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Iran 'better get smart soon' warns Trump in social media post
US president Donald Trump has warned Iran that “they better get smart soon” and sign a non-nuclear deal, in his latest social media post.
Trump shared an image of himself, wearing sunglasses and carrying a gun, set against the backdrop of – presumably – Middle Eastern towns and villages being bombed, with the caption “No more Mr Nice Guy”.
He wrote:
Iran can’t get their act together. They don’t know how to sign a nonnuclear deal. They better get smart soon! President DJT
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Supreme court rules Louisiana must redraw its congressional map in landmark case
Sam Levine
The US supreme court has ruled that Louisiana will have to redraw its congressional map, in a landmark decision that effectively guts a major section of the Voting Rights Act.
In a 6-3 decision along partisan lines, the court rendered ineffective section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, the last remaining powerful provision of the 1965 civil rights law that prevents racial discrimination in voting. Section 2 specifically has long been used to ensure minority voters are treated fairly in redistricting.
“Allowing race to play any part in government decision-making represents a departure from the constitutional rule that applies in almost every other context,” Justice Samuel Alito, a conservative, wrote for the majority opinion. “Compliance with section 2 thus could not justify the state’s use of race-based redistricting here. The state’s attempt to satisfy the Middle District’s ruling, although understandable, was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.”
In a dissenting opinion, Justice Elena Kagan wrote the court had now accomplished a “demolition of the Voting Rights Act”.
At the heart of the case, Louisiana v Callais, was a thorny question of how much lawmakers are allowed to consider race when they redraw districts to ensure that Black voters are adequately represented. The supreme court initially heard oral arguments in the case last March, but took the unusual step of asking lawyers to re-argue the case last fall. In setting the case for a re-argument, the justices raised the stakes of the case, asking lawyers to focus on whether section 2 of the Voting Rights Act was constitutional.
The decision comes after years of legal wrangling over the boundaries of the map.
Here’s Sam’s full report:
Supreme court hearing on whether protected status of Haitians and Syrians can be revoked begins
US supreme court oral arguments have begun in a case that will ultimately decide whether the Trump administration can strip temporary protected status (TPS) from hundreds of thousands of Haitians and Syrians living in the United States.
The hearing was supposed to begin at 10am ET, but it started late as the court released decisions, including a major ruling that Louisiana will have to redraw its congressional map (more on that to follow).
As my colleague José Olivares wrote in this preview, people with TPS are given the permission to live and work in the US because the government has deemed their home countries to be unsafe due to war, political instability or natural disasters.
In the past year, the Trump administration has attempted to cut the program for various countries, opening the door to the removal of hundreds of thousands of protected immigrants in the US.
Last year, the supreme court allowed the administration to strip TPS status for more than 300,000 Venezuelans under the court’s emergency docket. Now, the court will hear arguments challenging the Trump administration’s efforts to remove the same protections from Syrians and Haitians.
If the supreme court sides with the Trump administration in its effort to cut the program for Syrians and Haitians, analysts say the administration would likely seek to end the TPS program for all countries. Nearly 1.3 million people were TPS holders at the start of the second Trump administration.
Pete Hegseth defends war on Iran as he appears before House armed services committee
In his opening statement, Pete Hegseth defended the war on Iran, saying of the US-Israeli war:
Iran cannot have a nuclear bomb. We are proud of this undertaking.
“The biggest challenge, the biggest adversary we face at this point are the reckless, feckless and defeatist words of congressional Democrats and some Republicans,” he added.
'Where is this going?': top Democrat on committee slams administration's strategy on Iran
In his opening remarks, ranking member Adam Smith praised the US military before expressing concern about the Pentagon’s budget request given the state of the national debt.
The Democrat then went on to call Pete Hegseth’s past comments about how the US military strategy is based on realism “absurd”. “It is the exact opposite of realism,” he said.
Starting wars in the Middle East that get out of control and lead us to have far greater costs with the benefits, is one of the cornerstones of the unrealistic strategy that this administration has criticized over and over and over again. And yet, here we are in a full scale Middle East war, and we’ve seen the costs of that.
