Senate fails to advance war powers resolution, while more GOP lawmakers break with party
For the seventh time, the Senate failed to advance a war powers resolution that would curb military action in Iran. However, today’s vote, 49-50, was the closest one yet, with more Republican lawmakers voting in favor of the resolution.
For the first time, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska joined her GOP colleagues, Susan Collins and Rand Paul, in voting yes.
Meanwhile, John Fetterman was again the only Democrat to break with his party and vote no.
This is the first vote on the resolution since the lapsed 60-day deadline for Congress to authorize the conflict, as required by the War Powers Act.
Key events
And here’s my colleague Joseph Gedeon’s story on Donald Trump saying yesterday that the growing financial pressure inflicted on Americans by his war on Iran is “not even a little bit” motivating him to make a peace deal with Tehran.
With US inflation at a three-year high, and fuel costs still climbing after a sharp rise in oil prices, the US president said on Tuesday that he is not focused on the economic hardship sparked by the conflict.
Trump told reporters at the White House before boarding a plane to China:
The only thing that matters when I’m talking about Iran [is] they can’t have a nuclear weapon. I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. I don’t think about anybody. I think about one thing: We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon. That’s all.
The president’s remarks come ahead of a US midterm election campaign season which looks to be defined by mounting concerns around affordability.
Adding to that last post, in a new interview with Reason magazine, the Democratic senator John Fetterman has said that the US war on Iran is worth the higher gas prices and costs to Americans because it’s for a “noble cause”.
Fetterman, who has repeatedly broken with his party to vote against advancing war powers resolutions that would curb US military action against Iran, said:
Yeah, it’s real expensive for America right now, but that’s a noble cause to just hold Iran regime accountable for the mass chaos, murder and destruction that they’ve underwritten for decades.
Fetterman also critiqued comparisons to the disastrous US war in Iraq, saying that with regards to Iran, “we have a nuclear power at the cusp and it’s entirely appropriate to hold them accountable for what they’ve done”.
His comments echo those made by Donald Trump and his allies to justify the war as being necessary and worth the costs to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
Even just yesterday, Trump was asked by a reporter how much the impact of the war on Americans’ personal finances factored into his thinking in negotiations with Iran, to which he – astoundingly – replied:
Americans’ financial situation … I don’t think about anybody. I think about one thing. We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon. That’s all.
You can also watch Fetterman’s interview here.
Senate fails to advance war powers resolution, while more GOP lawmakers break with party
For the seventh time, the Senate failed to advance a war powers resolution that would curb military action in Iran. However, today’s vote, 49-50, was the closest one yet, with more Republican lawmakers voting in favor of the resolution.
For the first time, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska joined her GOP colleagues, Susan Collins and Rand Paul, in voting yes.
Meanwhile, John Fetterman was again the only Democrat to break with his party and vote no.
This is the first vote on the resolution since the lapsed 60-day deadline for Congress to authorize the conflict, as required by the War Powers Act.
Van Hollen posts copy of test that screens for unhealthy alcohol use on social media, urges FBI director to do the same
As we reported on Tuesday, the FBI director, Kash Patel, clashed with Senator Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat, after the lawmaker grilled him about allegations of heavy drinking on the job, as reported by the Atlantic.
Van Hollen asked if the FBI would be willing to take a test to determine whether he has a drinking problem, Patel snapped that he would – provided the senator take it alongside him.
On Wednesday, the Democratic senator posted a completed copy of the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test on social media, which he said he took after “all the lies” the FBI director told yesterday.
“I imagine he’ll fudge the numbers here, but let’s see yours,” Van Hollen said, urging Patel to take the questionnaire.
Dharna Noor
A House natural resources committee hearing got heated on Wednesday morning as lawmakers asked US Interior Secretary Doug Burgum about the Trump administration’s budget proposal for fiscal year 2027.
Ranking member Jared Huffman, a Democrat from California, asked Burgum about the cost of living crisis Americans are facing.
“I mean, you’re in a different economic strata, but I think most of us understand there’s a struggle out there because of this administration’s economic and energy policies,” he said.
Huffman said Burgum has “spent a lot of the department’s time resources and taxpayer dollars to serve Donald Trump’s vanity,” including by working on the renovation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool – the cost of which has ballooned to $13m according to a federal contracting record first reported by The New York Times.
“It’s hard to understand how these projects to stroke Trump’s ego do anything for the American people with their day to day struggles,” said Huffman. Meanwhile, the “big oil billionaires” are profiting from the president’s war on Iran, he said. Burgum defended the administration, saying it is working to make energy affordable.
Dharna Noor
Two of Trump’s top environmental officials are defending the administration’s policies before lawmakers this morning.
The US interior secretary Doug Burgum is testifying before the House natural resources committee about Trump‘s fiscal 2027 budget request for the department, while energy secretary Chris Wright is appearing at a Senate armed services committee hearing about the forthcoming 2027 Defense Authorization Request, which proposed a $1.5tn budget for defense spending.
Burgum faced scrutiny at the House committee hearing. Congresswoman Susie Lee, a Democrat from Nevada, asked the secretary about a July 2025 memo requiring he personally approve all solar and wind permits.
