Summary
Closing summary
Our live coverage is ending now. In the meantime, you can find all of our live US politics coverage here. Here is a summary of the key developments from today:
The supreme court will allow Texas to use a congressional map redrawn to favor Republicans in 2026. The ruling will impact elections as soon as the March primaries. Texas redrew its congressional map this summer as part of an effort Donald Trump initiated to protect Republicans’ slim majority in the House ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. The effort kicked off a nationwide redistricting battle that saw California voters respond by voting to redraw their state’s congressional map as well.
US forces struck another alleged drug trafficking boat in the eastern Pacific, killing four men. The attack is the 22nd such strike in recent months. The US Southern Command released a statement on X saying the strike came at the direction of defense secretary Pete Hegseth.
Adm Frank “Mitch” Bradley arrived on Capitol Hill earlier today to discuss the “double-tap” boat strike on suspected drug boats off the coast of Venezuela with the House and Sentate armed services committees. The top Navy official spoke at a classified briefing alongside the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Dan Cain. Responses from lawmakers have generally been along party lines. Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Senate armed services committee, said today that he is “deeply disturbed” by the footage of the 2 September strike. While Republican Tom Cotton, the chair of the Senate intelligence committee, said the follow-up strike was “entirely lawful and needful”. According to the members of Congress who were briefed, Bradley received no “kill them all order, and that there was not an order to grant no quarter”.
The Department of Defense’s inspector general released the much-anticipated unclassified report on Thursday about Pete Hegseth’s disclosure of plans for military airstrikes in Yemen in a Signal group chat earlier this year. It found that Hegseth violated departmental policies when he shared information in the chat, and that if a foreign enemy force intercepted that information it could have endangered the lives of US troops, as the Guardian reported on Wednesday.
After a contentious meeting, vaccine advisers for the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) voted to delay a vote on restricting hepatitis B vaccination for infants. The meeting of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) turned confrontational at times before one member introduced a motion to delay the vote, which passed by 6 to 3, to give advisers time to examine the wording before taking a vote.
A man was arrested for planting pipe bombs outside the Republican and Democratic party headquarters on the eve of the January 6 insurrection. At a justice department press conference today, attorney general Pam Bondi confirmed that Brian Cole Jr was in custody, but side-stepped questions about possible political motivations.
A grand jury has declined to re-indict Letitia James, the New York Times and Associated Press report, citing sources familiar with the matter. A Virginia grand jury chose not to indict James, a Trump critic, on a mortgage fraud charge the Trump administration has sought to revive. The president has sought to prosecute James since returning to office in January, following a years-long civil case James had overseen investigating Trump for overstating his wealth.
National guard troops may temporarily remain in Washington DC while a federal appeals court evaluates a challenge to the Trump administration’s deployment of troops to the nation’s capital. A three judge panel from the appeals court sided with the Trump administration, which requested a pause to a lower court’s order that would have seen troops withdrawn on 11 December. The decision comes just days after a shooting of two national guard members near the White House.
Tim Walz, the Democratic governor of Minnesota, denounced recent statements Donald Trump has made calling the state’s Somali community “garbage”.
Walz said the president’s comments were “unprecedented for a United States president. We’ve got little children going to school today who their president called them garbage.”
Here’s more from my colleague Rachel Leingang on the incident:
Letitia James’s attorney, Abbe Lowell, drew attention to the rarity of a grand jury refusing to indict James during an appearance on CNN this evening.
“I can’t tell you a time in the federal system … where a federal prosecutor thought a case was strong enough to bring to a grand jury, and the grand jury said no,” Lowell said.
In a separate statement, Lowell said: “A federal court threw this case out after President Trump illegally installed a US attorney to file baseless charges against attorney general James that career prosecutors refused to bring. This should be the end of this case. If they continue, undeterred by a court ruling and a grand jury’s rejection of the charges, it will be a shocking assault on the rule of law and a devastating blow to the integrity of our justice system.”
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A bevy of House Republicans raised criticisms of Speaker Mike Johnson after the Louisiana Republican told reporters that he had instructed his party “to come to me, don’t go to social media” with any concerns.
“I certainly think that the current leadership and specifically the speaker needs to change the way that he approaches the job,” representative Kevin Kiley, a Republican from California, said.
“Anxious is what happens when you get nervous. I’m not nervous. I’m pissed,” representative Anna Paulina Luna of Florida wrote on social media, responding to leadership comments that she was overly anxious.
Representative Nancy Mace of South Carolina told reporters that she shared her frustrations directly with Johnson, particularly around work to release the Epstein files.
The new Dietary Guidelines, which federal law requires be updated every five years, will not be released this year, the New York Times reports, citing a spokesperson from the department of health and human services.
The guidelines will instead be published in early 2026, the spokesperson said, adding that the government shutdown was responsible for the delay.
This spring, health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr., a vocal critic of ultra processed foods, said his agency expected to publish the guidelines ahead of schedule. But their release has now been delayed twice.
Donald Trump has met with the family of wounded national guard member Andrew Wolfe, the president said at the National Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony. Trump shared a photo from the meeting on his social media site shortly after.
“His parents, brother, and all of his friends are praying,” Trump said. “I just met them in the Oval Office — They are fantastic American Patriots!”
He added that Wolfe “is in the process of healing”.
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California’s redrawn congressional map is likely to hold, the supreme court noted in its decision today, despite a Trump administration-backed lawsuit against the state.
Speaking on CNN, John Garamendi, a California congressman, said: “Let’s understand the supreme court. The supreme court is marching side by side with Trump on most every issue … He’s trying to control the next congress through the use of redistricting. It is wrong.”
