Code Pink protester crashes Hegseth’s Senate testimony to condemn ‘war for Israel’ – live

The White House said in a statement that Donald Trump has signed the Department of Homeland Security funding bill into law, which excludes immigration enforcement operations, bringing an end the longest government agency shutdown in history.

The US Congress has passed a 45-day extension of a law that grants US intelligence agencies warrantless spying powers.

Bitter infighting over section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in the Republican wing of Congress has repeatedly tanked conservative leaders’ plans to renew the controversial surveillance law for multiple years. The deadlock continued on Thursday, as the Republican House speaker Mike Johnson refused to include key reforms pushed by hardliners in his party and progressive Democrats.

In remarks before a final vote in the House, lawmakers opposed to a long-term extension of section 702 again called on Johnson to consider their concerns about how the surveillance program is abused to spy on Americans.

“We’re willing to give you 45 more days for us to negotiate this thing if the Speaker will actually sit down with us,” said US congressman Jamie Raskin, a Democrat from Maryland, who has rallied against an extension of the program with no changes. “We can make this happen if we’re willing to get rid of all the chaos and the pandemonium we’ve seen over the last several days and simply sit down and have a meaningful conversation and write the legislation.”

Hardline Republicans across the aisle who took issue with section 702 welcomed Raskin’s remarks as they too expressed their fears about how the program surveils Americans’ communications. “Fisa databases have been used to query political activists, members of Congress and their staff, random romantic interests of FBI agents, and we’re being told, ‘Oh, don’t worry, it’s not being abused any more,” said Thomas Massie, a Republican from Kentucky.

As our colleague Robert Tait reports, US defense secretary Pete Hegseth’s attempt to put a positive spin on the ongoing US war on Iran was immediately challenged, first by the ranking Democrat on the armed services committee, senator Jack Reed, who lambasted his “dangerously exaggerated” claims, and then by a protester who shouted, “you’re a war criminal!”

A Reuters photograph of the protester from the activist group Code Pink showed that he stood up in the audience behind Hegseth and held a sign reading “No War on Iran”, as a colleague recorded and Capitol Police officers quickly converged on him.

That video, recorded and posted online by fellow activists from the group Code Pink, showed that the protester shouted at Hegseth, as he being bundled away by Capitol Police officers: “You should be arrested. What you’re doing is despicable. The American people do not want to go into this war. We don’t want to fight a war for Israel!”

Code Pink co-founder Medea Benjamin also posted video of a brief interview with the protester in handcuffs outside the hearing room. “I’m being arrested because I oppose the war in Iran,” he said. We don’t want to fight this war for Israel… and we don’t want to commit war crimes.

Trump dismissed the press corps from the Oval Office, but then quickly paused their departure to ask whether the assembled journalists, many from Maga-aligned outlets, liked the new floors.

“What I do best is I build,” Trump said, before launching into a, by his own admission, “tangent” on the difference between granite and marble. Granite is stronger, but marble, in the president’s opinion, is more beautiful. He said the White House raced to complete the new granite floor in time for King Charles’s visit.

“Did he love it?” one reporter asked. “Ooh he loved it and he’s seen some nice stones,” Trump replied.

“This is a Trump renaissance,” one person told him. “We’re fixing the White House,” he agreed.

Trump was asked whether he might start wearing a bullet proof vest after the latest incident at the White House correspondents dinner.

“I don’t know if I could handle looking 20lbs heavier,” Trump quipped, drawing laughs from the room. Of the secret service agents, he said: “Some of these guys are physical specimens.”

He mused that it might be useful to wear one, but “you don’t like to do it because you’re giving into a bad element,” he said.

He was previously asked whether the shot that struck a US secret service officer during Saturday’s shooting outside the ballroom at the Washington Hilton.

“They say it was not friendly fire,” he said. “That’s what I heard.”

The officer was struck in the chest, but protected by a bulletproof vest. “He didn’t even want to go to the hospital,” Trump said, emphasizing the efficacy of the vest.

Trump is taking questions in the Oval Office after signing an executive order on Thursday that aims to expand access to retirement plans for workers whose employers don’t provide one.

