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Mullin Scrapes Through: DHS Confirmation Exposes a Senate in Crisis
A former wrestler turned senator turned cabinet nominee barely survived his own confirmation hearing. Welcome to America...
The White House, Capitol Hill and the culture war.
The four Sunday political shows took the four working interlocutors of the working week and put each on a single working page. Schumer parks the Tuesday floor vote. Murkowski commits AUMF markup to the first week of June. Khanna names discharge count at 193. Rubio names the four Tehran conditions “serious, narrow and answerable.”
Five Indiana state legislators who voted against mid-decade redistricting lost their Republican primaries on Saturday on margins of twelve to twenty-three points. The four-state June calendar hardens. Speaker Johnson’s soft Republicans on H.Res.939 tighten from twenty-three to seventeen by Sunday afternoon.
The Saturday-evening Republican conference call closes at twenty-three soft Republicans. The OLC memorandum defending the ‘hostilities terminated’ line runs to fourteen pages. The Senate parallel call holds at three. The Wednesday floor vote survives the weekend.
The President’s Friday letter declares the May 1 War Powers deadline does not apply because the Iran hostilities are “terminated”. Five Indiana legislators lose primaries by 12 to 23 points. Speaker Johnson schedules a Saturday 18:00 conference call. H.Res.939 sits on Wednesday’s floor calendar.
The longest single bilateral the West Wing has held since the inauguration ran ninety-eight minutes and produced no Section 232 climbdown. The cerrado niobium walks to the United States Trade Representative’s table on Eighteenth Street on Monday afternoon.
The Office of Passport Services moved to operational phase at midnight Eastern time on the twenty-seven hundred names HHS certified at six o’clock Friday evening. The ACLU’s emergency TRO sits before Judge Tanya Chutkan at half past one Monday afternoon.
The Supreme Court of Virginia, in a four-to-three opinion handed down at twenty-two minutes to five Eastern time on Friday afternoon, blocked the Democratic-drawn congressional map. Four GOP-held seats revert to the boundaries of November 2021. The Tennessee, Alabama, Louisiana and South Carolina maps move on a Republican-friendly calendar through June.
The Tennessee House voted 73–26 at 14:18 Central. The Senate concurred at 16:02. Memphis is split into three congressional districts. The NAACP Legal Defense Fund files in the Western District on Monday. The four-state Southern calendar is now in motion.
The Chief Justice issued a forty-minute lament about the Court’s public reputation in Cincinnati on Thursday evening. The President named two of his own appointees, by name, in the colonnade on Friday morning. The most public single argument between a Chief Justice and a President since the New Deal is now under way.
The President stepped to the Rose Garden lectern at 11:02 Eastern, delivered a seventeen-minute statement, signed the first sanctions-relief executive order of the second term, and named “Phase Two” on Russia and Ukraine. Witkoff to Geneva Sunday. Umerov in Geneva Monday. Lavrov invited, has not responded.
The Secretary of State formally declared Operation Epic Fury terminated and used the Riyadh ministerial to deliver the toughest Iraq message a United States Cabinet officer has read into a Gulf summit since 2007. Treasury sanctions posted to the OFAC SDN list at 14:24 Riyadh time. Three-hour bilateral with al-Sudani at the Ritz-Carlton.
The President’s Wednesday letter tells the House the May the first deadline “does not apply” because the operations have themselves “terminated.” Senator Tim Kaine tells Foreign Relations the position “does not survive contact with the text of the War Powers Resolution.” House Democrats split out the ballroom-security line for a separate floor vote.
The first Republican map of the post-Callais project dismembers Steve Cohen’s Memphis district and folds majority-Black voters into four surrounding GOP-held seats. The Friday floor vote will trigger a Sixth Circuit filing within ninety minutes of the governor’s signature.
The twenty-two-point Brown margin is the largest contested Ohio Democratic Senate primary margin since 1994. Amy Acton takes the gubernatorial primary on a fourteen-point closing margin. Cook re-rates the Acton-Ramaswamy general to a Tier-1 toss-up. The DSCC and DGA agree to a coordinated $94 million Columbus-based field operation.
