Progressive Democrat Analilia Mejia wins congressional special election in New Jersey in a landslide
Democrat Analilia Mejia won a special election to represent New Jersey’s 11th congressional district in the House of Representatives in a landslide, the Associated Press reports.
Mejia who narrowly defeated Tom Malinowski, a former congressman, in the Democratic primary, after a super PAC aligned with AIPAC hit him with a barrage of negative ads, took more than 70% of the vote in early counting.
Mejia will replace Mikie Sherrill, the former congresswoman who is now New Jersey’s governor.
Malinowski, a supporter of Israel, had criticized Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, during Israel’s assault on Gaza in 2023, and refused to rule out placing conditions on US aid to Israel.
Mejia, who was endorsed by Elizabeth Warren and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, is far more critical on Israel and was the only candidate in the Democratic primary to call Israel’s actions during the war in Gaza a genocide.
Key events
Closing summary
This concludes our live coverage of the second Trump administration, but just for the day. Here are the latest developments:
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Donald Trump nominated Erica Schwartz, former deputy surgeon general during his first administration, to lead the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).
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Schwartz was under immediate pressure from critics of the health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, to oppose his anti-vaccine ideology. At a heated oversight hearing, House Democrats grilled Kennedy over his vaccine rollbacks.
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Speaking in Las Vegas, Trump told supporters “the war in Iran is going along swimmingly, we can do whatever we want.” He did not explain why, then, the US military has been unable to stop Iran from closing the strait of Hormuz.
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The US Department of Justice opened an investigation into Eric Swalwell following his resignation from Congress, according to a source familiar with the matter.
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Police in Illinois responded Wednesday evening to the home of Pope Leo’s brother, John Prevost, after a bomb threat was made, NBC Chicago reported.
Trump calls it an early night in Las Vegas, after repeating familiar litany of false claims
Donald Trump just wrapped up a relatively brief, for him, 45-minute event in Las Vegas to celebrate what he terms the great success of his “no tax on tips” policy, which is actually just a temporary deduction of up to $25,000 in tips for eligible workers annually, which expires in two years.
Before he was done, however, the nearly 80-year-old president regaled the small crowd of supporters with a number of lies he tells at event after event.
In a rambling monologue at one stage, for instance, the president falsely claimed that the king of Saudi Arabia had told him last year the US was “dead” during the Biden administration and insisted that 25 million migrants had entered the US illegally during the four years between 2021 and 2025.
“The King of Saudi Arabia,” Trump began, in a story he has told again and again and again over the past year, “he said to me, a year and half ago, I was with him, he said, ‘You know, two year ago, you were a dead country’”.
In fact, during Trump’s visit to Saudi Arabia 11 months ago, he did not meet the Saudi king, who is elderly and in poor health, but was hosted instead by the crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman.
What’s more, it appears that Trump has misremembered something he said to the crown prince for something the crown prince said to him during his visit to the Saudi kingdom.
During a speech to a US-Saudi investment forum on Riyadh on 13 May 2025, Trump said: “the days of economic misery under the last administration are rapidly giving way to the greatest economy in the history of the world. We are rocking. The United States is the hottest country, with the exception of your country, I have to say, right? I’m not going to take that on. No Mohammed, I’m not going to take that on… You’re hotter. At least as long as I’m up here, you’re hotter. But groceries, gasoline, energy and all other prices are down with no inflation.”
But in the ensuing months, Trump has claimed, at event after event, that it was “the king of Saudi Arabia” who used this very Trumpian expression, that the US is “the hottest country”.
In his remarks on Thursday, Trump slid directly from what he described as the Saudi royal’s remarks into how own attack on his predecessor. “Everyone thought America was finished, we were a laughing stock, with a president that couldn’t walk up a flight of stairs, he was, no, he was so horrible, think, I mean it’s not even funny, it was horrible,” Trump said.
“But the king said, you know, ‘Two years ago, you were a dead country, and now you’re the hottest country anywhere in the world.’”
In the same monologue, Trump also claimed, falsely, that Biden “allowed 25 million people into the country, totally unvetted and unchecked… we’re still getting them out.” Among those migrants, Trump claimed, there were “11,888 murderers… let into our country”.
As the CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale has reported, Trump’s figure is a vast exaggeration he has made repeatedly to cast the crackdown on undocumented migrants as vital to stopping crime. “Through December 2024, the last full month under the Biden administration,” Dale explained on Wednesday, after Trump used this imaginary figure in a Fox Business interview, “the federal government had recorded under 11 million nationwide ‘encounters’ with migrants during that administration, including millions who were rapidly expelled from the country. Even adding in the so-called “gotaways” who evaded detection, estimated by House Republicans as being roughly 2.2 million”.
