race to succeed Steny Hoyer, the longest-serving House Democrat and a longtime member of leadership who is retiring at the end of his 23rd term. Boafo, a state delegate, defeated the former US Capitol police officer Harry Dunn, who defended the building on January 6, and businesswoman Quincy Bareebe.
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April McClain Delaney fended off her predecessor, the former Democratic congressman David Trone, who sought to reclaim his seat in Maryland’s sixth district after an unsuccessful bid for Senate two years ago.
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Nancy Lacore, a three-star navy rear-admiral fired by Pete Hegseth last year in the defense secretary’s purge of senior US military officials, has won the Democratic nomination in a runoff for a closely watched congressional race in South Carolina.
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South Carolina’s attorney general, Alan Wilson, won the Republican nomination for governor, defeating Trump-backed lieutenant governor Pamela Evette.
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In Utah, former congressman Ben McAdams, a political moderate, won the primary to compete in a newly drawn Democratic-friendly district in Salt Lake City.
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Donald Trump is slated to meet with the Nato secretary general, Mark Rutte, in the Oval office on Wednesday.
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Later Wednesday, Trump will also be hosting the opening of The Great American State Fair, an event held by the Freedom 250, an organization run by Trump supporters to mark the United States’ 250th anniversary and run counter to America250, the nonpartisan body set up by Congress a decade ago to oversee the commemoration.
