We’re wrapping up our live coverage for the day. We’ll be back on Wednesday. Here is a summary of today’s developments:
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The Pentagon chief, Pete Hegseth, has warned that Tuesday would be the “most intense” day of US strikes yet, even as he blamed Iran for civilian casualties by claiming its forces were firing missiles from schools and hospitals. Speaking alongside Gen Dan Caine, the chair of the joint chiefs of staff, Hegseth alleged Iran was deliberately firing missiles from schools and hospitals, describing the country’s leadership as “desperate and scrambling like the terrorist cowards they are”. More here.
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The minelayers near the strait of Hormuz were among multiple Iranian vessels taken out by US forces today, according to a post by the US Central Command. In a post on X, the military published unclassified footage of some of the vessels after Donald Trump warned Iran against laying mines in the critical waterway.
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Republican former prosecutor Clay Fuller and retired army general Shawn Harris, a Democrat, will head to a run-off after they came out ahead in a special election Tuesday to replace Marjorie Taylor Greene in Congress. The election for the state’s 14th congressional district has been seen as a test of Donald Trump’s sway and may provide a rare opportunity for Democrats in a deep-red pocket of north-west Georgia. More here.
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Mike Johnson, the speaker of the US House of Representatives, declined to condemn Republican lawmakers who recently made Islamophobic comments, saying only that he had spoken to them about their “tone”. Democrats and groups advocating religious tolerance have decried the statements from congressmen Andy Ogles of Tennessee and Randy Fine of Florida, with the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, calling on Johnson to discipline the latter. More here.
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Donald Trump said that America First Refining plans to open a new oil refinery in Brownsville, Texas, as part of a $300b deal. “THE BIGGEST IN US HISTORY, A MASSIVE WIN for American Workers, Energy, and the GREAT People of South Texas! Thank you to our partners in India, and their largest privately held Energy Company, Reliance, for this tremendous Investment,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social on Tuesday.
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Donald Trump has appointed Erika Kirk, the widow of murdered rightwing activist Charlie Kirk, to a key advisory board of the US Air Force Academy. The 37-year-old joins a number of other loyalists to the president on the 16-member panel of the academy’s board of visitors, which according to its website “inquires into the morale, discipline, curriculum, instruction, physical equipment, fiscal affairs, academic methods and other matters” of the Colorado Springs military training facility. More here.
A new Democrat-led bill seeks to exempt small businesses from Donald Trump’s latest round of tariffs, as small business owners continue to reel from the impacts of the battle over the president’s signature economic policy.
Introduced by the senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts, the bill, known as the “Small Business Liberation 2.0 Act”, would exempt goods imported by or for the use of small businesses from new tariffs, which Trump enacted on 20 February, immediately after the US supreme court’s ruling invalidating his “liberation day” tariffs.
The bill text also prohibits price gouging as a result of the latest tariffs. Democratic senators Chuck Schumer, Mazie Hirono, John Hickenlooper, Kirsten Gillibrand, Amy Klobuchar and Chris Van Hollen are signed on as co-sponsors of the bill.
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The Guardian’s Timothy Pratt brings us reactions coming from voters in Marjorie Taylor Greene’s district in Georgia:
Arthur Carlson, turning 97 next week and a retired Seventh Day Adventist minister, said Trump “says America First, but he doesn’t act it – and the war in Iran is one example. Ever since he got in, he’s tried to be king.” He voted for one of the three Democrats in the field of 17 candidates to replace Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Luis Linares, 24, has lived in Dalton all his life. He voted for Trump in 2024 and thinks “the U.S. is strong under Trump, and that the war in Iran is to free their people.” He cast his ballot for GOP candidate Nicky Lama, a former local politician, because “he went with my brother to high school.”
Linares’ parents came from El Salvador to work in the town’s carpet industry. Nearly 55 percent of Dalton’s population of about 35,000 is Hispanic.
Juan Escudero, a 61-year-old local business owner who has lived in Dalton 22 years and became a citizen in June, was voting for the first time. He also voted for Lama, who he met shortly after arriving to town two-plus decades ago. “The president is doing a good job,” he said. “I think things are going well.”
Hannah Fleming and Laura Bishop voted for Democratic candidate Shawn Harris because they’re “looking for something different,” said Fleming, whose t-shirt said, “women belong in the White House.”
Maria Guijón, 39, was brought from Mexico when she was 11 and works as a paralegal with Dalton’s immigrant community. “There should be a person with a different point of view” in Greene’s seat. “There needs to be reform in the immigration system,” she added.
Yvonne Otts, 85 and a Dalton native, said “the biggest thing for me is to get somebody with good sense, common sense.” Greene, she said, “put herself first – she didn’t put America first. We’re putting American first for the first time [with Trump].”
