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• US supreme court ‘demolishes’ key Voting Rights Act provision that prevented racial discrimination

The US Federal Reserve is widely expected to hold interest rates steady on Wednesday after a key policy meeting, likely the last chaired by central bank chief Jerome Powell, a frequent target of president Donald Trump’s ire.

Policymakers will weigh the risks of surging energy prices and snarled supply chains due to the US-Israel war on Iran, with analysts widely expecting a third pause in a row as the effects of the conflict ripple through the world’s largest economy.

White House says its Middle East envoys will meet Tehran’s foreign minister in Islamabad

• Middle East crisis – live updates

Donald Trump is sending his Middle East envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner to Pakistan to resume negotiations to end the war with Iran, which has lasted nearly eight weeks.

The White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt confirmed the travel on Friday, saying that Witkoff and Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, would meet Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, in Islamabad.

During the first year of his return to power, Donald Trump managed to change the image of the White House that people remembered from his first term, often portrayed as a turbulent time when the president, true to his past as a reality TV star who became famous for the cry of “You’re fired!”, could dismiss his staff at any time and in any way, often with a single tweet. He got rid of an attorney general, a secretary of state, a national security advisor, a communications director, and the head of the FBI—a list completed by numerous resignations: 14 members of his administration left between 2017 and 2021, as well as four chiefs of staff and several White House spokespeople.

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John Phelan firing caused by poor relationship with Pete Hegseth and slow movement on shipbuilding, sources say

The Trump administration fired its top naval official on Wednesday in a move unrelated to the ongoing naval blockade of Iran’s strait of Hormuz, but instead over over an internal dispute about shipbuilding.

The Pentagon confirmed that John Phelan, who ran a private investment fund in Florida and was a Donald Trump donor, had been ousted as the navy secretary. His departure – the first of any service secretary in the Trump administration – came in the same week Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps seized two container ships in the strait of Hormuz, claiming maritime violations and transferring them to Iranian shores.

A global coalition of 125 organizations is issuing an urgent public appeal to all states to immediately cease all forms of support, active or passive, for the United States’ campaign of extrajudicial killings in the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean. Since September 2025, the U.S. armed forces have killed more than 175 people aboard small boats in operations that the Trump administration characterizes as attacks against “narco-terrorists.” The international outcry underscores a shift from directly condemning U.S. actions to also holding third-party countries accountable for their role in these deadly attacks.

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U.S. Navy Secretary John Phelan has been dismissed in a new wartime shake‑up at the Pentagon, coming just weeks after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth removed the Army’s highest‑ranking general from his post.

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Neither elite espionage, nor artificial intelligence capable of processing a thousand targets on the first day of the war, nor the deployment of three U.S. aircraft carriers has proven sufficient. The muscle of the Pentagon and Israel has run up against Iranian naval mines in the Strait of Hormuz, a weapon as discreet and cheap as it is effective. Tehran didn’t even need to officially admit to planting them on the seabed. It was enough to designate “danger zones” in this funnel-shaped waterway, a little over 100 miles long and 20 miles wide at its narrowest point. In this way, it blocked the passage of 20% of the world’s crude oil for seven weeks, negotiated a ceasefire with the United States, and agreed to reopen the passage last Friday, although it reversed course on Saturday. Tehran has managed to remove regime change from the dialogue agenda. All this without detonating a single mine, based solely on the suspicion of their presence.

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The defense secretary said his prayer drew on Ezekiel, but wording closely matches Quentin Tarantino dialogue

It was perhaps inevitable that a braggadocious Christian nationalist defense secretary elevated from his role as a weekend Fox News television host would pluck a fake Bible verse from a violent Hollywood blockbuster and present it at a Pentagon prayer session to rally the troops for the “holy war” in Iran.

Certainly among a glut of stories swirling around Pete Hegseth this week, including articles of impeachment brought against him by a group of ambitious Democratic lawmakers, the bizarre allegation that the Bible-thumping Hegseth was passing off a fire-and-brimstone script by Quentin Tarantino, an Oscar-winning director, as the word of the Lord was far too compelling to ignore.