Secretary of State Marco Rubio will face a litany of questions Tuesday about the Trump administration’s fragile or stalling diplomatic efforts around the world when he appears for back-to-back hearings on Capitol Hill for the first time since the Iran war began.
Senate Republicans will meet Tuesday to discuss next steps after the Justice Department said it would comply with a court order pausing the implementation of a $1.776 billion settlement fund designed to compensate President Donald Trump’s political allies.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche is also set to return to Capitol Hill on Tuesday for a hearing before the House Appropriations Committee. The hearing was scheduled for discussion of the Justice Department’s budget, but lawmakers will almost certainly focus their questioning on the settlement fund.
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Jill Biden surprised at Kamala Harris’ critiques of Joe Biden’s 2024 decision
The former first lady said Tuesday she was surprised that the former vice president wrote in her own memo that Joe Biden’s ego and ambition effectively damaged Democrats’ hopes in the 2024 presidential election.
“I was a little surprised she wrote that,” Jill Biden said on MSNOW’s “Morning Joe,” adding that “Joe and Kamala, me, Doug (Emhoff), I thought we were a great team.”
She added that “when Joe got out, he handed over the reins to Kamala” and “had full confidence in her.”
The interview comes as part of Jill Biden’s media tour touting her new memoir of the Bidens’ White House years.
The former first lady said her husband and Harris remain on good terms and that Harris “just called two days ago” to check on how he’s doing.
Former first lady says of Joe Biden’s cancer has been tough
Jill Biden said her 83-year-old husband “gets tired a little more often” since his prostate cancer diagnosis.
“Cancer takes its toll,” she said in an MSNOW interview.
But she noted the former president is “still giving speeches” and “still on Amtrak a couple of times a month, keeping a schedule.”
Biden’s son, Beau Biden, died of an aggressive brain cancer in 2015, when his father was still vice president.
“I know every family in America has been touched by cancer,” Jill Biden said. “So I think people can relate when I say … it’s been, it’s been tough.”
Pentagon policy illegally banned transgender troops from military service, appeals court panel rules
A Pentagon policy illegally banned transgender troops from military service, a divided panel of federal appeals court judges ruled on Monday in another legal setback for President Donald Trump’s sweeping agenda.
The majority opinion — by a three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia circuit — held that the Trump administration’s policy was designed to exclude people from the military based on their gender identity.
The ban remains in effect. The U.S. Supreme Court allowed the Pentagon to start enforcing it last year, as litigation continues to play out.
The panel’s new ruling would keep the military from kicking out current service members named in the lawsuit, but wouldn’t allow new transgender recruits to join. The judges put their decision on hold, though, to let the administration seek further review.
What to watch in Tuesday’s primaries as Democrats try to defend California and make inroads in Iowa
For a state that’s home to Hollywood, there isn’t much star power in California’s gubernatorial race. It’s a somewhat different story in Los Angeles, where a reality television personality is running for mayor as the city prepares to host the Olympics.
More primaries are being held on Tuesday as well. Democrats are banking on a rare chance to regain ground in Iowa, a rural state that has repeatedly eluded them in recent years. Republicans, meanwhile, are grappling with a New Jersey congressman whose unexplained absence could put their already slim majority at risk.
▶ Read more about what to watch as voters in California, Iowa, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico and South Dakota cast ballots
Pentagon bars journalists from its press office, saying it has become a ‘classified space’
In another of a series of moves restricting media access at the Pentagon, the Defense Department has declared that its press office is now a classified space inaccessible to journalists.
On X, acting Pentagon press secretary Joel Valdez confirmed the move, saying there was “nothing controversial” about it and that it came because speechwriters, who use classified material, were now occupying the space.
“The Pentagon Press Office has been redesignated as a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility due to speechwriters from the Office of the Secretary of War sharing the facility,” Valdez wrote.
“These speechwriters routinely handle classified material … as a result, journalists will no longer be permitted to enter the office space. There’s nothing controversial about that.”
The latest move, first reported by The Washington Post, took place against a backdrop of escalating tensions between the U.S. media and the second Trump administration, which has played out both in the public arena and at times in the courts.
Republican senators want more answers on $1.8 billion settlement fund as Trump considers its future
Senate Republicans will meet Tuesday to discuss next steps after the Justice Department said it would comply with a court order pausing the implementation of a $1.776 billion settlement fund designed to compensate Trump’s political allies.
GOP senators who revolted against the settlement before leaving for a Memorial Day recess two weeks ago say they want more information from the administration about the future of the fund, which could potentially go to Trump supporters who beat police and attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Meanwhile, Trump is reconsidering whether to move forward with it at all, according to a person familiar with his thinking.
Caught in the middle is legislation that would fund Trump’s immigration enforcement agencies for three years. Republicans abruptly left town without passing it after Democrats said they would offer amendments to scrap or scale back the judgment fund, forcing Republicans to go on the record for or against it and endangering the money for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol.
By Mary Clare Jalonick, Kevin Freking and Seung Min Kim
Rubio will testify before Congress for the first time since the start of the Iran war
Secretary of State Marco Rubio is set to face a litany of questions Tuesday about the Trump administration’s fragile or stalling diplomatic efforts around the world when he appears for back-to-back hearings on Capitol Hill for the first time since the Iran war began.
The Republican former senator will sit before House and Senate committees to make the State Department’s annual budget request. But the focus is likely to shift quickly to the already unsteady ceasefire between Washington and Tehran, which has been further tested in recent days by back-and-forth attacks.
Cabinet members, including Rubio, have defended Trump’s decision to launch the conflict despite promises over the years not to engage in “forever wars” in the Middle East. That work has been made more difficult by Trump’s shifting goals for the conflict.
In the two months since the war began, a small but growing faction of Republicans have joined Democrats in questioning the astronomical price tag and overall economic consequences of the conflict as they head into midterm elections in the fall.
The Associated Press