He added: “We didn’t want to do it in California. But if Trump is going to do this, then we have to fight fire with fire.”
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Suzan DelBene, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chair, called Texas’ redrawn congressional map “racially gerrymandered” in a statement responding to the supreme court’s decision today.
“The people of Texas don’t want this map, but it was put in place at the behest of national Republicans who are desperate to cling to their majority in the House of Representatives by decimating minority voting opportunity,” she said. “And because the public continues to turn on Republicans and their broken promises, we know Republicans will not net nearly the number of seats in Texas as they hoped. House Democrats remain poised to re-take the majority next year.”
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California senator Adam Schiff also criticized the supreme court ruling and accused the court of abandoning its “commitment to justice”.
He said: “The Roberts Court will go down in history as having upheld the desires of Donald Trump and the GOP, rather than its commitment to justice, precedent or the rule of law. Today’s ruling – which substitutes its own fact finding for that of the lower court – is yet another example.”
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Justice Elena Kagan sharply dissents, calling ruling disrespectful of lower court
In a sharply worded dissent, Elena Kagan objected to the decision by the supreme court’s majority, arguing that it disrespected the work of the lower court, whose ruling actually was authored by a judge appointed by Trump.
“We are a higher court than the district court, but we are not a better one when it comes to making such a fact-based decision,” Kagan wrote in a dissent joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
“This court’s stay guarantees that Texas’s new map, with all its enhanced partisan advantage, will govern next year’s elections for the House of Representatives. And this court’s stay ensures that many Texas citizens, for no good reason, will be placed in electoral districts because of their race. And that result, as this court has pronounced year in and year out, is a violation of the constitution,” she continued.
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Hakeem Jeffries condemns supreme court's decision on Texas congressional map
Meanwhile, Democrats have criticized the supreme court’s decision to allow Texas to use its new congressional map in 2026.
Hakeem Jeffries, the House Democratic leader, said the court had “once again shredded its credibility by rubber-stamping a racially gerrymandered map in Texas”. In an X post, he added: “Republicans know the extremists can only win by cheating. The people of California and beyond will prevent that from happening.”
In a statement Jeffries added: “Tonight’s ruling by far-right justices on the supreme court is further proof that the extremists will do anything to rig the midterm elections. The gerrymandered Texas congressional map is a partisan and racially discriminatory power grab designed to subvert the will of the voters — particularly in Black and Latino communities.”
He added: “California voters overwhelmingly approved Prop 50 and other states will soon follow suit. We will not let Republicans cheat their way to holding the majority in the House of Representatives. Donald Trump and Republican extremists started this fight. Democrats will finish it.”
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Here’s our full report on the boat strike, which we will keep updating as more details emerge:
The latest strike on an alleged drug smuggling boat comes on the same day as senior military officials appeared in Congress over an attack on a boat on 2 September that has left the defense secretary under immense pressure.
US navy Adm Frank Bradley, who commanded the attack, and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Dan Caine, appeared before the House and Senate’s armed services and intelligence committees for a closed briefing in which they showed video and discussed the attack with lawmakers.
Top Democratic and Republican lawmakers said after the meeting that Hegseth had not ordered the military to kill surviving members of a deadly attack on a boat alleged to be carrying drugs in the Caribbean, but differed over whether the double strike was appropriate.
A leading Democratic lawmaker told reporters after the meeting he was disturbed by what he’d seen. “What I saw in that room was one of the most troubling things I’ve seen in my time in public service,” Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House armed services committee, said.
However, he said Bradley “confirmed that there had not been a ‘kill them all’ order, and there was not an order to grant no quarter”.
Updated
US Southern Command released unclassified footage of the boat strike, showing a vessel speeding through the waters before going up in flames.
Updated
US forces strike another alleged drug trafficking boat, killing four people
US forces have struck another alleged drug trafficking boat in the eastern Pacific, killing four men.
The US Southern Command released a statement on X saying the strike came at the direction of defense secretary Pete Hegseth.
The statement says:
On Dec. 4, at the direction of @SecWar Pete Hegseth, Joint Task Force Southern Spear conducted a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel in international waters operated by a Designated Terrorist Organization. Intelligence confirmed that the vessel was carrying illicit narcotics and transiting along a known narco-trafficking route in the Eastern Pacific. Four male narco-terrorists aboard the vessel were killed.
Pam Bondi celebrates justices' ruling in favor of Texas Republicans
Trump’s attorney general Pam Bondi also celebrated the decision. Bondi said federal court had “no right to interfere with a state’s decision to redraw legislative maps for partisan reasons”.
Writing on X, she added: “A federal district court ignored that principle two weeks ago, and the Supreme Court correctly stayed that overreaching decision tonight. Congratulations to Texas for advancing the rule of law, my Solicitor General John Sauer, and our team of lawyers for their excellent brief supporting Texas in this important case.”
As Rachel Leingang reported, courts now cannot stop maps drawn for partisan reasons, but they can intervene if maps are racially gerrymandered. And that was the basis of the lower court’s decision as referenced in my earlier post.
Catch up on that full report here:
Texas attorney general hails supreme court decision
Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general, has welcomed the supreme court decision in favor of the state’s Republican party.
In a statement carried by the Associated Press, Paxton said the order “defended Texas’s fundamental right to draw a map that ensures we are represented by Republicans”.
“Texas is paving the way as we take our country back, district by district, state by state,” he added. “This map reflects the political climate of our state and is a massive win for Texas and every conservative who is tired of watching the left try to upend the political system with bogus lawsuits.”
