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House Democrats to introduce bill aimed at blocking construction of Trump’s ‘triumphal arch’ – live | US politics
House Democrats to introduce bill to block construction of Trump’s ‘triumphal arch’
Two House Democrats, Don Beyer of Virginia and Dina Titus of Nevada, announced on Wednesday that they plan to introduce a bill that would “explicitly prohibit construction of President Trump’s proposed ‘triumphal arch’ outside Arlington National Cemetery”, they said in a statement.
Given that the Democrats are in the minority, and their Arlington National Cemetery Viewshed Protection Act would need two-thirds majorities in both the House and the Senate to override a veto from Trump, the legislation has little chance to become law, but it does focus resistance to the planned 250-foot knock-off of the Arc de Triomphe the president insists he can build without congressional authorization.
Renderings of the giant monument Trump said last October would be in honor of himself show that it would obstruct the view of the Lincoln Memorial from Arlington National Cemetery.
Beyer, who represents a Northern Virginia district that includes Arlington National Cemetery (ANC), and whose parents, grandparents, and sister are buried there, said:
Arlington National Cemetery is sacred ground, the resting place for some of our nation’s greatest heroes. It is unthinkable that we would desecrate this hallowed space to build a monument to Donald Trump’s ego.
Trump’s vanity project would waste taxpayer money, brazenly violate existing law, and become yet another vehicle for his corruption. The Administration has also given no consideration to potential harmful effects on the region including impacts on air safety and traffic on major roadways.
“Worst of all, Trump is not trying to build this arch to commemorate national heroes, servicemembers who lie in Arlington National Cemetery, or to celebrate freedom. He did not dedicate it to the American people or our country’s greatness. Asked who this arch is for, Trump said, simply: ‘me.’
Representative Titus added: “As President Trump strips away the necessary safety nets from Americans who are struggling to afford their basic needs like groceries and healthcare, he builds his unauthorized, grandiose Triumphal Arch. While destroying historical monuments and artifacts important to our American identity, he is erecting monuments to honor himself.”
Key events
Trump administration re-imposes sanctions on Francesca Albanese, UN expert on human rights of Palestinians under Israeli occupation
The Trump administration re-imposed sanctions on Wednesday against Francesca Albanese, an Italian lawyer who was appointed by UN Human Rights Council to monitor human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel since 1967, including Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights.
An entry on the US treasury department’s website was updated on Wednesday to include Albanese, two weeks after a federal judge had temporarily blocked US sanctions against her for criticizing Israel’s war on Gaza, calling it a likely violation of her free speech rights.
Albanese was appointed US special rapporteur on the human rights situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory in 2022, a role filled by an independent expert.
House Democrats to introduce bill to block construction of Trump’s ‘triumphal arch’
Two House Democrats, Don Beyer of Virginia and Dina Titus of Nevada, announced on Wednesday that they plan to introduce a bill that would “explicitly prohibit construction of President Trump’s proposed ‘triumphal arch’ outside Arlington National Cemetery”, they said in a statement.
Given that the Democrats are in the minority, and their Arlington National Cemetery Viewshed Protection Act would need two-thirds majorities in both the House and the Senate to override a veto from Trump, the legislation has little chance to become law, but it does focus resistance to the planned 250-foot knock-off of the Arc de Triomphe the president insists he can build without congressional authorization.
Renderings of the giant monument Trump said last October would be in honor of himself show that it would obstruct the view of the Lincoln Memorial from Arlington National Cemetery.
Beyer, who represents a Northern Virginia district that includes Arlington National Cemetery (ANC), and whose parents, grandparents, and sister are buried there, said:
Arlington National Cemetery is sacred ground, the resting place for some of our nation’s greatest heroes. It is unthinkable that we would desecrate this hallowed space to build a monument to Donald Trump’s ego.
Trump’s vanity project would waste taxpayer money, brazenly violate existing law, and become yet another vehicle for his corruption. The Administration has also given no consideration to potential harmful effects on the region including impacts on air safety and traffic on major roadways.