Running through some of those costs, Smith underlined the human cost in thousands of civilian deaths, the deaths of 13 US service members, other countries being “dragged into the war”, gas prices at home, and the cost of fertilizer.
He then moved to a big question for Hegesth today, which is what is the US’s endgame in Iran, given that fundamentally nothing has changed in Iran despite the war?
One of the big questions that we need to get answered today is, where is this going? What is the plan to achieve our objectives? We’ve seen the cost, and the cost is very, very high. All we keep hearing on the objectives is we keep seeing all of the targets that we have struck …
We’re in this to fundamentally change Iran. And as we sit here today, Iran’s nuclear program is exactly what it was before this war started. They have not lost their capacity to inflict pain. They still have a ballistic missile program. They’re still able to blockade the strait of Hormuz and have the ships that are capable of doing that. What is the plan to get that to change? And most disturbingly, the president keeps telling us that it’s over.
Smith also criticized the administration’s harsh treatment of Nato for not joining the war, highlighting that Nato supported the US by invoking article 5 after 9/11 and adding:
There’s nothing realistic about starting a war in the Middle East, going it alone and pushing aside all diplomacy.
In his final point, Smith stressed the need for answers regarding the strike on the Iranian girls’ school that killed at least 175 people, most of them children:
There is absolutely no question at this point what happened. We made a mistake and that happens in war. We identified this target based on earlier charts. And yet two months after it happened, we refuse to say anything about it, giving the world the impression that we just don’t care.
Hegseth to face questions from lawmakers for first time since US-Israeli war on Iran began
Pete Hegseth is finally due to appear before the House armed services committee at 10am ET, giving lawmakers their first opportunity to publicly question the defense secretary since the US and Israel launched war on Iran over two months ago.
Since the war began, Hegseth and General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have only given press conferences and haven’t testified before Congress. Caine is also set to testify today. They are both also due to appear before the Senate armed services committee tomorrow.
Today’s appearance is formally billed as a routine hearing on the Pentagon’s budget request (the administration is requesting a record $1.5tn in defense spending, and the request was put together before the war), and comes amid intensifying questions over the rate at which the department is depleting weapon stockpiles.
Hegseth is also likely to face scrutiny over civilian casualties in the war on Iran – not least the horrendous strike on an Iranian girls’ school that killed at least 175 people, most of them children. We can also expect questions on the US’s strategic rationale for the war, the effectiveness of the US-Israeli bombing campaign, the US’s preparedness for retaliatory strikes from Tehran, the strait of Hormuz crisis, his abrupt firings of senior defense officials, and more.
“Pete Hegseth’s got a lot to answer to from this disastrous war,” Jason Crow, a Democratic representative on the House committee, told Politico. “How much is this costing? What’s the end game?”
Pennsylvania Democrat Chris Deluzio told the outlet that Hegseth has been “dodging congressional questions about the Iran war since day one”.
We’ll be watching the hearing and will you bring you all the key lines here.
James Comey expected to self-surrender to law enforcement, CNN reports
Former FBI director James Comey is expected to self-surrender to law enforcement at federal court in the eastern district of Virginia today, CNN (paywall) is reporting, citing a federal official familiar.
It comes after the US justice department filed new criminal charges against Comey yesterday, in what appears to be the latest instance of the DOJ wielding its power to target Donald Trump’s political adversaries.
A reminder that Comey was this time charged over a picture he posted on Instagram last year while on vacation, showing seashells arranged to say “86 47”. The post was read as a threat to Trump, the 47th president, as the number 86 can be used as shorthand for getting rid of something. Comey had captioned the image: “Cool shell formation on my beach walk.”
Comey then deleted the post and apologized, saying he had not realized the numbers were associated with violence. “It never occurred to me, but I oppose violence of any kind so I took the post down,” he wrote on Instagram.
The charges against Comey, approved by a grand jury in the eastern district of North Carolina where he allegedly took the photo of the shells, include making a threat against the president and transmitting a threat, via social media, across state lines, according to court documents.
According to the indictment, the seashell numbers are something a reasonable person “would interpret as a serious expression of an intent to do harm to the President of the United States”.