Asked about Iran, he claimed that they “want to make a deal badly”.

When pressed on whether the Iranian soccer team should be allowed to take part in the FIFA world cup this summer, Trump said if Fifa president Gianni Infantino – whom he called a “piece of work” – agreed the team should play, he would support that decision. “Let them play,” Trump said.

Iran’s participation has been the subject of uncertainty since the US and Israel launched airstrikes on the Islamic Republic in February, but Infantino insisted they will fulfil fixtures against New Zealand, Belgium and Egypt.

We have some additional reporting on the major shake-up in the Maine Senate race, following Governor Janet Mills’s decision to suspend her bid.

My colleague, Shrai Popat, was in Portland reporting on the race this week, and files this report.

Mills decision to suspend her campaign now paves the way for Platner, a progressive newcomer with no experience in politics, to clinch the Democratic nomination. Platner has staked his campaign on fixing a “broken” political system that caters to the wealthy and fosters corruption.

At a campaign event in Augusta shortly after the announcement, Platner said that Mills’s decision to suspend her campaign was an example of the governor’s “commitment” to defeat Collins. “I look forward to working closely with [Mills] between now and November … to turn this seat blue again,” Platner added.

Mills, a two-term governor and longtime Maine politician who also served as the state’s attorney general, has yet to confirm whether she will endorse Platner. The governor was seen as one of Democrats’ top 2026 recruits when she entered the Senate race last year. She had the backing of Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, and prominent left-leaning advocacy groups, as they try pick up at least four seats to reclaim control of the upper chamber of Congress.

The Republican-led Senate on Thursday again blocked a Democratic attempt to stop Trump’s war in Iran, rejecting a war powers resolution that would have limited the conflict until Congress authorities further military action.

The vote was 47-50, with two Republicans – senator Susan Collins of Maine and Rand Paul of Kentucky – voting in favor and one Democrat – senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania – opposing it.

It was the sixth time this year that Democrats have forced a vote on a war powers resolution related to the US’s assault on Iran. All have failed, mostly along party lines.

The resolution’s author, Senator Adam Schiff, said Thursday’s vote was critical. Friday marks 60 days since the Trump administration notified Congress that it was carrying out strikes on Iran.

Under the War Powers Resolution of 1973, the president must terminate its military campaign at the end of the 60-day window, unless Congress has declared war or authorized the use of military force. Hegseth, testifying earlier on Capitol Hill, said the 60-day clock was paused due to the current ceasefire with Iran, though Democrats and critics have raised concerns with that interpretation.

After bidding farewell to King Charles and Queen Camilla at the White House this morning, Trump turned to Truth Social to announce that he would remove tariffs and restrictions on whiskey “having to do with Scotland’s ability to work with Commonwealth of Kentucky”.

“In Honor of the King and Queen of the United Kingdom, who have just left the White House, soon headed back to their wonderful Country, I will be removing the Tariffs and Restrictions on Whiskey having to do with Scotland’s ability to work with the Commonwealth of Kentucky on Whiskey and Bourbon, two very important Industries within Scotland and Kentucky,” Trump wrote in a truth social post.

“People have wanted to do this for a long time, in that there had been great Inter-Country Trade, especially having to do with the Wooden Barrels used,” Trump continued, heaping praise on the royal couple. “The King and Queen got me to do something that nobody else was able to do, without hardly even asking! A wonderful Honor to have them both in the U.S.A.”

Donald Trump on Thursday pulled his controversial nominee for US surgeon general, Casey Means, and announced a potential replacement.

The US president said that Means will continue to fight for the so-called Make America Healthy Again (Maha) movement spearheaded by health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr and decried the opposition to her nomination from Bill Cassidy, the Republican US senator of Louisiana and medical doctor, to Means’s nomination.

Trump then announced that he would nominate radiologist and Fox News contributor Dr Nicole Saphier for the post of US surgeon general.

Here’s more from my colleague Bob Tait who was following the hearing from Washington.

Pete Hegseth has failed to give Donald Trump an accurate picture of the war on Iran while resorting to “dangerously exaggerated” statements to create an inaccurate picture of a US military triumph, a senior Democrat told a Capitol Hill hearing on Thursday.

