Newsom calls Republican redistricting to eliminate Black-majority congressional districts ‘stone-cold racism’
Asked on Thursday for his response to Republican efforts to eliminate majority-Black congressional districts in former confederate states, with the approval of the US supreme court, California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, said: “This is Jim Crow 2.0, it’s sick. Stone-cold racism on a scale I never thought I’d see in my lifetime, never. Never have seen in my lifetime. It’s all happening, bringing us to a pre-1960s world. It’s jaw-dropping, what’s happening.”
Turning to the decision by Louisiana’s Republican governor, Jeff Landry, to cancel a primary election that was already underway, in which more than 42,000 ballots had been cast, to use a new map, Newsom added: “It was jaw-dropping what governor Landry did. He suspended a primary election where tens of thousands of people had already voted. Why? To redistrict two districts, to eliminate Black representation.”
Key events
Closing summary
This concludes our live coverage of the day in US politics, but our colleagues in Australia will be back soon with updates on the final day Donald Trump’s visit to Beijing. Here are the latest developments:
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Democrats on the House oversight committee called on Howard Lutnick to resign, following the commerce secretary’s testimony about his ties to Jeffrey Epstein, the late sex-offender Donald Trump socialized with for nearly two decades.
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Lawmakers in Louisiana voted to eliminate a majority-Black congressional district, giving Republicans a chance to win an additional House seat in midterm elections.
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California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, denounced the redistricting in the former confederate states. “This is Jim Crow 2.0, it’s sick. Stone-cold racism on a scale I never thought I’d see in my lifetime,” Newsom said. “It was jaw-dropping” what Louisiana’s governor did, he added. “He suspended a primary election where tens of thousands of people had already voted. Why? To redistrict two districts, to eliminate Black representation.”
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The US House ethics committee announced an investigation of alleged sexual harassment by a Republican congressman from North Carolina, Chuck Edwards.
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A war powers resolution, directing the US president, Donald Trump, “to remove the United States Armed Forces from hostilities against the Islamic Republic of Iran”, failed to pass the House of Representatives on Thursday by a single vote.
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The US supreme court upheld nationwide access to mail-order mifepristone, an abortion medication, in a shadow-docket decision on Thursday.
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FBI director Kash Patel took what government officials described as a “VIP snorkel” tour of the USS Arizona memorial at Pearl Harbor during what was presented as a work trip to Hawaii, emails obtained by the Associated Press show.
FBI director Kash Patel took undisclosed ‘VIP snorkel’ tour of Pearl Harbor memorial during Hawaii trip – report
Two days after the FBI director, Kash Patel, deflected questions about his reported alcohol abuse by falsely accusing a US senator of drinking to excess, the Associated Press reports that Patel took what government officials described as a “VIP snorkel” tour of the USS Arizona memorial at Pearl Harbor last year during what was presented as a work trip to Hawaii.
As the AP notes, the FBI insisted at the time that the director was not on vacation, highlighting his walking tour of the bureau’s Honolulu field office and meetings with local law enforcement.
But government emails obtained through the Freedom of Information Act revealed the previously undisclosed tour of the sunken battleship, which holds the remains more than 900 sailors and marines.
With few exceptions, snorkeling and diving are off-limits around the USS Arizona, the AP explains.
The battleship, now a military cemetery reachable only by boat, has stood as one of the nation’s most hallowed sites since Japan bombed and sank it in 1941. Marine archaeologists and crews from the National Park Service make occasional dives at the memorial to survey the condition of the wreck. Other dives have been conducted to inter the remains of Arizona survivors who wanted to rest eternally with their former shipmates.
Hack Albertson, a US Marine veteran who is part of a select group from the Paralyzed Veterans of America trained to dive on the Arizona annually to check on the condition of the wreck, told the AP it was inappropriate for Patel and other political figures to snorkel or dive at the memorial.
“It’s like having a bachelor party at a church. It’s hallowed ground,” he said. “It needs to be treated with the solemnity it deserves.”
