Chris Stein
More than 100 House Democrats on Wednesday voted to slash military aid to Israel, a significant rebuke of the longtime US ally as accusations that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government green-lit genocide in Gaza continue to convulse the party ahead of November’s midterm election.
The amendment proposed by Republican congressman Thomas Massie to a spending measure would have halted $3.3bn in planned aid – much of which would have gone to Israel’s military – but was rejected by a 104-314 vote, with 10 lawmakers voting present. It received the support of 103 House Democrats, or nearly half of the 212-strong caucus, underscoring how sentiment in the party towards Israel and the Netanyahu government has soured since the 7 October attack and Israel’s subsequent invasion of Gaza.
The provision resulted in an unusual split among top House Democrats, with minority leader Hakeem Jeffries and the caucus chair, Pete Aguilar, both saying they would vote against it. In a letter to members, Jeffries called Massie’s amendment “overly broad”, but said he would not formally try to persuade other Democrats to join him in opposition, citing “the strongly held views throughout the caucus in this important area of foreign policy”.
On Wednesday, the House Democratic whip Katherine Clark said she would support Massie’s amendment, saying in a statement “it is clear that the status quo is not tenable.
We should not provide a blank check for military aid to any country that does not comply with US law, interests, and values. The Netanyahu government has failed to meet that standard,” added Clark, the second-highest ranking House Democrat.
Key events
Massie and Khanna introduce sequel to Epstein files act to enable state officials to sue for withheld records
Republican Thomas Massie and Democrat Ro Khanna, the two congressmen who introduced the Epstein Files Transparency Act, the law requiring the Department of Justice to release investigative files on the late child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, introduced a sequel on Wednesday.
The Epstein Files Transparency Act II, Massie said in a statement, “gives standing to state attorneys general, the victims of Jeffrey Epstein and his co-conspirators, and members of Congress to challenge the Department of Justice (DOJ) in court for the DOJ’s failure to comply with the disclosure” of records from the Epstein files.
“Since the Epstein Files Transparency Act was signed into law on November 19, 2025, the Department of Justice has flagrantly and consistently ignored EFTA’s disclosure requirements,” Massie said. “The Department of Justice continues to unlawfully withhold over 3 million Epstein files that should be released to the public. In addition, the DOJ is unlawfully maintaining heavy redactions on the files it is releasing. State attorneys general and victims should have the right to sue the Attorney General of the United States to compel compliance with a transparency law President Trump signed.”
Khanna added: “the DOJ has violated our law, delayed the release of millions of files, botched the redactions, and denied the survivors justice.”
Congresswoman Teresa Leger Fernández, a New Mexico Democrat who joined the effort to get the new legislation passed, accused the acting attorney general, Todd Blanche, who described himself on Wednesday as Donald Trump’s lawyer, of “hiding the truth from the American people and creating even more injustice and trauma for survivors”.
The effort is led in the Senate by Jeff Merkley, an Oregon Democrat, and Ben Ray Luján, a New Mexico Democrat.
A new law is needed, Merkley said, because “those in power continue to side with the Epstein Class and shield abusers from accountability for their horrific crimes”.
The newly drained Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool’s bottom surface has noticeably faded since it was lined with a protective coating in a color Donald Trump called “American flag blue” this spring, the Associated Press reports.
An Associated Press reporter and photographer viewed the fenced-off reflecting pool on Wednesday from the top of the Washington Monument. The new liner appears grayer than when the pool was repainted and refilled with water in early June. Debris that had been visible earlier this week after the pool was drained is now largely gone, after work crews removed it.
Trump’s problem-plagued effort to revamp the landmark has stretched well past his initial goal of having the reflecting pool ready by 4 July for the nation’s 250th birthday.
The president at first suggested his renovations would cost $1.5m, but the bill ballooned to more than $16m by June.
Trump had said the repairs would last a century, but within days of the project’s initial completion last month, the water was beset by an algae bloom and pieces of the new coating appeared to be peeling off the bottom.
