Texas congressman Tony Gonzales says he will resign from House seat – as it happened

The CEO of United Airlines suggested merging the company with American Airlines in a meeting with Donald Trump in late February, Reuters reports, citing two sources.

Scott Kirby brought up the potential merger at the end of a scheduled meeting at the White House on the future of Washington DC’s Dulles airport.

Such a merger would redraw the entire US airline landscape, which is made up of four airlines of roughly the same size formed after the last wave of mergers more than a decade ago.

Earlier this month, transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, said he believed there was room to consolidate the US airline industry, but that such a move would face close scrutiny.

Donald Trump will attend the White House Correspondents Dinner for the first time as president on 25 April, after famously boycotting the event for the first time in 2017 (he has not attended since in either of his terms as president).

But the president may be faced with an awkward dilemma. At the dinner, the Wall Street Journal will be awarded the Katharine Graham Award for Courage and Accountability for its reporting on the “bawdy” letter Trump sent Jeffrey Epstein. Trump sued the Journal over the story, in a case that a judge just dismissed today.

Presidents typically present the honorees with their awards. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Guardian as to whether Trump will present the Journal with its award.

A Texas man has been charged with hurling a molotov cocktail at the home of OpenAI chief executive, Sam Altman, and attempting to set fire to the AI firm’s headquarters.

According to a FBI affidavit filed in federal court today, surveillance video captured Daniel Moreno-Gama, 20, throwing the molotov. Moreno-Gama was carrying a self-authored “anti-AI” document when a San Francisco police officer arrested him.

Here’s our full report:

A Minnesota county is investigating the widely covered arrest of a US citizen, who was forced from his Minnesota home at gunpoint without a warrant while wearing only his underwear in subfreezing conditions this January.

Ramsey county attorney, John Choi, and sheriff Bob Fletcher said Monday they were investigating whether the arrest of ChongLy “Scott” Thao could qualify as a case of kidnapping, burglary and false imprisonment.

“There are many facts we don’t know yet, but there’s one that we do know. And that is that Mr Thao is and has been an American citizen. There’s not a dispute over that,” Fletcher said. “There’s no dispute that he was taken out of his house, forcibly taken out of his home and driven around.”

Chris Wright, the US energy secretary, says oil prices will peak “in the next few weeks” until the US gets “meaningful ship traffic through the strait of Hormuz”.

His comments came at the Semafor World Economy Summit in Washington.

“We’re going to see energy prices high – and maybe even rising – until we get meaningful ship traffic through the strait of Hormuz,” Wright said. “That’ll probably hit the peak oil price at that time. That’s probably sometime in the next few weeks.”

In an appearance on Fox News’ Special Report with Bret Baier, JD Vance said the U S had made significant progress in its talks with Iran. He also added that he believed Washington will work well with Hungary’s next prime minister.

The vice-president’s remarks came just days after he traveled to Islamabad for last-ditch negotiations to reopen the strait of Hormuz and Hungary to help rally for Viktor Orbán, who lost his bid to continue his 16-year tenure as prime minister last night.

In a particularly powerful rebuke, Vance, a Catholic, backed Donald Trump in the president’s recent clash with Pope Leo XIV, saying the pontiff should “stick to matters of morality”.

Vance added that an AI-generated image that the president posted depicting himself as a Christ-like figure was “a joke” and added that it’s “a good thing” that Trump “likes to mix it up on social media” and is “not filtered”.

My colleague Andrew Roth shares more background on the vice-president’s recent foreign policy work:

In new comments to reporters, Pope Leo XIV said he didn’t “want to get into a debate” with Donald Trump, but added that “the message of the gospel” is being “abused”.

“I don’t think that the message of the gospel is meant to be abused in the way that some people are doing,” Leo told Reuters onboard a flight as he began his 10-day tour of four African countries. “I will continue to speak out loudly against war, looking to promote peace, promoting dialogue and multilateral relationships among the states to look for just solutions to problems.

“Too many people are suffering in the world today,” Leo said. “Too many innocent people are being killed. And I think someone has to stand up and say: ‘There’s a better way.’”

He added: “The message of the church, my message, the message of the gospel: blessed are the Peacemakers. I do not look at my role as being political – a politician,” he said.

Chuck Schumer said “Democrats will force a vote to stop the war in Iran and rein in an out-of-control Trump” when they vote on a war powers resolution this week.