Updated
Today’s supreme court decision overrules an order by a panel of three federal judges in November, who had said the state could not use the 2025 maps because they are probably “racially gerrymandered”.
At the time, Judge Jeffrey Brown wrote: “The public perception of this case is that it’s about politics. To be sure, politics played a role in drawing the 2025 map. But it was much more than just politics. Substantial evidence shows that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 map.”
The Guardian’s Rachel Leingang reported in November:
Typically, redistricting happens after a new decade’s census results. Maps are often fought over, inviting lawsuits that can take years to resolve. In some states, the process is done by lawmakers, while in others, by independent bodies. Courts now cannot stop maps drawn for partisan reasons, but they can intervene if maps are racially gerrymandered.
Brown pointed to Texas lawmakers’ responses to the justice department. Lawmakers initially resisted the idea of redrawing maps for purely partisan reasons, but moved forward after the Trump administration “reframed” the idea of redistricting around racial makeup.
A July letter from the head of the department’s civil rights division, Harmeet Dhillon, made the “legally incorrect assertion” that four of Texas’s congressional districts were unconstitutional. She threatened legal action if the state did not redraw these “coalition districts”, where no single racial group made up a majority of voters – “a threat based entirely on their racial makeup”, Brown wrote.
“Notably, the [justice department] letter targeted only majority-non-white districts,” the decision says. “Any mention of majority-white Democrat districts – which [the justice department] presumably would have also targeted if its aims were partisan rather than racial – was conspicuously absent.”
The legislature and governor’s office then followed suit on these demands from the justice department, Brown said, noting statements made by local officials on their reasoning.
“The governor explicitly directed the legislature to redistrict based on race,” Brown wrote. “In press appearances, the governor plainly and expressly disavowed any partisan objective and instead repeatedly stated that his goal was to eliminate coalition districts and create new majority-Hispanic districts.”
The supreme court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, issued its ruling in an unsigned order. Its three liberal justices dissented, Reuters reports.
In a brief opinion explaining the decision, the court writes: “The district court improperly inserted itself into an active primary campaign, causing much confusion and upsetting the delicate federal-state balance in elections.”
While acknowledging the political aims of Texas to benefit the Republican party, the opinion also said the lower court mistakenly did not fault the new map’s challengers for not themselves producing “a viable alternative map that met the state’s avowedly partisan goals”.
The ruling comes amid a nationwide battle about the redrawing of electoral maps. Republicans and Democrats have been engaged in a war in legislatures and courts to narrow the political battlefield of 2026 before a single vote is cast.
Here’s more on this battle from the Guardian’s George Chidi and Andrew Witherspoon:
Grand jury refuses a second indictment of Trump opponent Letitia James
A grand jury has declined to re-indict Letitia James, the New York Times and Associated Press report, citing sources familiar with the matter.
A Virginia grand jury chose not to indict James, a Trump critic, on a mortgage fraud charge the Trump administration has sought to revive. The president has sought to prosecute James since returning to office in January, following a years-long civil case James had overseen investigating Trump for overstating his wealth.
Here’s more of our past coverage of James:
Supreme court rules Texas redistricting may proceed
The supreme court will allow Texas to use a congressional map redrawn to favor Republicans in 2026. The ruling will impact elections as soon as the March primaries.
Texas redrew its congressional map this summer as part of an effort Donald Trump initiated to protect Republicans’ slim majority in the House ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. The effort kicked off a nationwide redistricting battle that saw California voters respond by voting to redraw their state’s congressional map as well.
Today’s supreme court ruling responds to an emergency request for a decision from Texas because candidates have until 8 December to file to run ahead of the March primaries.
Updated
Mark Warner, a Democrat from Virginia and the vice-chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, called footage of a US attack on a Venezuelan boat “very disturbing”.
“We all know that our country’s record of interventions in the Caribbean and Central America and South America over the last 100-plus years hasn’t been a perfect record,” Warner said.
He added that all of Congress should see the video footage, and asked for the Trump administration to share additional information about the strikes.
Updated
National guard troops may temporarily remain in Washington DC while a federal appeals court evaluates a challenge to the Trump administration’s deployment of troops to the nation’s capital.
A three judge panel from the appeals court sided with the Trump administration, which requested a pause to a lower court’s order that would have seen troops withdrawn on 11 December. The decision comes just days after a shooting of two national guard members near the White House.
Here’s the full story:
With less than a month until Zohran Mamdani becomes mayor of New York City, current mayor Eric Adams issued two executive orders today focused on Israel.
My colleague Edward Helmore has more:
The first order prohibits city agency heads and staff from engaging in “any policy that discriminates against the state of Israel, Israeli citizens based on their national origin, or individuals or entities based on their association with Israel”. It also prohibits officials overseeing the city pension system from making decisions in line with the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement, which Mamdani has said he supports.
A second order directs the New York City police commissioner, currently Jessica Tisch, to evaluate proposals for regulating protest activity occurring close to houses of worship. That comes after demonstrations last month outside an Upper East Side synagogue hosting an event promoting immigration to Israel sparked claims of antisemitism.
The Department of Homeland Security has posted a recruitment ad for “deportation judges” featuring the comic book character Judge Dredd.
A fictional police officer and judge, Judge Dredd is a “street judge” tasked with the roles of judge, jury and executioner in a dystopian future. Carrying a self-loading handgun called “The Lawgiver”, Judge Dredd’s face is always covered and never revealed in the comics.
