US president makes positive posts as Ukraine seeks more firepower and Israeli PM seeks to repair relationship

Donald Trump hosted back-to-back White House meetings with Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday, as Ukraine seeks more firepower for its air defenses and the Israeli prime minister tries to repair his strained relationship with the US president.

Trump described both meetings in positive terms on social media Tuesday evening, remaining vague about what was discussed.

Whether in favor of or against the US-Israel war on Iran, people across the country are left holding the bill and wondering on its purpose

Five months after the United States and Israel started a historically unpopular war against Iran that was going to supposedly last weeks, the fighting has refused to resolve in victory, defeat or peace. Iran’s supreme leader had been killed in the opening strikes, ceasefires broke down, and the strait of Hormuz has been closed and reopened.

For voters interviewed across the country, while the damage may be distant, the residual effects have shown up at the pump, on the grocery bill and in a phone call telling a spouse they have a day to report for deployment. And for a country still absorbing the aftermath of Israel’s war on Gaza – funded to the tune of billions of dollars by the United States – the war in Iran lands on top of an already raw argument about what American power is for.

Abdul El-Sayed may be buoyed by a younger, anti-establishment coalition as he runs against an establishment candidate

Abdul El-Sayed spends a fair amount of his day not taking himself so seriously. He jokes about his haircut, films selfie videos with supporters and has taken – more than once – to cringey dancing and lip-syncing on camera.

But ask him after a long day on the campaign trail to explain the difference between a virus and a bacterium, and the epidemiologist takes over from the entertainer.

President mocks political opponents and journalists in mostly light-hearted, hour-long speech at White House correspondents’ dinner

Donald Trump joked around with the room of journalists who he again accused of producing “fake news” as he hurled insults at his political enemies in a speech at the White House correspondents’ dinner.

A day after the Trump administration abandoned, for now, an extraordinary bid to subpoena reporters over their coverage, the US president attended the rescheduled White House correspondents’ dinner – an annual celebration of press freedom – in Washington on Friday evening.

Dozens of demonstrators chant ‘get ICE out!’ and call out Republican senator Susan Collins for her complicity in voting to support ICE without any reforms

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The Democrat’s outgoing senator for Michigan Gary Peters has endorsed member of Congress Haley Stevens to be his successor over Abdul El-Sayed in the state’s neck-and-neck primary race set for 4 August.

“She has demonstrated to me time and time again that she’s a fighter,” Peters told the Detroit News. “We need workhorses in the Senate, and we need someone who can do that job from day one. This is not a place for on-the-job training.”

President’s dismemberment of Election Assistance Commission called a ‘brazen attempt’ to control elections

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Donald Trump has been accused of trying to “rig” the upcoming US midterm elections after he fired the last three members of an independent federal commission.

Trump’s extraordinary move to paralyze the US Election Assistance Commission (EAC) wipes out the only federal agency devoted solely to election administration months before the US midterm elections.

Platner’s former backers are seeking ‘real progressive’ to prevent nomination going to establishment Democrat

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Progressive groups and lawmakers who rallied behind Graham Platner’s insurgent bid for a US Senate seat are now racing to decide where to transfer their support after his withdrawal from the Maine race following yet another allegation of sexual assault.

The scramble and apparent heartbreak underscores the uncertainty facing the coalition surrounding Platner’s anti-establishment message, and the response from more centrist Democrats to proceed with caution. Organizations, voters, volunteers and elected officials that once saw him as a vehicle for a more populist progressive agenda are now weighing whether to unite behind a successor, or hold back until the party’s replacement process plays out.

Sanders, one of Platner’s earliest and most influential backers, is latest to call on him to withdraw from Maine race

The progressive senator Bernie Sanders called on Graham Platner to withdraw from the US Senate race in Maine, citing “very serious allegations” of sexual assault, hours before the embattled nominee faced another claim of sexual misconduct.

While Platner has denied the new allegations, reported by Politico, and later by the Washington Post, the initial report prompted a wave of prominent Democrats to urge him to stand aside as the party’s nominee in the consequential Senate contest.

Elizabeth Warren and colleagues demand tighter rules on political figures’ crypto dealings, citing disclosures of large-scale Trump family profits

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Donald Trump has again been accused of “brazen crypto corruption” after financial disclosures revealed his family’s cryptocurrency ventures generated more than $1bn in his first year back in the White House.

A 927-page disclosure, released on Tuesday by the US Office of Government Ethics, showed that the US president had been paid more than $2.2bn last year in total, from real estate, golf resorts, branded merchandise, licensing deals and court settlements.

In blistering dissent, Sonia Sotomayor writes ‘the court gives the president a power unknown even to the English crown’

• Key cases today: Trump can fire federal regulators; Lisa Cook firing unconstitutional; bid to appeal $5m E Jean Carroll verdict; mail-in ballots arriving after election day

The supreme court is due to release some of its final opinions at 10am ET, with major decisions including on Donald Trump’s effort to end birthright citizenship and to fire Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook still to come.

Last week the court handed the Trump administration huge wins in major rulings on immigration. It gave the administration a green light to block asylum seekers at the US-Mexico border, in a decision that fundamentally reshapes the US asylum system. And it also ruled in favor of the administration’s bid to strip temporary protected status from hundreds of thousands of Haitians and Syrians, who were legally in the US and protected from deportation. The decisions, powered by court’s conservative justices, saw the supreme court accused of advancing a white supremacist agenda.

