‘Stone-cold racism’: Newsom condemns GOP redistricting efforts; Louisiana approves plan to erase majority-Black district – live

Mike Banks, the border patrol chief who oversaw the most aggressive militarization of the US southern border in recent history, has resigned with immediate effect.

“It’s just time,” Banks told Fox News in an interview. “I feel like I got the ship back on course from the least secure, most disastrous, most chaotic border to the most secure border this country has ever seen.”

Rodney Scott, the Customs and Border Protection (CBP), commissioner, said: “We thank US Border Patrol Chief Michael Banks for his decades of service to this country and congratulate him on his second retirement after returning to serve during one of the most challenging periods for border security.

“During his time as chief, the border was transformed from chaos to the most secure border ever recorded. We wish him and his family well.”

The resignation comes weeks after the Washington Examiner reported that six current and former border patrol employees had accused Banks of regularly paying for sex with prostitutes during trips to Colombia and Thailand over more than a decade, and bragging about it to colleagues.

The behavior was said to have been investigated twice by CBP officials, with one inquiry reportedly ending abruptly while the former homeland security secretary Kristi Noem was in office.

CBP described the matter as “closed” last month, with a spokesperson telling the Examiner the allegations “date back more than a decade and were reviewed years ago”.

The agency did not comment on the allegations when contacted by the Guardian on Thursday.

• Democrats on the House oversight committee called on Howard Lutnick to resign, following the commerce secretary’s 6 May testimony to the panel about his ties to the late sex-offender Jeffrey Epstein. “Secretary Lutnick spent his interview trying to cover up his lie and hide from the truth. He couldn’t explain bringing his family to Epstein’s island years after he claimed to have cut ties, even after he found Epstein to be deeply unsettling,” said Robert Garcia, the committee’s ranking member. All Democrats on the panel also signed a letter calling on the commerce secretary to resign, or for Donald Trump to fire him.

• During his transcribed interview, Lutnick elaborated on the instances where he was in contact with Epstein after 2005, the year the commerce secretary initially claimed he stopped interacting with the late sex-offender. However, the commerce secretary then explained the two instances where he spent time with Epstein in the years after – describing them both as “meaningless and inconsequential”.

• The Senate unanimously approved a resolution to withhold senators’ pay during future government shutdowns. The measure would come into effect after the 2026 midterm elections. The resolution, brought forward by senator John Kennedy from Louisiana, said that lawmakers in the upper chamber would receive a back pay after the shutdown ends, the way it works for other federal government employees.

• The House speaker, Mike Johnson, and the minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, on Wednesday announced a bipartisan effort to combat sexual misconduct on Capitol Hill. The “partnership” led by the chairs of the Republican and Democratic women’s caucuses – congresswomen Kat Cammack of Florida and Teresa Leger Fernández of New Mexico – aims to “identify reforms and solutions to make Congress a safer work environment for women and all survivors”, the leaders said in a joint statement.

• Earlier, in Beijing, Donald Trump thanked Xi Jinping for “a magnificent welcome like none other”. The president said that he and his team, which includes secretary of state Marco Rubio, had extremely positive and productive conversations and meetings with the Chinese delegation. At the state banquet, Trump also extended an invitation to Xi to the White House on 24 September.

During his transcribed interview, Lutnick elaborated on the instances where he was in contact with Epstein after 2005, the year the commerce secretary initially claimed he stopped interacting with the late sex-offender.

Lutnick said that after Epstein made a “crude and gross remark in my wife’s presence, which caused us to cut the visit short and leave”, when they visited him while neighbors in 2005 he vowed to “never establish a personal or professional relationship with [Epstein].”

However, the commerce secretary then explained the two instances where he spent time with Epstein in the years after – describing them both as “meaningless and inconsequential”.

In 2011, Lutnick said that he had a conversation with Epstein at the disgraced financier’s home on a “particular weekend afternoon”.

“I rang the bell, sat in his foyer with my dog, waited for him to come down, heard what he had to say, and left. As far as I recall, it was about scaffolding,” Lutnick told oversight lawmakers.

He then described the 2012 lunch on Epstein’s private island, Little Saint James, with his family and friends (another family of six). “I still have no idea how his staff discovered my family’s vacation plans or why they pursued arranging a visit with me,” Lutnick said in his interview, before characterizing the event as a “a brief, meaningless, and inconsequential lunch”.

Democrats on the House oversight committee called on Howard Lutnick to resign, following the commerce secretary’s 6 May testimony to the panel about his ties to the late sex-offender Jeffrey Epstein.