“I supported a Republican candidate – the president should have people around him who support him,” Otts said. As for the war in Iran, “That doesn’t affect me at all,” she said. “It’s a very short-term thing.”
Republican former prosecutor Clay Fuller and retired army general Shawn Harris, a Democrat, will head to a run-off after they came out ahead in a special election Tuesday to replace Marjorie Taylor Greene in Congress.
The election for the state’s 14th congressional district has been seen as a test of Donald Trump’s sway and may provide a rare opportunity for Democrats in a deep-red pocket of north-west Georgia.
Fuller has Trump’s endorsement and had raised more than $1m leading into voting Tuesday, but Harris, who faced Greene two years ago, has raised more than four times as much. Even though four Republican candidates dropped out before the election, the Republican field was fractured among more than a dozen candidates, including former state senator Colton Moore, a combative agitator to the right of most Republican legislators in Georgia.
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After the Pentagon confirmed that about 140 US troops have been wounded in the US-Iran war, Democratic National Committee chair, Ken Martin, slammed Donald Trump for failing “to provide Americans with a coherent justification.”
“Ten days into his war of choice in Iran, Trump has failed to provide Americans with a coherent justification, given contradictory timelines that change daily, and has demonstrated little remorse over the human cost of war,” Martin wrote in a statement on Tuesday.
“Meanwhile, the American people are totally in the dark while U.S. troops remain in harm’s way and Americans are stranded in the Middle East because of Trump’s illegal war,” he added.
The minelayers near the strait of Hormuz were among multiple Iranian vessels taken out by US forces today, according to a post by the US Central Command.
In a post on X, the military published unclassified footage of some of the vessels after Donald Trump warned Iran against laying mines in the critical waterway.
The world’s most popular podcaster, Joe Rogan, said Donald Trump’s supporters “feel betrayed” by the conflict in Iran.
“Well, it just seems so insane, based on what he ran on. I mean, this is why a lot of people feel betrayed, right?” Rogan said during an episode launched today. “He ran on, ‘No more wars,’ ‘End these stupid, senseless wars,’ and then we have one that we can’t even really clearly define why we did it.”
Rogan has slowly begun to distance himself from the US president after endorsing him in 2024. Earlier this year, Rogan compared US immigration raids to Gestapo operations during an episode where he and his guest were discussing the death of Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old woman who was fatally shot by an ICE agent in Minneapolis..
In an interview with CNBC, Republican senator Ted Cruz said he has “not seen a basis” for President Trump’s decision to ban all federal agencies from using the artificial intelligence model developed by Anthropic after the standoff between the company and the Pentagon.
“I’ll confess, I have not seen a basis laid out for why the government would be prohibited from using Anthropic,” Cruz told CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin. “Claude is one of the many AI tools that can be very helpful.”
The Texas lawmaker’s remarks come amid a monthslong feud over Anthropic’s efforts to implement safeguards against the military’s potential use of its artificial intelligence models for mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous lethal weapons. Yesterday, the company filed two lawsuits against the department of defense over the Trump administration’s decision to label the AI firm a “supply chain risk.”
Microsoft has filed a legal brief supporting Anthropic in its case against the Trump administration, asking a court to temporarily block the Pentagon from labeling the AI company a supply chain risk.
Anthropic sued the Trump administration on Monday after President Trump ordered federal agencies to stop using the company’s AI products, following the company’s statement that it did not want its models to be used in mass surveillance of Americans or for autonomous lethal weapons.
According to a filing in the US District Court in San Francisco, Microsoft said a judge should issue a restraining order that would block the Pentagon’s designation of Anthropic as a supply chain risk.
The restraining order would “enable a more orderly transition and avoid disrupting the American military’s ongoing use of advanced AI,” reads the filing.
The State Department has authorized up to $40m in emergency funds to pay for charter flights evacuating Americans from the Middle East, two US officials told the AP.
The funds come amid transportation disruptions caused by the war with Iran. The department had approved the use of money from a fund normally reserved for emergencies that involve diplomatic and consular staff.
Private Americans are obligated to reimburse the government for such transportation under federal law, but secretary of state Marco Rubio waived that requirement last week.
Donald Trump said that America First Refining plans to open a new oil refinery in Brownsville, Texas, as part of a $300b deal.
“THE BIGGEST IN US HISTORY, A MASSIVE WIN for American Workers, Energy, and the GREAT People of South Texas! Thank you to our partners in India, and their largest privately held Energy Company, Reliance, for this tremendous Investment,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social on Tuesday.
Trump claimed that the new refinery will “strengthen” the US national security, “fuel” the US markets, and deliver “Billions of Dollars in Economic impact.”
Trump also said the oil refinery, which he said is the first new US oil refinery in 50 years, would be the “CLEANEST REFINERY IN THE WORLD,” bringing “THOUSANDS” of new jobs to the area.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: theguardian.com
