Closing summary
This concludes our live coverage of the day in US politics, but we will return on Wednesday. Here are some of the day’s developments:
Brad Lander, the New York City comptroller and mayoral candidate was detained by federal immigration officers for over three hours for trying to escort an immigrant out of a hearing in lower Manhattan. After his release, he expressed shock when a reporter told him that a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said that he had been arrested for putting his hands on a federal officer. “Seriously?” Lander said.
Donald Trump held a meeting in the White House situation room, leading to widespread speculation that he might join the Israeli attack on Iran.
“Effective today, I am lifting the curfew in downtown Los Angeles,” the city’s mayor, Karen Bass, said in a statement on Tuesday afternoon.
A federal judge in Boston ruled that transgender and intersex people can obtain passports that align with their gender identity during litigation that seeks to overturn Trump’s executive order that US passports must conform to the sex citizens were assigned at birth.
A federal appeals court in San Francisco heard arguments on Tuesday in Trump v Newsom, to determine whether the Trump administration must return control of the California national guard troops deployed to Los Angeles by Trump to the state’s governor during protests over federal immigration raids.
Tulsi Gabbard, who decried 'regime change wars' now says she is 'on the same page' as Trump on Iran
Tulsi Gabbard, the current US director of national intelligence, was clear about where she stood on the rush to war with Iran, on 3 January 2020, the day that Donald Trump brought the US to the brink by assassinating the Iranian Quds force commander Qassem Suleimani.
“‘We do not seek regime change’ Trump declares as he escalates his regime change war against Iran”, Gabbard tweeted that day. “Neocons like Graham/Bolton are cheering. To all who voted for Trump [because] of his antiwar rhetoric, it’s time to realize he lied to u. Stand with me against Trump’s Iran War!”
Just over five years later, having switched parties and then endorsed and campaigned for Trump on the premise that he was an enemy of “regime change wars”, Gabbard told Megyn Kelly that she was playing a key role in preventing war with Iran.
But Gabbard was reportedly excluded from a top-level discussion about Iran and Israel at Camp David last week.
Then, earlier today, when Trump was reminded by a reporter that Gabbard had testified in March that the intelligence community she leads has seen no evidence that Iran has restarted the pursuit of nuclear weapons it abandoned in 2003, he dismissed her sworn testimony as unimportant. “I don’t care what she said,” said Trump. “I think they were very close to having one.”
Still, before a hearing on Tuesday, Gabbard told CNN that she and Trump “are on the same page” about Iran.
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