The FBI’s Tuesday seizure of Fulton County voting-machine memory cards and audit logs draws a 10am Friday hearing before Chief Judge Boulee. The Georgia Secretary of State’s lawyers file a sealed TRO motion at 4pm. A joint letter signed by chief election officers from twenty-four states — four Republican, twenty Democratic — lands in the AG’s in-tray.
FBI’s Atlanta field office took custody of forty-eight Dominion ImageCast tabulators, three backup tape sets and eight years of tabulation logs. Raffensperger learned from WSB-TV. Speaker Burns filed a TRO motion. Hearing Friday before Chief Judge Steve C. Jones.
Tom Suozzi’s Wednesday-evening signature took the Khanna petition to 211 of 218. The Doha page has made the legislative architecture of Project Freedom substantively moot. Republican calculation: positioning, not substance.
Five of seven December dissenters lose their primaries to Trump-endorsed challengers. The Indiana State Senate now has the margin to pass the redistricting bill it killed in December — by Memorial Day.
The NYT polling average reads 38–58 for a net of minus twenty — the President’s weakest in that series. The Speaker’s internal seat-loss universe now reads 18 to 28 — well above the four-seat margin.
The Senate cloture math on the seventh war-powers resolution tightens. Three Republicans publicly committed; two further private targets in reach. The President’s pause has made cloture cheaper, not harder.
Three Trump-backed challengers won (Dernulc, Buck, Walker); four redistricting-no incumbents survived (Rogers, Deery, Goode, Holdman). The 50.4 per cent hit-rate is above the Reagan-1986 baseline and well below Trump-2018. The Massie test in Kentucky on May 19 is now the cleanest read.
Bacon and Davis added their names overnight. Murkowski’s AUMF defines Project Freedom as a sustained operation that triggers the Section 5(b) clock from March 2 and requires authorisation by July 1. Schumer’s seventh war-powers cloture is on the floor Tuesday May 12.
The Defence Secretary’s 38-minute Pentagon briefing: Project Freedom is a temporary, escort-and-mine-clearance mission, separate from the April 8 truce. Iran fired 15 missiles at the UAE; THAAD intercepted 11; one struck Fujairah. The USS Stockdale and USS Cape St George destroyed six Peykaap-class IRGC-N boats. Schumer files a seventh war-powers resolution Thursday, cloture May 12.
Polls close 6pm ET. Seven incumbents on tonight’s ballot face primary challengers personally endorsed by the President. National-group spending against the seven has reached $9.1 million in the closing six weeks. The Hoosier party expects to lose at least three.
Polls close at 6pm ET. Trump-aligned national groups have spent roughly $9 million targeting seven incumbents who joined Democrats to defeat the President’s mid-decade redistricting demand in December. The night will read across four other state Senate conferences.
Cloture on S.J.Res. 71 fell 50–49 at 5:18pm Tuesday with Murkowski crossing as the first Republican of the war to vote to terminate hostilities. Vance broke the tied vote. Trump posted “MEANINGLESS — war is OVER” at 5:31pm. Khanna’s House discharge petition added two further Republican signatures by 6:42pm; the count stood at 200 of 218 at 7pm.
The Washington Post–ABC News–Ipsos poll lands May 5: 37 approve, 62 disapprove. Cost-of-living disapproval 76%. Inflation disapproval 72%. Iran-war disapproval 58%. Republican-leaning independents collapse to 56% approve, a new low. RNC’s spring presentation projects this number forward to a net Senate loss of three to five seats. White House political shop has stopped dismissing the polling.
Schumer scheduled a 4:30pm cloture vote on S.J.Res. 71, the first since Trump’s Friday letter declaring hostilities “terminated.” Blumenthal told the floor at 11:18am there is “no pause button in the Constitution.” Three Republicans — Paul, Lee, Murkowski — on the flip list. Vote will not pass cloture. Vote will set the constitutional table for the year. Litigation in DDC moves to a Friday status conference. House discharge petition at 198 of 218.