“Worst of all, Trump is not trying to build this arch to commemorate national heroes, servicemembers who lie in Arlington National Cemetery, or to celebrate freedom. He did not dedicate it to the American people or our country’s greatness. Asked who this arch is for, Trump said, simply: ‘me.’
Representative Titus added: “As President Trump strips away the necessary safety nets from Americans who are struggling to afford their basic needs like groceries and healthcare, he builds his unauthorized, grandiose Triumphal Arch. While destroying historical monuments and artifacts important to our American identity, he is erecting monuments to honor himself.”
Jill Biden tells CBS News she thought Joe Biden was ‘having a stroke’ during 2024 debate
In a new interview with CBS News, Jill Biden, the former first lady, said that she was “frightened” as she watched her husband, then-president Joe Biden, freeze up during his disastrous 2024 debate against Donald Trump.
Asked if she was horrified as she viewed the debate, the former first lady said: “I wasn’t horrified, I was frightened, because I had never, ever seen Joe like that – before or since. Never.”
Pressed by the interviewer, Rita Braver, to explain what happened, Jill Biden said: “I don’t know what happened. I mean when, as I watched it, I thought, ‘Oh, my God, he’s having a stroke’. And it scared me to death.”
The comments were made in an interview that will air in full on Sunday.
The admission from the former first lady prompted immediate reactions from hosts of the podcast Pod Save America, former aides to Barack Obama who called for Joe Biden to immediately drop out of the presidential race in the aftermath of the debate. Biden did, eventually, step aside, but only after sustained pressure from Democrats, in the face of resistance from the president’s closest advisors and family, who insisted that he was fine.
“Those of us who agreed with Jill Biden’s actual assessment (i.e., people who could see and hear) were told by the Bidens and the campaign and the online dead-enders that we were all wildly overreacting and that his debate performance was fine — even good!” Barack Obama’s former speechwriter Jon Favreau wrote.
“I think this is how most voters felt while watching that debate, and why it was obvious that Biden had to drop out of the race,” Favreau’s co-host Tommy Vietor added. “The impression left by Biden’s performance was unfixable, and pretending otherwise was insulting to voters.”
As the MS NOW correspondent Akayla Gardner noted, immediately after the debate, Jill Biden stood on stage with Joe Biden and told him: “you did such a great job; you answered every question, you knew all the facts!”
Aram Roston
The day before Donald Trump’s first term ended in 2021, he inked a pardon for Elliott Broidy, a scandal-plagued Republican fundraiser and former Republican National Committee official who had pleaded guilty three months earlier to trying to illegally lobby Trump and his administration.
Last month, a company headed by Broidy won a $106m contract from the Department of Justice, according to federal contracting records.
Under the contract, awarded by the Bureau of Prisons to LEO Technologies, the company will use artificial intelligence to translate, transcribe and monitor prison phone calls. Broidy lists himself as the founder and CEO of LEO.
In a letter to the Guardian, LEO’s attorneys said Broidy sets the strategy of the company but does not run the day-to-day operations.
The company has previously won awards in state and local prison systems, but the new contract with the Bureau of Prisons marks the first time it is doing business with the federal government. On its website, the Texas-based company says that prisoners’ phone calls “represent the world’s largest concentration of criminally-minded activity – all on recorded lines, all legally accessible”.
Analysis: Trump’s iron grip on the GOP has never been stronger. What about the US?
Callum Jones
Ken Paxton’s clear victory in a Texas runoff – the widest primary defeat of an incumbent US senator in almost five decades – highlights the extraordinary loyalty Trump continues to command over his base. But Democrats are still optimistic that Paxton’s extremism and scandal-riddled past will bring disenchanted Cornyn voters to their camp.
Paxton’s confirmation has bolstered Democratic optimism that the party is in with a shot of winning statewide office in Texas for the first time in more than three decades, with the help of old guard Republicans and Latino voters switching back from the GOP.