In an interview with CNN on Thursday, a former FBI director, James Comey, seemed taken aback by the reporting. “You said snorkeling?” Comey asked the host.
He added that while he had “visited the Pearl Harbor memorial with the admiral in charge of the Pacific command on a Navy boat,” as director, he “never got in the water.”
Supreme court allows abortion pill mifepristone to continue to be available by mail
Melody Schreiber
The US supreme court upheld nationwide access to mail-order mifepristone, an abortion medication, in a shadow-docket decision on Thursday.
Louisiana sued the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in October in a bid to curtail the regulatory agency’s rules on prescribing mifepristone remotely, arguing that it interfered with the state’s ban on abortion.
The fifth circuit ruled in Louisiana’s favor on 1 May, effectively banning mail-order mifepristone for the entire country. Two mifepristone manufacturers, Danco Laboratories and GenBioPro, filed an emergency request with the supreme court, which granted a temporary stay until at least Thursday.
In a decision with dissents from the justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, the court sided against the fifth circuit, ending the ban – for now.
The decision came nearly a half hour after the court missed its own 5pm EST deadline.
Louisiana has no standing to challenge mail-order abortion, the court found, sending the case back to the fifth circuit. The suit is expected to return to the court on an official appeal, instead of emergency requests from drug manufacturers, in another term.
Medication accounts for approximately two-thirds of abortions in the US. In large part because of mailed medication, abortion rates have stayed steady in the US despite bans in several states.
US House fails to pass war powers resolution to direct Trump to end Iran was by a single vote
A war powers resolution, directing the US president, Donald Trump, “to remove the United States Armed Forces from hostilities against the Islamic Republic of Iran”, failed to pass the House of Representatives on Thursday by a single vote, after the Republican House leadership kept voting open long enough to achieve a 212-212 tie vote.
Three Republicans, Thomas Massie of Kentucky, Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania and Tom Barrett of Michigan, voted in favor of the resolution.
Warren Davidson, a Republican congressman from Ohio who previously supported the measure, flipped his vote, ensuring a tie.
The only Democrat to vote against the resolution, Jared Golden of Maine, said in a statement that he had initially supported the resolution when his colleague Josh Gottheimer introduced it in March, “but unfortunately its proposed 30-day deadline lacks any real meaning now that we are more than 70 days into this conflict”.
Golden added that he would vote in favor of a “clean’”war powers resolution to remove US forces from hostilities against Iran sponsored by congressman Gregory Meeks when it comes to the floor as early as next week.
House ethics committee announces investigation of sexual harassment allegations against Republican Chuck Edwards
The US House ethics committee announced an investigation of alleged sexual harassment by a Republican congressman from North Carolina, Chuck Edwards.
According to a statement from the panel’s senior Republican and Democrat, the committee:
is reviewing allegations that Representative Chuck Edwards may have created or fostered a hostile work environment and engaged in sexual harassment in violation of the Code of Official Conduct or any other applicable standard of conduct.
The Committee notes that the mere fact that it is investigating these allegations, and publicly disclosing its review, does not itself indicate that any violation has occurred.
The investigation comes one day after Axios reported that the publication had reviewed a text message exchange in which Edwards, a married 65-year-old, texted “a 20-something female staffer it was ‘disappointing to feel something that used to be easy has gotten complicated’ after she did not want to have dinner with him in May 2025”.
Newsom calls Republican redistricting to eliminate Black-majority congressional districts ‘stone-cold racism’
Asked on Thursday for his response to Republican efforts to eliminate majority-Black congressional districts in former confederate states, with the approval of the US supreme court, California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, said: “This is Jim Crow 2.0, it’s sick. Stone-cold racism on a scale I never thought I’d see in my lifetime, never. Never have seen in my lifetime. It’s all happening, bringing us to a pre-1960s world. It’s jaw-dropping, what’s happening.”
Turning to the decision by Louisiana’s Republican governor, Jeff Landry, to cancel a primary election that was already underway, in which more than 42,000 ballots had been cast, to use a new map, Newsom added: “It was jaw-dropping what governor Landry did. He suspended a primary election where tens of thousands of people had already voted. Why? To redistrict two districts, to eliminate Black representation.”