Polls open 6am Eastern, close 6pm. The Mason-Dixon poll has Trump-endorsed challengers leading in four of seven contested seats, trailing in two, within margin in one. Senate majority leader Rodric Bray is the marquee race. The Indianapolis Star calls District 24 “the single contest that will decide whether the Republican party of Indiana is still recognisable.”
Alito’s 4:08pm administrative stay halts the Fifth Circuit’s mifepristone mail-and-pharmacy ban hours before it was due to bite. The full Supreme Court will rule on the substantive emergency application by 9:30am Eastern Monday, May 11. The President’s 4:42pm Truth Social post calls the underlying question “a matter for the states.”
Trump tells the Oval Office press pool the German drawdown is just the start, with Italy and Spain under review. Senate Armed Services chairmen Wicker and Risch issue a joint “extremely concerning” statement. NATO Secretary General books a Tuesday Brussels NAC meeting with no agreed agenda.
The fifty-three-page complaint filed at 8:01am Friday by twenty-six House members and eight senators is on Judge Christopher Cooper’s docket at 10:00am. The President posted at 4:14am that “Judge Cooper is a Disgrace.” The Justice Department’s thirty-eight-page opposition rests on Raines v. Byrd, the political-question doctrine, and the May 1 letter. Cooper does not have to make the political branches do anything. He has to read the brief.
Schumer’s 487-word resolution names the Hormuz blockade as “hostilities for purposes of Section 4(a)(1).” The motion-to-proceed count sits between 47 and 51. Lisa Murkowski says she will read Cooper’s ruling first. Wicker delivers the Republican floor speech at 4:14pm and quotes his own 2019 Yemen vote. The chairman of Armed Services who quotes himself is, in Democratic floor staff’s reading, on a different timetable than the President.
The Coast Guard’s pay-and-allowances account exhausts its remaining transfer authority at close of business today, the 75th day of the partial DHS shutdown. Three hundred million dollars of unpaid utility and supplier bills, water shut off at Port Huron and Channel Islands, gas disconnected at Barbers Point, and an Operations memo war-gaming a managed stand-down from day eleven of pay disruption.
Hegseth told Senate Armed Services at 10:08am Thursday that the April 8 ceasefire “pauses or stops” the 60-day War Powers clock. Kaine: “the statute does not support that.” Friday midnight deadline still holds. The Schumer count for the fifth war powers vote on Tuesday gets to 49 and stops.
Trump’s late-Wednesday Truth Social post said the US is “studying and reviewing” troop reductions in Germany. The Pentagon said no order has arrived. Berlin called the threat “not a surprise but a strategic mistake.” NATO’s Secretary General lands in Washington Tuesday with three sets of remarks. The President is reported to have drafted the post in the residence after a Bret Baier segment.
The Khanna privileged resolution lands on the floor at 6:45pm Thursday. Three Republican yes votes are public. Ten more are privately wobbling. The 60-day War Powers clock expires at 23:59 Friday regardless. This is the last action Congress will take before the deadline.
A 12:48pm email from the Personnel Office removed every member of the NSF’s policy and oversight Board. Acting Chair Daniel Reed read it out mid-briefing. A draft TRO complaint was filed with DC District Court within ninety minutes. Judge Beryl Howell hears it at 10:30 Friday.
FL-9, FL-14, FL-22, FL-23, FL-24 redrawn. Cook puts the partisan lean at Trump +3 to Trump +14 across the five. None of Florida’s four Black congressional incumbents has a district to file in by May 13. The White House political shop has Texas, Georgia and Tennessee on standby. Cook ceiling fourteen seats; the West Wing’s working number is twelve.
Alito writes for Roberts, Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett. Sotomayor reads from the bench, Kagan and Jackson join. Section 2 stands; the race-conscious remedy does not. Filing deadlines still open in fourteen states. Cook’s preliminary count puts the universe of seats “in play” at seven-to-eleven. Speaker Johnson’s memo at 11:42am uses the phrase “meaningful tailwind” three times.
