The Guardian80%
Over 100 House Democrats vote to end military aid to Israel in significant rebuke to US ally – as it happened 13%
By Robert Mackey23% Shrai Popat0% Lucy Campbell0% Tom Ambrose0%
7/16/2026, 1:54:01 AM
Topics: US Politics, Foreign Policy, Military Aid, Israel, Democrats, Republicans, Congress, Jeffrey Epstein, Donald Trump, Todd Blanche, Jay Clayton, Jon Ossoff, Thomas Massie, Ro Khanna, Brendan Carr, Elizabeth Warren, Nexstar, Tegna, Kyle Clark, Victor Marx, Bill Owens, Dena Karari, Jared Genser, Jd Vance, Joe Rogan, Susie Wiles, Kash Patel, New York Governor Kathy Hochul, Richard Blumenthal, Chris Coons, John Cornyn, Sheldon Whitehouse, Amy Klobuchar, Dick Durbin, Summer Lee, Greg Casar, Ice, Iran, US Federal Communications Commission, US Army War College, US Treasury Department, Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, General Dynamics, Jewish Voice For Peace
BS Summary: This article contains 16 faulty reasoning types, including Biased Writer Voice, Appeal to Emotion, and Hasty Generalization, with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 22.3% saturation with 854 hits. Analysis detected 2,660 faulty-reasoning hits from 3,834 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 29.9% and a BS Rank of 13% (14,421 of 16,550 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 87.10% of the article peer group.
This concludes our live coverage of the second Trump administration for the day, but we will be back on Thursday.
Here are the latest developments: 103 House Democrats voted to cut military aid to Israel as accusations that Israel’s government carried out a genocide in Gaza are gaining more traction in the party.
Two of Donald Trump’s nominees for powerful positions, Todd Blanche and Jay Clayton, buckled under pressure during their confirmations hearings.
Blanche, the acting attorney general, described himself as Trump’s lawyer, before correcting himself.
Clayton, the would-be national intelligence director, refused to say who won the 2020 election when asked by senator Jon Ossoff.
Thomas Massie and Ro Khanna, who wrote the Epstein Files Transparency Act, the law requiring the release of investigative files on the late child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, introduced a sequel that would allow state officials, victims and members of Congress to sue the attorney general over withheld recor
The pugnacious chair of the US Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, lashed out at senator Elizabeth Warren on social media on Wednesday after she criticized his move to rescind a rule that bars a single company from owning broadcast television stations that reach more than 39% of US households.
In March, the FCC waved the 39% rule to approve the $3.54bn sale of local television station owner Tegna to Nexstar, despite objections from officials in Democratic-led states.
The acquisition, if not reversed by courts, will expand Nexstar’s presence to cover 80% of US households.
After Carr announced, in an essay for the far-right website Breitbart, that the FCC will vote in three weeks on scrapping the ban, Warren said in a statement: “Trump’s FCC Chair is trying to illegally rewrite the rules to make it easier for billionaires to line their own pockets while jacking up costs and controlling what Americans watch.
After rubber-stamping the Nexstar-Tegna megamerger, this looks like
Republican Thomas Massie and Democrat Ro Khanna, the two congressmen who introduced the Epstein Files Transparency Act, the law requiring the Department of Justice to release investigative files on the late child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, introduced a sequel on Wednesday.
The Epstein Files Transparency Act II, Massie said in a statement, “gives standing to state attorneys general, the victims of Jeffrey Epstein and his co-conspirators, and members of Congress to challenge the Department of Justice (DOJ) for the DOJ’s failure to comply with the disclosure” of records from the Epstein files.
“Since the Epstein Files Transparency Act was signed into law on November 19, 2025, the Department of Justice has flagrantly and consistently ignored EFTA’s disclosure requirements,” Massie said.
“The Department of Justice continues to unlawfully withhold over 3 million Epstein files that should be released to the public.
In addition, the DOJ is unlawfully maintaining heavy redactions on
The newly drained Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool’s bottom surface has noticeably faded since it was lined with a protective coating in a color Donald Trump called “American flag blue” this spring, the Associated Press reports.
An Associated Press reporter and photographer viewed the fenced-off reflecting pool on Wednesday from the top of the Washington Monument.
