Texas congressman Tony Gonzales says he will resign from House seat – US politics live

Chuck Schumer said “Democrats will force a vote to stop the war in Iran and rein in an out-of-control Trump” when they vote on a war powers resolution this week.

The vote will mark the fourth time lawmakers consider such a resolution since the Iran war began. This time, Democrats appear confident that they have enough Republican votes to advance the measure.

“For the 4th time, Republicans will have the chance to end this war,” the senate minority leader added to his post on social media.

A woman “with serious sexual misconduct allegations” against the Democratic congressman Eric Swalwell will hold a press conference alongside her attorneys, Lisa Bloom and Arick Fudali, at 9.30am tomorrow in Beverly Hills.

Bloom and Fudali, who have previously represented victims in sexual misconduct cases involving Bill O’Reilly and Jeffrey Epstein, “will describe the next legal steps” in the woman’s case.

Eric Swalwell will give up his seat in the House of Representatives, following sexual assault allegations.

“I am deeply sorry to my family, staff, and constituents for mistakes in judgment I’ve made in my past,” Swalwell said in a statement posted on social media. “I will fight the serious false allegation made against me. However, I must take responsibility and ownership for the mistakes I did make.”

In the post, Swalwell criticized calls to expell him from Congress, which Democratic lawmakers, including his close personal friend Ruben Gallego, have made over the course of the day.

“Expelling anyone in Congress without due process, within days of an allegation being made, is wrong,” he said. “But it’s also wrong for my constituents to have me distracted from my duties.”

Senator Ruben Gallego has called on Congress to expell his personal friend Eric Swalwell after allegations that the congressman engaged in sexual misconduct.

“I support the ethics committee’s investigation and believe Eric Swalwell is no longer fit to be a Member of Congress. He should be expelled from Congress,” Gallego said in a statement Monday.

“I want to be clear: I had no knowledge of the allegations of assault, harassment, and predatory behavior against Eric Swalwell,” he added. “I trusted someone who I believed was a friend, but it is now clear that he is not the person I thought I knew.”

The rebuke comes just shortly after Gallego, the senator from Arizona, withdrew his endorsement of Swalwell in the congressman’s bid to become the next governor of California.

Almost 100 protesters have been arrested at a New York City demonstration calling on senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand to vote this week to block the sale of US bombs to Israel.

Hundreds of protesters with Jewish Voice for Peace attempted a sit-in inside Schumer and Gillibrand’s offices today, but were blocked by security from entering the building.

The demonstrators called on the Democratic senators to vote in support of resolutions introduced by Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, which would block the sale of more than $600m in bombs to Israel, that could come to a vote this week. Protesters told reporters that Israel’s attacks in Lebanon and the US-Israel war in Iran have deepened their concerns about US funding for Israel.

As the protesters demonstrated outside Schumer and Gillibrand’s office, 90 were taken into police custody – including Chelsea Manning, actor Hari Nef and New York city council member Alexa Avilés, JVP told the Associated Press.

Congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle are criticizing Donald Trump for attacking Pope Leo XIV.

Senate majority leader John Thune told reporters today: “I would leave the church alone.”

He added that he had “no observation” on an AI-generated image the president shared on social media, depicting him as a Christ-like figure, saying: “My understanding is it’s been taken down.”

Senate minority Chuck Schumer had firmer words, which he shared with Fox News: “Donald Trump reached a new low when he insulted Pope Leo, the first American pope, by calling him, among other things, weak on crime and too liberal.

“Trump said this in response to the pope’s comments during Easter Sunday, calling for peace. It’s the same Donald Trump who has called the Bible his favorite book on the campaign trail, but can’t name a single verse,” Schumer added.

Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s prime minister and longtime ally of Donald Trump, has called the president’s feud with Pope Leo XIV “unacceptable”.

The rightwing Meloni was the only European leader who attended Trump’s 2025 inauguration, but her rebuke of the president comes as Europe’s far right is distancing itself from Trump amid the war in Iran and Trump-backed Viktor Orbán’s defeat in Hungary yesterday.

In a statement, Meloni said: “I find President Trump’s words regarding the Holy Father to be unacceptable. The pope is the head of the Catholic church, and ​it is right and normal for him to call for peace and to condemn every form of war.”

More Democratic lawmakers will join their colleagues in filing a war powers resolution that they’re hoping to bring to the Senate floor this week.

Senators Mark Kelly, Jeff Merkley, Kirsten Gillibrand, Chris Van Hollen, Raphael Warnock and Andy Kim are signing on to the measure in an attempt to curb the Trump administration’s military action in Iran. While the resolution has already failed three times in the upper chamber, Democrats are confident that they have the handful of GOP votes needed to advance the measure as Congress returns from a two-week recess that included the administration’s failed negotiations with Tehran and whipsawing oil prices.

