This concludes our live coverage of the second Trump administration for the day. Here are the latest developments:

• The American Civil Liberties Union filed a suit on behalf of Louisiana voting rights groups, asking a state court to block the state’s governor, Jeff Landry, and secretary of state, Nancy Landry, from suspending congressional elections.

• Senate Democrats called BS, literally, on Donald Trump’s claim that the war in Iran is over, in a formal letter the president sent on Friday to Republican House speaker Mike Johnson and Republican senator Chuck Grassley, the president pro tempore of the Senate. “That’s bullshit,” Chuck Schumer, the Democratic minority leader in the Senate, posted in response to the news. “This is an illegal war”.

• A US appeals court temporarily blocked a federal rule allowing the abortion drug mifepristone to be dispensed through the mail, significantly curtailing access to the drug nationwide and particularly in states that have banned abortion.

• The United States is withdrawing 5,000 troops from Nato ally Germany, the Pentagon announced on Friday, days after Trump lambasted the German chancellor for saying the US was “being humiliated” by Iran’s leadership.

• The Republican governors of Tennessee and Alabama called special legislative sessions for next week to give Republican state lawmakers the chance to redraw congressional district boundaries ahead of elections for Congress in November.

• Trump delivered a pair of rambling speeches to friendly crowds in Florida, in which he repeated a large number of previously debunked false claims and reiterated his racist comments about Somali Americans.

During his now concluded remarks on Friday night in Palm Beach, Donald Trump briefly referenced the failed assassination attempt last weekend at the White House Correspondents’ dinner.

“Consequential people get in a lot of danger,” Trump said. “You know what I’m talking about, Saturday night. It was good for one thing: people are loving my ballroom now, that’s the only thing. They love my ballroom. They love my ballroom. It’s going to be the best in the world, although I like the one at Mar-a-Lago very much too”.

In a brief question and answer session after his speech at the Forum Club of the Palm Beaches, Donald Trump was asked to name a moment from the founding of the United States that stays with him.

After first stalling, by describing his idea to give US troops a bonus of $1,776, Trump landed on an old favorite of his: the story of what he claims, despite a total lack of evidence, was the warning confederate general Robert E Lee issued to his commanders at Gettysburg. “It was, 'Never fight uphill, me boys, never fight uphill.’ They fought uphill and they just got wiped out,” the president said.

“But to me, that while, the Robert E Lee era, with Ulysses S Grant, Abraham Lincoln, I mean, to me, that is such an amazing- you can learn so much from it, but it was such an amazing time. Such a horrible time. Beautiful in certain ways, but such a horrible, horrible time,” Trump added.

The comments were a very much condensed version of a riff Trump has given before, notably in 2024 when he was widely mocked for apparently inventing a saying no historian ever recorded during a rally speech in Pennsylvania.

Trump cited the same imaginary tale during a campaign speech in 2020 in Minnesota, in which he criticized protesters who called for the removal of statues of Lee.

In an aside during his just completed hour-long speech in Palm Beach, Donald Trump mentioned an architect who comes from Cuba, and added, “which we will be taking over almost immediately”.

The crowd laughed, but Trump gave no indication that he was joking.

“Cuba’s got problems,” he continued. “We’ll finish one first, I like to finish a job.”

“What we’ll do, on the way back from Iran, we’ll have one of our big, maybe the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier, the biggest in the world, we’ll have that come in, stop about a hundred yards off shore and they’ll say, ‘Thanks you very much, we give up.’”

Donald Trump’s stand-up tour of Florida has moved on to the Forum Club of the Palm Beaches, where is currently speaking.

He has repeated much of the same material from his earlier set at the Villages, and even provided live commentary in the fact that certain material went over better there.

The president said that a temporary, 5,000-seat arena is being built at the White House for a UFC fight “for the 250th” anniversary of American independence.

“That’s going to be June 14th, which is my birthday,” Trump said, “and that’s a coincidence, it is not- I didn’t do that, it just worked out that way, it is actually true, I swear, I did not do it, it worked out that way, but it’s June 14th, at least it’s easy to remember… It’s going to be a Sunday night, it’s going to be on CBS.”