Homeland Security’s new ad, posted on social media on Thursday, features an image of Judge Dredd alongside the text: “Deliver justice to criminal illegal aliens. Become a deportation judge. Save your country.”
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A nonpartisan watchdog group has sued the defense and justice departments for failing to release records about the Trump administration’s strikes on Venezuelan boats.
American Oversight filed a lawsuit today in federal court alleging that the departments failed to release documents requested under four Freedom of Information Act requests.
“When the defense secretary stands accused of ordering military strikes that experts warn may amount to war crimes — and is simultaneously found to have mishandled classified military intelligence in ways that endangered the lives of our servicemembers — the American people deserve straight answers,” said Chioma Chukwu, executive director of American Oversight.
The White House has confirmed that Shalom Baranes will take over as architect on Donald Trump’s grand ballroom, following reporting earlier today from the Washington Post.
“Shalom is an accomplished architect whose work has shaped the architectural identity of our nation’s capital for decades and his experience will be a great asset to the completion of this project,” said White House spokesman Davis Ingle.
USCIS cuts maximum work authorization periods for certain immigrants
US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has updated its policy manual to cut the maximum worth authorization period for certain immigrant categories to “ensure proper vetting and screening of aliens”.
The agency announced that five-year Employment Authorization Documents (EAD) will now only last 18 months for several groups, including those who have been admitted as refugees, those granted asylum, and immigrants granted withholding of deportation or removal.
USCIS said that this will affect those with applications for employment authorization that are “pending or filed” on or after 5 December.
Donald Trump replaces architect he chose for his grand ballroom, Washington Post reports
Citing three people familiar with the matter, the outlet reported Thursday that James McCrery II and his boutique architecture firm had been chosen to design Trump’s ballroom until late October. It remains unclear whether McCrery stepped back voluntarily. However, he and Trump departed on good terms, according to one of the sources.
The Washington Post reported:
“Trump and McCrery had clashed over the president’s desire to keep increasing the size of the building, but it was McCrery’s firm’s small workforce and inability to hit deadlines that became the decisive factor in him leaving, one of the people said.”
Trump’s new pick is architect Shalom Baranes, according to the Washington Post’s sources. In a written statement about Baranes, who has handled previous projects including the main Treasury building near the White House, a White House spokesperson said:
“As we begin to transition into the next stage of development on the White House Ballroom, the Administration is excited to share that the highly talented Shalom Baranes has joined the team of experts to carry out President Trump’s vision on building what will be the greatest addition to the White House since the Oval Office — the White House Ballroom. Shalom is an accomplished architect whose work has shaped the architectural identity of our nation’s capital for decades and his experience will be a great asset to the completion of this project.”
Updated
Analysts have estimated that 75% of the commitments that the US made at the Paris climate agreement – which Donald Trump pulled the nation out of as soon as he took office – can be reached entirely without federal support.
It’s this conviction in the power of local governance that animates Climate Cabinet, an organization focused on supporting pro-climate candidates in under-the-radar races at the state or city level. Climate Cabinet uses data science to comb through the more than 500,000 public offices that US citizens have the opportunity to vote on every cycle, identifies candidates who could make a real impact on the climate, and offers them financial and policy support.
The organization was founded by Caroline Spears, who was inspired while working for one of the country’s largest solar companies. As an analyst, it was her job to look at all the markets in which her company wanted to build, and make sense of why they were able to make progress in some states and not others. She watched as the company built dozens of projects in Massachusetts and zero in the far sunnier state of Arizona.
“This was during Trump’s [first term] – so these two states had the same federal backdrop – but their ability to actually build clean energy was vastly different,” Spears said. “That was solely because of state and local policymaking in those two states.”
For the full story, click here:
Here's a recap of the day so far
Adm Frank “Mitch” Bradley arrived on Capitol Hill earlier today to discuss the “double-tap” boat strike on suspected drug boats off the coast of Venezuela with the House and Sentate armed services committees. The top Navy official spoke at a classified briefing alongside the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Dan Cain. Responses from lawmakers have generally been along party lines. Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Senate armed services committee, said today that he is “deeply disturbed” by the footage of the 2 September strike. While Republican Tom Cotton, the chair of the Senate intelligence committee, said the follow-up strike was “entirely lawful and needful”. According to the members of Congress who were briefed, Bradley received no “kill them all order, and that there was not an order to grant no quarter”.
The Department of Defense’s inspector general released the much-anticipated unclassified report on Thursday about Pete Hegseth’s disclosure of plans for military airstrikes in Yemen in a Signal group chat earlier this year. It found that Hegseth violated departmental policies when he shared information in the chat, and that if a foreign enemy force intercepted that information it could have endangered the lives of US troops, as the Guardian reported on Wednesday.
After a contentious meeting, vaccine advisers for the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) voted to delay a vote on restricting hepatitis B vaccination for infants. The meeting of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) turned confrontational at times before one member introduced a motion to delay the vote, which passed by 6 to 3, to give advisers time to examine the wording before taking a vote.
A man was arrested for planting pipe bombs outside the Republican and Democratic party headquarters on the eve of the January 6 insurrection. At a justice department press conference today, attorney general Pam Bondi confirmed that Brian Cole Jr was in custody, but side-stepped questions about possible political motivations.
Top Senate Republican says follow-up strikes on suspected drug boats were 'entirely lawful and needful'
Republican Tom Cotton, the chair of the Senate intelligence committee, spoke to reporters after the classified briefing from Adm Frank Bradley and general Dan Caine.