House Democrats are also hoping to pass their version of the resolution, after it failed on several occasions in recent weeks. They are also hopeful that they have the few Republicans needed to buck their party on side. They’re also convinced that the small number of Democrats who previously voted against the measure will be onboard this time around.

“Trump is a guy who needs kind of to be hit from as many possible angles as possible,” Glenn Ivey, a Democratic congressman from Maryland, told the Guardian.

Oil prices have fallen back after briefly rising to above $100 a barrel as Donald Trump claimed Iran had made contact and wanted “very badly” to strike a deal in the face of his blockade of the strait of Hormuz.

The Brent crude international benchmark rose above the key psychological threshold earlier in the day, at one point up 6.9% to $101.70 a barrel on news of the US president’s plan to block the waterway to Iranian marine traffic.

However, it later eased back to a little more than $99 a barrel after Trump said the blockade had come into force at 10am ET (3pm BST), and the Iranians had subsequently got in touch.

• The House ethics committee announced today that it has launched an investigation into Democratic congressman Eric Swalwell, after reported allegations of inappropriate behavior, sexual assault and rape. A reminder that Swalwell, who represents a congressional district in northern California, ended his gubernatorial bid over the weekend amid the accusations against him.

• Donald Trump deleted an AI-generated image of himself that he posted to Truth Social on Sunday, depicting him as a Jesus Christ-like figure, with divine light emanating from his hands. The removal of the post comes after a wave of backlash from some of the president’s most high-profile and loyal Christian supporters, many of whom have stood by the president through multiple other indiscretions. At an impromptu press conference at the White House, Trump defended his use of the image, saying he thought it portrayed him “as a doctor and had to do with the Red Cross”.

• As the US blockade of the strait of Hormuz continues, Trump vowed that any Iranian ships that come “anywhere close” will be “immediately ELIMINATED”. In a post to Truth Social, the president added that US forces will use “the same system of kill that we use against the drug dealers on boats at Sea. It is quick and brutal.” However, Trump later claimed that Tehran would “also like to made a deal very badly” after “the appropriate people” called the administration this morning.

• While speaking to reporters today, the president also escalated his feud with Pope Leo XIV, calling the pontiff “weak on crime” and dismissing his criticism of the war on Iran. “There’s nothing to apologize for. He’s wrong,” Trump said. Earlier, Leo had insisted he has “no fear of the Trump administration” after the president accused him of “catering to the Radical Left.” Without naming Trump, the pope suggested over the weekend that a “delusion of omnipotence” was driving the US‑Israel war in Iran – remarks that prompted the president’s latest outburst.

• A federal judge has dismissed Donald Trump’s $10bn lawsuit against Wall Street Journal and its publisher Dow Jones, after the president claimed the Rupert Murdoch-owned outlet defamed him by reporting on the president’s alleged message to Jeffrey Epstein, as part of the late sex offender’s 50th birthday album. Judge Darrin Gayles said that Trump’s legal team failed to proved that the Journal acted with “actual malice”, a key requirement in defamation cases involving a public figure.

• The Senate returns to work today, while the House will hold a brief procedural session before getting back to regular business on Tuesday. Lawmakers have a vast agenda to tackle on their return, including a funding bill to reopen the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) subagencies affected by the record-breaking partial government shutdown, now in its ninth week. They’ll also keep debating Trump’s restrictive voter ID legislation, hash out a reconciliation bill to fund federal immigration enforcement, deal with the potential expulsion of four members of Congress and bring a war powers resolution to curb US military action in Iran to the floor in both chambers.

For US Democrats seeking rays of light in the dark landscape of Donald Trump’s authoritarian onslaught, illumination has arrived from the unlikely source of Budapest.

Viktor Orbán’s stunning defeat in Hungary’s general election – ending 16 years of unbroken rule for his governing Fidesz party – carries symbolic and psychological significance for American politics out of all proportion to the central European country’s modest size and distance from the US.

Democrats concerned about Trump’s repeated signaling of his intention to meddle in next November’s congressional midterm election can draw encouragement from that success, said Steven Levitsky, a politics professor at Harvard University.

“The electoral system was heavily gerrymandered in favour [of Fidesz] but it is entirely possible in what I call competitive authoritarian regimes for oppositions to win,” said Levitsky, the author, with Daniel Ziblatt, of How Democracies Die.

Yet amid the optimism, there are notes of caution, with commentators warning against overstating the parallels between the US and Hungary, a country of under 10 million people and a cold war history of communist rule.

Levitsky pinpointed important differences between Orbán, a one-time liberal who campaigned against the former communist regime, and Trump.

“We’re accustomed to calling Hungary an autocracy and the United States, a democracy, but there are ways in which Donald Trump is much more nakedly authoritarian than Orbán,” he said.

“Orbán has never refused to accept defeat. He’s never tried to prosecute his opponents. He has in many ways been less repressive than Trump. If Democrats can take comfort in the fact that it’s still possible to win despite a tilted playing field, they can’t get overconfident, because Trump is capable of doing things that Orbán has never done.”

