Senate’s latest war powers resolution fails in 49-50 vote as some Republicans side with Democrats
Meanwhile, the latest attempt by Congress to rein-in president Donald Trump’s attacks in the Middle East failed in the Senate on Thursday.
The war powers resolution failed in a 49-50 vote.
Democratic senator John Fetterman voted with Republicans to sink the measure. But notably, Republicans senators Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski and Rand Paul voted in favor of the motion to prevent Trump from continuing hostilities against Iran.
Mitch McConnell was absent for the vote as he recovers from a June fall and has not received clearance to return to work.
Key events
Closing summary
This concludes our live coverage of the second Trump administration for the day. Here are the latest developments:
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Donald Trump threatened to “temporarily” pull the nomination of Todd Blanche to be attorney general, and keep him in the role in an acting capacity until two Republican senators who want Blanche to agree in writing to drop a $1.776bn slush fund for Trump supporters, and limit tax audit immunity for Trump’s family.
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The US Senate narrowly rejected a largely symbolic effort to check Donald Trump’s war in Iran, as a war powers resolution directing the president to end hostilities failed in a 49-50 vote.
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The House Democratic Women’s Caucus called on Thursday for an ethics committee investigation of Republican congressman Max Miller, a former Trump aide who has been accused of domestic abuse by his ex-wife and former girlfriend.
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Trump announced that his so-called “Board of Peace” reached an agreement for the complete disarmament of Hamas militants and other armed groups in Gaza.
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New polling commissioned by Fox News shows Texas Democrat James Talarico narrowly ahead of the state’s Trump-backed Republican attorney general, Ken Paxton, in their contest for a seat in the US Senate.
Roque Planas
Current and former prosecutors are denouncing the Trump administration for fast-tracking the deportation of immigrant children, as a key contract for legal services is set to expire on Friday.
A series of federal laws has for decades shielded child immigrants from removal, either to protect their safety or to allow them to testify against abusers or human traffickers.
But the Trump administration has undermined those laws, immigrant advocates and prosecutors say, by directing immigration judges to fast-track deportation cases for minors and blocking their access to lawyers who might help them apply for several forms of relief from removal – including acting as witnesses in cases of human trafficking or domestic violence.
“By arresting and deporting survivors who have come forward and applied for protection, the Administration not only risks endangering the survivor and their family members, but the Government also sends a chilling message to the larger community: don’t call the police, don’t report crime – you or your loved ones will get deported,” reads a Wednesday letter to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) from 10 current and former prosecutors. “This undermines public safety for us all.”
Trump’s on-again, off-again promise to license Patriot anti-missile system to Ukraine might be off again
Three weeks after publicly telling Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, “we’re going to give a license to you to make Patriots”, and two days after Zelenskyy met with Lockheed Martin in Washington to discuss using that license, Donald Trump told the Financial Times on Thursday that he was “not sure” about granting Ukraine the right to manufacture its own Patriot air defense interceptors, to defend against Russian ballistic missile attacks.
“It’s a very extraordinary weapon,” Trump said in a phone call with the FT columnist Ed Luce. “We have to be a little bit careful of who we license to. We don’t really license equipment.”
Luce, whose calls Trump regularly answers, also reports that Trump repeated his rosy assessment of the war he started but has been unable to stop with Iran. “We are beating the hell out of them,” he said.
The president also claimed that the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, is “very much” in favor of his idea to have the kingdom recognize Israel as a condition of a nuclear cooperation agreement with the US. No such condition was apparently mentioned before US and Saudi officials signed a nuclear deal, and the Saudis have clearly said that they will not recognize Israel unless Israel begins the process of establishing a Palestinian state, something that no leading Israeli politician is willing to do.
New Fox poll shows Texas Democrat James Talarico narrowly ahead in Senate race
New polling commissioned by Fox News shows Texas Democrat James Talarico narrowly ahead of the state’s Trump-backed Republican attorney general, Ken Paxton, in their contest for a seat in the US Senate.
According to the survey, Talarico leads Paxton by three percentage points, 51% to 48%, among registered voters, which is within the poll’s margin of error.
The same survey shows an even tighter race for Texas governor, with the Republican incumbent, Greg Abbott, just one point ahead of his Democratic challenger, state lawmaker Gina Hinojosa, 50% to 49%.
The polling also suggests that Donald Trump’s unpopularity might be a drag on the Republicans he supports. The president is viewed unfavorably by 54% of Texas voters, which is worse than Paxton (51%), Abbott (49%), Talarico (43%) and Hinojosa (34%).