The new liner appears grayer than when the pool was repainted and refilled with water in early June.
Debris that had been visible earlier this week after the pool was drained is now largely gone, after work crews removed it.
Trump’s problem-plagued effort to revamp the landmark has stretched well past his initial goal of having the reflecting pool ready by 4 July for the nation’s 250th birthday.
The president at first suggested his renovations would cost $1.5m, but the bill ballooned to more than $16m by June.
Trump had said the repairs would last a century, but within days of the project’s initial completion last month, the
Donald Trump thanked the country he is bombing, Iran, for allowing an American citizen he said was “wrongfully detained in December of 2024” to leave the country.
“She is now safely outside of Iran, and in good condition,” Trump wrote on social media, without naming the woman.
“The United States of America appreciates this gesture of Goodwill by Iran!”
The woman is Dena Karari, a dual American and Iranian citizen, her lawyer Jared Genser announced on social media.
Genser said that he was “excited to report” that Karari, who was banned from leaving Iran after visiting her family in 2024, and was interrogated but not detained, “is now safe and traveling back to the United States.”
“This would not have happened but for the extraordinary and relentless efforts of” Trump, he added.
The New York Times reported last year that an Iranian American woman who was first imprisoned and prevented from leaving the country in December 2024, but released from custody, “works for an American technologic
Jewish Voice for Peace, a coalition of anti-Zionist American Jewish groups, called Wednesday’s vote by 104 members of the US House in favor of a failed measure that would have halted $3.3bn in planned aid to Israel, much of it for the Israeli military, “a seismic shift in US politics.”
“This historic vote shows a major break in Democratic support for U.S. complicity in Israeli apartheid, with more Democrats voting to block military funding than actively voting to continue it,” the group said in a statement.
“What was once unquestioning bipartisan consensus to fund Israel’s atrocities against Palestinians is now breaking apart,” Beth Miller, the political director of Jewish Voice for Peace Action, said.
“While it is shameful that the House failed to pass this amendment, it is also now clear that it is impossible for Congress to ignore our voices.
The overwhelming majority of Democratic voters are demanding that we halt U.S. military funding to Israel, and every Democrat who ignored thes
In an interview with the podcaster Joe Rogan, US vice-president JD Vance discounted the conspiracy theory that Donald Trump’s long association with Jeffrey Epstein, the late child sex offender, had been used by Israel to blackmail the president into attacking Iran.
When Rogan turned to the subject of the war in Iran, he began by asking Vance: “Do you think he would have continued with the most recent campaign if it wasn’t for the influence of Israel?”
After denying that Israeli influence was to blame for Trump’s decision to go to war with Iran, Vance said: “I think a lot of people- I’ve heard this argument, this idea… that Donald Trump, you know, was sort of, I’ve even heard people say he was blackmailed into this by the Israelis.”
“Yeah, a lot of people think that,” Rogan interjected.
“That’s not true dude; it’s just it’s just not true” Vance replied.
“Can you understand though why people would come to that conclusion, especially because of the Epstein files?”
Rogan asked a short time
In a new report from CNN, Donald Trump’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles, and FBI director Kash Patel, have initiated a “sprawling” investigation at the White House, in order to identify who leaked information about the security deficiencies on the new Air Force One plane – a gift from the Qatar.
Citing unnamed sources familiar, CNN reports that some officials being asked to turn over their phones to investigators on White House grounds.
Following a report from the New York Times, who initially reported on the security concerns surrounding the new plane, Trump was incensed according to CNN’s sources.
What ensued was a probe into the leaked information, and subpoenas issued to the four Times journalists who reported the story.
According to CNN, Patel cancelled a trip to Chicago on Friday, instead arriving at the White House to help lead the investifation.
The FBI director and Wiles spent “roughly seven hours” in a White House office, according to one of CNN’s sources.
The investigators also sought information from those who were traveling with Trump or had a role in the president’s trip to Ankara for the Nato summit.
One of CNN’s sources also said that not all officials who were asked to turn over their devices complied with the directive.
The Times reported that Trump had to leave Turkey on the old Air Force One instead of the Qatari-donated Boeing 747-8, as a security precaution.