Comey published a video of himself yesterday saying:
Well, they’re back. This time, about a picture of seashells on a North Carolina beach a year ago. And this won’t be the end of it, but nothing has changed with me. I am still innocent. I am still not afraid. And I still believe in the independent federal judiciary. So, let’s go.
It’s really important that all of us remember – this is not who we are as a country, this is not how the Department of Justice is supposed to be, and the good news is we get closer every day to restoring those values. Keep the faith.
The justice department previously indicted Comey, who has long been the subject of Trump’s wrath, last year and charged him with lying to Congress. That case was thrown out when a judge in the eastern district of Virginia ruled that the prosecutor overseeing the case had been wrongfully appointed.
Trump tells aides to prepare for extended blockade of Iran, WSJ reports
Donald Trump has told aides to prepare for an extended blockade of Iranian ports, the Wall Street Journal (paywall) reported last night, citing US officials.
Trump has reportedly said in recent meetings that he prefers the blockade over other methods to increase the pressure on Iran as peace talks stall and Tehran keeps the critical strait of Hormuz closed.
According to the WSJ’s report, Trump believes that his other options, such as resuming bombing or walking away from the war, would carry greater risks than maintaining the blockade.
The US military has been preventing ships from entering and departing Iranian ports since 13 April, after direct talks with Iran failed to yield results.
Fed likely to leave rates unchanged at what may be Powell's last meeting
The US Federal Reserve is widely expected to hold interest rates steady on Wednesday after a key policy meeting, likely the last chaired by central bank chief Jerome Powell, a frequent target of president Donald Trump’s ire.
Policymakers will weigh the risks of surging energy prices and snarled supply chains due to the US-Israel war on Iran, with analysts widely expecting a third pause in a row as the effects of the conflict ripple through the world’s largest economy.
All eyes will be on Powell’s future plans at what could be his final press conference as head of the Fed on Wednesday afternoon, AFP reported.
While the central bank chief’s tenure as chair ends 15 May, his term as a member of the board of governors continues until January 2028.
Since returning to power last year, Trump has frequently criticized and insulted Powell for not cutting interest rates – a policy that would turbocharge economic activity but could fuel inflation.
Gabrielle Canon
An attempt by the Trump administration to gain access to Arizona’s detailed voter records was thwarted by the courts on Tuesday, when a federal judge dismissed the US justice department’s lawsuit against the state.
The ruling marks the latest legal setback in an unprecedented nationwide effort by the administration before the midterm elections to collect sensitive information about tens of millions of Americans. The DoJ has sued at least 30 states and the District of Columbia seeking to force release of the data, which includes dates of birth, addresses, driver’s license numbers and partial social security numbers.
The US district judge Susan Brnovich, a Trump appointee, ruled that Arizona’s statewide voter registration list was “not a document subject to request by the Attorney General” under federal law. The judge dismissed the lawsuit with prejudice because, she wrote, “amendment would be legally futile”.
At least 13 states have either handed the information over voluntarily or promised to provide their detailed voter registration lists to the department, according to the Brennan Center for Justice and Associated Press reporting: Alaska, Arkansas, Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas and Wyoming.
In addition to Arizona, judges have ruled against the administration in Rhode Island, California, Massachusetts, Michigan and Oregon. In Georgia, a judge dismissed a DoJ lawsuit because it had been filed in the wrong city, prompting the government to refile elsewhere.
US lawmakers to grill Pentagon chief on Iran war
US defense secretary Pete Hegseth will face tough questions from lawmakers about the Iran war on Wednesday during his first testimony to Congress since the start of the conflict.
Hegseth’s appearance before the House Armed Services Committee – for a hearing on president Donald Trump’s $1.5tn defense budget request – comes with the war still unresolved and the economic fallout from it continuing around the globe.
Lawmakers from both parties have previously expressed dissatisfaction with the information provided in classified briefings on the war, setting up a potentially fiery public hearing in which top US military officer general Dan Caine is also set to testify, AFP reported.
“Finally, Secretary Hegseth will come before the House Armed Services Committee this week. It is time to answer for this war of choice,” Representative Maggie Goodlander, a Democratic member of the committee, said in a post on X.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy has thanked King Charles for his speech in Washington yesterday.