The vote will mark the fourth time lawmakers consider such a resolution since the Iran war began. This time, Democrats appear confident that they have enough Republican votes to advance the measure.

“For the 4th time, Republicans will have the chance to end this war,” the Senate minority leader added to his post on social media.

A woman “with serious sexual misconduct allegations” against the Democratic congressman Eric Swalwell will hold a press conference alongside her attorneys, Lisa Bloom and Arick Fudali, at 9.30am tomorrow in Beverly Hills.

Bloom and Fudali, who have previously represented victims in sexual misconduct cases involving Bill O’Reilly and Jeffrey Epstein, “will describe the next legal steps” in the woman’s case.

Almost 100 protesters have been arrested at a New York City demonstration calling on senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand to vote this week to block the sale of US bombs to Israel.

Hundreds of protesters with Jewish Voice for Peace attempted a sit-in inside Schumer and Gillibrand’s offices today, but were blocked by security from entering the building.

The demonstrators called on the Democratic senators to vote in support of resolutions introduced by Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, which would block the sale of more than $600m in bombs to Israel, that could come to a vote this week. Protesters told reporters that Israel’s attacks in Lebanon and the US-Israel war in Iran have deepened their concerns about US funding for Israel.

As the protesters demonstrated outside Schumer and Gillibrand’s office, 90 were taken into police custody – including Chelsea Manning, actor Hari Nef and New York city council member Alexa Avilés, JVP told the Associated Press.

Congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle are criticizing Donald Trump for attacking Pope Leo XIV.

Senate majority leader John Thune told reporters today: “I would leave the church alone.”

He added that he had “no observation” on an AI-generated image the president shared on social media, depicting him as a Christ-like figure, saying: “My understanding is it’s been taken down.”

Senate minority Chuck Schumer had firmer words, which he shared with Fox News: “Donald Trump reached a new low when he insulted Pope Leo, the first American pope, by calling him, among other things, weak on crime and too liberal.

“Trump said this in response to the pope’s comments during Easter Sunday, calling for peace. It’s the same Donald Trump who has called the Bible his favorite book on the campaign trail, but can’t name a single verse,” Schumer added.

Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s prime minister and longtime ally of Donald Trump, has called the president’s feud with Pope Leo XIV “unacceptable”.

The rightwing Meloni was the only European leader who attended Trump’s 2025 inauguration, but her rebuke of the president comes as Europe’s far right is distancing itself from Trump amid the war in Iran and Trump-backed Viktor Orbán’s defeat in Hungary yesterday.

In a statement, Meloni said: “I find President Trump’s words regarding the Holy Father to be unacceptable. The pope is the head of the Catholic church, and ​it is right and normal for him to call for peace and to condemn every form of war.”

More Democratic lawmakers will join their colleagues in filing a war powers resolution that they’re hoping to bring to the Senate floor this week.

Senators Mark Kelly, Jeff Merkley, Kirsten Gillibrand, Chris Van Hollen, Raphael Warnock and Andy Kim are signing on to the measure in an attempt to curb the Trump administration’s military action in Iran. While the resolution has already failed three times in the upper chamber, Democrats are confident that they have the handful of GOP votes needed to advance the measure as Congress returns from a two-week recess that included the administration’s failed negotiations with Tehran and whipsawing oil prices.

House Democrats are also hoping to pass their version of the resolution, after it failed on several occasions in recent weeks. They are also hopeful that they have the few Republicans needed to buck their party on side. They’re also convinced that the small number of Democrats who previously voted against the measure will be onboard this time around.

“Trump is a guy who needs kind of to be hit from as many possible angles as possible,” Glenn Ivey, a Democratic congressman from Maryland, told the Guardian.

Oil prices have fallen back after briefly rising to above $100 a barrel as Donald Trump claimed Iran had made contact and wanted “very badly” to strike a deal in the face of his blockade of the strait of Hormuz.

The Brent crude international benchmark rose above the key psychological threshold earlier in the day, at one point up 6.9% to $101.70 a barrel on news of the US president’s plan to block the waterway to Iranian marine traffic.

However, it later eased back to a little more than $99 a barrel after Trump said the blockade had come into force at 10am ET (3pm BST), and the Iranians had subsequently got in touch.

For US Democrats seeking rays of light in the dark landscape of Donald Trump’s authoritarian onslaught, illumination has arrived from the unlikely source of Budapest.