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The House ethics committee announced today that it has launched an investigation into Democratic congressman Eric Swalwell, after reported allegations of inappropriate behavior, sexual assault and rape. A reminder that Swalwell, who represents a congressional district in northern California, ended his gubernatorial bid over the weekend amid the accusations against him.

The committee said it was specifically examining the allegations Swalwell “may have engaged in sexual misconduct, including towards an employee working under his supervision”.

This comes after a former staffer said the representative sexually assaulted her twice when she was too inebriated to consent, according to a report by the San Francisco Chronicle.

Donald Trump also defended his social media post with himself portrayed as Jesus Christ in the role as healer, which has since been taken down from his Truth Social platform after a massive backlash, notably from conservatives.

“I did post it, and I thought it was me as a doctor and had to do with Red Cross as a Red Cross worker there, which we support. And, only the fake news could come up with that one … it’s supposed to be me as a doctor making people better. And I do make people better. I make people, a lot better,” the US president said.

The AI-generated image of Trump shows him wearing flowing white and red robes, bathed in celestial light and with a shining orb in his left hand while his right hand is laid on a patient’s head and emits a glowing aura – all obviously atypical of hospital, family or field doctors.

The International Committee of the Red Cross in late March put out a statement about the US-Israel war on Iran condemning the loss of thousands of lives, saying: “A devastating pattern of warfare is eroding the foundations of civilian life in the Middle East. One month of hostilities has upended the lives of millions and sent shockwaves far beyond the region at a scale and speed that threatens to overwhelm the humanitarian response.”

At the press conference at the White House just now, Donald Trump also continued to feud with the pope.

In the process he defended the US-Israel war on Iran, while Pope Leo has made repeated calls for peace and negotiation and has criticized the Trump administration’s might is right tone and couching of its war as America’s justified Christian crusade.

After continuing his personal attack on the pope and his attitude to crime, Trump said: “The other thing is, he didn’t like what we’re doing with respect to Iran.”

And continued: “But Iran wants to be a nuclear nation so they can exterminate the world. Not going to happen.”

JD Vance, the US vice-president at the weekend said that peace talks failed because or Iran’s refusal to abandon its nuclear weapons program.

Meanwhile, Trump said of the feud and his calling the pope weak on crime: “There’s nothing to apologize for. He’s wrong.”

Meanwhile, in a press conference just moments ago, Donald Trump returned to one of his favorite topics: false claims about the 2020 election. Trump lost this race to Democrat Joe Biden, before winning back the White House in 2024.

Alleging that the 2020 presidential contest was “rigged” – a claim that has repeatedly been refuted by verified, factual information – the US president said that many of the US’s woes would have been solved by now if not for Biden.

“It’s the only way we got an incompetent man to be a president, and he was an incompetent man,” Trump said without evidence. “Many of the things that we’re talking about, even including this, this would have been settled a long time ago, not now, and it should have been settled by other presidents, but the election was a rigged election. We can’t let that happen to our country.”

While Donald Trump’s blockade of the strait of Hormuz threatens to snarl international supply chains – and further increase sky-high oil prices – he boasted on Monday about his positive impact on this global waterway.

“34 Ships went through the Strait of Hormuz yesterday, which is by far the highest number since this foolish closure began. President DONALD J. TRUMP,” he said in a Truth Social post.

Trump said Sunday that the US naval blockade would target Iranian ships as well as vessels that paid money to Iran for safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz. This is part of Trump’s effort to stop the flow of oil from Iran.

Several hours prior to this post, Trump said he had “obliterated” 158 Iranian naval vessels.

Two months after the Trump administration removed the LGBTQ+ Pride flag from the Stonewall national monument in New York City, federal authorities agreed that the flag can remain.

According to the New York Times, the federal government agreed on Monday to reverse officials’ decision to remove the Pride flag, settling a lawsuit brought by several non-profits.

Federal authorities took down the Pride flag in February, amid the Trump administration’s persistent attacks on the LGBTQ+ community and diversity generally. LGBTQ+ persons across the US saw the flag’s removal as an effort to scrub their history from public spaces.

This monument recognizes the riots in June 1969 that came after police descended on the Stonewall Inn, a beloved gay bar located in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village neighborhood. The six days of protests that followed were a watershed in the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement.

The monument is recognizes as a national symbol of LGBTQ+ Pride.

The Manhattan borough president, Brad Hoylman-Sigal, who is gay, had said that the Pride flag was taken down over the 7 February weekend after a 21 January interior department memo.

Several days after the removal, New York City officials raised the Pride flag again at the Stonewall monument. The Times notes that while the Pride flag had “flown at the site since then in an unofficial capacity”, federal authorities could have taken it down since there hadn’t been an agreement.

Under the settlement, federal authorities will permanently return the Pride flag to its original flagpole in one week, per The Times. The Pride flag will fly along with National parks service and American flags.