Louisiana lawmakers approve plan to eliminate 1 of 2 majority-Black US House districts
Just two weeks after the US supreme court ruled that Louisiana must redraw its congressional map, in a landmark decision that effectively gutted a major section of the Voting Rights Act, the state’s senate voted on Thursday to approve a map that would eliminate a majority-Black district, giving Republicans a chance to win an additional House seat in this year’s midterm elections.
If the state’s lower house approves the plan, the new US House districts would immediately be used for primary elections the state postponed in the wake of the supreme court ruling.
As our colleague Sam Levine reported, the supreme court decision was a major upheaval in US civil rights law and gave state lawmakers permission to draw districting plans that weaken the influence of Black and other minority voters.
The new map in Louisiana scraps a district that snakes over 200 miles (321 kilometers) northwest from the capital, Baton Rouge, to Shreveport, that gave a majority of Black residents the opportunity to elect a representative in Congress. Cleo Fields, a Democratic congressman, represents the current district.
The redrawn district would instead be clustered around predominantly white communities in the Baton Rouge area and southern Louisiana.
The new plan keeps a New Orleans-based, majority-Black district, currently represented by Democratic congressman Troy Carter but adds a portion of Baton Rouge to it.
Mike Banks, the border patrol chief who oversaw the most aggressive militarization of the US southern border in recent history, has resigned with immediate effect.
“It’s just time,” Banks told Fox News in an interview. “I feel like I got the ship back on course from the least secure, most disastrous, most chaotic border to the most secure border this country has ever seen.”
Rodney Scott, the Customs and Border Protection (CBP), commissioner, said: “We thank US Border Patrol Chief Michael Banks for his decades of service to this country and congratulate him on his second retirement after returning to serve during one of the most challenging periods for border security.
“During his time as chief, the border was transformed from chaos to the most secure border ever recorded. We wish him and his family well.”
The resignation comes weeks after the Washington Examiner reported that six current and former border patrol employees had accused Banks of regularly paying for sex with prostitutes during trips to Colombia and Thailand over more than a decade, and bragging about it to colleagues.
The behavior was said to have been investigated twice by CBP officials, with one inquiry reportedly ending abruptly while the former homeland security secretary Kristi Noem was in office.
CBP described the matter as “closed” last month, with a spokesperson telling the Examiner the allegations “date back more than a decade and were reviewed years ago”.
The agency did not comment on the allegations when contacted by the Guardian on Thursday.
Here’s a recap of the day so far
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Democrats on the House oversight committee called on Howard Lutnick to resign, following the commerce secretary’s 6 May testimony to the panel about his ties to the late sex-offender Jeffrey Epstein. “Secretary Lutnick spent his interview trying to cover up his lie and hide from the truth. He couldn’t explain bringing his family to Epstein’s island years after he claimed to have cut ties, even after he found Epstein to be deeply unsettling,” said Robert Garcia, the committee’s ranking member. All Democrats on the panel also signed a letter calling on the commerce secretary to resign, or for Donald Trump to fire him.
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During his transcribed interview, Lutnick elaborated on the instances where he was in contact with Epstein after 2005, the year the commerce secretary initially claimed he stopped interacting with the late sex-offender. However, the commerce secretary then explained the two instances where he spent time with Epstein in the years after – describing them both as “meaningless and inconsequential”.
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The Senate unanimously approved a resolution to withhold senators’ pay during future government shutdowns. The measure would come into effect after the 2026 midterm elections. The resolution, brought forward by senator John Kennedy from Louisiana, said that lawmakers in the upper chamber would receive a back pay after the shutdown ends, the way it works for other federal government employees.
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The House speaker, Mike Johnson, and the minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, on Wednesday announced a bipartisan effort to combat sexual misconduct on Capitol Hill. The “partnership” led by the chairs of the Republican and Democratic women’s caucuses – congresswomen Kat Cammack of Florida and Teresa Leger Fernández of New Mexico – aims to “identify reforms and solutions to make Congress a safer work environment for women and all survivors”, the leaders said in a joint statement.