“Secretary Lutnick spent his interview trying to cover up his lie and hide from the truth. He couldn’t explain bringing his family to Epstein’s island years after he claimed to have cut ties, even after he found Epstein to be deeply unsettling,” said Robert Garcia, the committee’s ranking member.

Democratic lawmakers on the panel signed a letter calling on the commerce secretary to step down.

A reminder that Lutnick – the highest-ranking Trump administration official prominently named in the Epstein files, aside from Donald Trump himself – said on a podcast last year that he had decided to “never be in the room” with Epstein following a 2005 tour of the financier’s home in Manhattan that disturbed him and his wife.

But the release of justice department files on Epstein earlier this year showed that Lutnick had two engagements with Epstein years past that. He attended a 2011 event at Epstein’s home. And Lutnick’s family had lunch with Epstein on his private island in 2012 – four years after Epstein was sentenced to 13 months in jail for procuring a minor for prostitution.

Lutnick admitted to the 2012 lunch during his 10 February testimony before the Senate appropriations committee. “I did have lunch with him, as I was on a boat going across on a family vacation,” Lutnick said. In that testimony, Lutnick also insisted that he “barely had anything to do” with Epstein.

The commerce secretary only agreed to the closed-door interview in May, after Democrats on the committee publicly threatened to subpoena Lutnick if he refused to cooperate. Representative Ro Khanna of California told reporters that the votes were there to compel his testimony.

In their letter on Thursday, oversight Democrats were resolute about Lutnick’s need to resign. “The facts are clear: you lied to the American people and attempted to conceal your relationship with Jeffrey Epstein in your public statements,”they wrote. “Your lack of candor demonstrates that you are unfit to perform the duties required of you as secretary of Commerce, and you must step down immediately.”

Pope Leo XIV issued a start warning against the development of artificial intelligence (AI) in military and civilian contexts, in a post on X.

The events in Ukraine, Gaza and the Palestinian territories, Lebanon, and Iran describe “the inhuman evolution of the relationship between war and new technologies, which creates a spiral of annihilation,” he said.

He cautioned against the growth in military expenditure around the world and in Europe in the past year, adding that rearmament should not be called defense.

The Senate unanimously approved a resolution to withhold senators’ pay during future government shutdowns Thursday morning. The measure would come into effect after the 2026 midterm elections.

The resolution, brought forward by senator John Kennedy from Louisiana, said the senators would receive a back pay after the shutdown ends, the way it works for other federal government employees.

This comes after the US government experienced a 43-day shutdown in the fall, the longest closure to date. Separately, most of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) experienced a 76-day partial shutdown earlier this year.

Adm Brad Cooper, head of the US Central Command, testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee about the the Trump administration’s military campaign against Iran Thursday morning.

Cooper, in his first public hearing since the launch of the war, said Iran’s ability to strike the US or its allies had been “dramatically degraded” by the US, citing that the Iranian navy was no longer a regional power.

Iran’s warnings are continuing to ward of commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz, Cooper said. Iran has largely closed the strait of Hormuz, which was previously responsible for about a quarter of the world’s seaborne supply of oil and gas, since the start of the military campaign.

“The Iranian capability to stop commerce has been dramatically depleted through the strait, but their voice is very loud,” Cooper said. “And those threats are clearly heard by the merchant industry and insurance industry.”

Democratic Congresswomen Teresa Leger Fernández and Republican Kat Cammack announced a bipartisan partnership between the Democratic Women’s Caucus and Republican Women’s Caucus to combat workplace sexual misconduct in Congress. The representatives were appointed by House speaker Mike Johnson and minority leader Hakeem Jeffries to lead the initiative.

“No woman – regardless of party, title, or position – should ever feel unsafe in her workplace. Period,” said Cammack.

This comes after former Representative Eric Swalwell, a Democrat, stepped down from Congress in April, following multiple allegations of sexual assault and misconduct that ended his bid for California governor. Shortly after, Tony Gonzales, a Republican from Texas, also resigned after acknowledging an extramarital affair with a staffer and facing a growing threat of expulsion from his colleagues.

“It is sickening that Congressmen sexually harassed and assaulted women staff instead of treating them with the respect they deserved,” Fernández said in a statement announcing the taskforce.

John Thune, the Senate majority leader, told reporters today that the “Byrd scrubs with the parliamentarian get started today”, after Democrats vowed to fight the reconciliation bill “with every tool we have,” earlier this week.

Minority leader Chuck Schumer said that his party will stymie the budget bill that confers $72bn for federal immigration enforcement, and includes $1bn for security measures for Donald Trump’s ballroom project. Democrats have said this provision violates the so-called Byrd rule, and is extraneous and not actually budgetary.