The vote was 215-213. Eighteen Republicans defected including Massie, Roy, Burchett and Greene; six Democrats crossed. Wyden, Lee, and Paul placed a Senate hold inside twelve minutes. The ten-day stop-gap signed April 19 expires midnight Friday.
Ninety-eight minutes of argument Wednesday. Roberts opened on the September 6 Haitian deadline. Kavanaugh asked Sauer to point to the supporting statute. Sauer paused. Barrett asked the relief question and went silent. The immigration bar reads it as a 6–3 narrow APA remand by end of June.
Alito wrote it; Roberts, Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett joined. Section 2’s race-conscious remedies are now held to violate Equal Protection. Brennan Center counts thirty-one districts in fifteen states exposed; Cook revises its 2026 House baseline by seven seats toward Republicans within ninety minutes.
Two-count indictment in Raleigh. Maximum 10 years per count. Grand jury vote 20-3. The acting US Attorney’s signature is alone on the charging instrument. Comey: “I’m still innocent. I’m still not afraid. Let’s go.”
46-51 against discharging the resolution from Foreign Relations Committee Wednesday morning. Paul lone GOP yes, Fetterman lone Democrat no. Susan Collins flipped from her fourth-resolution yes to a fifth-resolution no, citing the King’s address. The parliamentarian rules Friday on whether the 60-day clock expires May 1 or May 4. The Speaker has cancelled the House appropriations markup the Pentagon needs by May 9.
Rubio went on Fox News at 3:32pm with the line: “Iranians don’t decide who uses an international waterway.” Ninety minutes later the IRGC Navy issued a Telegram statement contradicting Araghchi’s coordinated-corridor framing. The 11am NSC meeting broke without a decision. Brent settled $107.41. The market is no longer pricing the resolution; it is pricing how the resolution fails.
Allen survived Saturday; reporting he was killed at the scene was wrong. Forty-eight-page complaint, lead count attempted assassination of the President, life max. Family-group manifesto in FBI possession, names Hegseth and Vance. Detention hearing April 30. The “lone wolf” framing has to settle by Thursday.
Bondi’s 14-page memo, signed April 21 and released April 24 after she was fired. Garland’s 2021 moratorium lifted. Pentobarbital returns. Bowers, Roof and Tsarnaev are the named cases. ACLU, Constitution Project and Becket Fund file Eighth Amendment challenges in EDVA by Friday. Zeldin Senate confirmation May 18 now turns on whether he keeps the memo in force.
Trump, the First Lady, the VP and most of the Cabinet evacuated from the Hilton at 9:48pm Saturday after Cole Tomas Allen, 31, of Torrance, charged the south service entrance with a shotgun, handgun and knives. CAT officer took a round to the chest plate; saved by his vest. Allen killed in the exchange. Truth Social calls him a “lone wolf” by 11:48pm. WHCD canceled. FBI domestic-terrorism investigation opened. Patel personally directing.
Section 5(b) clock dispute: April 28 (strike date) vs. May 1 (Joint Resolution deposit). Parliamentarian MacDonough rules Monday afternoon. OLC’s third memo argues the blockade is not “hostilities.” Paul, Lee and Murkowski still privately committed to break with the President. Saturday-night Hilton attack reorders the politics. ACLU litigation set to follow either path. Schumer needs 51 with no margin.
S.Con.Res.33 adopted 50–48 at 3:30am after a six-hour vote-a-rama. Paul and Murkowski only Republican defectors. Forty-seven Democratic amendments fell on tabling motions. Judiciary and HSGAC each authorised to draft $70bn in ICE and CBP funding via reconciliation — three years of enforcement spending with no 60-vote filibuster threshold. Murkowski already signalling she will block the actual bill. Mark-ups scheduled for week of May 11.