“Then they’re having anywhere from 75 to 100,000 people in the park, right across from the White House, its a beautiful circular park, ellipse,” he added, without mentioning that that was also the location of the speech he gave to supporters on January 6 2021 before they stormed the Capitol in support of his lie that he had not lost the 2020 election.

In a statement, Louisiana’s anti-abortion attorney general, Liz Murrill, welcomed a ruling on Friday by the fifth US circuit court of appeals in New Orleans that blocked a Biden-era federal rule allowing the abortion drug mifepristone to be dispensed through the mail.

“The Biden abortion cartel facilitated the deaths of thousands of Louisiana babies (and millions in other states) through illegal mail-order abortion pills,” Murrill said. “Today, that nightmare is over, thanks to the hard work of my office and our friends at Alliance Defending Freedom. I look forward to continuing to defend women and babies as this case continues”.

Alliance Defending Freedom, the well-funded conservative legal advocacy group behind the overturning of Roe v Wade, also scored a significant victory at the US supreme court last month when it successfully challenged a Colorado law that prohibited mental health professionals from trying to change the sexual orientation or gender identity of LGBTQP+ minors through so-called “conversion therapy”.

Democrats expressed outrage over the court ruling on mifepristone.

“A conservative court packed with Trump-appointed judges just ruled to ROLL BACK access to the abortion pill,” Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren posted on Bluesky. “This is a page straight out of extremist Republicans’ anti-abortion playbook. Let me be clear: the abortion pill is safe and effective. We must fight back.”

California congressman Ro Khanna also denounced the restrictions on mifepristone.

“Under no circumstances can women’s body autonomy be up for debate,” Khanna posted. “This decision was purely political, and not rooted in any science or support for women’s reproductive health. The Democratic Party must use every lever of power at our disposal to protect women and provide resources for those seeking access to abortions.”

A US appeals court on Friday temporarily blocked a federal rule allowing the abortion drug mifepristone to be dispensed through the mail, significantly curtailing access to the drug nationwide and particularly in states that have banned abortion, Reuters reports.

A panel of the fifth US circuit court of appeals in New Orleans said the state of Louisiana was likely to prevail in its challenge to the 2023 rule adopted by former president Joe Biden’s administration.

While the ruling is temporary, it is the first to significantly curtail access to mifepristone in a series of lawsuits challenging the drug’s initial approval in 2000 and subsequent rules making it easier to obtain. The 2023 regulation removed a requirement that mifepristone be dispensed in person.

The Republican governors of Tennessee and Alabama called special legislative sessions for next week to give Republican state lawmakers the chance to redraw congressional district boundaries ahead of elections for Congress in November.

Governors Bill Lee and Kay Ivey acted to take advantage of this week’s US supreme court decision that effectively legalized the use of extreme gerrymandering in order to dilute the voting power of racial minorities.

The court gutted a key provision of the 1965 Voting Right Act, a central achievement of the civil rights movement, that prevented racial discrimination in the conduct of elections.

“We owe it to Tennesseans to ensure our congressional districts accurately reflect the will of Tennessee voters,” Lee said in a statement calling the legislature back into session next Tuesday. “I believe the General Assembly has a responsibility to review the map and ensure it remains fair, legal, and defensible.”

“Following the successful 2020 census, Alabama maintained our representation in Congress, and I called a special session to redraw our maps. Since then, we have been battling federal courts and activist groups who think they know Alabama better than Alabama,” Ivey said in a statement on the session she called for Monday. “Alabama’s redistricting battle is not over. The state remains under a court order prohibiting the use of new congressional maps until after the 2030 census.”

“By calling the Legislature into a special session, I am ensuring Alabama is prepared should the courts act quickly enough to allow Alabama’s previously drawn congressional and state senate maps to be used during this election cycle. If the court-ordered injunction is lifted, Alabama would revert to the maps drawn by the Legislature for congressional districts in 2023 and state senate districts in 2021,” the Alabama governor added.

Ilhan Omar, the Somali-born Democratic congresswoman from Minnesota, posted a withering response to the latest remarks about her, and Somali Americans, from Donald Trump.

“This unhinged rant would solicit anger if it wasn’t coming from a criminal, who has 34 felony convictions, held accountable for rape and accused of being a pedo,” Omar wrote on social media aboce video of Trump’s remarks in Florida on Friday. “I still don’t know how anyone would willingly humiliate themselves like this but here we are. Btw, the pedophile protection party should find new material for their deflection”.