Dual US-Iranian citizen Dena Karari allowed to leave Iran
Donald Trump thanked the country he is bombing, Iran, for allowing an American citizen he said was “wrongfully detained in December of 2024” to leave the country.
“She is now safely outside of Iran, and in good condition,” Trump wrote on social media, without naming the woman. “The United States of America appreciates this gesture of Goodwill by Iran!”
The woman is Dena Karari, a dual American and Iranian citizen, her lawyer Jared Genser announced on social media.
Genser said that he was “excited to report” that Karari, who was banned from leaving Iran after visiting her family in 2024, and was interrogated but not detained, “is now safe and traveling back to the United States.”
“This would not have happened but for the extraordinary and relentless efforts of” Trump, he added.
The New York Times reported last year that an Iranian American woman who was first imprisoned and prevented from leaving the country in December 2024, but released from custody, “works for an American technological company and runs a charity for underprivileged children in Iran.” After the US joined Israel in bombing Iran in 2025, she was charged with espionage.
According to a 2023 Guardian profile of Genser, the human rights lawyer nicknamed “the extractor” has managed to free over 340 prisoners of conscience from 20 countries over the past two decades.
Jewish Voice for Peace calls 103 House Democrats voting against funding Israel’s military ‘a seismic shift in US politics’
Jewish Voice for Peace, a coalition of anti-Zionist American Jewish groups, called Wednesday’s vote by 104 members of the US House in favor of a failed measure that would have halted $3.3bn in planned aid to Israel, much of it for the Israeli military, “a seismic shift in US politics.”
“This historic vote shows a major break in Democratic support for U.S. complicity in Israeli apartheid, with more Democrats voting to block military funding than actively voting to continue it,” the group said in a statement.
“What was once unquestioning bipartisan consensus to fund Israel’s atrocities against Palestinians is now breaking apart,” Beth Miller, the political director of Jewish Voice for Peace Action, said. “While it is shameful that the House failed to pass this amendment, it is also now clear that it is impossible for Congress to ignore our voices. The overwhelming majority of Democratic voters are demanding that we halt U.S. military funding to Israel, and every Democrat who ignored these calls should fear for their seat”.
“The Israeli government is using U.S. weapons and funding to commit atrocities against Palestinian, Iranian, and Lebanese civilians,” she added. “These atrocities are in direct violation of U.S. and international law. A majority of Americans — and the vast majority of Democrats — oppose the illegal and immoral U.S.-Israeli war on Iran. The American people want the U.S. to stop sending weapons and equipment to the Israeli military as it inflicts apartheid and genocide on Palestinian people.”
Pressed by Joe Rogan, JD Vance denies that Trump was blackmailed into Iran war by Israel over Epstein ties
In an interview with the podcaster Joe Rogan, US vice-president JD Vance discounted the conspiracy theory that Donald Trump’s long association with Jeffrey Epstein, the late child sex offender, had been used by Israel to blackmail the president into attacking Iran.
When Rogan turned to the subject of the war in Iran, he began by asking Vance: “Do you think he would have continued with the most recent campaign if it wasn’t for the influence of Israel?”
After denying that Israeli influence was to blame for Trump’s decision to go to war with Iran, Vance said: “I think a lot of people- I’ve heard this argument, this idea… that Donald Trump, you know, was sort of, I’ve even heard people say he was blackmailed into this by the Israelis.”
“Yeah, a lot of people think that,” Rogan interjected.
“That’s not true dude; it’s just it’s just not true” Vance replied.
“Can you understand though why people would come to that conclusion, especially because of the Epstein files?” Rogan asked a short time later. “The Epstein files were supposed to be released… and there was a tremendous amount of resistance to those files being released and that concerned a lot of people, because if if you’re talking about very wealthy, powerful people that were engaged in crimes.”
“I see,” Vance said. “So you’re you’re basically saying like… the fear is that whatever’s in the Epstein files was used to blackmail like the administration into doing the Iran thing”.
He then denied that there was any connection between the Epstein files and the war, and cast the flawed release of the files as a mere communications problem.