Jack Reed, the ranking Democrat on the Senate armed services committee, told Hegseth, the defense secretary, that far from victory, US citizens were having to bear the cost of a war they did not support in the form of increased fuel prices.

“American families are bearing the cost of a war they wanted nothing to do with and have gained nothing from and yet, Secretary Hegseth, you declared victory a month ago,” said Reed, a senator from Rhode Island.

The comments came at the opening of the second successive day of congressional testimony from Hegseth and Dan Caine, the chairman of the US armed forces’ joint chiefs of staff, who are testifying over the Pentagon’s record $1.45tn military budget submission.

As with the previous day’s appearance before the equivalent committee in the House of Representatives, the hearing quickly devolved into confrontation over the war with Iran, which has become stalemated after eight weeks of fighting and seen the regime in Tehran close the strategically vital strait of Hormuz.

Read his dispatch in full below:

Hegseth faced nearly three hours of grilling before the Senate Armed Service Committee, alongside the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dan Caine. An anti-war protester shouted at the secretary as he stood to leave.

The senators press Hegseth on the costs and consequences of the Iran war, asking what the Pentagon was doing to prevent and minimize civilian harm. Democrats asked particularly pointed questions about Hegseth’s rhetoric, conduct and in one-back-and-forth, potential insider trading within the department.

At one point, Hegseth claimed that the 60-day legal limit for the war in Iran, which would be reached on Friday, was paused as a result of the ceasefire, an interpretation some experts and critics have cast as dubious.

Caine also acknowledged to senators that Russia has been aiding Iran’s war effort, but declined to provide further details given the public nature of the hearing.

Senator Jacky Rosen, a Nevada Democrat, asked Hegseth about his comparison of the US press corps and Democratic senators the Pharisees who conspired to destroy Jesus Christ.

“It’s a problematic and historically weaponized term that casts Jewish communities as hypocritical and morally corrupt. What you choose to say, how we choose to say it – how do you justify using this language?” Rosen said.

“It’s a pretty accurate term for those who don’t see the plank in their own eye … so I stand by it,” Hegseth replied.

“Sir, I cannot stand for that. That is wrong,” she said.

A historically long 75-day partial government shutdown has ended after a voice vote in the House to advance funding for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) following a late-night Republican rally to boost a GOP budget blueprint.

The tides turned on Wednesday evening when the House passed the Republican resolution following a last-minute deal over unrelated ethanol fuel provisions that flipped enough holdouts to push it over the line.

That blueprint unlocked a procedural tool allowing Republicans to pass up to $75bn for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the border patrol on party lines, sidestepping Democratic demands for new oversight following the fatal shootings of two US citizens by federal agents in January.

Donald Trump has set a 1 June deadline for a final funding package to reach his desk. The White House has warned Congress that without action, it will be unable to pay most DHS employees from May. More than 1,100 Transpotation Safety Administration agents have so far quit since February.

A separate bill funding non-immigration DHS agencies must still pass before lawmakers leave for recess.

Senator Mark Kelly, a Democrat of Arizona, pressed the Secretary on whether he stands by his statement of “no mercy, no quarter” for US enemies, which legal experts and Democrats have said could consitution a violation of international law.

Kelly has argued that Hegseth’s vow to take “no quarter” implies that enemy combatants will not be taken prisoner but instead executed, a war crime under the Hague Convention of 1899.

Kelly, a former Navy pilot, repeated the question, quoting the definition of “no quarter” from the department’s law of war manual, and asked if Hegseth wanted to provide any clarity on what he meant by the statement.

“We have untied the hands of our warfighters. We fight to win and we follow the law,” Hegseth said.

“You’re not clarifying your statement,” Kelly said. “You’re the secretary of defense. The things you say matter and your response right here, right now, makes it clear to the American people why you’re not right for this job.”

Notably, Hegseth had tried to punish Kelly for his participation in a video that implored US troops to reject unlawful orders. In February, a judge blocked the Pentagon from formally censuring Kelly over the video.