The United States is withdrawing 5,000 troops from Nato ally Germany, the Pentagon announced on Friday, the Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell told Reuters and Fox News on Friday.

“The Secretary of War has ordered the withdrawal of approximately 5,000 troops from Germany,” Parnell said in a statement to Fox News. “This decision follows a thorough review of the Department’s force posture in Europe and is in recognition of theater requirements and conditions on the ground. We expect the withdrawal to be completed over the next six to twelve months.”

Donald Trump had threatened a drawdown in forces earlier this week after the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, told students on Monday “the Americans clearly have no strategy” for ending the war and that “an entire nation is being humiliated by the Iranian leadership”.

The planned withdrawal would reduce US forces in Germany by nearly 15%. Germany is the US military’s biggest basing location in Europe, with some 35,000 active-duty military personnel, and serves as a key training hub.

A senior Pentagon official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters recent German rhetoric had been “inappropriate and unhelpful.”

“The president is rightly reacting to these counterproductive remarks,” the official said.

The Pentagon said the withdrawal was expected to be completed over the next six to twelve months.

Merz has said Germany and other US allies in Europe were not consulted before the US and Israel attacked Iran on 28 February, and that he had conveyed his skepticism about the conflict directly to Trump.

“The president has been very clear about his frustrations about our allies’ rhetoric and failure to provide support for U.S. operations that benefit them,” the senior Pentagon official said.

Donald Trump’s remarks to seniors in Florida are still going, but if you haven’t had time to tune in, don’t worry, the president is mostly saying nothing new, merely reciting what he thinks of his greatest hits, in a speech made up almost entirely of boasts, lies and attacks on his rivals he has made in previous speeches.

At one point, the president boasted about his performance on cognitive tests, confusing them with intelligence tests, in the exact same terms he had posted on social media this week.

The president, who instructed his lawyer ahead of his 2016 campaign to threaten officials at the high school and colleges he attended with jail if they revealed his grades, then repeated a false claim he has made before about Barack Obama having been admitted to Harvard Law School despite bad grades as an undergraduate at Columbia. Before he ran for president, Trump pivoted from demanding that Obama release his birth certificate, which he did, to demanding that he release his college transcript.

Obama graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, which means his grade point average was in the top 10% of his class, and told a biographer that his grade point average at Columbia was 3.7.

He then went on to mock Democrats for drawing attention to the affordability crisis his policies have exacerbated, first through tariffs and now through the attack on Iran that has spiked fuel prices.

“The Democrats start screaming, ‘Affordability! Affordability!’ They’re the ones that caused the problem,” Trump said, putting on a comic accent as he pronounced the word “affordability”. “I’ll tell you what, they got one good line of bullshit,” the president added.

In one disturbing passage, Trump again attacked Somali Americans, in clearly racist terms.

“Somalia, it’s a beautiful place,” the president said with sarcasm. “It’s got no anything. It’s got one thing that’s really strong: crime. It’s got a lot of crime. They have no police. All they do is run around shooting each other. It’s filthy dirty, disgusting dirty. It’s a horrible place. They come here, and Ilhan Omar, you ever hear of her? She heads it.”

“Think of it,” the president said, riling up the crowd against the Minnesota congresswoman he has been singling out for racist abuse since his first term. “And then she comes here, from Somalia, and she tells us how to run the United States of America,” the president said to a chorus of boos from his supporters.

“She says, ‘the constitution gives me certain rights,’” the president said of the elected lawmaker, putting on, for some reason, a faux English accent. “Get the hell out, what a phony!”

As the crowd roared, the president mixed a lie with a viral conspiracy theory. “She married her brother to come in,” Trump claimed, falsely. Omar came to the US as a refugee from Somalia and obtained citizenship before briefly marrying a man she has insisted is not her brother and who is a British citizen. Despite years on scrutiny from reporters and rightwing bloggers, no evidence to support the viral claim that Omar married her brother has been found.

“Isn’t she despicable?” Trump asked. “Their whole life is based on fraud and a scam,” the president said of Somali Americans. “The whole thing is a scam and we ought to get those people the hell out of our country,” he said, to wild applause.