Sources who spoke to the Times said that the new plane does not have all the features of the older plane.
On Wednesday, during Todd Blanche’s confirmation hearing to be the next attorney general, Democratic Senator Peter Welch grilled Trump’s nominee on the efforts to subpoena the Times journalists, and get them to reveal their confidential sources.
Blanche confirmed that he authorized the subpoeana, but insisted it was “not targeting reporters”.
“They’re material witnesses, just like a reporter would be a material witness to a car crash,” he told lawmakers.
“We want to ask them is who provided them with classified national security information, which everybody in this body should want to protect.”
Donald Trump said he does not like giving deadlines when asked by reporters on Wednesday if Iran had a deadline before the United States starts attacking Iranian bridges.
“I don’t like giving deadlines, but they pretty much know, they know the story … they better behave,” Trump said on arrival in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
The president, in fact, has a history of setting deadlines – or perhaps we should say, unenforced deadlines – for Iran to end the war he started but has since struggled to end.
Some counts have it as at least eight deadlines, which he then publicly shifted or extended.
Indeed, since the conflict began on 28 February, Trump has repeatedly threatened to resume bombing if Iran didn’t reopen the strait of Hormuz, reach a deal, and/or hand over its enriched uranium.
Over the last few months that has included several infamous threats to bomb civilian infrastructure including bridges and power plants – which could possibly constitute war crimes under international law.
He typically then walks back his threats within hours, extending or postponing his deadlines citing “progress” made in talks.
Throughout today’s confirmation hearing, Democratic and Republican lawmakers have questioned whether the $1.8bn “anti-weaponization” fund created to compensate the president’s allies – namely January 6 defendents – has been definitively abandoned by the Trump administration.
Blanche sought to underscore that the slush fund is “dead”, as he fielded questions from senators on both sides of the aisle.
“The settlement fund is just not moving forward,” Blanche told Cornyn.
“No money went from the treasury to any other account.”
At various points, Blanche sparred with Democratic senators repeatedly with Democrats over allegations about FBI director Kash Patel’s conduct.
Patel has denied, under oath, claims of heavy drinking and unexplained absences on the job, calling them “baseless.”
At one point, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse pressed Blanche: “Are you confident he’s not drinking on the job?
Are you sure none of his travel is a pretext for vacation activities like snorkeling Olympics and visiting girlfriends?”
Blanche shot back: “That’s an extraordinarily obnoxious question, senator.
And I have full faith in director Patel and the work he’s doing every day.”
Blanche insisted that he does not merely do the president’s bidding and that he would resign if ever asked to do anything illegal or unethical, when questioned by senators today.
He also said he had disagreed at times with Trump and said he did not believe the president was eligible to run for a third term.
“President Trump trusts me to give him counsel,” Blanche said at one point.
“Counsel does not mean I’m a yes man.”
However, Trump’s pick to lead the justice department evaded questions about the presence of federal agents at polling locations.
Blanche simply said that he would “commit to following the law”, when asked by Senator Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat from Minnesota, whether he would ensure that ballot sites were free of federal officers.
Trump has said publicly that he favors elections being “nationalized” – which has drawn widespread backlash from legal experts and lawmakers alike.
Blanche repeatedly defended the Justice Department’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files, while conceding that the release included “mistakes” – notably redaction errors that exposed identifying details of some survivors.
He said those errors were fixed quickly and that only “1%” of the documents required changes.
In a particularly heated exchange, Senator Dick Durbin pressed Blanche to meet personally with survivors, several of whom were in the room.
Blanche said he was barred from doing so.
Durbin, unsatisfied, accused him of “dancing on the head of a pin” to avoid responsibility.
Earlier, Senator John Cornyn, the outgoing Republican from Texas, confirmed to reporters outside the Senate judiciary committee hearing room that he was still undecided about his support for Todd Blanche’s confirmation as attorney general.
One of Cornyn’s main concerns is the $1.8bn so-called “anti-weaponization” slush fund, derived from Donald Trump’s settlement with the IRS, and whether it is officially non-existent.
“I think it’s really important to correct the record, which I tried to do, and I think he was straightforward in answering my questions.
