Senate Democrats will force war powers vote, says minority leader Chuck Schumer – US politics live | US news-Breaking News, Latest Updates

During today’s press briefing, Karoline Leavitt defended the president’s comments on Truth Social that a “whole civilization” would die if a deal with Iran was not reached.

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“[Trump’s] very tough rhetoric and his tough negotiating style is what has led to the result that you are all witnessing today,” Leavitt said. “It was the Iranians who backed down, not President Trump.”

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The press secretary went on to say that Trump “absolutely has the moral high ground over the Iranian terrorist regime”.

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The press secretary chided the press for allegedly “misreporting” that Donald Trump is working from the original 10-point plan put forward by Tehran.

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“It was literally thrown in the garbage by President Trump and his negotiating team,” she said, despite the fact that Trump said on Truth Social that the US received a 10-point proposal from Iran that is believed to be a “workable basis on which to negotiate”.

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Leavitt claimed that Iran actually put forward a “more reasonable and entirely different and condensed plan to the president”.

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She noted that Trump’s red lines, namely the end of uranium enrichment in Iran, “have not changed”.

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“The idea that President Trump would ever accept an Iranian wishlist,” she says, “is completely absurd.”

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After Trump announced the ceasefire, Iranian state media published a proposal that included continued Iranian control over the strategic strait of Hormuz, an end to international sanctions on the country and “acceptance” of uranium enrichment.

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In a press conference in New York today, Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, said Democrats in the upper chamber would force a vote on a war powers resolution to limit the administration’s military campaign in Iran when Congress returns from recess next week.

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Earlier, the Senate’s top Democrat called Donald Trump a “military moron” on social media.

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Schumer noted that, despite the two-week ceasefire, the cost of the war, and the effect on gas prices, has made the US “worse off today than we were when [Trump] started it”.

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“If he restarts this war we will be in even worse shape. We must pass our War Powers Resolution to end this war for good,” Schumer wrote.

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A growing number of Democrats are calling for the 25th amendment to be invoked to remove Donald Trump from office, following the president’s genuinely shocking post yesterday morning in which he threatened to wipe out an entire civilization if Iran didn’t capitulate to his demands.

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The extraordinary, violent outburst has raised questions about the president’s mental health, as well as spurring grave concerns about whether he would follow through on his threats to bomb Iran’s critical infrastructure – which would amount to war crimes under international law.

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More than 70 lawmakers – mostly in the House but also a handful in the Senate – have made the demand. Some have called for his cabinet to invoke the amendment to declare him unfit for office, others have called for his impeachment and conviction – and some have called for both.

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Senator Chris Murphy, of Connecticut, told CNN on Tuesday that “no president in control of his senses would publicly promise to eradicate an entire civilization”.

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That’s why I agree with Republicans who have put the 25th amendment on the table. Trump seems to be taking us on a path to mass war crimes. That’s a path we cannot accept.

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Ed Markey, of Massachusetts, wrote on X:

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The House and Senate must return to session. The House must pass articles of impeachment, and then the Senate must vote to convict and remove the President. Or, the cabinet and Vice President, with congressional concurrence, must invoke the 25th Amendment and remove Trump.

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“We need to invoke the 25th Amendment and remove Trump,” representative Ro Khanna, of California, wrote on Tuesday morning on X. “Threatening war crimes is a blatant violation of our constitution and the Geneva Conventions.”

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Former House speaker Nancy Pelosi said on X:

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Donald Trump’s instability is more clear and dangerous than ever. If the Cabinet is not willing to invoke the 25th Amendment and restore sanity, Republicans must reconvene the Congress to end this war.

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Representative Pramila Jayapal also said on X after the ceasefire announcement:

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I’m relieved Trump did not destroy an entire civilization last night, but his unhinged threat and illegal war make it clear he is unfit to serve as president.

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Trump needs to be removed from office. And we must oppose his new $1.5 trillion budget proposal for more war.

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Illinois’s governor, JB Pritzker, a potential future presidential hopeful, also called for the 25th amendment to be invoked. He said on X of Trump’s post:

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This is not foreign policy, it’s a deranged mad man threatening to wipe out an entire country. It’s past time. The 25th Amendment must be invoked.

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Trump’s threat outraged even those who formerly made up his core Maga base, including former representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, and rightwing commentators and conspiracy theorists Alex Jones and Candace Owens.

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“25TH AMENDMENT!!!” Greene, formerly a staunch Trump ally turned critic, posted on X yesterday. “Not a single bomb has dropped on America. We cannot kill an entire civilization. This is evil and madness.”

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A handful of Republican lawmakers also expressed unease with threats to strike civilian targets, but by and large the party has remained silent.

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The House oversight committee has signaled it will continue to seek testimony from former attorney general Pam Bondi after she was ousted last week.

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She was subpoenaed for a 14 April deposition on the justice department’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files, but the date was never confirmed by her. A committee spokesperson said in a statement that the panel would continue to pursue scheduling a date for her testimony.