Donald Trump is speaking to seniors in Florida now, against a background emblazoned with the words “Golden Age for your Golden Years”.

Before the president, who turns 80 in six weeks, took the stage to speak to his elderly supporters, the crowd was treated to a rally playlist that included the song Live and Let Die. The same song was previously a feature of Trump’s pre-speech playlist during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020.

In his rambling remarks, which the president himself noted was an example of the sort of wild swings in topic he has called “the weave”, the president repeated a number of previously debunked false claims, including:

• that 60 Minutes had broadcast an interview with Kamala Harris “the night before the election” in 2024 in which they replaced her answer to one question with an answer to a different question, to make her sound more coherent. In fact, the 60 Minutes interview with Harris was broadcast a month before the election and the answer Harris gave was edited, so that only part of what she said was used in the broadcast. Such editing is routine and, earlier this week, 60 Minutes edited out multiple long, rambling answers Trump gave during an interview on Sunday.

• that the BBC used AI to put words in his mouth that he never said in a documentary that quoted his speech to supporters before they stormed the Capitol on January 6 2021. “BBC has me AI, saying about hate. ‘We hate, we hate.’ I said, ‘That’s not me.’ They changed my lips. I couldn’t even tell myself,” Trump said. In fact, the BBC did not use AI and did not put words in Trump’s mouth. The broadcaster spliced together two parts of Trump’s remarks in a misleading edit that made it seem as if statements made early and late in the speech formed part of a single statement. The BBC has apologized for the edit, but Trump filed suit.

• that “25 million illegal aliens” were allowed to enter the United States during the Biden administration. In fact, according to estimates from the Center for Migration Studies of New York in 2024, just 10.9 million undocumented immigrants reside in the United States, based on Census Bureau and American Community Service data. The Department of Homeland Security, had produced a similar estimate, that has now been removed from the web. About 40% of the undocumented population are also estimated to have overstayed their visas. The same estimate suggested number of undocumented in the US increased by just 650,000 from 2020 to 2022.

• that the administration has “removed 300,000 illegal aliens from the Social Security rolls and we’ve removed more than 100,000 migrants from Medicare eligibility”. In fact, the 2025 tax and spending law Trump signed passed by Republicans in Congress restricted access to affordable health care tax credits for many low-income immigrants considered “lawfully present”, including green card holders in their first five years of residency and people with temporary statuses. According to a Congressional Budget Office estimate, 300,000 lawfully present immigrants with low incomes were disqualified from those tax credits.

• that Trump got “97%” of the vote in the part of Florida the event was held in, The Villages, in the 2024 election. In fact, Trump took 68% of the vote in 2024 in Sumter County, where most of the sprawling retirement community is located.

Senate Democrats called BS, literally, on Donald Trump’s claim that the war in Iran is over, in a formal letter the president sent on Friday to Republican House speaker Mike Johnson and Republican senator Chuck Grassley, the president pro tempore of the Senate.

“There has been no exchange of fire between United States Forces and Iran since April 7, 2026. The hostilities that began on February 28, 2026 have been terminated,” Trump wrote, as the ongoing war he claimed the US won in the first hour of combat continues with competing Iranian and US blockades of the Persian gulf.

“That’s bullshit,” Chuck Schumer, the Democratic minority leader in the Senate, posted in response to the news. “This is an illegal war and every day Republicans remain complicit and allow it to continue is another day lives are endangered, chaos erupts, and prices increase, all while Americans foot the bill.”

Jeanne Shaheen, the ranking member of the Senate armed services committee, agreed.

“President Trump declaring the war with Iran ‘terminated’ doesn’t reflect the reality that tens of thousands of U.S. service members in the region are still in harm’s way, that the Administration continually threatens to escalate hostilities or that the Strait of Hormuz remains closed and prices are skyrocketing at home,” Shaheen wrote. “President Trump entered this war without a strategy and without legal authorization and today’s announcement doesn’t change either fact.”

The American Civil Liberties Union filed a suit on behalf of Louisiana voting rights groups today, asking a state court to block the state’s governor, Jeff Landry, and secretary of state, Nancy Landry, from suspending congressional elections.