But they don’t they don’t lead inevitably to the conclusion that it’s that it’s dead.
It could be revived at a future date,” he told reporters.
Cornyn added that he would not make any decisions at this point.
“I’m going to wait until we actually vote on the confirmation in a week or so,” he said.
A reminder that Blanche can afford very few Republican defections in order to secure his nomination.
Donald Trump lambasted New York Governor Kathy Hochul Wednesday for pausing the construction of large new datacenters, the gargantuan, resource-intensive facilities that power artificial intelligence.
“New York state has made a terrible decision,” he wrote on Truth Social, the social network he owns.
Trump said that Hochul had implemented the one-year ban for purely political reasons and should scrap the policy “IMMEDIATELY”.
“One of the biggest Driving Forces in the Future for Jobs, are Data Centers.
They are big, strong, bold, and Money Machines for the State in which they are built,” Trump wrote.
New York became the first US state to enact a moratorium on new datacenters on Tuesday.
Hochul issued an executive order mandating a one-year statewide pause on the large facilities.
“This pause will remain in place for up to one year while New York establishes the strongest possible framework to protect our community’s guardrails to reduce the risk to our energy grid, minimize land disruption, noise pollution and protect our national resources, especially our water supply,” Hochul said at a press conference.
The president has pursued a deregulatory agenda with regards to AI during his second term, though he said Wednesday that datacenters should pay for their own water and power rather than accepting tax breaks, as have been offered in the past.
“Both the Taxes and the Jobs amount to LIQUID GOLD!
All of this Income, and other Benefits, will be going to Red States, and some Blue, where Data Centers are sought as Cash Cows, with Lower Taxes and Record Setting Jobs,” he wrote, adding that data centers constituted “tremendous WINS” for “states that were lucky enough to get them.”
He said the “radical left democrats” would cause the US to “lose Data Centers and AI” to China.
The appetite for datacenter moratoriums is growing nationally as anger grows over the facilities’ effects on energy prices and local environments.
Almost three-quarters of Americans oppose a datacenter project being built near their homes, according to a new Heatmap poll.
More than a dozen states have considered moratoria in response to residents’ fears about the potential costs of living next to datacenters, especially higher utility bills and negative environmental effects.
Seattle approved a one-year ban on datacenter development in June, becoming the largest city to do so.
Democratic senator Sheldon Whitehouse probed Blanche over the alleged behavior of FBI director Kash Patel while on the job.
Patel has denied, under oath, recent allegations of excessive drinking and unexplained absences on the job, dismissing them as “baseless”.
The reports were first covered by the Atlantic mid-April, and the embattled FBI director sued the magazine – filing a defamation lawsuit against the magazine for publishing the claims and seeking $250m in damages.
During Blanche’s hearing, Whitehouse questioned whether the nominee for attorney general was happy with Patel’s performance.
“Are you good with his airplane jaunts?
Are you confident he’s not drinking on the job?
Are you sure none of his travel is a pretext for vacation activities like snorkeling Olympics and visiting girlfriends?
Are you sure he knows what he’s doing?
Do you vouch for him?
Are you willing to look at whether he lied to this committee?”
the Democratic senator asked.
Blanche quickly snapped back: “That’s an extraordinarily obnoxious question, senator.
And I have full faith in director Patel and the work that he’s doing every day.”
When asked by Klobuchar whether he would ensure that federal agents are not deployed to polling sites during the November midterm elections, Blanche simply said that he would “commit to following the law”.
A reminder that the US constitution defers control of elections to each state.
Donald Trump, however, has said publicly that he favors elections being “nationalized” – which has drawn widespread backlash.
“Do you understand why voters, US citizens, are concerned about armed agents at polling places?”
Klobuchar asked.
“I’m not aware of armed agents being at polling places,” Blanche responded.
“So I don’t.
I’m not aware of that concern.
But I will tell you, we will follow the law, senator.”
Senators on the judiciary committee have kicked off the confirmation hearing for Todd Blanche to serve as the attorney general.
The committee chair, Republican Chuck Grassley, noted that the lawmakers will consider Blanche for a “promotion” today.
A reminder that Blanche was previously confirmed, and served, as deputy attorney general under Pam Bondi.