Trump claims Hamas has agreed to disarm and allow international force to police Gaza
Writing on social media, Donald Trump announced his so-called “Board of Peace” reached an agreement on Thursday for the complete disarmament of Hamas militants and other armed groups in Gaza.
“The agreement will be carried out in carefully structured phases,” the president wrote. “As disarmament is completed, Israeli forces will withdraw, and the International Stabilization Force will work with a new Palestinian police force to take responsibility for Gaza being safe for its residents and its neighbors.”
Trump thanked Egyptian, Qatari and Turkish mediators, and his own “outstanding team” for what he called “a critical step towards Gaza finally being governed by a new Palestinian government that will work closely with the Board of Peace”.
“At the same time, Israel will have the security it deserves, with Gaza no longer used as a base for terror attacks,” he added.
Earlier in the day, sources told Reuters that talks between mediators and Hamas leaders in Cairo on implementing a US-brokered Gaza peace plan had made rare progress, although an Israeli official said proposed terms were not satisfactory.
“One year ago there was a violent raging war” in Gaza, Trump said. “We have made historic progress.” He made no mention of the ongoing Israeli attacks on the Palestinian enclave.
Israeli strikes killed at least six Palestinians in Gaza on Thursday, including two children, medics said.
Last week, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported that 1,180 Palestinians had been killed, and 3,810 wounded, since Trump announced the Gaza ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas on 9 October 2025.
House Democratic Women’s Caucus calls for ethics investigation of Republican congressman Max Miller over domestic abuse allegations
The House Democratic Women’s Caucus called on Thursday for an ethics committee investigation of congressman Max Miller, an Ohio Republican and former Trump aide who has been accused of domestic abuse by his ex-wife and former girlfriend.
The group’s chair, Teresa Leger Fernández of New Mexico, and vice-chairs, Emilia Sykes of Ohio and Hillary Scholten of Michigan, said in a statement:
The recent reports of domestic violence and child abuse against Representative Max Miller are deeply disturbing and Congress can’t ignore them. Allegations of violence against women and children have to be met with the utmost seriousness.
We therefore call on the House Committee on Ethics to swiftly and thoroughly investigate these allegations.
Every woman and child deserves to live free from fear of violence, especially within the sanctity of their own home, and we will not stop fighting until that’s the reality.
The Republican congressman, 37, who represents Ohio’s seventh congressional district, has denied accusations made by his ex-wife, Emily Moreno, and former girlfriend Stephanie Grisham, as he campaigns for re-election.
Moreno, a conservative policy adviser whose father is Ohio senator Bernie Moreno, shares a two-year-old daughter with Miller. The pair have been engaged in a legal battle over custody of their child since 2024.
Grisham, who held the roles of press secretary for both Donald Trump and Melania Trump at various points during Trump’s first term, dated Miller from 2019 to 2020, when he was a White House staffer.
Anna Betts
A former White House counsel and former general counsel of Goldman Sachs, who has faced scrutiny over her past ties to Jeffrey Epstein, told a House committee this month that some of the allegations made by one his most prominent accusers “lacked inherent credibility”, according to newly released transcripts.
Kathryn Ruemmler’s name appeared thousands of times in records related to Epstein, the disgraced financier and convicted sex offender, that were released earlier this year by the US Department of Justice under the Epstein Files Transparency Act.
The files revealed Ruemmler had accepted gifts from Epstein, who died by suicide while awaiting trial in 2019 after he was arrested by federal authorities, at times addressed him as “Uncle Jeffrey” and “sweetie” in emails, and offered him informal advice on how to respond to questions about his sex crimes.
Ruemmler’s testimony before Congress when she was asked about Virginia Giuffre, a victim of Epstein’s abuse, was swiftly criticized by Giuffre’s family. “She should be ashamed of herself,” Giuffre’s brother and sister-in-law, Sky and Amanda Roberts, said in a statement. Giuffre died by suicide in April 2025.
Two federal appeals courts reject ICE policy to detain undocumented residents with no criminal records
Two federal appeals courts ruled on Thursday that the Trump administration cannot deny immigrants detained inside the United States a chance for release on bond, rejecting a new policy to detain even undocumented immigrants with no criminal records who have resided in the US for years.
In a pair of 2-1 decisions, majorities of the San Francisco-based 9th US circuit court of appeals and the Chicago-based 7th US circuit court of appeals agreed with four previous appeals court rulings across the country that a 1996 law does not mandate the detention of every undocumented immigrant who initially entered the country unlawfully, no matter how long ago.