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Earlier, in Beijing, Donald Trump thanked Xi Jinping for “a magnificent welcome like none other”. The president said that he and his team, which includes secretary of state Marco Rubio, had extremely positive and productive conversations and meetings with the Chinese delegation. At the state banquet, Trump also extended an invitation to Xi to the White House on 24 September.
During his transcribed interview, Lutnick elaborated on the instances where he was in contact with Epstein after 2005, the year the commerce secretary initially claimed he stopped interacting with the late sex-offender.
Lutnick said that after Epstein made a “crude and gross remark in my wife’s presence, which caused us to cut the visit short and leave”, when they visited him while neighbors in 2005 he vowed to “never establish a personal or professional relationship with [Epstein].”
However, the commerce secretary then explained the two instances where he spent time with Epstein in the years after – describing them both as “meaningless and inconsequential”.
In 2011, Lutnick said that he had a conversation with Epstein at the disgraced financier’s home on a “particular weekend afternoon”.
“I rang the bell, sat in his foyer with my dog, waited for him to come down, heard what he had to say, and left. As far as I recall, it was about scaffolding,” Lutnick told oversight lawmakers.
He then described the 2012 lunch on Epstein’s private island, Little Saint James, with his family and friends (another family of six). “I still have no idea how his staff discovered my family’s vacation plans or why they pursued arranging a visit with me,” Lutnick said in his interview, before characterizing the event as a “a brief, meaningless, and inconsequential lunch”.
Oversight Democrats demand Lutnick resign after testimony over Epstein ties
Democrats on the House oversight committee called on Howard Lutnick to resign, following the commerce secretary’s 6 May testimony to the panel about his ties to the late sex-offender Jeffrey Epstein.
“Secretary Lutnick spent his interview trying to cover up his lie and hide from the truth. He couldn’t explain bringing his family to Epstein’s island years after he claimed to have cut ties, even after he found Epstein to be deeply unsettling,” said Robert Garcia, the committee’s ranking member.
Democratic lawmakers on the panel signed a letter calling on the commerce secretary to step down.
A reminder that Lutnick – the highest-ranking Trump administration official prominently named in the Epstein files, aside from Donald Trump himself – said on a podcast last year that he had decided to “never be in the room” with Epstein following a 2005 tour of the financier’s home in Manhattan that disturbed him and his wife.
But the release of justice department files on Epstein earlier this year showed that Lutnick had two engagements with Epstein years past that. He attended a 2011 event at Epstein’s home. And Lutnick’s family had lunch with Epstein on his private island in 2012 – four years after Epstein was sentenced to 13 months in jail for procuring a minor for prostitution.
Lutnick admitted to the 2012 lunch during his 10 February testimony before the Senate appropriations committee. “I did have lunch with him, as I was on a boat going across on a family vacation,” Lutnick said. In that testimony, Lutnick also insisted that he “barely had anything to do” with Epstein.
The commerce secretary only agreed to the closed-door interview in May, after Democrats on the committee publicly threatened to subpoena Lutnick if he refused to cooperate. Representative Ro Khanna of California told reporters that the votes were there to compel his testimony.
In their letter on Thursday, oversight Democrats were resolute about Lutnick’s need to resign. “The facts are clear: you lied to the American people and attempted to conceal your relationship with Jeffrey Epstein in your public statements,” they wrote. “Your lack of candor demonstrates that you are unfit to perform the duties required of you as secretary of Commerce, and you must step down immediately.”
Maham Javaid
Pope Leo XIV issued a start warning against the development of artificial intelligence (AI) in military and civilian contexts, in a post on X.
The events in Ukraine, Gaza and the Palestinian territories, Lebanon, and Iran describe “the inhuman evolution of the relationship between war and new technologies, which creates a spiral of annihilation,” he said.
He cautioned against the growth in military expenditure around the world and in Europe in the past year, adding that rearmament should not be called defense.