Phelan was removed Tuesday evening “effective immediately” after 13 months, hours before Trump ordered the Navy to “shoot and kill” Iranian mine layers in Hormuz. Undersecretary Hung Cao is acting. Reed calls it “a breach of every working norm”; Wicker calls it “extraordinarily ill-timed.” Third senior civilian departure in ten days: Bondi, Chavez-DeRemer, Phelan.
Judge Jack Hurley blocked certification Wednesday morning on two grounds: lawmakers skipped a required second reading; the ballot language was “flagrantly misleading.” AG Miyares filed an appeal within the hour. Chief Justice Goodwyn is expected to set argument inside a week. The DCCC’s four-seat cushion is on hold.
Uthmeier announced criminal subpoenas on OpenAI at a Tallahassee press conference Tuesday. 200-plus AI messages entered into evidence in the Phoenix Ikner case, including “What time is it the busiest in the FSU student union?” minutes before he opened fire last April 17. Legal theory stacks reckless-harm and consumer-protection counts. OpenAI: “ChatGPT is not responsible for this terrible crime.” Motion to quash expected within 10 days. White House AI Action Framework pre-emption will be tested.
Yes led 51.4% to 48.6% with 97% reporting. Fairfax 71%, Loudoun 63%, Richmond 74%. Final margin projected 2.8–3.3 points — outside the 0.5-point recount trigger. The 10–1 map takes Kiggans’s VA-2, cracks McGuire’s VA-5 into three, and merges Wittman’s VA-1 into a 71% Black plurality seat. Cook moves the House to 217–204 toss-ups before Texas, California, New York finish redrawing.
Effective immediately, the seasonal flu vaccine is voluntary for all Active and Reserve Component service members and DoD civilians. The mandate dated to 1941. Uniformed medical leadership learned of the decision after it was signed. Seven additional standing vaccine requirements are flagged for voluntary-status review. Senate Armed Services ranking Democrat Jack Reed: “A readiness decision made by a press secretary.”
Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick faxed a one-line resignation letter to the Clerk of the House at 11:47am Tuesday, thirteen minutes before the Ethics Committee was due to open her sanctions hearing. Chairman Michael Guest told the waiting press the panel had “now lost jurisdiction on this matter.” She is the third House member to resign under threat of expulsion in seven days. FL-20 now heads to a June primary and September general.
Polls opened at 6am. Early voting hit 961,400 ballots, 28% above the 2021 benchmark. A yes vote converts a 6–5 Democratic edge into a 10–1 Democratic edge. Republicans have pre-filed a Supreme Court challenge for Wednesday 9am. With Texas, California and New York all redrawing, Virginia is the fourth state deciding the 120th Congress in a courtroom rather than on the stump.
The Justice Department concludes the 1978 PRA is unconstitutional on separation-of-powers grounds. Two NARA careerists have resigned rather than implement the guidance. Judge Amy Berman Jackson has drawn the AHA case. The country is three signatures away from presidents keeping and burning their own papers again.
The NRCC filing is a record. The major-donor class is committed. The voter numbers are pointing the other way. CNN has Trump at 35%, strong-Republican approval down nine points on the quarter. Cook widens the Democratic advantage by four seats. $193 million buys television. It does not buy a different set of fundamentals.
The White House framed it as a private-sector move. The IG complaint is worse than the leak suggested. At least four Labor officials were already pushed out as the probe progressed. Deputy Keith Sonderling — already running the building — takes over as acting. The Senate HELP Committee now has a vehicle for three days of floor oversight right in the middle of the Iran war powers fight.
Patel’s Florida complaint names author Sarah Fitzpatrick, editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg and parent Emerson Collective. The Atlantic’s response — thirty-seven words, no hedge — guarantees the story will now be litigated for years. The actual malice standard is brutal. The magazine’s sources are willing to be deposed. Patel’s problem is bigger than the retraction he wants.
Section 5(b) of the WPR forces withdrawal at 60 days. April 28 is nine days away. Paul and Lee are public. A third Republican is private. The OLC is arguing a naval blockade is not a hostility — a defence, not a confidence. Islamabad has three days to produce a ceasefire or the war becomes a constitutional crisis.