Donald Trump indicated on Wednesday that he plans to attend this year’s NBA finals after the New York Knicks clinched their place in the championship series earlier this week.
Trump, a New York native, has counted James Dolan, who owns the Knicks, the NHL’s Rangers and Madison Square Garden, as a friend and a campaign donor in recent years. The president said he had been invited to the finals by Dolan and “numerous” others.
“Jim Dolan’s great guy, [he], as you know owns … Madison Square Garden. He’s having a good year. Boy, what a team. They won all their games. They really have some great players,” the president told reporters during a cabinet meeting. “I think I’ll be going to one of the games, yeah. I was invited by numerous people and Jim – and I think I’ll be going. Great to see. The Knicks have really, they’ve really suffered for years. They’re doing right now very well.”
Joseph Gedeon
Republican leaders rushed to throw their weight behind Ken Paxton following his big primary victory in Texas over the four-term US senator, John Cornyn, amid anxiety within the party over his prospects in November’s general election.
Hours after the race was called, Donald Trump – who backed Paxton, despite intense concern among establishment Republicans – took to Truth Social to attack his Democratic rival in the midterm elections.
James Talarico “may be the worst Texas candidate I have ever seen”, said the US president, claiming the Austin state representative and Democratic nominee for Texas senator was weak on crime and an advocate for open borders.
Reaching for a favored Republican attack line against Talarico, Trump claimed he was a vegan who “dislikes meat, not exactly a good way to be if you’re wanting to win an Election in Texas”.
For the full story, click here:
Michael Sainato
Three Democratic state attorneys general said their deputies were turned away from a roundtable hosted by JD Vance on Tuesday, sowing confusion about what the White House has billed as a bipartisan crackdown on fraud.
After attorneys general – including New York’s Letitia James, California’s Rob Bonta and New Jersey’s Jennifer Davenport – declined a last-minute invitation to participate in the event alongside their Republican counterparts, they said representatives from their offices travelled to Washington to attend, but were shut out.
“My deputy attorney general went to Washington DC today, and unfortunately was not allowed access to the meeting,” James told reporters at a press conference on Tuesday, after Vance convened more than a dozen Republican state attorneys general as part of the White House’s campaign to root out fraud in government programs.
The White House did not respond to requests for comment. In his remarks at the roundtable on Tuesday, Vance, chair of the White House taskforce to eliminate fraud, said representatives from the Democratic state attorneys general offices in Oregon and Connecticut were present.
For the full story, click here:
Former attorney general Pam Bondi diagnosed with cancer
Former attorney general Pam Bondi revealed that she was recently diagnosed with thyroid cancer.
In an interview with CNN, Bondi, who was ousted by Trump in April over her handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files, shared that she has already undergone surgery and is still recovering and “doing well, though.”
Although Bondi is no longer leading the justice department, Trump has tapped her for another influential role within his administration, Axios reports.
She will now serve on the Presidential Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, a group helping shape federal policy on artificial intelligence and technology.
“Pam has been an enormously valuable asset to the president’s team, and I’m thrilled for her and for all of us that she’s going to remain involved in confronting some of the most important issues the administration faces,” vice president JD Vance said, according to Axios.
Trump also said he wants to change the the acronym for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, to NICE.
Since retaking office last January, ICE raids under the leadership of Trump have disrupted families across the country, led to widespread protests as well as multiple killings including to US citizens in Minnesota.
Yet during the cabinet meeting, Trump said: “I’d love to change the name called NICE,” before falsely claiming that protestors against the often violent violent immigration raids are paid actors.
In response to a question about whether his administration feels any urgency to strike a deal with Iran amid rising US gas prices linked to the US’s war on Iran, Trump dismissed the concern.
Instead, he said: “I’ll tell you, the primary urgency I have, I said this, it wasn’t covered properly, but the primary urgency is that we can’t let Iran have a nuclear weapon, but at the same time we have a tremendous amount of oil, gas, coal. We have tremendous amounts of energy, we’re blessed with something very special.”
“Those prices are going to come down, they’re going to come down fast,” he added.