Landry suspended the state’s congressional primary election yesterday – even after early voting had begun – to enact new districts for the 2026 election. The move came after the supreme court’s 6-3 decision in the Louisiana v Callais case on Wednesday, which invalidated swaths of the Voting Rights Act and declared that a Louisiana congressional district with a majority-nonwhite voting population violated equal protection provisions of the US constitution.

Other races on the ballot, as well as votes for amendments to Louisiana’s constitution, will continue, according to Landry’s order. While the congressional race will remain on the ballot, its votes will not be counted, Landry ordered.

The League of Women Voters of Louisiana, the Louisiana state conference of the NAACP, the Power Coalition for Equity and Justice, and three individual voters filed suit in a state court in Baton Rouge today, seeking a temporary restraining order. They argued that an order delaying an election had only previously been issued “due to natural disasters or similar emergencies that posed threats to health and safety”, and that a supreme court decision did not constitute state of emergency under Louisiana law.

“Furthermore, the executive order sows chaos into an already-confusing election and puts Louisianians’ votes at risk, especially those who have already cast absentee ballots,” the NAACP said in a prepared statement.

Donald Trump said in letters sent to Congress today stating that, due to the ceasefire, he doesn’t need congressional authorization for military operations in Iran - despite the conflict reaching the 60-day mark this week and despite US armed forces remaining in the region – and that he considers the war “terminated”.

“On April 7, 2026, I ordered a two-week ceasefire. The ceasefire has since been extended. There has been no exchange of fire between the United States Forces and Iran since April 7, 2026. The hostilities that began on February 28, 2026, have terminated,” Trump wrote in the letters, one of which was sent to the House and one to the Senate.

But he also suggested the war isn’t actually over, adding:

Despite the success of United States operations against the Iranian regime and continued efforts to secure a lasting peace, the threat posed by Iran to the United States and our Armed Forces remains significant.

I have and will continue to direct United States Armed Forces consistent with my responsibilities and pursuant to my constitutional authority to conduct United States foreign relations and as Commander in Chief and Chief Executive.

Donald Trump said earlier that he was not satisfied with the latest Iranian proposal for talks on the Iran war, while Iran’s foreign minister said Tehran was ready for diplomacy if the United States changes its approach.

It comes after Iranian state media and a Pakistani official said Iran had submitted its latest proposal for negotiations, raising some hope that a deadlock in efforts to end the war might be broken.

“They want to make a deal, but ... I’m not satisfied with it,” Trump told reporters as he left the White House to head to Florida, adding that the Iranian leadership was “very disjointed” and split into two or three groups.

Trump also praised Pakistan’s mediation efforts, saying negotiations by phone were continuing.

“They’ve made strides, but I’m not sure if they ever get there,” Trump said. “They’re asking for things that I can’t agree to.”

Meanwhile, Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi said his country was ready to pursue diplomacy if the United States changes what he called its “excessive approach, threatening rhetoric and provocative actions”.

However, Araghchi added in a post on his Telegram channel that “Iran’s armed forces remained ready to defend the country against any threat”.

Following Donald Trump’s threat to slap a higher 25% tariff on truck and car imports from the European Union, Bernd Lange, the chairman of the EU parliament’s trade committee, responded immediately:

President Trump’s behaviour is unacceptable.

This latest move demonstrates just how unreliable the US side is.

We have already witnessed these arbitrary attacks from the US in the case of Greenland; this is no way to treat close partners.

Trump last year imposed a 25% tariff on global automotive imports under a national security trade law, but reached a deal with the EU in August to lower those duties to a net 15%, inclusive of prior duties.

In exchange, the EU agreed to eliminate duties on US industrial goods, including autos, and accept US safety and emissions standards on vehicles.

EU lawmakers advanced legislation in March to implement the tariff reductions, but the process is not expected to be completed before June, as EU governments and the European parliament negotiate final texts.

Asked to explain Trump’s latest move, a Trump administration official told Reuters:

The EU has not complied with the autos deal after eight months.

Donald Trump said “I’m not happy” in regards to reports of US weapons intended for Iranian protesters being sent to Kurdish Iranian opposition groups in Iraq.

“I’m not happy with the delivery of the weapons. I’m not thrilled with it, but a small amount of weapons were sent, and we’ll see who has them. But I’m not happy with what happened with the Kurds. The Kurds did not deliver the weapons,” he said.