“We absolutely screwed up the comms of the Epstein files, like we just did. But do I think the reason we screwed up the comms is because we were trying to hide something? No,” Vance said.
The vice-president then blamed Pam Bondi, the former attorney general for saying that a rumored Epstein client list, of powerful people he trafficked girls to for sex, and so could blackmail, was sitting in her desk for review.
The effect of that statement by Bondi, Vance said, “was to make people mistrust the entire effort.”
But, he added, “I don’t think there was anything malicious going on.”
Vance then insisted that, despite being himself “one of the OG Epstein conspiracy theorists”, there was no evidence in the files he had seen to prove that anyone associated with Epstein who has not been prosecuted had committed crimes.
Unhelpfully for Trump, his vice-president then suggested that there might have been evidence against Epstein associates that was destroyed after Epstein’s initial plea deal in 2008. “Anything that existed from the 80s and 90s up to 2006, 2007, anything that existed that we didn’t get back then was disappeared. Right?” Vance said. “So like when people say, ‘Has what you’ve seen on the inside make you think that the you know that Epstein never blackmailed people or that Epstein never engaged in broader sex trafficking?’ No, absolutely not. What I have seen, and I’ve looked at most of the files, is that there just wasn’t dispositive evidence. And if that dispositive evidence ever existed, it was probably destroyed after 2006, 2007.”
“I’ve never seen a single piece of credible evidence that the president of United States engaged in wrongdoing with minors ever.,” Vance added. “So, like when the president says ‘the hoax’, that’s what he’s talking about, is this Democratic idea that he somehow was a was a pedophile. It’s absurd. There’s no evidence for it.”
After she voted to cut US military aid to Israel Summer Lee, a Democratic congresswoman from Pennsylvania, said in a statement: “Thousands and thousands of Palestinians have been killed using our tax dollars. This shift in the party is a testament to the movement but it’s still unconscionable for any member of Congress to justify sending any aid to fuel Israel’s genocide.”
Her colleague Greg Casar, a Texas congressman who chairs the House progressive caucus, posted: “I just voted to end US funding for Israel’s weapons of war. More Democrats than ever before voted to block funding. That is a victory for the millions of Americans who have demanded an end to our taxpayer dollars going to fund genocide. Tomorrow we get back to work. We will win.”
George Chidi
Speaking at a defense industry summit in Pennsylvania, Donald Trump said his administration “will soon take historic action to get an illegal alien truck drivers,” announcing plans to ban undocumented drivers from retaining commercial drivers licenses.
Trump claimed that undocumented drivers “are just killing a lot of people. They can’t read signs. Many of them are on drugs or alcohol and they shouldn’t be driving these things and they’re … they came in totally illegally and we don’t want them, but they are driving all over America’s roadways.”
The administration has made this labor a focal point of federal transportation policy and political rhetoric, highlighting any case involving an undocumented commercial driver in an accident that causes fatalities. Most recently, the death of Pennsylvania State Trooper Michael Pahira Jr – who was struck and killed by Michael Bon, a Haitian national with a commercial drivers license – has been part of the rallying cry for a change to federal policy. Bon, who held a valid commercial driver’s license issued by Massachusetts, has been charged with vehicular homicide.
The Trump administration established a new rule in March that barred immigrants with temporary status, DACA recipients and refugees and asylum seekers with legal status from renewing or obtaining commercial drivers licenses. About 20% of the transportation workforce is foreign-born.
Trump said he intended to replace undocumented truck drivers with veterans.
“We’re gonna teach them a lot about driving trucks and in many cases they know,” he said. “We’re going to say any American who’s driven a heavy truck for our military will automatically be eligible for a commercial driver’s license.”
Chris Stein
More than 100 House Democrats on Wednesday voted to slash military aid to Israel, a significant rebuke of the longtime US ally as accusations that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government green-lit genocide in Gaza continue to convulse the party ahead of November’s midterm election.
The amendment proposed by Republican congressman Thomas Massie to a spending measure would have halted $3.3bn in planned aid – much of which would have gone to Israel’s military – but was rejected by a 104-314 vote, with 10 lawmakers voting present. It received the support of 103 House Democrats, or nearly half of the 212-strong caucus, underscoring how sentiment in the party towards Israel and the Netanyahu government has soured since the 7 October attack and Israel’s subsequent invasion of Gaza.