“The first strike, the second strike, and the third and the fourth strike on 2 September were entirely lawful and needful, and they were exactly what we’d expect our military commanders to do,” Cotton said.
When asked about the survivors who were killed in a follow-up strike, the Arkansas senator said that he saw two people “trying to flip a boat loaded with drugs” and “didn’t see anything disturbing about it”.
Cotton confirmed that Adm Bradley said that he received no “kill all order”.
“He was given an order that, of course, was written down in great detail, as our military always does,” he said. “There was no vocal order either.”
At the justice department’s press conference today, attorney general Pam Bondi said there was “no new tip” or “no new witness” that led to today’s arrest of the suspect in the pipe bomb case. “Just good, diligent police work and prosecutorial work,” she said.
When asked by a reporter about any possible political motivations of the suspect, Bondi side-stepped the question.
“Right now, it’s ongoing,” she said. “We just executed the search warrant early, early this morning.”
Updated
Top Senate Democrat says he's 'deeply disturbed' after seeing footage of strikes on suspected drug boats
Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Senate armed services committee, said today that he is “deeply disturbed” by the footage of the 2 September “double-tap” strike on a suspected drug-trafficking boat off the coast of Venezuela.
On Capitol Hill, the Rhode Island lawmaker didn’t respond to questions from reporters after the classified briefing with Adm Frank Bradley and general Dan Caine ended today. However, in a statement Reed said that the Pentagon had “no choice” but to release the unedited video of the strike.
“This briefing confirmed my worst fears about the nature of the Trump Administration’s military activities,” Reed added. “This must and will only be the beginning [sic] of our investigation into this incident.”
Updated
Justice department confirms arrest of suspect in pipe bomb case
Attorney general Pam Bondi is holding a presser now, confirming the arrest of a suspect, Brian Cole Jr, for planting pipe bombs at the Republican and Democratic party headquarters on the evening before the January 6 insurrection.
She’s joined by FBI director Kash Patel and US attorney for Washington DC, Jeanine Pirro.
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CDC vaccine advisers push back vote on hepatitis B vaccine for babies
After a contentious meeting, vaccine advisers for the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) voted to delay a vote on restricting hepatitis B vaccination for infants.
The meeting of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) turned confrontational at times before one member introduced a motion to delay the vote, which passed by 6 to 3, to give advisers time to examine the wording before taking a vote.
Trump delivers remarks at re-named Institute of Peace
The president is now speaking at the recently re-named Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace, ahead of the ceremonial signing of a US-brokered peace and economic agreement between Rwanda and Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
While introducing Rwandan president Paul Kagame and the leader of the DRC, Félix Tshisekedi, he mispronounces the latter’s name.
Trump went on to tout his administration’s peace-making credentials, and his hopes for the two countries who have been locked in an ongoing conflict for years. “I think they spent a lot of time killing each other, and now they’re going to spend a lot of time hugging, holding hands, and taking advantage of the United States of America economically, like every other country does,” Trump said.
A congressional watchdog is opening an investigation into whether Bill Pulte, a top Trump ally, abused his position to obtain sensitive mortgage data on Donald Trump’s political rivals and accuse them of crimes.
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) confirmed on Thursday it was opening the investigation.
“I can confirm that GAO has accepted this request following our standard process. The first thing GAO does as any work begins is to determine the full scope of what we will cover and the methodology to be used. This can take a few months, and until that is done, we cannot provide any estimates on a completion date,” a GAO spokesperson said.
The inquiry comes after six senate Democrats requested the investigation into how Pulte went about referring New York attorney general Letitia James, Senator Adam Schiff, California representative Eric Swalwell, and Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook to the justice department for mortgage fraud. All four have denied wrongdoing and only James was indicted, though experts have said the case against her appears thin.
Experts told the Guardian that Pulte’s referrals were extremely unusual. Mortgage fraud investigations are typically handled by the Federal Finance Housing Agency’s Office of inspector general, which is staffed by investigative agents. Pulte appears to have bypassed that office entirely.
Pulte is a top Trump ally who has used his perch atop a little-known federal agency to accuse Trump’s rivals of crimes.
One quick note, after today’s classified briefing from Adm Frank “Mitch” Bradley and general Dan Caine on the “double-tap” strike on a suspected drug-trafficking boat, the top lawmakers on the Senate armed services committee – chair Robert Wicker and ranking member Jack Reed – left the room without responding to questions from reporters.
Suspect named in January 6 pipe bomb case - report
A suspect has been named in the pipe bomb case that targeted the Republican and Democratic party headquarters in Washington DC, on the night before the January 6 insurrection.
The Associated Press is reporting, citing three unnamed sources familiar, that Brian Cole has been identified as the alleged perpetrator. Two of the AP’s sources said that Cole is from suburban Woodbridge, Virginia. No other details were immediately available, including the charges the suspect might face.
Signalgate report concludes Hegseth violated internal defense department instructions by using personal phone
The inspector general concluded that Hegseth had sent “sensitive, nonpublic, operational information” to the Signal chat from his personal cell phone “that he determined did not require classification” before he sent it.
The report acknowledges that Hegseth “holds the authority to determine the required classification level of all DoD information he communicates”. But it does not say whether or not he did so in this instance.
It finds that his actions violated an internal defense department instruction that prohibits “using a personal device for official business and using a non-approved commercially available messaging application to send nonpublic DoD information”.
Updated
According to the report, in Hegseth’s statement he acknowledged the email briefing he had received about upcoming war plans on 14 March from the US Central Command.
He also stated that as defense secretary “he has authority to decide whether information should be classified and whether classified materials no longer require protection”.
