Closing summary
We’re wrapping up our live coverage for the day. We’ll be back on Wednesday. Here is a summary of today’s developments:
The Pentagon chief, Pete Hegseth, has warned that Tuesday would be the “most intense” day of US strikes yet, even as he blamed Iran for civilian casualties by claiming its forces were firing missiles from schools and hospitals. Speaking alongside Gen Dan Caine, the chair of the joint chiefs of staff, Hegseth alleged Iran was deliberately firing missiles from schools and hospitals, describing the country’s leadership as “desperate and scrambling like the terrorist cowards they are”. More here.
The minelayers near the strait of Hormuz were among multiple Iranian vessels taken out by US forces today, according to a post by the US Central Command. In a post on X, the military published unclassified footage of some of the vessels after Donald Trump warned Iran against laying mines in the critical waterway.
Republican former prosecutor Clay Fuller and retired army general Shawn Harris, a Democrat, will head to a run-off after they came out ahead in a special election Tuesday to replace Marjorie Taylor Greene in Congress. The election for the state’s 14th congressional district has been seen as a test of Donald Trump’s sway and may provide a rare opportunity for Democrats in a deep-red pocket of north-west Georgia. More here.
Mike Johnson, the speaker of the US House of Representatives, declined to condemn Republican lawmakers who recently made Islamophobic comments, saying only that he had spoken to them about their “tone”. Democrats and groups advocating religious tolerance have decried the statements from congressmen Andy Ogles of Tennessee and Randy Fine of Florida, with the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, calling on Johnson to discipline the latter. More here.
Donald Trump said that America First Refining plans to open a new oil refinery in Brownsville, Texas, as part of a $300b deal. “THE BIGGEST IN US HISTORY, A MASSIVE WIN for American Workers, Energy, and the GREAT People of South Texas! Thank you to our partners in India, and their largest privately held Energy Company, Reliance, for this tremendous Investment,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social on Tuesday.
Donald Trump has appointed Erika Kirk, the widow of murdered rightwing activist Charlie Kirk, to a key advisory board of the US Air Force Academy. The 37-year-old joins a number of other loyalists to the president on the 16-member panel of the academy’s board of visitors, which according to its website “inquires into the morale, discipline, curriculum, instruction, physical equipment, fiscal affairs, academic methods and other matters” of the Colorado Springs military training facility. More here.
A new Democrat-led bill seeks to exempt small businesses from Donald Trump’s latest round of tariffs, as small business owners continue to reel from the impacts of the battle over the president’s signature economic policy.
Introduced by the senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts, the bill, known as the “Small Business Liberation 2.0 Act”, would exempt goods imported by or for the use of small businesses from new tariffs, which Trump enacted on 20 February, immediately after the US supreme court’s ruling invalidating his “liberation day” tariffs.
The bill text also prohibits price gouging as a result of the latest tariffs. Democratic senators Chuck Schumer, Mazie Hirono, John Hickenlooper, Kirsten Gillibrand, Amy Klobuchar and Chris Van Hollen are signed on as co-sponsors of the bill.
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