Hegseth on National Guard troops in DC: ‘We’re going to surge this summer’
Trump has called for the numbers of US National Guard troops deployed across Washington DC to not be lowered.
“Keep them, and don’t lower the number, either. Somebody said, ‘Oh, are there less?’ I said, ‘I hope not, but don’t lower the number, if you don’t mind,” Trump said.
In response, defense secretary Pete Hegseth said: “We’re going to surge this summer too.”
Defense secretary Pete Hegseth is now speaking on Iran, saying that the US has imposed a “world-class blockade” on the country.
“They may have missiles, but they can’t build more right now, and they can’t build more drones right now, and they can’t build more ships, and so they came and cried uncle to talk,” Hegseth said.
“We know from intel that their economy is hurting big time, because that is their lifeblood again bringing them to the table, so whether it is through the efforts of your negotiators that ensure that they never have a new weapon, or we have to go back to the War Department to finish the job, we’re prepared to do that,” Hegseth added, addressing Trump.
On oil, interior secretary Doug Burgum said that the US has opened up lease sales on public land for further drilling.
“When we’re drilling on public land, those companies pay a royalty, and that money comes to all of our citizens, and it goes to local school districts, and it goes to states,” Burgum said.
“This is an opportunity for us to bring prosperity and affordability here at home, but also bring peace abroad,” he added.
Climate activists and Indigenous communities have warned that expanding oil drilling on public land could deepen the climate crisis and damage already fragile ecosystems across the US.
Trump: ‘We don’t need oil, we don’t need the straits’
Trump briefly interjected Marco Rubio’s briefing, saying that the US is “producing right now more oil by double than Russia and Saudi Arabia combined.”
He then added: “We don’t need oil, we don’t need the straits, we don’t need anything but we have more oil now being produced by double, by two times than Russia and Saudi Arabia combined.”
Trump had previously threatened Iran, warning that “a whole civilization will die” if Tehran refused to comply with US demands to reopen the Strait of Hormuz – a critical chokepoint for global oil shipments.
A mum whose daughter died weeks after a brain tumour diagnosis says her death must not be “in vain”.
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Donald Trump has threatened to “blow up” Oman if it fails to “behave” in a casual aside during a cabinet meeting, as the US scrambles to reopen the strait of Hormuz.
The US president made the threat after reports of talks between Iran and Oman about jointly charging a toll for ships passing through the crucial waterway, which has been all but closed since the start of the US-Israel war on Iran.
“The strait is going to be open to everybody,” Trump declared on Tuesday. “Nobody’s going to control it. We’re going to watch over it. We’ll watch over it. But nobody’s going to control it. That’s part of the negotiation that we have.”
The strait – which typically carries about a fifth of the world’s oil supplies – has been blockaded by Iran since late February, triggering a global energy crisis and raising fears for the world economy.
Tehran wants to persuade Oman, a US ally, to support a mechanism to collect tolls from vessels transiting through the strait, the Associated Press has reported in recent days, citing a regional official.
“They would like to control it,” said Trump, who stressed the strait is part of international waters.
In an extraordinary threat, he added: “Oman will behave just like everybody else. Or else we’ll have to blow them up. They understand that. They’ll be fine.”
Trump’s efforts in recent weeks to strike a peace deal with Iran have so far failed to bear fruit. During Wednesday’s meeting, he accused Iran of trying to stall the agreement and “outwait me” until November’s midterm elections in the US.
When Trump signaled he was on the verge of a deal at the weekend, Republican hawks who had strongly backed his controversial decision to order war on Iran alongside Israel issued a rare rebuke.
Roger Wicker, who chairs the Senate armed services committee, said the “rumored 60-day ceasefire” would be a “disaster” in a post on social media. “Everything accomplished by Operation Epic Fury would be for naught,” he added.
Tommy Robinson ‘equated with Nelson Mandela’ at Oxford Union
House Democrats to introduce bill aimed at blocking construction of Trump’s ‘triumphal arch’ – live | US politics
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