Emerson College’s first post-Swalwell California gubernatorial poll shows Xavier Becerra climbing from 3% to 19% among Democrats in three weeks. Republican Steve Hilton leads the overall field at 17%. With 23% undecided and a four-way Democratic split, the state is staring at a Hilton-Bianco run-off unless the Democratic field consolidates by August.
The White House has directed the FBI and the National Nuclear Security Administration to look across eleven separate cases of US scientists and officials with classified access who have died or vanished since mid-2023. Former FBI CI chiefs say the “link analysis” is the tell: it is what you do when case-by-case has stopped explaining the pattern.
The first successful discharge petition over a sitting Speaker since Paul Ryan in 2015. Ten Republicans crossed the aisle, including Salazar, Giménez, Malliotakis and Lawler — the exact moderates the GOP needs to hold the House. Johnson has already stripped Fitzpatrick of a subcommittee gavel. The internal Republican fight is the real damage.
The House Ethics sanctions hearing is Tuesday. Twenty-five counts proven. Five million dollars of FEMA funds routed through the family business to her campaign. Johnson wants two-thirds. Jeffries has not decided whether to whip. The first Democrat expulsion in 24 years is in play.
CNN/SSRS puts Trump at 35%, one point off his all-time low. Iran approval at 33%, economy at 31%. Quinnipiac has him at 38 to 55. Strong Republican approval has collapsed from 52% in January to 43%. Inflation approval is at 27%, down from 44% a year ago. The base is finally breaking.
Cardinal Tobin of Newark accuses Trump of “troubling lack of respect for the faith of millions.” Bishop Barron, a White House Religious Liberty Commissioner, calls the Pope attacks “entirely inappropriate.” The 2024 Catholic coalition, Trump’s most important demographic win, is openly fracturing in real time.
Trump has offered the FEMA administrator job to the same Navy SEAL Kristi Noem fired in May 2025 for telling Congress the agency should be preserved. Mullin wants him confirmed before June 1 and hurricane season. The Senate will wave him through. The 2025 FEMA-abolition experiment is over.
Mejia — Center for Popular Democracy co-executive director and Sanders’s 2020 national political director — defeated Republican Joe Hathaway by twenty points in a suburban New Jersey district Mikie Sherrill won on a centrist brand. The first federal election of the Trump second term and the most explicit progressive special-election win of the cycle.
CAPE goes live at 0800 ET on April 20. More than 300,000 importers, 53 million entries, up to $175 billion at stake. Treasury is contesting interest, pass-through and statute-of-limitations — a legal and political fight that will run for the whole midterm cycle.
In the dead of night the House passed a ten-day stop-gap extension of Section 702 by unanimous consent at 2:09am, after GOP leadership watched its own five-year renewal tank, then its own eighteen-month renewal — the one Trump personally demanded — tank. The bill buys until April 30 and nothing else.
Ten Republicans and one independent joined a unified Democratic caucus to pass a three-year TPS extension for Haitians already in the US. The bill reached the floor only because of a bipartisan discharge petition — the rarest successful legislative manoeuvre in the modern House. Trump has promised to veto.
The 24-year ICE veteran who ran the agency through the most aggressive deportation tempo in its history is leaving for the private sector. DHS Secretary Mullin gave no reason. Lyons has been fighting headquarters centralisation, dodging a House Oversight subpoena, and watching his operational runway shrink in federal court.
Four Republicans broke ranks. One Democrat crossed the other way. The resolution lost by one. Johnson held the conference together by the narrowest possible margin, and he did it by exhausting every tool a Speaker has. The 28 April supplemental vote is currently whipped at 216–216.
The first Iranian-American Democrat elected to Congress has filed the articles. Eight Democratic co-sponsors have signed on. No member of the leadership has. The resolution will not pass. It is designed to ensure the Iran war cannot be conducted outside public view.