Hegseth also said that he had taken “‘non-specific general details” that he determined “were either not classified or that he could safely declassify and use to create an ‘unclassified summary’ to provide to the Signal chat participants”.
Further, Hegseth refused to be interviewed in person, and instead provided a written statement on 25 July, more than four months after the incident.
According to the report, the Department of Defense provided only “a partial copy of messages from the Secretary’s personal cell phone, including some messages that The Atlantic previously reported, but other messages had auto-deleted because of chat settings”.
That meant the inspector general had to rely in part on a transcript of those messages published by The Atlantic for a full record.
The report finds that Hegseth “sent a message containing operational information to members of the ‘Houthi PC Small Group’ Signal chat” at 11.44pm on 15 March.
It finds that some of the information the secretary of defense sent from his personal cell phone on Signal matched the operation information in the aforementioned email (see my last post).
It also found that he did so from his residence at Fort McNair in Washington in the presence of “his junior military assistant and his personal communicator”.
DoD inspector general releases report into Hegseth Signalgate furor
The Department of Defense’s inspector general has released the much-anticipated report this morning about Pete Hegseth’s disclosure of plans for military airstrikes in Yemen in a Signal group chat earlier this year. I’ll go through the findings in the next few posts.
It finds that the head of US Central Command sent a secure email to Hegseth and the acting chairman of the joint chiefs of staff on 14 March just before 9pm, approximately 17 hours before the beginning of the 15 March strikes. “This email provided operational details and updates to senior DoD leadership, including detailed information on the means and timing of the strikes,” it says.
That information about the planned attacks was classified as secret, and not to be disseminated to foreign nationals.
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Here’s the outside of the freshly unveiled Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace in Washington DC, formerly known as the US Institute of Peace, the congressionally funded nonprofit his administration has been working to dismantle since February.
The state department said on Wednesday it renamed the organization to “reflect the greatest dealmaker in our nation’s history”.
The renaming comes despite an ongoing fight over the institute’s control. The Trump administration seized the independent entity and ousted its board before actually affixing his name to the building. A seesaw court battle is ongoing.
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Only testing mothers for hepatitis B can be problematic for several reasons.
Testing occurs in the first trimester, and infection could happen later in the pregnancy or after birth, and the tests have a 5% false negative rate, which means one in 20 people who have hepatitis B will still test negative. Because of unequal access to prenatal care, some 500,000 people are not tested during pregnancy each year.
In addition, mothers are not the only people who give birth, and they are not the only family members in close contact with babies – other parents, children, extended family members, and friends could also pass on the virus.
Some 50% of people who are infected with hepatitis B don’t know where they acquired the virus, according to the CDC. The Hepatitis B Foundation puts that figure higher, around 68%. Exposures can happen at daycare, while playing sports, even while sharing nail clippers.
Further, the ACIP meeting is today voting on whether to restrict access to the vaccine and make it “shared clinical decision-making” at the hospital.
Shared clinical decision-making is a process that has only been applied to five vaccines in the past – usually when vaccines don’t warrant full recommendation. When the recommendation for Covid vaccines switched to this framework, families and providers were confused and uncertain about the change. Insurers don’t always cover vaccines in this category.
Even short delays in giving children the hepatitis B vaccine have immense health and financial repercussions, according to a new model.
Delaying the shot from birth to two months would lead to at least 1,400 infections, 300 cases of liver cancer, and 480 deaths every year – all preventable by vaccination, the researchers wrote. It would also result in more than $222 million in additional health care costs every year.
A new review from the Vaccine Integrity Project of more than 400 studies over four decades found no evidence that delaying the vaccine would improve safety or effectiveness, and it found that vaccination at birth has no short- or long-term serious adverse events or deaths.
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The hepatitis B vaccine is extremely safe and offers for most people lifelong protection against the virus, which can cause liver cancer and other serious health outcomes.
Children who become infected within the first year of life are most at risk of developing severe illness.
Recommending hep B vaccination at birth has nearly eliminated transmission from birth parents and dramatically reduced cases of the illness in childhood. Infant immunization has been directly linked to a 99% decline in acute hepatitis B cases in children, adolescents and young adults since 1990 and 2019.
Kennedy advisers weigh dropping hepatitis B vaccine recommendation for most US children
For more than 30 years it has been routine to give all newborn babies in the United States the hepatitis B vaccine within the first 24 hours of life, a practice which has resulted in a dramatic drop in hep B infections.
There has also long been a carefully constructed timetable used by pediatricians to administer more than 30 doses to protect against more than a dozen diseases in early childhood.
But that could be set for a major and controversial change. Robert F Kennedy Jr’s handpicked vaccine advisers are convening today and tomorrow to discuss whether to abandon the current recommendation for vaccinating babies against hepatitis B, and to rethink fundamental elements of the established childhood vaccination schedule that has protected children against dangerous diseases for decades.
A vote is planned for around 2.30pm ET.
Per my colleague Melody Schreiber:
The vote contains several parts. First, the advisers plan to vote on recommending the vaccine at birth if an infant’s mother tests positive for hepatitis B. For babies whose mothers test negative or whose mothers don’t know their status, the shot could become shared clinical decision-making – an opaque term not typically applied to routine vaccines. If the shot is not chosen at birth, advisers will consider limiting it to be offered at two months or later – which would mean parents who aren’t able or ready to get it at birth may have to wait eight weeks or more.
A second vote would recommend that providers draw blood from infants to check for hepatitis B before giving the vaccine, and would require insurance companies to cover the blood test. Both of these rules would exceed the authority of the committee, which makes recommendations on vaccines.
