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Key events
When Pete Hegseth was made Donald Trump’s secretary of war, there was shock and consternation. Since then he has put highly classified plans to bomb Yemen on a group chat and ordered executions of Venezuelans in the sea, reportedly insisting they “kill everybody”, even when the survivors who were seen clinging to a boat could pose no threat.
The former Fox News talkshow host holds one of the most powerful jobs in the world and has come to it with a clear ideology. He wants to bring his “warrior culture” to the US military. Joseph Gedeon, a breaking news reporter for the Guardian US, tells Nosheen Iqbal:
His whole thing is about what he calls the warrior ethos. His whole message is that America fights with one hand tied behind its back because of lawyers, oversight and cultural distractions.
Now strikes on Venezuelans in the Caribbean Sea have led to him being accused of war crimes and a damning report into his handling of classified information has come back. Can he survive? Listen to the latest episode of the Guardian’s Todqay in Focus podcast for a discussion on this:
Opening summary
US lawmakers have shared their concerns over escalating tensions between the US and Venezuela after US forces seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela.
Senator Rand Paul told NewsNation, as reported by the Hill, that the action “sounds a lot like the beginning of a war” and it was not “the job of the American government to go looking for monsters around the world, looking for adversaries and beginning wars”.
The major escalation of Donald Trump’s four-month pressure campaign against the South American country’s dictator, Nicolás Maduro, was described by the Venezuelan government as “an act of international piracy”.
Trump confirmed the operation on Wednesday, saying:
We’ve just seized a tanker on the coast of Venezuela – a large tanker, very large, the largest one ever seized actually.
“It was seized for a very good reason,” the US president added, declining to say who owned the vessel.
Pam Bondi, the US attorney general, posted footage of the seizure on X. She said the tanker had been sanctioned by the US for “multiple years” due to its “involvement in an illicit oil shipping network supporting foreign terrorist organizations”.
Venezuela’s government said in a statement that the seizure “constitutes a blatant theft and an act of international piracy”.
It continued:
Under these circumstances, the true reasons for the prolonged aggression against Venezuela have finally been revealed … It has always been about our natural resources, our oil, our energy, the resources that belong exclusively to the Venezuelan people.
Also speaking to NewsNation, senator Chris Coons said that while he did not know the details of the incident, he was “gravely concerned that [Trump] is sleepwalking us into a war with Venezuela”.
In other developments:
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Donald Trump launched a new program that will allow wealthy foreign individuals to buy a US “golden visa” for $1m, and trailed a “platinum” version for $5m. “A direct path to Citizenship for all qualified and vetted people. SO EXCITING! Our Great American Companies can finally keep their invaluable Talent,” Trump wrote on Wednesday on social media.
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The US Federal Reserve announced on Wednesday that it was cutting interest rates by a quarter point for the third time this year, as the embattled central bank appeared split over how best to manage the US economy.
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The US House voted 312-112 to pass a sweeping defense policy bill on Wednesday that authorizes $900bn in military programs, including a pay raise for troops and an overhaul of how the Department of Defense purchases weapons.
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The governor of Washington, Bob Ferguson, declared a statewide emergency on Wednesday in response to heavy rain in the Pacific north-west state since an atmospheric river smacked the region a day earlier with rains that triggered mudslides and washed out roads and submerged vehicles.
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A senior Democratic senator is calling for an investigation into potential insider trading by fossil-fuel billionaires close to the Trump administration, after a Guardian investigation raised questions about an unusual share-buying spree. Robert Pender and Michael Sabel, the founders and co-chairs of Venture Global, a liquefied natural gas (LNG) company headquartered in Virginia, bought more than a million shares worth almost $12m each, just days after meeting with senior Trump officials in March.
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Immigrant students across the US have experienced increased bullying, with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) crackdowns causing declines in attendance and a “culture of fear” among immigrant students in public schools, according to a new survey of high school principals. Researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles’s Institute for Democracy, Education and Access (Idea) conducted a “nationally representative” survey of more than 600 principals about the toll of raids and deportations, and how schools were responding.
