US defense secretary Pete Hegseth will face tough questions from lawmakers about the Iran war on Wednesday during his first testimony to Congress since the start of the conflict.

Hegseth’s appearance before the House Armed Services Committee – for a hearing on president Donald Trump’s $1.5tn defense budget request – comes with the war still unresolved and the economic fallout from it continuing around the globe.

Lawmakers from both parties have previously expressed dissatisfaction with the information provided in classified briefings on the war, setting up a potentially fiery public hearing in which top US military officer general Dan Caine is also set to testify, AFP reported.

“Finally, Secretary Hegseth will come before the House Armed Services Committee this week. It is time to answer for this war of choice,” Representative Maggie Goodlander, a Democratic member of the committee, said in a post on X.

US president Donald Trump has warned Iran that “they better get smart soon” and sign a non-nuclear deal, in his latest social media post.

Trump shared an image of himself, wearing sunglasses and carrying a gun, set against the backdrop of – presumably – Middle Eastern towns and villages being bombed, with the caption “No more Mr Nice Guy”.

He wrote:

Iran can’t get their act together. They don’t know how to sign a nonnuclear deal. They better get smart soon! President DJT

Britain’s King Charles and his wife Queen Camilla arrive in New York on Wednesday to commemorate victims of the 11 September terror attacks on the city.

The king and queen’s scheduled arrival in New York follows a packed day in Washington on Tuesday, when Charles delivered a speech to Congress, held private meetings with president Donald Trump amid tensions between the US and UK over the Iran war and sat down with leaders of the US tech industry, Reuters reported.

Charles and Camilla will begin their day in New York with a ceremony at the 9/11 memorial in lower Manhattan, where the twin towers of the World Trade Center were destroyed by al-Qaeda suicide bombers on 11 September, 2001. Charles is expected to meet with New York City’s mayor, Zohran Mamdani, at the ceremony.

The king will then head to Harlem to visit a grassroots community organization that created a sustainable after-school urban farming initiative in an effort to combat food insecurity, according to local media.

Meanwhile, Camilla will celebrate the 100th birthday of AA Milne’s fictional character Winnie the Pooh on behalf of her charity, The Queen’s Reading Room, which Buckingham Palace is calling a “literary engagement” event.

The supreme court will hear oral arguments on Wednesday over whether the Trump administration can strip the temporary protected status (TPS) of hundreds of thousands of Syrians and Haitians, under a program that has protected them from deportation due to safety concerns in their home countries.

People with TPS are given the permission to live and work in the US because the government has deemed their home countries to be unsafe due to war, political instability or natural disasters. In the past year, the Trump administration has attempted to cut the program for various countries, opening the door to the removal of hundreds of thousands of protected immigrants in the US.

Last year, the supreme court allowed the administration to strip TPS status for more than 300,000 Venezuelans under the court’s emergency docket. Now, the court will hear arguments challenging the Trump administration’s efforts to remove the same protections from Syrians and Haitians.

If the supreme court sides with the Trump administration in its effort to cut the program for Syrians and Haitians, analysts say the administration would likely seek to end the TPS program for all countries. Nearly 1.3 million people were TPS holders at the start of the second Trump administration.

The TPS program, established in 1990, does not offer a pathway to citizenship but allows citizens from designated countries to live and work in the US if they are unable to return safely to their home countries. TPS designations can be extended by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

Haitians have been protected from deportation under the TPS program since 2010 and Syrians have been protected since 2012. Earlier this month, the House passed legislation to extend the protection for Haitian immigrants under the TPS program for three years.

Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog.

Britain’s King Charles will use a trip to New York today to showcase cultural and economic ties between the UK and the US at a time when the so-called “special relationship” is under strain.

It is the third day of a four-day state visit, clouded by tensions over the Iran war, that began in Washington with president Donald Trump greeting the monarch and his wife, Queen Camilla, AFP reported.

The New York leg will first see the royals take part in a wreath-laying ceremony at the 9/11 memorial to mark 25 years since the terror attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people. The city’s mayor Zohran Mamdani is not expected to meet Charles privately but will join him for the ceremony.

“This atrocity was a defining moment for America and your pain and shock were felt around the whole world,” Charles told the US Congress on Tuesday.

“We stood with you then. And we stand with you now in solemn remembrance of a day that shall never be forgotten,” he added in a speech that called for unity among western powers.

It comes as Trump said Charles agrees with him that Iran should never be allowed nuclear weapons. The president’s comments are likely to cause some embarrassment to royal aides that his views have been made public.

Trump said in his speech at the white-tie event on Tuesday evening:

We’re doing a little Middle East work right now … and we’re doing very well. We have militarily defeated that particular opponent, and we’re never going to let that opponent ever, Charles agrees with me even more than I do, we’re never going to let that opponent have a nuclear weapon.

They know that, and they’ve known it right now, very powerfully.

A Buckingham Palace spokesperson said:

The king is naturally mindful of his government’s longstanding and well-known position on the prevention of nuclear proliferation.

In other developments:

• Todd Blanche, the former defense lawyer for Donald Trump now serving as acting US attorney general, announced two charges against James Comey, the former FBI director and deputy attorney general for allegedly “knowing and willfully making a threat to kill” the president of the United States in a social media post.

• Patrick Fitzgerald, a former US attorney for the northern district of Illinois who now represents James Comey, said that his client, “vigorously denies the charges” filed against him.

• US defense secretary Pete Hegseth will face tough questions from lawmakers about the Iran war on Wednesday during his first testimony to Congress since the start of the conflict.

• President Trump will welcomes the Artemis II astronauts to the White House later today. The capsule returned to Florida’s Kennedy Space Center on Tuesday, almost a month after blasting off on humanity’s first lunar trip in more than a half century.

• The supreme court will hear arguments Wednesday over the Trump administration’s push to end legal protections for migrants fleeing war and natural disaster, one in a series of immigration cases the high court is considering against the backdrop of the president’s far-reaching immigration crackdown.

• The US Federal Reserve is widely expected to hold interest rates steady on Wednesday after a key policy meeting, likely the last chaired by central bank chief Jerome Powell. Policymakers will weigh the risks of surging energy prices and snarled supply chains due to the US-Israel war on Iran, with analysts widely expecting a third pause in a row.