The figure 11,888 is also a lie, since that number refers to non-citizens who entered the US over several decades, including during the first Trump’s first administration, “not just under Biden,” and later committed murders, which they were jailed for.
Progressive Democrat Analilia Mejia wins congressional special election in New Jersey in a landslide
Democrat Analilia Mejia won a special election to represent New Jersey’s 11th congressional district in the House of Representatives in a landslide, the Associated Press reports.
Mejia who narrowly defeated Tom Malinowski, a former congressman, in the Democratic primary, after a super PAC aligned with AIPAC hit him with a barrage of negative ads, took more than 70% of the vote in early counting.
Mejia will replace Mikie Sherrill, the former congresswoman who is now New Jersey’s governor.
Malinowski, a supporter of Israel, had criticized Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, during Israel’s assault on Gaza in 2023, and refused to rule out placing conditions on US aid to Israel.
Mejia, who was endorsed by Elizabeth Warren and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, is far more critical on Israel and was the only candidate in the Democratic primary to call Israel’s actions during the war in Gaza a genocide.
Trump calls Doordash delivery stunt ‘a little tacky’, repeats false claim about how much worker’s tax cut was
Donald Trump just repeated his false claim about how much the Doordash worker from Arkansas who delivered food to the White House this week saved on her taxes thanks to the no tax on tips policy included in the 2025 One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
As he did on Monday, the president claimed that the delivery worker, Sharon Simmons, got an $11,000 tax refund as a result of the policy. In fact, Simmons told Fox News that she paid was “probably going to be saving about $3,000 to $4,000” in taxes on the $11,000 in tips she made last year.
Trump, who openly called the event “staged” as it was unfolding on Monday, called the stunt with Simmons “a little tacky” in his remarks on Thursday.
“You know, they come up with these crazy ideas,” Trump said of his staff dreaming up televised stunts for him to star in, like his 2024 campaign appearance at a McDonalds, which was intended to drive home the false claim that Kamala Harris had lied about working at the fast-food chain as a college student.
“We do these things in politics, they’re a little embarrassing. They’re a little tiny embarrassing, but we do them and you win by landslides,” the president, habitually exaggerating the scale of his narrow, 1.47% margin of victory in the 2024 popular vote.
Trump says ‘the war in Iran is going along swimmingly’
Speaking in Las Vegas, Donald Trump just told supporters “the war in Iran is going along swimmingly, we can do whatever we want.”
He did not explain why, then, the US military has been unable to stop Iran from closing the strait of Hormuz.
In Las Vegas, Trump touts ‘no tax on tips’ policy, which expires in 2028
Donald Trump just arrived for a roundtable in Las Vegas to celebrate what he calls the massive impact of the tax cut for tipped workers included in the 2025 package of tax and spending changes known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
Trump began by thanking the relatively small crowd for helping him to win Nevada by what he called a large margin. In fact, he got just 46,008 more votes than Kamala Harris in the state.
Ahead of the president’s remarks, the Reuters correspondent Jarrett Renshaw reported that Nevada Democrats told him they support the reduced tax on tips policy but noted that it has a short expiration date, unlike some of Trump’s other tax policies that benefit wealthy Americans. The tax cut for tipped workers expires in 2028.
In an Air Force One posting spree, Trump tears into Tucker Carlson and Joe Kent, but urges Hezbollah to ‘act nicely’
Donald Trump has just arrived in Las Vegas for a promotional event touting his no tax on tops policy.
Before he stepped off Air Force One, however, the president devoted the last hour of the flight to a social media posting spree, sending followers 10 posts in which he attacked critics of his war on Iran, including Tucker Carlson and Joe Kent, posted four times about how upset he is over a federal judge blocking construction of the White House ballroom he has his heart set on, and then, in a brief, final post, urged the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah to make peace with Israel, which has invaded its homeland and killed hundreds of women and children in recent days.
“I hope Hezbollah acts nicely and well,” Trump wrote, addressing the militants in far kinder language than that he reserved for the domestic critics of his war on Iran.
Trump’s longest post, attacking former supporters turned critics of his decision to attack Iran began with the question: “Who’s dumber, Tucker Carlson or Joe Kent?”
The president then went on to claim, falsely, that he barely knew Kent, his former counterterrorism director.
