More than 100 Democrats voted to cut military aid to Israel as US public opinion shifts – Republicans are noticing too

Somewhere in the days before Wednesday’s vote, Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader, sat down and wrote his caucus a letter urging Democrats to reject an amendment that would strip security assistance to Israel. For most of his tenure as Democratic leader, that kind of internal whipping operation would have been unnecessary, because the outcome would have been assumed.

His own second-in-command voted the other way anyway.

Republican Trump ally has spent years promoting discredited claims about 2020 election

Donald Trump has endorsed Mike Lindell’s bid for Minnesota governor, calling the MyPillow founder “one of America’s greatest and most hard working Patriots” in a Truth Social post on Wednesday.

Trump described Lindell as someone who had “sacrificed” more than almost anyone else “in fighting for our country, especially when it comes to Election Integrity”, invoking Lindell’s years spent promoting discredited claims about the 2020 election. Trump said Lindell “will MAKE MINNESOTA GREAT AGAIN” and gave him full-throated support ahead of the state’s 11 August Republican primary, where early voting is already under way.

Move comes after Trump rebuked his own homeland security department and insisted ICE maintain policy

The White House overturned a one-day old homeland security department (DHS) memo that said they would be halting traffic stops in the wake of recent stops that left two men killed in the space of a week on Wednesday morning, hours after Donald Trump insisted ICE keep making them.

Federal officers across the US had been told to temporarily stop pulling drivers over on Tuesday. That directive came after ICE agents fatally shot Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston on 7 July and Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Maine on Monday. Both men were unarmed, neither was the intended target of the operation that killed him, and in both cases the agents involved wore no body camera to record what happened.

President’s dismemberment of Election Assistance Commission called a ‘brazen attempt’ to control elections

• US politics live – latest updates

Donald Trump has been accused of trying to “rig” the upcoming US midterm elections after he fired the last three members of an independent federal commission.

Trump’s extraordinary move to paralyze the US Election Assistance Commission (EAC) wipes out the only federal agency devoted solely to election administration months before the US midterm elections.

Platner’s former backers are seeking ‘real progressive’ to prevent nomination going to establishment Democrat

• US politics live – latest updates

Progressive groups and lawmakers who rallied behind Graham Platner’s insurgent bid for a US Senate seat are now racing to decide where to transfer their support after his withdrawal from the Maine race following yet another allegation of sexual assault.

The scramble and apparent heartbreak underscores the uncertainty facing the coalition surrounding Platner’s anti-establishment message, and the response from more centrist Democrats to proceed with caution. Organizations, voters, volunteers and elected officials that once saw him as a vehicle for a more populist progressive agenda are now weighing whether to unite behind a successor, or hold back until the party’s replacement process plays out.

Trump administration requested pause on lower court’s ruling after Trump’s name was removed from facade in June

Weeks after workers pried his name from the Kennedy Center’s facade, Donald Trump lost another round in his fight to get it back. A federal appeals court on Wednesday rejected the administration’s argument that the removal was damaging the arts institution’s finances.

The decision by a three-judge panel of the US ⁠court of appeals for the District of Columbia circuit denied a request from the Trump administration to pause a ⁠lower court judge’s order in a lawsuit brought by Joyce Beatty, a Democratic representative and Kennedy Center board ‌member. Trump’s name was ‌removed from the iconic Washington theater center’s facade and signage last month. ‌US district judge Christopher Cooper ordered the removal in May, and also blocked Trump’s plans to close the center for two years of renovations starting on 4 July.