The majority decision in the 9th circuit court was written by Daniel Bress, a judge appointed by Donald Trump in 2019.
Two appeals courts, the Fifth circuit in New Orleans and Eighth circuit in St Louis have sided with the Trump administration.
The split between the circuit courts increases the likelihood that the US supreme court will eventually take up the issue, as the administration requested last month.
John Cornyn met Todd Blanche on Thursday, source says
Senator John Cornyn has met with acting attorney general Todd Blanche, a source familiar has told the Guardian this afternoon.
It comes just hours after President Donald Trump said that that he may withdraw Blanche’s nomination and nominate him again after Cornyn and Senator Thom Tillis, the two current Republican holdouts, leave office in January.
The State Department has announced that its limited-edition Trump-branded US passports designed to “celebrate America’s 250th” will become available on 8 August.
In a post on social media, the State Department said that there will be “250,000 commemorative passports” and shared an image of the passport which appears to include a photo of Trump on the inside.
According to its website, the passport, dubbed the “Patriot Passport” will include “custom artwork and enhanced images on the front, back, and inside covers.”
Ahead of the vote on the latest war powers resolution, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand said that the war with Iran was “launched without a clear plan, executed without a coherent strategy and has become a costly self inflicted disaster for the American people.”
“Every justification that we were given for this conflict has proven hollow” she said on the floor.
Democrat Mandela Barnes drops out of Wisconsin governor race as democratic socialist leads polls
Democrat Mandela Barnes has announced that he is dropping out of the Democratic race for governor in Wisconsin.
In a video shared on social media on Thursday, Barnes said that “last night I had a very difficult conversation with my staff.”
“We’re incredibly proud of all the things that we’ve accomplished and all the resources that we have raised to spread our message” he said. “But it’s become very clear who our nominee is going to be”.
Barnes appears to be referencing state representative Francesca Hong, a democratic socialist, who is currently leading the polls ahead of the 11 August Democratic primary.
“And I said from the very beginning, when I launched this campaign that the number one goal was taking on and defeating Tom Tiffany to deliver big wins for Democrats up and down the ticket” Barnes added. “And Now, it’s time for us to come together, to focus our efforts on that one goal.”
Senator Thom Tillis, a Republican of North Carolina, responded to Trump’s threat to withdraw Todd Blanche’s nomination for attorney general and renominate him after Tillis and Senator John Cornyn leave office in January, saying the president is “getting bad advice.”
“He should listen to Blanche and others who think if it’s dead, it should be rendered completely dead,” Tillis told reporters.
“That same adviser wants to bring it back to life at some point” he added.
A new report alleges that billionaire Elon Musk is preparing to spend $100m to $120m on the midterm elections to help Republicans.
A New York Times report on Thursday, alleges that according to two people briefed on the plans, Musk has has authorized his super PAC to spend $100m to $120m on a new field program in at least eight states to help elect Republicans in November.
Musk was the biggest donor in the 2024 presidential election, spending over $240m.
According to the Times, officials from Musk’s super PAC, America PAC, have communicated their nine-figure budget to Republicans in recent weeks, and that the spending plan is set to begin next month.
The report alleges that Musk’s group plans to first target Senate races in Alaska, Iowa, Maine, Michigan and Ohio and is also having conversations and considering spending in North Carolina, Georgia and Texas. The super PAC is also planning to spend in House races including in California, Wisconsin and Washington, according to two people familiar.
On Wednesday, Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer gave a speech on the chamber floor in which he implored Republicans to abandon their support of Trump’s war in Iran.
“Are Senate Republicans listening? The country is clamoring for you to end this war,” he said. “I urge and plead with my Republican colleagues: listen to the American people. Vote to end this war. We’re going to keep forcing Republicans to vote until we do.”
On Thursday before the vote was finalized, Schumer posted on X:
Trump’s war with Iran has been one of the greatest foreign policy dumpster fires in American history, and it seems to be expanding with new attacks now targeting Egypt. Our troops’ lives are unnecessarily at risk fighting a war that was totally avoidable. All while Trump is too busy playing keyboard warrior on Truth Social. We must end this war now.
A reminder that today a new poll was released on American attitudes about the US-Iran war, with most people believing this is not worth fighting. Trump’s approval rating also showed a slump, according to the new AP-NORC poll.
The results are a stark repudiation of Trump’s approach to the conflict, which has dragged on far longer than he originally predicted.
About two-thirds of US adults say the war with Iran has not been worthwhile, according to the new poll from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. That includes the vast majority of Democrats and independents, as well as about 37% of Republicans.