He said:
I thank His Majesty King Charles III, royal family, the United Kingdom, and all valiant American hearts for this clarion call for unity in support of Ukraine across the Atlantic.
This is exactly what is needed to bring dignified and lasting peace to Ukraine and all of Europe. The people of Ukraine deeply appreciate all the support provided by the United Kingdom and the United States. Thank-you.
Iran 'better get smart soon' warns Trump in social media post
US president Donald Trump has warned Iran that “they better get smart soon” and sign a non-nuclear deal, in his latest social media post.
Trump shared an image of himself, wearing sunglasses and carrying a gun, set against the backdrop of – presumably – Middle Eastern towns and villages being bombed, with the caption “No more Mr Nice Guy”.
He wrote:
Iran can’t get their act together. They don’t know how to sign a nonnuclear deal. They better get smart soon! President DJT
In his state dinner speech King Charles appeared to suggest to president Trump that the purpose of his state visit was to “put the ‘special’ back into our relationship” – just as Queen Elizabeth II did almost 70 years ago.
Charles spoke about the ties between Britain and the US, and implied it mirrored events in the aftermath of the 1956 Suez crisis, when Elizabeth toured the US to help repair relations.
Britain was left humiliated when the US refused to support its campaign with France to regain control of the Suez canal from Egypt, and the brief conflict marked the end of the UK’s role as a global military power.
Charles told the dinner guests, who included the Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos, and the golfer Rory McIlroy: “And yes, we have had our moments of difficulty, even in more recent history. When my mother visited in 1957, not the least of her tasks was to help put the ‘special’ back into our relationship after a crisis in the Middle East.”
Some of the guests laughed when the king said: “Nearly 70 years on, it is hard to imagine anything like that happening today…”
King Charles to visit New York to commemorate 9/11 victims
Britain’s King Charles and his wife Queen Camilla arrive in New York on Wednesday to commemorate victims of the 11 September terror attacks on the city.
The king and queen’s scheduled arrival in New York follows a packed day in Washington on Tuesday, when Charles delivered a speech to Congress, held private meetings with president Donald Trump amid tensions between the US and UK over the Iran war and sat down with leaders of the US tech industry, Reuters reported.
Charles and Camilla will begin their day in New York with a ceremony at the 9/11 memorial in lower Manhattan, where the twin towers of the World Trade Center were destroyed by al-Qaeda suicide bombers on 11 September, 2001. Charles is expected to meet with New York City’s mayor, Zohran Mamdani, at the ceremony.
The king will then head to Harlem to visit a grassroots community organization that created a sustainable after-school urban farming initiative in an effort to combat food insecurity, according to local media.
Meanwhile, Camilla will celebrate the 100th birthday of AA Milne’s fictional character Winnie the Pooh on behalf of her charity, The Queen’s Reading Room, which Buckingham Palace is calling a “literary engagement” event.
US supreme court to hear whether protected status of Haitians and Syrians can be revoked
José Olivares
The supreme court will hear oral arguments on Wednesday over whether the Trump administration can strip the temporary protected status (TPS) of hundreds of thousands of Syrians and Haitians, under a program that has protected them from deportation due to safety concerns in their home countries.
People with TPS are given the permission to live and work in the US because the government has deemed their home countries to be unsafe due to war, political instability or natural disasters. In the past year, the Trump administration has attempted to cut the program for various countries, opening the door to the removal of hundreds of thousands of protected immigrants in the US.
Last year, the supreme court allowed the administration to strip TPS status for more than 300,000 Venezuelans under the court’s emergency docket. Now, the court will hear arguments challenging the Trump administration’s efforts to remove the same protections from Syrians and Haitians.
If the supreme court sides with the Trump administration in its effort to cut the program for Syrians and Haitians, analysts say the administration would likely seek to end the TPS program for all countries. Nearly 1.3 million people were TPS holders at the start of the second Trump administration.
The TPS program, established in 1990, does not offer a pathway to citizenship but allows citizens from designated countries to live and work in the US if they are unable to return safely to their home countries. TPS designations can be extended by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
Haitians have been protected from deportation under the TPS program since 2010 and Syrians have been protected since 2012. Earlier this month, the House passed legislation to extend the protection for Haitian immigrants under the TPS program for three years.