He also said that he was “not happy” with both Italy and Spain, countries which he said “feel [that] it’s OK for Iran to have a nuclear weapon.”

“Anybody that feels it’s OK for Iran to have a nuclear weapon is not very smart,” Trump told reporters on Friday.

Donald Trump has issued a new wave of sanctions on the Cuban government, according to two White House officials who spoke to Reuters.

In addition to agents, officials and government supporters, the sanctions target people, entities and affiliates that support the Cuban government’s security apparatus or are complicit in corruption or serious human rights violations, the officials said.

No specific details were provided on the latest individuals and entities to be sanctioned by the Trump administration.

Donald Trump has announced that he will be increasing tariffs on cars and trucks from the European Union to 25%.

In a post on Truth Social, the president said:

I am pleased to announce that, based on the fact the European Union is not complying with our fully agreed to Trade Deal, next week I will be increasing Tariffs charged to the European Union for Cars and Trucks coming into the United States. The Tariff will be increased to 25%. It is fully understood and agreed that, if they produce Cars and Trucks in U.S.A. Plants, there will be NO TARIFF. Many Automobile and Truck Plants are currently under construction, with over 100 Billion Dollars being invested, A RECORD in the History of Car and Truck Manufacturing. These Plants, staffed with American Workers, will be opening soon — There has never been anything like what is happening in America today!

Georgia’s Republican governor Brian Kemp has said that he doesn’t plan to delay the state’s primary this month to redraw its political maps for this year’s elections, after the supreme court’s landmark ruling yesterday to severely weaken a key pillar of the Voting Rights Act.

“Voting is already underway for the 2026 elections,” Kemp told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution ahead of Georgia’s primary elections on 19 May.

But, the ruling makes clear it “requires Georgia to adopt new electoral maps before the 2028 election cycle”, he said.

Praising the supreme court’s decision, Kemp said it “restores fairness to our redistricting process and allows states to pass electoral maps that reflect the will of the voters, not the will of federal judges”.

Yesterday, Louisiana moved to postpone its May primaries, as other southern states including Florida are also scrambling to redraw congressional districts in response to the ruling.

Iran has sent its latest proposal to the United States to end the war via Pakistani mediators, state news agency IRNA has reported.

It comes as talks between Washington and Tehran have stalled. Meanwhile, Iran maintains its chokehold on the strait of Hormuz, and the US Navy maintains a blockade to prevent Iran’s oil tankers from getting out to sea.

It also comes as the Trump administration argued yesterday that the war had already ended because of the fragile ceasefire which began in early April, an interpretation that would allow the White House to avoid today’s deadline for having to seek congressional approval to extend the war.

We’ll bring you more on Iran’s latest proposal as we get it.

Angela Giuffrida in Rome and Jon Henley

Donald Trump earlier threatened to withdraw US troops from Italy and Spain a day after saying he was looking at reducing the number deployed in Germany.

The US president’s threat to Germany came after the country’s chancellor, Friedrich Merz, said America was being “humiliated” by Iran.

Trump has severely criticised Nato allies for not sending their navies to help to open the strait of Hormuz, a crucial commercial shipping corridor.

Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has spoken out against the US-Israeli war on Iran from the start, and Rome had played a balancing act until late March, when it refused the use of an airbase in Sicily to US planes carrying weapons for Iran.

Asked late yesterday whether he would consider pulling US troops out of Italy and Spain, Trump told reporters:

Probably … look, why shouldn’t I? Italy has not been of any help to us and Spain has been horrible, absolutely horrible.

Italy’s defence minister, Guido Crosetto, said he did not understand Trump’s motives for the threat to withdraw US troops from Italy and rejected accusations that Rome had not helped the US, especially in relation to maritime security. Crosetto also alluded to Trump’s accusations that European-linked ships had crossed the strait of Hormuz.

“As is clear to everyone, this never happened,” Crosetto told Ansa. “We have also made ourselves available for a mission to protect shipping. This was greatly appreciated by the American military.”

Crosetto added: “The incredible thing is, they’ve used the strait of Hormuz, while we haven’t.”

More on this story here:

Fourteen employees with the US Federal Emergency Management Agency returned to work this week, after spending eight months on administrative leave for signing a public letter criticising the Trump administration.