Kennedy spent three hours doing exactly what his advisors signalled: refusing to engage on vaccines. He led with drug prices and dietary guidelines. Democrats led with his CDC messaging shutdown. He did not answer the question that mattered.
The Commission of Fine Arts — packed with Trump appointees last October after he fired every previous member — voted Thursday to advance a 250-foot Arc de Triomphe imitation on Columbia Island. The Public Citizen lawsuit is still live. May 5 injunction hearing looms.
The fourth 47–52 vote of 2026 tells a story worth taking seriously. The Senate has effectively settled, along party lines bar Rand Paul, that the executive branch’s Article II claim is the law of the land. It is a genuine institutional shift, happening almost silently.
The bill will not pass. Every Democrat on the filing list knows this. What the filing actually does is move a taboo. A meaningful slice of the caucus has concluded that the political cost of silence now exceeds the political cost of being called out as partisan.
The Trump administration is signalling fresh optimism on a framework deal as Pakistan’s army chief shuttles between capitals carrying messages exchanged since Vance walked out of Islamabad empty-handed. The Senate war powers vote is loaded. The IMF downgrade is coming. If Islamabad fails again, the domestic pressure becomes unmanageable.
The USCCB filed in the Southern District of New York on Monday, calling the executive order “immoral” in plain terms in paragraph 14. The bishops joining in their corporate capacity institutionalises the Catholic breach Trump opened on Friday.
The CEA’s annual set-piece landed the same morning the Hormuz blockade went live. Nowhere in the report does the word “Hormuz” appear. The gap between the world the report describes and the world it was published into is comically wide.
Trump’s 11:47pm attack on the first American pope opens a breach with Rome no sitting president has dared in modern history. Marist polling shows his weekly-mass Catholic support has already collapsed seventeen points in ten weeks.
Two sitting members of Congress announced resignations 55 minutes apart on Monday night, dropping the working Republican majority to four on the eve of a war-powers vote Johnson cannot afford to lose.
Bondi was a no-show for her scheduled House Oversight deposition hours before Trump fired her. House Democrats used the chaos to formally introduce a 25th Amendment resolution demanding the Cabinet declare the President unfit.
Merkley, Gillibrand, Van Hollen, Kelly, Warnock and Kim join the war powers push. Combined with the existing Kaine–Schiff resolution, this is the largest congressional effort to constrain the president’s war-making authority since the conflict began.
Trump quietly removed an AI-generated Truth Social image showing himself in Christ-like robes healing a sick man after evangelical and Catholic allies called it blasphemous. The post came minutes after he attacked Pope Leo XIV. Trump claimed it depicted him “as a doctor.”
The Swalwell sexual assault scandal has expanded into a bipartisan push to expel multiple members. Republicans and Democrats are targeting Swalwell, Tony Gonzales and potentially two more lawmakers in an unprecedented mass purge that could reshape House margins.
JD Vance left Pakistan Sunday without an agreement after 21 hours of marathon talks. The White House now faces Congressional war powers votes, an IMF downgrade, and the political fallout of a naval blockade.
Rep. Eric Swalwell’s California governor bid collapsed Friday after Hakeem Jeffries and the top three House Democrats demanded he withdraw immediately. His campaign chair quit, major unions suspended support, and rival candidates are circling.
When the Senate gavels back in on Tuesday, Schumer will invoke privileged-motion provisions to force a floor vote on a bipartisan war powers resolution. Kaine–Paul is the vehicle. Four Republicans are already wavering. If Islamabad produces no deal by Monday night, this becomes the first real congressional check on the war.
A bipartisan bill is moving in the House and Senate to impose insider-trading rules on prediction markets. The FBI has reportedly opened a preliminary inquiry into a single account that cleared half a million dollars in the hours before the US struck Iran. The White House has told staff not to trade.
Speaker Pro Tempore Chris Smith gavelled down a Democratic attempt to force a vote on an Iran war powers resolution, refusing even to let a member speak. More than three dozen Democrats have now called for Trump’s removal. Senate Democrats will force their own vote next week.