US officials have revealed a preliminary memorandum of understanding between Washington and Tehran to end the costly 110-day conflict

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Senior US officials have revealed the contents of a preliminary memorandum of understanding (MOU) between Washington and Tehran to end the 110-day conflict which has cost thousands of lives and devastated the world economy.

The officials dictated the MOU to journalists on Wednesday, before it was signed by Donald Trump and Iranian counterpart Masoud Pezeshkian. Both sides have 60 days to negotiate the terms before a final agreement.

This blog is now closed – see our full report on the latest in the Middle East crisis

Trump also addressed media reports of a leaked US-Iran deal (see post at 11:57), denying claims it includes a $300bn reconstruction fund for Tehran.

“We’re not putting up 10 cents,” he said. “We are not investing and we do not have a fund.”

It’s not final. It’s a memorandum of understanding, and if I don’t like it, we’ll go back to shooting at them, dropping bombs on their head.

If I don’t like it, if they don’t behave, we’ll go right back to dropping bombs right smack in the middle of their head, okay, because they’ve misbehaved for 47 years.”

Congressman Jamie Raskin alleges FBI director authorized substantial recurring payments to agents in his inner circle

Kash Patel, the FBI director, has been accused of directing more than $1m in taxpayer-funded bonus payments to a small circle of loyalist agents as part of a “personal slush fund” that may have violated federal law.

Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the ranking member of the House of Representatives judiciary committee, alleged Patel had authorized substantial recurring payments to agents in his inner circle and security detail.

Former secretary of state says the winner of a genuine Democratic primary ‘would have beaten Donald Trump’

Joe Biden’s decision to seek a second term was “a terrible mistake” that cost Democrats the presidency and may have permanently damaged his legacy, Hillary Clinton has declared.

Speaking at the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan on Monday, the former US secretary of state and 2016 Democratic nominee said Biden had reneged on a prior commitment to step aside – and that the betrayal of that promise proved catastrophic. “He made a terrible mistake for himself, his legacy, and for the country,” she said.

Some fighters will receive bonuses in ‘stablecoins’ issued by Trump family business World Liberty Financial

The Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) announced on Friday that it will pay bonuses to fighters in a form of cryptocurrency issued by Trump family business World Liberty Financial at the heavily publicized White House mixed martial arts event on Sunday.

The development connects the Trump family’s financial interests to the high-profile UFC competition being promoted on government property. The competition on the south White House lawn is scheduled for 14 June, Donald Trump’s birthday.

Sean Strickland claims he was not cleared to attend the UFC event because he ‘made fun of Israel and Epstein’

The only current men’s US UFC champion says he has been barred from Sunday’s fight card on the south lawn of the White House because he dared to criticize Donald Trump, Israel and Jeffrey Epstein.

On Tuesday night, middleweight champion Sean Strickland wrote on X that he had been informed by the Ultimate Fighting Championship that he had not been cleared to attend the event by the White House.

Trump, still negotiating to conclude the war, claims it’s already over. Some Republican lawmakers have had enough

Donald Trump has two things to say about his war with Iran. The first is that it’s already over. And second, a symbolic congressional vote to end it – carried by four members of his own party – is a stab in the back that could derail the peace talks he’s conducting for the war that’s already over.

By a 215-208 margin on Wednesday, the US House of Representatives voted to direct the president to withdraw US forces from hostilities with Iran, the first time either chamber has passed such a measure in the little over three months since Operation Epic Fury began on 28 February. By Thursday morning, Trump was on Truth Social calling the vote “unpatriotic” and blaming it on “Trump Derangement Syndrome”.

Defense secretary’s latest interposition resulted in all-male, overwhelmingly white picks for promotion to admiralty

The US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, stripped nine navy officers including women and Black service members from a promotion list last month, according to a person familiar with the matter, resulting in an all-male, overwhelmingly white slate of 22 advancing as nominees to become one-star admirals.

Hegseth’s unusual intervention violated promotion rules designed to be merit-based and apolitical, the New York Times said on Tuesday, and extended the Trump administration’s push to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in the military.

Secretary of state appears before Congress and repeats Trump administration’s claims that a deal is within reach

Iran has agreed to negotiate aspects of its nuclear program that it had refused to discuss even a month ago, the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, has claimed, even as Tehran announced it was halting peace talks and moving to fully close the strait of Hormuz.

Appearing before the Senate foreign relations committee for the first time since the Trump administration launched the war against Iran – which was pitched as a short, weeks-long war, in February – Rubio repeated the Trump administration’s claims that a deal was within reach.

Jerusalem embassy told to issue protest to Palestinian Authority leaders, warning ‘consequences will follow’ if they do not comply

The US has ordered its Jerusalem embassy to press the Palestinian leadership into dropping a bid for a senior position at the UN general assembly, anxious that the role could allow Palestinians to chair high-profile debates on the Middle East.

A 19 May state department cable seen by the Guardian instructed the US embassy in Jerusalem to issue a demarche (a formal protest) to the leaders of the Palestinian Authority. It put pressure on them to withdraw the bid for a role as vice-president of the general assembly by 22 May, warning that “consequences will follow” if they failed to comply.