A review of more than 400 studies and reports by independent vaccine experts released on Tuesday found that the current US policy of giving the hepatitis B vaccine to newborns has cut infections in children by more than 95%.
The advisers are also set to discuss how pediatricians inoculate children against more than a dozen other infectious diseases, including measles, mumps, whooping cough and polio.
Should the changes get voted through, which is likely, it would be the most significant shift in US vaccination policy yet under Trump’s polarizing, vaccine-sceptic health secretary. Per NPR, for public health experts “the meeting underscores grave concerns … [that] it will further erode childhood vaccinations, leading to a resurgence of preventable infectious diseases”.
We’ll bring you all the key developments here.
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Top Navy admiral briefs lawmakers on 'double-tap' strike on suspected drug boats
Adm Frank “Mitch” Bradley arrived on Capitol Hill earlier today to discuss the “double-tap” boat strike on suspected drug boats off the coast of Venezuela with the House and Sentate armed services committees. The top Navy official spoke to lawmakers alongside the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Dan Cain.
Representative Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee, gaggled with reporters after Bradley’s classified briefing.
“What I saw in that room was one of the most troubling things I’ve seen in my time in public service,” he said, according to CNN’s Manu Raju.
Himes added that Bradley did confirm “there had not been a ‘kill them all’ order, and that there was not an order to grant no quarter”.
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Slotkin says watchdog's Signalgate report shows that Hegseth put 'lives of our service members at risk'
Senator Elissa Slotkin said that after reading the Pentagon inspector general’s Signalgate report, it “reinforced what was already publicly known”.
Today, we can expect to see the unclassified version of the watchdog’s report to be released, which concludes that the defense secretary violated departmental policies when he shared sensitive strike information in a Signal messaging chat in March.
“That kind of sensitive information, on a hackable personal cell phone and DoD-prohibited app, put the lives of our service members at risk,” said Slotkin, a Michigan Democrat who serves on the both the armed services and homeland security committees in the Senate.
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Among the beneficiaries of Donald Trump’s pardons and commutations, there is a group that legal experts and political scientists see as some of the clearest evidence of how such actions undermine the rule of law: those who were released from prison and again arrested for different alleged crimes.
During his first term, Trump issued 237 acts of clemency – including to someone who was a predatory lender and drug smuggler and to another who ran a Ponzi scheme. Since taking office again, Trump has issued more than 1,600, most for people involved in the January 6 attack on Congress.
At least a dozen of the people Trump has granted clemency to since 2016 were arrested for separate crimes after January 6.
That should come as no surprise, experts say, because Trump did not follow the usual review process for considering such pardons, making it more likely that those people had already committed other crimes or took the clemency as an indication that they did not do anything wrong.
“What else would you expect?” Susan Benesch, a human rights lawyer and director of the Dangerous Speech Project, said of the recidivism. “People have been pardoned in the past after they expressed remorse or served a lot of time or credibly expressed that they were sorry and wish they hadn’t committed the crime – or both.”
New poll shows almost half of Americans say cost of living is 'worst it's ever been'
A new poll by Politico shows that 46% of Americans surveyed say that the cost of living is the “worst they can remember it being”. What’s more, 37% of Trump voters share that view.
Similarly, almost half of Americans say that the cost-of-living crisis is the Trump administration’s responsibility.
For his part, the president said this week that the issue of affordability for Americans is a “fake narrative” conjured by Democrats.
“They just say the word. It doesn’t mean anything to anybody, they just say it,” Trump said.
FBI arrests suspect in January 6 pipe bomb case – reports
The FBI has arrested a person accused of planting pipe bombs outside the Democratic National Committee (DNC) building and near the Republican headquarters on the night before the January 6 insurrection, according to multiple reports.
The years-long search included the FBI releasing surveillance footage of the suspect placing a bomb at the DNC, and offering a $500,000 reward.
The bombs, which police deactivated and prevented from exploding, were discovered on the same day supporters of Donald Trump stormed the US Capitol in an attempt to stop lawmakers from certifying Democrat Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential election victory.
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My colleague Jakub Krupa is following the latest developments out of Europe in our dedicated live blog.
Earlier, he reported that the French president, Emmanuel Macron, has warned European leaders that “there is a chance that the US will betray Ukraine on territory without clarity on security guarantees”, the German magazine Der Spiegel reported, quoting a leaked note from a recent call between the European leaders.
The magazine claimed that Macron talked about the tense moment in the talks to be “a big danger” for the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, with the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, adding that the Ukrainian leader – also on the call – needed to be “very careful”.
“They are playing games with both you and us,” Merz was reported as saying, which the magazine concluded was a reference to Steve Witkoff’s recent mission to Moscow.
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Donald Trump will welcome the president of Rwanda, Paul Kagame, as well as the president of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Felix Tshisekedi, to the White House today.
After a trilateral meeting (which is currently closed to the press), the three leaders to will head to the Donald J Trump Institute of Peace – recently renamed in the US president’s honor – to sign a peace deal that aims to mitigate conflict in eastern Congo.
Later, Trump and the first lady will take part in the national Christmas tree lighting on the Ellipse in Washington DC.
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A new Emerson College Polling/Inside California Politics survey takes a look into the crowded race for California governorship, in which more than 95 candidates have so far submitted paperwork indicating their intention to run.
The poll found that Republican Chad Bianco, Republican Steve Hilton, Democrat Eric Swalwell (12%) and Democrat Katie Porter are currently leading the June 2026 primary. Of those polled, 13% said they were voting for Bianco, 12% for Hilton, 12% for Swalwell and 11% for Porter. In all, 31% of voters are undecided.