David Smith
A flick of Oscar Wilde here, a nod to Henry Kissinger there, a sprinkling of Charles Dickens here, a dollop of Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt there. Job done!
The British monarch mobilised an elite squad of dead white men, leavened with humour and subliminal politicking, on Tuesday in a charm offensive aimed over Donald Trump’s head and squarely at the US Congress. Judging by the cheers and minute-long applause he received at the end, the soft power flex worked a treat and the special relationship lives to fight another day.
But the king’s central message – of two great nations entwined in destiny – was also an inadvertent reminder of two empires that look increasingly shabby these days with rightwing populists on the march and the ghost of the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein hovering in the shadows.
Charles became the first British king to address the Congress almost exactly 250 years after the US denounced his fifth great-grandfather as a tyrant and declared its independence. “You’ll be back,” predicted George III in Hamilton and yet cricket, damp and a lack of air conditioning never clinched the deal.
What would America’s founding fathers have made of seeing George III’s direct descendant speak to their successors? Donald Trump mused at the White House on Tuesday: “They might be absolutely shocked but probably only for a moment. Surely they would be delighted that the wounds of war healed into the most cherished friendship.”
Well, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and co would surely be more shocked to discover that they now have their own mad king in the White House. If Charles spots signs saying “No kings” on his travels, he shouldn’t take it personally.
King Charles visits New York after Trump says UK monarch ‘agrees with me’ on Iran
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog.
Britain’s King Charles will use a trip to New York today to showcase cultural and economic ties between the UK and the US at a time when the so-called “special relationship” is under strain.
It is the third day of a four-day state visit, clouded by tensions over the Iran war, that began in Washington with president Donald Trump greeting the monarch and his wife, Queen Camilla, AFP reported.
The New York leg will first see the royals take part in a wreath-laying ceremony at the 9/11 memorial to mark 25 years since the terror attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people. The city’s mayor Zohran Mamdani is not expected to meet Charles privately but will join him for the ceremony.
“This atrocity was a defining moment for America and your pain and shock were felt around the whole world,” Charles told the US Congress on Tuesday.
“We stood with you then. And we stand with you now in solemn remembrance of a day that shall never be forgotten,” he added in a speech that called for unity among western powers.
It comes as Trump said Charles agrees with him that Iran should never be allowed nuclear weapons. The president’s comments are likely to cause some embarrassment to royal aides that his views have been made public.
Trump said in his speech at the white-tie event on Tuesday evening:
We’re doing a little Middle East work right now … and we’re doing very well. We have militarily defeated that particular opponent, and we’re never going to let that opponent ever, Charles agrees with me even more than I do, we’re never going to let that opponent have a nuclear weapon.
They know that, and they’ve known it right now, very powerfully.
A Buckingham Palace spokesperson said:
The king is naturally mindful of his government’s longstanding and well-known position on the prevention of nuclear proliferation.
In other developments:
Todd Blanche, the former defense lawyer for Donald Trump now serving as acting US attorney general, announced two charges against James Comey, the former FBI director and deputy attorney general for allegedly “knowing and willfully making a threat to kill” the president of the United States in a social media post.
Patrick Fitzgerald, a former US attorney for the northern district of Illinois who now represents James Comey, said that his client, “vigorously denies the charges” filed against him.
US defense secretary Pete Hegseth will face tough questions from lawmakers about the Iran war on Wednesday during his first testimony to Congress since the start of the conflict.
President Trump will welcomes the Artemis II astronauts to the White House later today. The capsule returned to Florida’s Kennedy Space Center on Tuesday, almost a month after blasting off on humanity’s first lunar trip in more than a half century.
The supreme court will hear arguments Wednesday over the Trump administration’s push to end legal protections for migrants fleeing war and natural disaster, one in a series of immigration cases the high court is considering against the backdrop of the president’s far-reaching immigration crackdown.
The US Federal Reserve is widely expected to hold interest rates steady on Wednesday after a key policy meeting, likely the last chaired by central bank chief Jerome Powell. Policymakers will weigh the risks of surging energy prices and snarled supply chains due to the US-Israel war on Iran, with analysts widely expecting a third pause in a row.