Trump told followers that he first met Kent during a dignified transfer ceremony at Dover air force base during his first term. “Kent, horribly, lost his wife,” the president noted.
What he failed to mention is that, according to comments he later made at a fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago for Kent’s subsequent campaign for Congress, Trump was so impressed by Kent that day that he urged him to run for Congress, even as they waited for the remains of Kent’s wife, an intelligence officer who was killed in Syria, to be returned for burial.
Trump then endorsed Kent in both of his failed runs for Congress, and recorded a phone message to let voters know about that support.
On Thursday, however, the president omitted that history in his social media post, writing that, after that brief encounter with the grieving Kent at Dover, “a number of years later, I noticed the same person was running for Congress in Washington State, and lost. I then noticed a couple of years later, he was running again, and lost.”
“While I didn’t know him other than our brief Dover encounter,” the president lied, “but feeling sorry for him after the two Election losses, I told my people, ‘Hire him for the White House.’”
“He was really a SLEAZEBAG, and some would say, on top of it all, A LEAKER! “ the president wrote of the man he urged to run for Congress at a memorial for his wife, twice endorsed and then nominated to a senior position in his administration. “Kent is a LOSER, just like Tucker, Candace, Megyn, and the rest of them are LOSERS — You’re born that way, LOW IQ, and there’s not a damn thing they’re going to be able to do about it!”
Sam Levin
The US Department of Justice (DoJ) has opened an investigation into Eric Swalwell following his resignation from Congress, according to a source familiar with the matter.
The news of a federal investigation comes days after the Democratic representative from California stepped down due to multiple allegations of sexual misconduct.
The DoJ has not publicly commented on its investigation.
Swalwell, a seven-term representative, was a frontrunner to replace Gavin Newsom as California’s governor until he became engulfed in scandal. He suspended his gubernatorial campaign and then resigned from Congress after the San Francisco Chronicle reported the account of an unnamed former staffer, who said he sexually assaulted her on two occasions. CNN published a similar account, which included claims from three other women who said Swalwell had sent them unwanted sexual messages.
On Tuesday, the day after Swalwell resigned, Lonna Drewes, another alleged victim, publicly came forward, saying Swalwell had drugged and raped her in 2018. Drewes spoke out at a press conference in Beverly Hills, saying the representative choked her and that she “lost consciousness” and thought she had “died”.
Sara Azari, a lawyer representing Swalwell, said in a statement earlier this week that he “categorically and unequivocally denies each and every allegation of sexual misconduct and assault that has been leveled against him”.
‘How deranged do you have to be to be upset with the Pope for preaching about peace and love’ Ilhan Omar asks
In remarks that somehow have not prompted a tirade on Truth Social, yet, Ilhan Omar, the Minnesota congresswoman, was sharply critical of Donald Trump’s repeated attacks on Pope Leo.
Asked on Thursday by the congressional correspondent Pablo Manriquez what she makes of the president’s rhetoric against the Catholic leader, Omar said: “I mean, how deranged do you have to be to be upset with the Pope for preaching about peace and love, in the spirit of Jesus Christ?”
“So it is telling that these people that say that they’re people of faith that they are far from being people of faith and far from practicing Christianity and having respect for the Bible and religious leaders,” the congresswoman continued.
Christopher Hale, who writes the Substack newsletter Letters from Leo, wrote in response to Omar’s comments: “The Muslim Congresswoman is giving a more eloquent defense of the gospel of Jesus Christ and Pope Leo XIV than almost every Christian GOP Member of Congress.”
Police in Illinois responded Wednesday evening to the home of Pope Leo’s brother, John Prevost, after a bomb threat was made, NBC Chicago and other news outlets reported. No explosive device or hazardous materials were found and authorities are now investigating the incident.
Christopher Hale, who writes about Pope Leo on Substack, noted on X that Donald Trump had mentioned the pope’s other brother by name in his earlier Truth Social post attacking the leader of the Catholic church as “WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy”.
“I like his brother Louis much better than I like him, because Louis is all MAGA,” Trump wrote in his lengthy, ranting post on Sunday.
The president’s screed followed the pontiff’s social media post lat week that named no names but appeared to hint at White House officials harnessing Christian nationalism to glorify the US and Israel’s war against Iran.
Democrats on the House committee that oversees the Department of Homeland Security have attacked the Trump administration for cutting funding for a Catholic charity that provides support to unaccompanied migrant children, amid the president’s spat with the pope.
“The party of performative Christianity is closing a shelter for homeless children,” the House Democrats wrote on social media. “Despicable.”