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The Department of Justice has stated Pam Bondi will not appear on April 14 for a deposition since she is no longer Attorney General and was subpoenaed in her capacity as Attorney General. The Committee will contact Pam Bondi’s personal counsel to discuss next steps regarding scheduling her deposition.

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Bondi was subpoenaed last month after five Republicans on the committee joined forces with Democrats to seek her testimony.

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The top Democrat on the panel, Robert Garcia, said in a statement on Wednesday that Bondi was “trying to get out of her legal obligation to testify”.

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Our bipartisan subpoena is to Pam Bondi, whether she is the Attorney General or not. She must come in to testify immediately, and if she defies the subpoena, we will begin contempt charges in Congress. The survivors deserve justices.

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Bondi answers questions from the media at the Capitol on 18 March.”,”caption”:”Pam Bondi answers questions from the media at the US Capitol on 18 March.”,”credit”:”Photograph: Matt McClain/Getty Images”}}],”attributes”:{“pinned”:false,”keyEvent”:true,”summary”:false},”blockCreatedOn”:1775662719000,”blockCreatedOnDisplay”:”17.38 CEST”,”blockLastUpdated”:1775663964000,”blockLastUpdatedDisplay”:”17.59 CEST”,”blockFirstPublished”:1775663506000,”blockFirstPublishedDisplay”:”17.51 CEST”,”blockFirstPublishedDisplayNoTimezone”:”17.51″,”title”:”House oversight committee to still pursue Pam Bondi testimony over justice department’s handling of Epstein case”,”contributors”:[],”primaryDateLine”:”Wed 8 Apr 2026 20.19 CEST”,”secondaryDateLine”:”First published on Wed 8 Apr 2026 11.48 CEST”},{“id”:”69d672718f089809b18e2118″,”elements”:[{“_type”:”model.dotcomrendering.pageElements.TextBlockElement”,”html”:”

Under Lee Zeldin – the US environment secretary who spoke at the climate-skeptical Heartland Institute’s conference on Wednesday morning – the EPA has exempted polluting facilities from regulations, shuttered climate and environmental research offices, and shrunk its workforce. It has also rolled back dozens of environmental and climate protections.

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“What we are doing in the last 14 months is no surprise,” he said. “It is what I pledged during my confirmation hearing, and it is what the American public voted for when they put Donald J Trump back in office. And thank God they did.”

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Zeldin spoke about his most controversial environmental rollback: the shredding of the legal finding underpinning virtually all US climate regulations, known as the “endangerment finding”.

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Scientists and other experts widely condemned the repeal, but Heartland Institute has celebrated it; references to its rollback were met with cheers at the conference in Washington DC on Wednesday. Zeldin expressed “admiration” for the Heartland Institute’s advocacy against the endangerment finding in his speech.

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He also criticized previous administrations for ignoring “what’s good and necessary about carbon dioxide for the life of the planet”.

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There is scientific consensus that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are warming the planet, resulting in dangerous increases in temperatures and in the intensity and frequency of extreme weather events. Scientists have long warned that the world must quickly phase out fossil fuels in order to preserve a livable climate.

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Zeldin speaks during an announcement on microplastics at the EPA headquarters in Washington DC on 2 April 2026.”,”caption”:”Lee Zeldin speaks during an announcement on microplastics at the EPA headquarters in Washington DC on 2 April 2026.”,”credit”:”Photograph: Ken Cedeno/Reuters”}}],”attributes”:{“pinned”:false,”keyEvent”:true,”summary”:false},”blockCreatedOn”:1775661681000,”blockCreatedOnDisplay”:”17.21 CEST”,”blockLastUpdated”:1775664015000,”blockLastUpdatedDisplay”:”18.00 CEST”,”blockFirstPublished”:1775662438000,”blockFirstPublishedDisplay”:”17.33 CEST”,”blockFirstPublishedDisplayNoTimezone”:”17.33″,”title”:”Zeldin touts rollbacks at climate-skeptical conference: ‘What we are doing is no surprise'”,”contributors”:[{“name”:”Dharna Noor”}],”primaryDateLine”:”Wed 8 Apr 2026 20.19 CEST”,”secondaryDateLine”:”First published on Wed 8 Apr 2026 11.48 CEST”},{“id”:”69d65ab98f089809b18e1fe8″,”elements”:[{“_type”:”model.dotcomrendering.pageElements.TextBlockElement”,”html”:”

Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader, said that the lower chamber should vote immediately on a war powers resolution to curb the Trump administration’s war on Iran.

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“We need a permanent end to Donald Trump’s reckless war of choice,” Jeffries told CNN shortly after Donald Trump announced the two-week ceasefire with Iran on Tuesday. “House Democrats have demanded that Speaker Mike Johnson immediately reconvene the House back into session so we can move a war powers resolution that will end this conflict permanently.”