The provision resulted in an unusual split among top House Democrats, with minority leader Hakeem Jeffries and the caucus chair, Pete Aguilar, both saying they would vote against it. In a letter to members, Jeffries called Massie’s amendment “overly broad”, but said he would not formally try to persuade other Democrats to join him in opposition, citing “the strongly held views throughout the caucus in this important area of foreign policy”.
On Wednesday, the House Democratic whip Katherine Clark said she would support Massie’s amendment, saying in a statement “it is clear that the status quo is not tenable.
We should not provide a blank check for military aid to any country that does not comply with US law, interests, and values. The Netanyahu government has failed to meet that standard,” added Clark, the second-highest ranking House Democrat.
Marina Dunbar
The treasury department announced Wednesday that the US Mint has started producing a new commemorative $1 coin featuring Donald Trump as part of the nation’s 250th anniversary celebration.
The coin is scheduled for release this fall. Treasury officials said its final design was approved earlier this year by the US Commission of Fine Arts, whose members were appointed by Trump. However, the version revealed Wednesday is not identical to the previously approved design. Among the changes, the coin has a gold finish rather than being made of solid gold.
Scott Bessent, the treasury secretary, said in an X post the coin is intended “to honor the enduring legacy of liberty and a lasting symbol of patriotism”, adding: “Featuring President Trump, it celebrates the strength of American values, and the promise of a nation dedicated to preserving freedom for all.”
The decision has already sparked criticism because federal law bars living presidents from appearing on US currency. At the same time, the treasury secretary has authority in certain situations to authorize the minting and issuance of coins.
The front of the new coin shows Trump wearing a suit and tie with a stern expression. The word “LIBERTY” appears across the top edge, while the dates 1776-2026 are displayed along the bottom. The phrase “IN GOD WE TRUST” is positioned in the center.
On the reverse, the coin features the traditional bald eagle from the Great Seal of the United States. “UNITED STATES OF AMERICA” is inscribed around the top edge, and the shield on the eagle’s chest bears the Latin phrase “E PLURIBUS UNUM,” meaning “Out of many, one.”
Donald Trump gave new meaning to the word rambling in nearly an hour of opening remarks at the US Army War College, during what was billed by the White House as a defense and innovation summit, but devolved into another opportunity for the president to recite his familiar boasts, false claims and grievances.
Among other topics, Trump spent time complaining about wind power, made false claims about immigrants flooding into the US, repeated his false boast that the King of Saudi Arabia told him two years ago that the US was “a dead country” before he transformed it into “the hottest country in the world”, saluted a conservative columnist in the crowd by name for writing flattering pieces about him, told a long story about how he supposedly corrected the designer of an aircraft carrier on how it should be constructed and claimed that the war in Iran is almost over.
“We’ll have Iran defeated soon, they’ll be defeated very soon,” Trump said, as he has dozens of times in the past four months.
While introducing officials and industry leaders at the Pennsylvania panel today, Trump addressed Danny Deep – an executive at the advanced military equipment manufacturer, General Dynamics.
The president said that General Dynamics “make the greatest submarine in the world” but “they just have to make them faster”.
“Danny, will you please make them faster?” Trump added. “That’s true with all of the munitions … we need a little more speed.”
In March, Democrats warned that the airstrikes on Iran are diminishing US stockpiles of certain weapons.
As my colleagues reported a short while ago, the US is launching another wave of strikes against Iran in a further effort to keep the strait of Hormuz open.
It will be the second set of strikes targeting Iran during daylight hours today.
On Wednesday, Donald Trump said that Iran “is not happy right now,” while speaking in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
At a defense and innovation summit at the US Army War College, the president repeated his frequent claim that Tehran wants “to settle so badly”.
“They don’t like what we’re doing, and they do want to settle. We’ll find out whether or not we settle with them, or we just finish it off,” he added.