Viktor Orbán’s stunning defeat in Hungary’s general election – ending 16 years of unbroken rule for his governing Fidesz party – carries symbolic and psychological significance for American politics out of all proportion to the central European country’s modest size and distance from the US.

Democrats concerned about Trump’s repeated signaling of his intention to meddle in next November’s congressional midterm election can draw encouragement from that success, said Steven Levitsky, a politics professor at Harvard University.

“The electoral system was heavily gerrymandered in favour [of Fidesz] but it is entirely possible in what I call competitive authoritarian regimes for oppositions to win,” said Levitsky, the author, with Daniel Ziblatt, of How Democracies Die.

Yet amid the optimism, there are notes of caution, with commentators warning against overstating the parallels between the US and Hungary, a country of under 10 million people and a cold war history of communist rule.

Levitsky pinpointed important differences between Orbán, a one-time liberal who campaigned against the former communist regime, and Trump.

“We’re accustomed to calling Hungary an autocracy and the United States, a democracy, but there are ways in which Donald Trump is much more nakedly authoritarian than Orbán,” he said.

“Orbán has never refused to accept defeat. He’s never tried to prosecute his opponents. He has in many ways been less repressive than Trump. If Democrats can take comfort in the fact that it’s still possible to win despite a tilted playing field, they can’t get overconfident, because Trump is capable of doing things that Orbán has never done.”

Read the full report here:

Donald Trump also defended his social media post with himself portrayed as Jesus Christ in the role as healer, which has since been taken down from his Truth Social platform after a massive backlash, notably from conservatives.

“I did post it, and I thought it was me as a doctor and had to do with Red Cross as a Red Cross worker there, which we support. And, only the fake news could come up with that one … it’s supposed to be me as a doctor making people better. And I do make people better. I make people, a lot better,” the US president said.

The AI-generated image of Trump shows him wearing flowing white and red robes, bathed in celestial light and with a shining orb in his left hand while his right hand is laid on a patient’s head and emits a glowing aura – all obviously atypical of hospital, family or field doctors.

The International Committee of the Red Cross in late March put out a statement about the US-Israel war on Iran condemning the loss of thousands of lives, saying: “A devastating pattern of warfare is eroding the foundations of civilian life in the Middle East. One month of hostilities has upended the lives of millions and sent shockwaves far beyond the region at a scale and speed that threatens to overwhelm the humanitarian response.”

Meanwhile, in a press conference just moments ago, Donald Trump returned to one of his favorite topics: false claims about the 2020 election. Trump lost this race to Democrat Joe Biden, before winning back the White House in 2024.

Alleging that the 2020 presidential contest was “rigged” – a claim that has repeatedly been refuted by verified, factual information – the US president said that many of the US’s woes would have been solved by now if not for Biden.

“It’s the only way we got an incompetent man to be a president, and he was an incompetent man,” Trump said without evidence. “Many of the things that we’re talking about, even including this, this would have been settled a long time ago, not now, and it should have been settled by other presidents, but the election was a rigged election. We can’t let that happen to our country.”

While Donald Trump’s blockade of the strait of Hormuz threatens to snarl international supply chains – and further increase sky-high oil prices – he boasted on Monday about his positive impact on this global waterway.

“34 Ships went through the Strait of Hormuz yesterday, which is by far the highest number since this foolish closure began. President DONALD J. TRUMP,” he said in a Truth Social post.

Trump said Sunday that the US naval blockade would target Iranian ships as well as vessels that paid money to Iran for safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz. This is part of Trump’s effort to stop the flow of oil from Iran.

Several hours prior to this post, Trump said he had “obliterated” 158 Iranian naval vessels.

Two months after the Trump administration removed the LGBTQ+ Pride flag from the Stonewall national monument in New York City, federal authorities agreed that the flag can remain.

According to the New York Times, the federal government agreed on Monday to reverse officials’ decision to remove the Pride flag, settling a lawsuit brought by several non-profits.

Federal authorities took down the Pride flag in February, amid the Trump administration’s persistent attacks on the LGBTQ+ community and diversity generally. LGBTQ+ persons across the US saw the flag’s removal as an effort to scrub their history from public spaces.

This monument recognizes the riots in June 1969 that came after police descended on the Stonewall Inn, a beloved gay bar located in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village neighborhood. The six days of protests that followed were a watershed in the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement.

The monument is recognizes as a national symbol of LGBTQ+ Pride.

