Summary
That’s all for live coverage today, thanks for following along. Here are some key links and developments from the day:
House Democrats filed six articles of impeachment against defense secretary Pete Hegseth.
Bernie Sanders led a failed effort to block the sale of bombs and bulldozers to Israel, but the votes revealed a growing appetite among Democrats to impose limits on US weapons transfers.
Trump threatened to fire Jerome Powell if he stays on as US Federal Reserve chair past the end of his tenure and doubled down on a criminal investigation into renovations of the central bank’s headquarters.
Wall Street scaled a fresh all-time high amid growing optimism among investors that the US-Israel war on Iran will soon be over.
The supreme court justice Ketanji Brown Jackson has delivered a sustained attack on her conservative colleagues’ use of emergency orders to benefit the Trump administration.
Trump defended his consumption of diet soda by suggesting it might help prevent cancer, according to recent comments shared by Mehmet Oz.
The US and Iran have been in indirect talks aimed at extending the two-week ceasefire beyond its expiry on 22 April, as Pakistan’s army chief arrived in Tehran to continue mediation efforts.
John Eastman, the Republican legal scholar who convinced Trump he could stay in office despite losing the 2020 election, lost his license to practice law in California.
Sonia Sotomayor apologizes to Brett Kavanaugh for 'hurtful' comments
Sonia Sotomayor, a liberal US supreme court justice, has issued an unusual apology to Brett Kavanaugh, a conservative on the court, after she publicly criticized him at a recent event.
Speaking at the University of Kansas, Sotomayor referenced a consequential 6-3 decision last year in which the court said federal immigration agents could stop people in Los Angeles for simply appearing Latino or speaking Spanish, a ruling that advocates said “effectively legalized racial profiling”.
Kavanaugh faced widespread scrutiny at the time for his concurring opinion in the case, which said race can be a “relevant factor” alongside other “common sense” indicators, such as employment in agriculture, to justify questioning individuals about their immigration status. He also downplayed the impact on lawful residents wrongfully stopped by agents, saying those encounters were “typically brief, and those individuals may promptly go free”. Some critics subsequently used the term “Kavanaugh stops” to refer to racially motivated arrests by agents.
In her recent remarks, Sotomayor said: “I had a colleague in that case who wrote, you know, these are only temporary stops. This is from a man whose parents were professionals. And probably doesn’t really know any person who works by the hour.”
Today, in a brief statement released by the court, Sotomayor apologized, though did not reference Kavanaugh by name, saying: “At a recent appearance at the University of Kansas School of Law, I referred to a disagreement with one of my colleagues in a prior case, but I made remarks that were inappropriate. I regret my hurtful comments. I have apologized to my colleague.”