“We’re not starting out from a blank slate.
You have a track record,” Grassley said.
“My Democrat colleagues have relentlessly attacked the department and your and President Trump’s leadership.”
During his opening statement, Grassley also used his time to flag new records released by the judiciary committee that shows former special counsel Jack Smith obtained text messages that 44 members of Congress sent to White House officials during the final weeks of Donald Trump’s first term in office.
This is part of a wider strategy from many Republican lawmakers to paint Smith’s investigation as a “recklessness and blatant abuse of power”.
Grassley added that the former special counsel’s operation was “a runaway political train that improperly obtained congressional information”.
In response, the committee’s ranking member, Dick Durbin, noted that Smith has volunteered to appear before the judiciary committee under oath and testify about his work as special counsel.
“For reasons I cannot explain, the Republican majority does not want to bring Jack Smith before this committee and have him testify under oath,” Durbin added.
“They continue on a regular basis to take exception to things that he said or did or allegedly did, but will not bring him before this committee.
I don’t get it.”
The president is awake and posting about ICE on his own social media network.
Writing on Truth Social, Donald Trump said ICE agents are doing a “great” job and that crime is “way down” in the US.
The full post reads:
The men and women of ICE are doing a GREAT job, one that has to be done.
CRIME IS WAY DOWN IN AMERICA, in many cases with numbers that haven’t been seen in decades.
The Open Border Policy of Sleepy Joe Biden allowed 25,000,000 people to pour into our Country, unchecked and unvetted.
Many were Criminals, and we have to get them out.
In order to do this, we must be strong, tough, and smart, and we CANNOT give up one of I.C.E.’s most important and effective Crime Fighting tools, THE TRAFFIC STOP!
Once we do, we are playing right into the criminal’s hands.
The Radical Left Dumocrats would like to see this done, but it won’t happen on my watch.
I.C.E., be judicious, fair and smart, and go back and do your very important job.
Keep those Crime Stat Records coming!
Remember, you are loved and respected in America.
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog.
President Donald Trump’s pick to be the next US attorney general – his former personal defense lawyer Todd Blanche – faces what is expected to be a contentious Senate confirmation hearing today.
Blanche will come under tough questioning from Democrats and potentially some Republicans during his appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
A sole Republican “no” vote on the panel could be enough to torpedo the 51-year-old Blanche’s appointment to be the chief law enforcement officer of the United States.
Blanche has been serving as acting attorney general since Pam Bondi was fired by Trump and has been closely tied to what Democrats have dubbed a “retribution” campaign by the Republican president against his perceived political enemies.
Senators are also expected to robustly press Blanche on his handling of the release of millions of files related to Jeffrey Epstein.
It comes amid a flurry of confirmation hearings set to take place today.
Jay Clayton, Trump’s pick to head the nation’s intelligence agencies, will testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee, weeks after Trump abruptly delayed his nomination.
And the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions will hold nomination hearings for Dr Erica Schwartz to permanently head the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), an agency that has been without a confirmed director for most of Trump’s second term.
The committee could also confirm Sean Kaufman to lead emergency and disaster preparedness efforts as Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response.
In other developments:
Federal immigration officials have been instructed to stop pulling over vehicles until further notice, according to a homeland security source, following two recent deadly shootings in Texas and Maine during which officials shot and killed immigrants in vehicles.
More here.
Darline Graham, the sister of the late Republican senator Lindsey Graham, was sworn in to temporarily fill his Senate seat on Tuesday, just three days after his sudden death.
Graham was appointed by Henry McMaster, South Carolina’s governor, to fill the remainder of her brother’s current term.
More here.
A person died during an encounter with federal immigration officials on Tuesday morning in Florida, marking the third death in one week linked to immigration enforcement operations.
Officials with Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), which is a component of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), had an “encounter” with four men in a vehicle in the parking lot of a convenience store along a busy road in St Augustine, Florida, the highway patrol spokesperson said.
More here.
Supreme court justices requested $14.6m increase in security amid a rise in threats.
Amy Coney Barrett told House lawmakers that a sharp rise in threats against her and other justices is increasingly affecting her personal and family lives.
More here.
Analysis
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