President said nine months at sea ‘not nearly long enough’ even as families call for attention to mental health crisis

Donald Trump has downplayed concerns about US sailors enduring a record-setting deployment of nearly nine months onboard the USS Abraham Lincoln on Friday, saying the deployment was “not nearly long enough” as concerns mount over mental health and supply issues onboard the aircraft carrier.

The US president made the comments during a brief exchange with reporters before flying to New York for an event highlighting falling violent crime rates across the US.

Defense secretary said conditions on aircraft carrier deployed in support of Iran war have been ‘completely misrepresented’

The US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, insisted a wave of reports describing deteriorating conditions and mental health struggles onboard the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln “completely misrepresented” the situation, pushing back against growing congressional pressure over the ship’s record-breaking, nearly nine-month deployment.

“We make sure every ship, every crew, every captain has everything we can provide them at every single moment,” Hegseth told reporters during a visit to Panama, adding that “some deployments are longer than others” and praising sailors enduring “high seas” and “austere conditions with less port calls”.

Suit alleges subscription offer aims to sell privileged access to information generated in president’s official capacity

Donald Trump has been sued after a subscription service charging up to $100,000 a month for early access to his posts on his Truth Social platform sparked allegations of corruption.

The lawsuit, filed in the US district court for the southern district of New York, was brought by the Intercept and the Freedom of the Press Foundation against Trump, two of his aides and the executive office of the president.

Journalists and others were allowed to fly on presidential jet despite security threat while Trump was spirited away

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Democrats called on Tuesday for a congressional briefing over a stunning charade in which Donald Trump was secretly spirited to a different plane from the one the public and press believed he was travelling on. Critics now question why reporters and the public had been deliberately misled.

When US intelligence allegedly found a credible threat that Iran plotted to kill him last month, Trump left Air Force One in a catering truck, an episode first reported by the Washington Post and also by the New York Times. While the president was reportedly snuck out the side door of the plane, more than a hundred aides, officials and reporters were kept onboard to fly towards Britain, without being told there was a threat to their lives.

Loyalist sworn in after Senate voted narrowly in favor of his confirmation on Saturday morning

Todd Blanche has been sworn as US attorney general, cementing Donald Trump’s installation of his former personal attorney in charge of the Department of Justice.

Blanche, who has been serving as acting attorney general since April, was confirmed in his new position during a ceremony at the White House on Monday. The 52-year-old is the second Senate-confirmed attorney general of Trump’s second term, after Pam Bondi, who was ousted earlier this year.

President and RFK Jr, the health secretary, repeatedly referred to autism during signing, though studies show no link between it and vaccines

Donald Trump has signed an executive order with plans for sweeping changes to the childhood vaccination schedule that attempts to override the authority of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

It is an attempt to undergird the changes made earlier this year to CDC vaccination recommendations, which were halted by a federal judge. The CDC is the federal agency tasked with recommending vaccines, not the White House.

US president on Truth Social concedes contractor had cut some corners to finish $14m renovation project by deadline

Donald Trump has conceded his own administration’s renovation of the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool was rushed and shoddy, while insisting that alleged vandals were to blame for damage to the Washington landmark.

In a post on his Truth Social platform, the US president said the pool’s contractor had cut some corners to finish the $14m repainting project in time for a 4 July opening. “As with many jobs, there was also some contractor error done by rushing the job,” he wrote on Sunday, claiming the resulting damage from this was confined to “a very small area” and “relatively inconsequential”.

Progressive candidate will face Republican Mike Rogers in race to represent midwestern purple state in the Senate

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Abdul El-Sayed won the Democratic primary for US Senate in Michigan, becoming the latest leftwing candidate to capture the party’s nomination ahead of November’s midterm elections.

El-Sayed, a progressive, beat Haley Stevens, a moderate US representative backed by the party’s establishment. He will now face Republican Mike Rogers in the race to represent the midwestern purple state in the Senate. The Associated Press called the race on Wednesday morning, moments after Stevens’s campaign said she had called El-Sayed to concede.

Abdul El-Sayed and his opponent Haley Stevens were both optimistic late in the evening, and said the results of the state’s Democratic primary might take until Wednesday morning to arrive

The marquee race for the Democratic nomination for Senate in Michigan remained too close to call on Tuesday night, with Abdul El-Sayed, a progressive former public health official, holding a narrow lead over Congresswoman Haley Stevens.

The battleground state is crucial to the party’s hopes of winning back control of the Senate in November’s midterm elections. The winner of Tuesday’s Democratic primary will face the Republican nominee, former representative Mike Rogers, in November, to succeed the retiring Democratic senator Gary Peters.

US president tells reporters during Camp David cabinet meeting technology ‘a hard thing to give away’

Donald Trump has backed off a promise to let Ukraine manufacture its own Patriot air defense interceptors, telling reporters that handing over the underlying technology was “a hard thing to give away” during a cabinet meeting at Camp David.

The retreat, billed by the White House as “something different” for the cabinet to experience together, was the first such meeting at the presidential compound of Trump’s second term.

Jamie Raskin targets football body’s proposed commercial sell-off and links to Trump administration

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Fifa could face a sweeping US congressional investigation into its expanding financial and political ties to Donald Trump and his family if Democrats reclaim the House of Representatives in November, a senior party figure has warned.

Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House judiciary committee, accused global football’s governing body of a “smash-and-grab scam of colossal proportions” after it proposed a multibillion-dollar privatization of its commercial operations.

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.