“I usually can’t predict the outcome of some of that,” Thune said on Capitol Hill today. “Although we put a lot of work into ensuring that the things that we attempt to do are things that ultimately could clear those various tests.”

If the Senate parliamentarian advises that the provision be struck from the reconciliation bill, the funding for ballroom security would have to clear the 60-vote filibuster, instead of passing by a simple majority.

With housing costs for working-class families steadily climbing across the US while billionaire fortunes soar to all-time highs, renters’ rights are becoming a defining policy in the upcoming midterm elections, tenant rights organizers say.

In Massachusetts – where Boston consistently lands in the top five US cities for priciest rents – a proposed ballot question this November could overturn the state’s three-decade ban on rent control and cap annual increases at 5%, thanks to a coalition of three dozen housing, faith and labor groups.

The coalition, Homes for All Massachusetts, joined forces last year, recruited an army of volunteers, and within two months, gathered more than 124,000 signatures for the measure – far exceeding the minimum support required to place the issue before voters.

“We’re proud to be part of the national movement for rent control and tenant protections,” said Carolyn Chou, the executive director of Homes for All Massachusetts. “Those kinds of wins symbolize what resonates with everyday people across the country.”

Tenants’ rights organizers say renters’ policies previously considered too extreme have become the centerpiece of insurgent political campaigns in the midterm elections. “Renter” has even become an identity for candidates to run on. Taking a cue from renter politicians in major cities – like New York City’s mayor, Zohran Mamdani, who turned “freeze the rent” into a rallying cry, and Seattle mayor Katie Wilson, who championed social housing – renter candidates across the country are running for city council, mayor and Congress this year.

“Working-class families are at an inflection point,” said Chris Otten, a tenant organizer in Washington DC. “There’s a lot of momentum for these types of policies that can materially benefit people’s lives.”

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On Capitol Hill today, we can expect a series of votes in the House and Senate.

Lawmakers in the lower chamber will vote for the third time to advance a war powers resolution that curbs military action in Iran. Much like yesterday’s failed Senate vote on the resolution, this is also expected to fall short, but we’ll be watching to see if any more Republicans defect and vote in favor.

In the upper chamber today, we can expect final passage on legislation that would withhold senators’ pay during a government shutdown. On Wednesday, the bill advanced by a unanimous vote, and will head to the Senate floor this afternoon.

As I reported earlier, we were watching for more opinions from the supreme court today. The justices didn’t hand down any decisions that we were watching closely.

However, it’s also worth saying that a case we’ll still be watching closely today, as the court is also poised to announce next steps in a case about granting nationwide access to mail-order mifepristone – an abortion medication.

On Monday, Justice Samuel Alito extended a temporary order that allows the pill’s distribution by telehealth and mail until at least 14 May. Two mifepristone manufacturers filed an emergency appeal to the supreme court after a federal appeals court ordered a ban on shipping the pill earlier this month.

A group of Miami residents has filed a lawsuit against Donald Trump and the state of Florida over a land giveaway for his proposed presidential library.

Almost three acres of prime waterfront land that once belonged to Miami Dade College (MDC) was illegally gifted to the US president by Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, the lawsuit states.

It cites the domestic emoluments clause of the US constitution that prohibits a sitting president from receiving any personal gain, profit or advantage from their position.

The action was brought in US district court for the southern district of Florida by the Washington DC-based Constitutional Accountability Center (CAC) on behalf of plaintiffs including an MDC student, a Miami non-profit, and residents, who state the land “is no longer available to serve MDC’s student community and downtown Miami”.

Instead, the filing states, “the land will house a Trump hotel that brings riches to the President”.

Plans for the “gaudy” project were unveiled in March, to be built next to Miami’s iconic Freedom Tower, the historical landmark and community art museum. A giant golden statue of the president will stand before a 50-story tower block that will feature the controversial $400m Boeing “flying palace” jumbo jet gifted to him by Qatar, but not yet in service, in its cavernous lobby.

The supreme court will hand down opinions at 10am ET today. Here’s a reminder of the major cases we’re tracking closely.

• Trump v Cook: Donald Trump’s case for firing Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook, as he continues to exert greater control over the US central bank.

• Trump v Slaughter: A case which examines the legality of Trump’s firing of a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) member, Rebecca Slaughter.

• Trump v Barbara: In which the court will decide if the administration’s attempts to restrict birthright citizenship are unconstitutional.

In response to a question about the latest data which saw US inflation jump to 3.8%, higher than when Joe Biden left office, Bessent remained undeterred.

“We may get a series, one or two more hot inflation numbers,” the treasury secretary said in an interview with CNBC. “But then I think we’re going to see substantial disinflation.”