“This basically created a total permitting mess in my home state of Nevada, stalling 93% of all new energy capacity in our state,” she said to Burgum, who claimed that the country “over-rotated towards intermittent forms of energy.”
On 21 April, a federal judge blocked the Trump administration’s July memo, issuing a preliminary injunction that was requested by environmental and industry trade groups which said the administration had imposed illegal roadblocks to wind and solar energy development.
Lee asked Burgum if the administration will appeal the decision. “Oh, absolutely,” the interior secretary replied.
Wright, too, faced tough questions on Wednesday morning. New Hampshire Democratic Senator Jeanne Shaheen, for instance, asked why the federal government would increase defense spending at the Department of Energy by $7.2bn, while its proposed budget would slash $2.5bn from energy efficiency programming.
“Talk to us, if you will, about how you square those cuts to successful energy efficiency programs that have really helped families in my state and throughout this country, with the high energy costs and the budget that you’ve proposed,” she said to Wright.
He responded that he “shares her passion” for energy affordability. “It’s just a matter of balancing what’s the right role of the government in that and what’s the right role of the marketplace,” he said.
While Trump is in China, we can expect to hear from vice-president JD Vance at 2pm ET today, when he hosts an anti-fraud initiative event. Vance will be joined by Federal Trade Commission chair Andrew Ferguson and Mehmet Oz, the administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
The Trump administration will launch a nationwide audit of state Medicaid Fraud Control Units (MFCUs), the Wall Street Journal reports, citing a senior administration officials. MFCUs are state watchdogs at the state level established to ensure that divisions responsible for uncovering abuse are adequately investigating misuse and wrongdoing.
Jason Wilson
Defense secretary Pete Hegseth will headline a faith rally on the National Mall this weekend in Washington DC, hosted by a private foundation operating in partnership with the White House, which includes some speakers that experts have characterized as Christian nationalist or extremist.
Rededicate 250, billed as the faith-based component of America’s semiquincentennial, features speakers including a Detroit pastor who has called the Democratic platform “demonic” and launched his own memecoin after praying at Trump’s second inauguration; a rabbi who has defended the use of torture and authored an essay titled “The Virtue of Hate”; and a Christian author and radio host who said in 2020 he would die in the fight to keep Joe Biden out of the White House and was later named in a defamation suit over 2020 election fraud claims.
Hegseth, secretary of state Marco Rubio and House speaker Mike Johnson are also scheduled to appear. The lineup includes no Muslims, no representatives of historically Black churches, no Indigenous faith leaders and no mainline Protestants.
David Smith
Reporting from Beijing
The Middle East conflict that Donald Trump started, and seems unable to finish, will cast a long shadow over two days of talks amid fears that he might be tempted to weaken US support for Taiwan, the self-governing democracy claimed by China, in return for Xi’s assistance.
“I don’t think we need any help with Iran,” Trump said to reporters before departing the White House on Tuesday. “We’ll win it one way or the other – peacefully or otherwise.”
He also sought to play down divisions with Beijing, saying Xi had been “relatively good” during the crisis and insisting that Washington had “Iran very much under control”.
The war has entered its third month, with Tehran tightening its grip over the strait of Hormuz and Washington struggling to turn a fragile ceasefire into a lasting settlement.
Behind the scenes, US officials have spent weeks urging China – Iran’s biggest oil customer and one of the few powers with leverage in Tehran – to pressure the Islamic Republic into reopening the strait of Hormuz, through which roughly a fifth of the world’s oil supply ordinarily passes, while accepting US terms for peace.
The US recently sanctioned several Chinese firms accused of assisting Iranian oil shipments and supplying satellite imagery allegedly used in Iranian military operations. China condemned the measures as “illegal unilateral sanctions” and invoked a rarely used blocking statute prohibiting Chinese entities from complying with them.
Xi has also offered implicit criticism of the US over the war. He has said safeguarding international rule of law is paramount and “must not be selectively applied or disregarded”, nor should the world be allowed to revert “to the law of the jungle”.
Still, neither side appears eager to allow the Iran crisis to derail broader diplomatic and economic engagement in the first of four potential meetings between Trump and Xi over the next year.
The two countries remain locked in a fragile tariff truce reached last autumn after tensions threatened to erupt into a full-scale trade war. Trump has long complained about China’s trade surplus with the US, while Beijing has bristled at American export controls and sanctions.
Trump arrived at his hotel earlier, and the press pool travelling with the president noted that the highway route leaving the airport was decorated with American and Chinese flags. Skyscrapers were lit up with Chinese characters meaning “Beijing Welcome”.
Here are some pictures of Donald Trump’s arrival in Beijing, where he was greeted by China’s vice-president Han Zheng.
Trump greeted in China with red carpet and fanfare
As the president exited Air Force One, a red carpet led him to the motorcade.
An honor guard marched to line up on both sides of the walkway, which was also flanked by hundreds of men and women in blue and white – waving the flag of the People’s Republic of China flag and the US flag while chanting.
As a band played for the ceremonial arrival, Trump offered a fist pump to the music, then proceeded down the stairs.
Travelling with the president, and following him off the aircraft were Eric and Lara Trump, Elon Musk, Marco Rubio, and Pete Hegseth.