The Manhattan borough president, Brad Hoylman-Sigal, who is gay, had said that the Pride flag was taken down over the 7 February weekend after a 21 January interior department memo.

Several days after the removal, New York City officials raised the Pride flag again at the Stonewall monument. The Times notes that while the Pride flag had “flown at the site since then in an unofficial capacity”, federal authorities could have taken it down since there hadn’t been an agreement.

Under the settlement, federal authorities will permanently return the Pride flag to its original flagpole in one week, per The Times. The Pride flag will fly along with National parks service and American flags.

As we noted earlier, Eric Swalwell’s decision to suspend his campaign for governor on Sunday, even as he denies allegations from four women who accuse him of sexual misconduct and assault, did not end the pressure the congressman faces.

On Sunday afternoon, his troubles deepened when the US Department of Homeland Security announced an investigation into allegations the US representative hired “a Brazilian national as a nanny without lawful work authorization”.

The claim that Swalwell and his wife might have violated immigration law by employing a Brazilian woman who did not have a work permit to care for their children was detailed in a 68-page complaint filed with federal immigration officials in February by Joel Gilbert, a California film-maker who calls himself “the conservative Michael Moore”.

Gilbert, who mailed a conspiratorial documentary about Barack Obama to voters in swing states before the 2012 election, and has made films attacking Michelle Obama, Bill Clinton and Al Gore, and others celebrating Donald Trump, denied that he was a Republican political operative. “I just kind of follow the truth where I see it,” he said in an interview.

A reminder that my colleagues are covering the latest developments out of the Middle East at our dedicated live blog. This includes the latest reaction to Donald Trump’s declaration that the US Navy would start blockading the Hormuz strait of Hormuz at 10am ET.

Since Trump’s announcement, the price of oil has leapt again, beyond $100 per barrel. Brent crude – the international standard – rose 7% to $102.29.

Follow along here:

Donald Trump is in Washington today. He’s spending most of the day in policy meetings and signing time. These will be closed to the press but we’ll let you know if anything changes. At 7pm ET, the president and first lady will welcome King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima of the Netherlands to the White House for a state dinner.

US-born Pope Leo XIV has defended his position of seeking peace, after Donald Trump criticised him for “catering to the Radical Left”.

“I have no fear of the Trump administration or speaking out loudly of the message of the Gospel, which is what I believe I am here to do, what the church is here to do,” the pontiff said.

“We are not politicians, we don’t deal with foreign policy with the same perspective (as) he might understand it,” he continued. “But I do believe in the message of the Gospel, as a peacemaker.”

This comes after Leo suggested over the weekend that “delusion of omnipotence” was fuelling the US-Israel war in Iran. In response, Trump said he doesn’t think the pontiff is not “doing a very good job”.

Both Trump and Pete Hegseth, his defence secretary, have invoked God and religious language in public messaging during the conflict. Hegseth has even framed the war effort as divinely supported, a sentiment that the pope has repeatedly refuted.

“Jesus is the king of peace, who rejects war, whom no one can use to justify war,” he said on Palm Sunday. “He does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war but rejects them.”

Congressman Eric Swalwell’s departure from the California governor race comes at a pivotal moment in the “wide-open” primary race, just weeks before voters receive postal ballots ahead of the 2 June election.

This jungle primary sees candidates of all parties competing, and the top two finishers regardless of party will advance to the November general election. The winner of the election will replace outgoing governor Gavin Newsom and lead the United States’ most populous state.

The other Democrat candidates include billionaire activist Tom Steyer, who has put at least $110m into television advertising, former Rep Katie Porter, former secretary of health and human services Xavier Becerra, former Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, California superintendent of public instruction Tony Thurmond, San Jose mayor Matt Mahan, and former state controller Betty Yee.

The deadline to enter the race ended in March, meaning the current roster of candidates is set and ballots are due to be sent out at the start of May. While Swalwell has suspended his campaign, his name cannot be removed from the ballot.

“None of these candidates really have a lane,” said Garry South, a longtime California Democratic strategist, as reported by CNN. “The race is wide open,” he said in an interview. “Today is Day 1 of that new race, and we all move forward.”

Historically, Republican candidates have struggled to win statewide races in the heavily Democratic state of California. However, in this election, the Democrat-heavy voter base has been split between candidates, leaving two Republicans, Steve Hilton and Chad Bianco, near the top of early primary polls.

The general election is due to take place on 3 November, and the top two finishers will advance to it, regardless of their party.