Clay Fuller held the deep-red district by 12 points — a 25-point swing away from Trump’s 2024 margin. Combined with a Wisconsin Supreme Court liberal gain and a six-point CNN generic ballot lead for Democrats, both parties are now treating the 2026 House map as genuinely competitive.
A Washington Post–Schar School poll shows 52–47 support for the amendment, but early voting patterns favour GOP-leaning areas. The margin is razor-thin and the national stakes are enormous.
The Pentagon denies Iran shot down two C-130s and two Black Hawks, calling the footage “staged and fabricated.” Senate Democrats are demanding an emergency classified briefing from a Defence Secretary who claimed uncontested air superiority days before an F-15 was downed.
Senate Appropriations ranking Democrat Patty Murray has unloaded on Trump’s record defence request, pledging to strip the $350 billion reconciliation tranche. Republican defence hawks have closed ranks. The libertarian right is the new wildcard.
The largest military budget request in US history demands a 40% increase in defence spending while cutting non-defence programmes by 10%. With Republicans holding a four-seat House majority and the war never formally authorised by Congress, the political arithmetic is extremely tight.
Judge Burroughs freezes the Department of Education’s 21-day data grab, warning of “grave and irreversible constitutional harm.” The third court in six weeks to rule the administration’s paperwork is too sloppy to stand.
Democrats lead the generic ballot by six points — exactly matching the 2018 margin that produced a 41-seat wave. “Double haters” favour Democrats by 31 points. But both parties are historically unpopular, and 75% of Democratic voters are voting against Trump, not for the party.
The domestic side of Trump’s $1.5 trillion war budget: a 12.5% cut to HHS, $5 billion stripped from the NIH, and a MAHA-driven reorganisation of federal health policy. The Iran war gets a blank cheque. American healthcare research pays for it.
The DOJ has asked the DC Circuit for an emergency stay to override a judge’s halt on White House ballroom construction — as reporting reveals the project would obliterate a Cold War military bunker beneath the East Wing.
The chief privacy officer in the DOJ Civil Rights Division has resigned as the department prepares to share sensitive voter data with DHS via the SAVE system. Demands sent to 48 states. Three federal judges have rejected the programme. No privacy impact assessment conducted.
At 7:44pm ET tonight, the most dangerous ultimatum of the Trump presidency runs out. Iran has promised permanent closure and retaliation against every US energy asset in the Gulf.
A bomb at the Oslo embassy. A breach at Karachi. Gunfire in Toronto. The State Department has told every American on earth to watch their back.
Thirteen dead. 230 wounded. $200bn requested. And still no congressional authorisation and no exit plan.
A nine-person jury has found the world’s richest man liable for deliberately driving down Twitter’s stock price. The damages could reach $2.6 billion.
A federal judge has eviscerated the Defence Department’s attempt to control which journalists can cover the Pentagon. The ruling is a landmark for press freedom.
The President has given Iran two days to reopen the world’s most critical waterway. If it doesn’t, he says he’ll ‘obliterate’ their power plants.
TSA callouts have surged 50% in Houston. 366 officers have quit. And 100,000 federal workers haven’t been paid in over a month.
Trump’s national AI legislation framework promises child safety. What it actually delivers is liability protection for tech companies.
Judge Lamberth didn't mince words: the Trump administration's gutting of VOA was 'arbitrary and capricious.' Kari Lake's entire tenure has been thrown out.
The President's approval rating looks stable. Underneath the surface, the fault lines for November are already forming.
A former wrestler turned senator turned cabinet nominee barely survived his own confirmation hearing. Welcome to America...
The President says he’s considering ending the war. His generals are deploying more Marines. Someone is lying....
A staggering spending request for a war that was supposed to be quick and decisive. The fiscal hawks have gone silent.
Trump's intelligence chiefs told Congress they don't take Putin at his word. Someone should tell the White House.
The White House wants to stop states regulating AI. The question is who that really benefits.
What took Modi ten years, Trump achieved in one. The data on American democratic backsliding is now undeniable.