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A reminder that Democratic lawmakers led calls for Trump’s ouster after he threatened to wipe out an “entire civilization” if Iran did not reach a deal to reopen the strait of Hormuz. While Jeffries told CNN that the pause is “insufficient”, it’s not clear how this deal will ultimately affect Congress’s wider perception of Trump’s handling of the war. Republicans, including Johnson and the Senate majority leader, John Thune, were largely silent in the wake of Trump’s astonishing posts on social media in recent days.

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When asked whether Donald Trump did, in fact, plan to follow through with his staggering threats that a “whole civilization will die” if Iran did not reopen the strait of Hormuz, Pete Hegseth said that had a target “set, locked and loaded” had a deal collapsed by Tuesday evening.

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The defense secretary claimed that the Iranian regime had “dual use” for “infrastructure, bridges, power plants”, adding that they were used “to fund their military” and “to fund their terror campaign”.

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A reminder, the administration came under wide-spread backlash on Tuesday after the president’s missive suggested that the US would violate the Geneva conventions to achieve its objective.

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“We had a lot of legitimate targets. They knew exactly the scope of what we were capable of,” Hegseth said, defending Trump’s plans.

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As the defense secretary continued to extol that the two-week ceasefire signals a decisive victory, he listed several Iranian officials who have been killed since the war began at the end of February.

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“The new Iranian regime was out of options and out of time, so they cut a deal,” Hegseth said. “We control their fate, not the other way around. That’s why they came to the table. Iran’s defeat is America’s retribution for every American lost to Iranian terror.”

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At his Penatagon press conference, Pete Hegseth begins by saying Iran “begged for this ceasefire” and says Operation Epic Fury “decimated” Iran’s military.

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He says the country’s missile programme has been “functionally destroyed” and that Iran’s navy “is at the bottom of the sea”. Hesgeth adds that “we [the US] own their skies”.

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The US carried out 800 strikes on Tuesday night, he says, destroying Iran’s defence industrial base.

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Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog.

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Democratic-backed candidate Chris Taylor won election to the Wisconsin supreme court on Tuesday, giving liberals a 5-2 edge on the court.

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She beat conservative Maria Lazar, consolidating the liberal hold on the high court ahead of the next presidential election, when the swing state is sure to see challenges to election results.

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“Once again, Wisconsin showed the entire nation that we believe that the people should be at the center of government and the priority of our judiciary, not the billionaires, not the most powerful and privileged, but the people,” Taylor said in her victory speech.

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Taylor’s win gives liberals a 5-2 bloc on the bench. Taylor is seen as friendly to voting rights, while Lazar’s views aligned more closely with Republicans, pushing for policies that could hinder voting access and impact. Lazar had continued to defend maps in Wisconsin that were gerrymandered to lead to more Republican victories, which have since been overturned.

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Liberals are now guaranteed to hold a majority on the court until at least 2030. Wisconsin Republican party chair Brian Schimming, in the wake of Lazar’s double-digit defeat, called for Republicans to “stay united and continue fighting for our conservative values.”

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The race is another gauge of Democrats’ durability in this year’s midterms, particularly in a closely watched swing state, though the November ticket and voter turnout will be much different than a court election.

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Democratic candidates have recently won upset victories throughout the country in places typically held by Republicans, giving them momentum heading into November. Voters often side against the president in midterm elections.

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Read the full story here:

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In other developments:

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  Shortly before his 8pm ET deadline for Iran to reopen the strait of Hormuz, or face the death of its “whole civilization”, Donald Trump posted on social media that the US had reached a temporary ceasefire agreement with Iran. Details of the agreement are still forthcoming and bombing continues across the region.

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  Iranian officials will meet with the United States for talks beginning Friday. Pakistan, which brokered the ceasefire agreement, will host the negotiations in Islamabad.

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  The Pentagon will hold a press briefing at 8am ET today. Defense secretary Pete Hegseth and Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, are expected to attend.

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  Some Democrats criticized the ceasefire deal, saying its terms, if true, would cede major concessions to Iran, including control over the strait of Hormuz. Others, including New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, called for Congress to invoke the 25th amendment to remove Trump from office after he “threatened a genocide against the Iranian people”.

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  Several Republicans cheered the president’s decision, casting it as shrewd and tactical. “This is a strong first step toward holding Iran accountable,” said senator Rick Scott of Florida.

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  Shelly Kittleson, the US journalist who was kidnapped in Baghdad by the Iran-backed Iraqi militia Kataib Hezbollah last week, has been released, said secretary of state Marco Rubio.

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  Repulican Clay Fuller won Georgia’s special election to replace Marjorie Taylor Greene in the House of Representatives. In line with special elections for Congress since the start of Trump’s term, his Democratic rival, Shawn Harris, overperformed.

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Key events

During today’s press briefing, Karoline Leavitt defended the president’s comments on Truth Social that a “whole civilization” would die if a deal with Iran was not reached.

“[Trump’s] very tough rhetoric and his tough negotiating style is what has led to the result that you are all witnessing today,” Leavitt said. “It was the Iranians who backed down, not President Trump.”

The press secretary went on to say that Trump “absolutely has the moral high ground over the Iranian terrorist regime”.