Votes were split on the influence of Gavin Newsom and his endorsement: 33% said Newsom’s endorsement would make them more likely to vote for a candidate, 33% said his endorsement would make them less likely to support a candidate, and 35% said it would make no difference.
Newsom currently holds a 47% job approval rating, while 39% disapprove of the job he is doing as governor, according to polling.
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A law has come into effect in Texas that will allow individuals in the state to sue abortion pill providers in other states. Proponents say it is a way to enforce abortion restrictions in Texas. Opponents worry about the methods complainants might use to find their evidence.
In this special episode of Politics Weekly America, the Guardian US reproductive health and justice reporter, Carter Sherman, speaks to people who are using, providing and protecting abortion pills, and those fighting against them in Texas.
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With the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, already in the hot seat over the 2 September boat strike and the inspector-general report on his use of the Signal messaging app in March, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that Hegseth had asked Adml Alvin Holsey to step down after he had expressed concerns over the legality of the attacks in the Caribbean.
Hegseth had announced in October that Holsey would be stepping down as head of the US military’s southern command less than a year after he took over the post. The posting, which oversees operations in Central America, South America and the Caribbean, typically lasts three years.
The discord between Hegseth and Holsey began just days after Donald Trump was sworn into the office, according to the Wall Street Journal, citing former officials. But it intensified after Holsey expressed concern over the “murky legal authority for the boat strike campaign”.
The Trump administration has insisted the strikes are legal under the rules of war and that the US is engaged in armed conflict with traffickers – an argument that has been widely rejected by most legal experts. The Pentagon’s own Law of War manual states that it is prohibited to attack anyone who is “wounded, sick, or shipwrecked”, thus the controversy over the second follow-up strike on 2 September that killed survivors after the initial strike failed to kill everybody onboard.
To read more on the legal arguments around the 2 September strike, click on the story below:
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New York Times sues Pentagon over new reporting restrictions
The New York Times filed a lawsuit against the Pentagon on Thursday, accusing the defense department of infringing on the constitutional rights of its journalists with its new reporting restrictions.
The restrictions, which went into effect in October, require reporters to sign a pledge that they will not obtain unauthorized material and restricts access to certain areas unless accompanied by an official – a stark departure from previous guidelines. In a summary of the filing, the New York Times called this policy “exactly the type of speech- and press-restrictive scheme that the Supreme Court and D.C. Circuit have recognized violates the First Amendment”.
The Guardian, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Atlantic, CNN, Reuters, the Associated Press, NPR, HuffPost and trade publication Breaking Defense are among the US outlets that refused to sign the agreement.
In the lawsuit, the New York Times is asking the US district court in Washington to issue an order stopping the Pentagon from enforcing the press policy. The New York Times “intends to vigorously defend against the violation of these rights, just as we have long done throughout administrations opposed to scrutiny and accountability”, the company said in a statement.
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Hegseth under scrutiny over drug boat strikes and Signalgate
Hello and thank you for joining us on the US politics live blog. I’m Vivian Ho and I will be bringing you the latest news over the next few hours.
Frank “Mitch” Bradley, the US navy admiral who reportedly issued orders to fire upon survivors of an attack on an alleged drug boat, is expected on Capitol Hill on Thursday to provide a classified briefing to congressional lawmakers overseeing national security.
Trump administration officials have defended carrying out the 2 September follow-up strike by arguing that the objective was to ensure the complete destruction of the boat – essentially mirroring the language in a secret justice department office of legal counsel (OLC) memo that purportedly said it was permissible for the US to use lethal force against unflagged vessels carrying cocaine since the cartels use the proceeds to fund violence.
Still, questions continue to mount over the legality of the attack, particularly around the reasoning of the second strike and what orders the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, gave.
“This is an incredibly serious matter. This is about the safety of our troops. This is an incident that could expose members of our armed services to legal consequences,” the Senate Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, said in a floor speech on Wednesday. “And yet the American public and the Congress are still not hearing basic facts.”
Hegseth, who is in hot water after a report by the Pentagon’s inspector general concluded that he had violated departmental policies when he shared secret information in a Signal messaging chat in March, has sought to downplay his own involvement in the strike. Democratic senator Mark Warner has called for his resignation and Republican senator Lisa Murkowski said that Hegseth does not have her support.
The briefing comes as The New York Times filed a lawsuit against the Pentagon, accusing the defense department of violating the first amendment with its new reporting restrictions.
In other developments:
The Trump administration’s immigration crackdown continues as federal agents descended upon New Orleans on Wednesday, sending fear through the region’s Latino community and prompting businesses to close. Gregory Bovino, the border patrol chief who has become the face of the Trump administration’s mass deportation efforts, was spotted leading a group of masked agents through the historic French quarter as one woman heckled the agents.
The operation in New Orleans came as Donald Trump continued his xenophobic attacks on Somali immigrants, telling reporters on Wednesday that “those Somalians should be out of here. They’ve destroyed our country” and that congresswoman Ilhan Omar should be “thrown the hell out”.
In more immigration news, an Amnesty International report published on Thursday found that detainees at the Florida immigration detention facility, “Alligator Alcatraz”, face “harrowing human right violations”.
The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is also in the process of creating a new internal database of non-US citizens who are “employed or affiliated” with the government department, a sensitive memo leaked to the Guardian has revealed.
Trump also announced on Wednesday that he is repealing Biden-era federal fuel economy standards.
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