The so-called “Katrina declaration”, sent last August to members of Congress and a federal council formed to help determine Fema’s future, was written as a rebuke from the workers about the dangerous erosion in US capacity to prepare for and respond to natural disasters.

Timed with the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, the catastrophic storm that killed 1,833 people and devastated parts of New Orleans and the Gulf coast in 2005, it served as a warning that the stage was set for history to repeat itself.

More than 190 current and former Fema employees signed on to the letter. Thirty-six signed their names. Those who were still actively employed at the agency were put on indefinite paid administrative leave one day later.

The US Senate has voted to ban senators and their staff from betting on prediction markets like Kalshi or Polymarket.

The resolution, introduced by Ohio Republican Bernie Moreno, goes into effect immediately and modifies the current rules prohibiting senators from entering into financial deals where the outcome depends on whether a specific event does or does not happen.

“United States senators have no business engaging in speculative activities like prediction markets while collecting a taxpayer-funded paycheck, period,” Moreno said in a statement.

Prediction markets have come under scrutiny recently after users whjo appeared to have advanced knowledge on the situation made substantial bets ahead of the US-Israel war in Iran and the military action in Venezuela earlier this year.

The Department of Justice’s quest to secure sensitive voter data is finding opposition in typically friendly territory – several staunchly conservative states.

As of 1 April, the Department of Justice (DoJ) has sued 30 states and the District of Columbia for failing to turn over full copies of their voter registration lists. The push has hit repeated roadblocks, including legal defeats in California, Massachusetts, Oregon, Rhode Island, Arizona and Michigan. But the DoJ is also running into obstacles in some of America’s reddest states, with Trump strongholds Utah, West Virginia, Georgia, Kentucky and Idaho all refusing to hand over the requested data.

In their objections, the Republican-controlled states cite their constitutionally guaranteed authority over election administration, as well as concerns over data security, privacy laws, and the questionable legal grounds of the DoJ’s request.

More here:

Hello and welcome to our live coverage of the day.

Today marks 60 days since the Trump administration notified Congress that it was carrying out strikes on Iran – meaning that under the War Powers Act of 1973, today is the deadline for Donald Trump to either end the Iran war or seek congressional authorization to extend it.

However, the Trump administration has repeatedly rejected the deadline, with Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, testifying before a heated Senate armed services committee that the ceasefire agreement reached with Iran more than three weeks ago “means the 60-day clock pauses, or stops”.

Hegseths’s comments reflect what a senior Trump administration official told the Guardian earlier: “For war powers resolution purposes, the hostilities that began on Saturday, February 28, have terminated,” the official said.

On Thursday, Senate Republicans again blocked a war powers resolution put forth by Democrat Adam Schiff that would have limited the conflict until Congress authorizes further military action.

This was the sixth time that Democrats have forced a vote on a war powers resolution related to the war in Iran, all of which have failed, mostly along party lines. But Republicans in recent weeks have said they would eventually like to see a vote and two Republicans – Susan Collins of Maine and Rand Paul of Kentucky – voted in favor of the resolution on Thursday (one Democrat, John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, opposed it).

“As I have said since these hostilities with Iran began, the president’s authority as commander-in-chief is not without limits,” Collins said on X. “The constitution gives Congress an essential role in decisions of war and peace, and the War Powers Act establishes a clear 60-day deadline for Congress to either authorize or end US involvement in foreign hostilities. That deadline is not a suggestion; it is a requirement.”

In other developments:

• Jeanine Pirro, the top federal prosecutor in Washington DC, released edited security-camera video of the incident at the White House correspondents’ dinner amid questions about whether or not the suspected gunman, Cole Allen, fired his weapon before being subdued. While the video shows four muzzles flashes from the agent’s gun as he fired at Allen, it was not immediately clear that it does show Allen discharging his weapon after he pointed it at the agent.

• Sean Curran, the director of the US Secret Service, told Fox News that Allen was stopped not by secret service gunfire, but by a box used to transport a metal detector, which he tripped over.

• Congress has passed a 45-day extension of section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a law that grants US intelligence agencies warrantless spying powers.

• Trump has threatened to withdraw troops from Spain and Italy, two countries that countries have been vocally critical of his war in the Middle East. This comes after Trump suggested reviewing US military presence in Germany after the country’s chancellor said America was being “humiliated” by Iran.