Senate Republicans have blocked another effort to stop President Trump’s war against Iran. On Thursday, senators voted 47 to 50 to reject a war powers resolution that would have reined in Trump’s ability to strike Iran until Congress authorizes further military action. The vote came ahead of today’s deadline under the 1973 War Powers Resolution, which gives the president 60 days to carry out military strikes in response to an imminent threat if Congress has not voted to authorize a war. On Thursday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told a Senate committee he believes the 60-day deadline “pauses or stops in a ceasefire.”

Meanwhile, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian condemned the U.S. naval blockade of Iran’s ports as an “intolerable” extension of military operations and said it is doomed to fail. At the White House, President Trump claimed Iran wanted to negotiate a deal “so badly,” adding, “Nobody knows what the talks are, except myself and a couple of other people.”

Lebanon’s National News Agency reports Israeli attacks have killed more than 30 people in a single day, in further violations of the U.S.-brokered ceasefire signed by Israel and Lebanon last month. Two children were among those killed in the attacks on southern Lebanon. They came as a Hezbollah drone injured 12 Israeli soldiers in northern Israel. On Thursday, Israel issued new forced evacuation orders for villages north of a strip of occupied territory along the border that Israel is calling a “Yellow Line.” More than 1 million people have been displaced from their homes by Israel’s attacks, about one-fifth of Lebanon’s population.

Israel’s military has issued new maps of the Gaza Strip showing it controls significantly more territory beyond what it agreed to in the U.S.-brokered ceasefire last October. Reuters reports the restricted area, marked on the maps with an orange line, ​makes up some 11% of Gaza’s territory beyond a so-called Yellow Line, meaning Israel now claims control over two-thirds of Gaza.

Israeli attacks on Gaza killed at least three Palestinians and wounded 10 others on Thursday and Friday in Israel’s latest violations of the ceasefire. The Pulitzer Prize-winning Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha said he was “heartbroken” after Israel shot his 30-year-old aunt in the chest while she was sitting with her three young children in a school shelter in the Jabaliya refugee camp. Abu Toha says the bullet pierced her chest and exited through her back, devastating her lungs and spleen, and leaving her in critical condition. He writes, “At the moment she was hit, she was holding her one-year-old son. He fell from her lap as she collapsed and was found bleeding from one of his ears.” Mosab Abu Toha and his wife, Maram, have lost over 100 relatives to Israeli attacks since October 2023, including 31 members of his family killed in a single airstrike.

On Thursday, the group Physicians for Human Rights Israel petitioned the Israeli Supreme Court, demanding the release of 14 Palestinian doctors from Gaza who’ve been detained without charge for more than a year. Among them is Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, the detained head of Gaza’s Kamal Adwan Hospital, who’s reportedly been tortured and denied adequate food and medicine despite his deteriorating health. Joining the call for the doctors’ release is Mohammed Abu Selmia, the director of Gaza’s Al-Shifa Hospital, who was imprisoned by Israel without charge for seven months after his arrest in November 2023.

Dr. Mohammed Abu Selmia: “I was brutally arrested. I was handcuffed behind my back, blindfolded and stripped naked. I was subjected to a humiliating search, and then the field interrogation began in the Netzarim area. This involved beatings, insults, with sand thrown on my head, putting dirt into my mouth, and severe beatings.”

Palestinian journalist Ali al-Samoudi has been freed after a year in Israeli prisons. He had been held without charge under Israel’s so-called administrative detention policy after he was arrested at his home in Jenin, in the occupied West Bank, in April 2025. Upon his release, al-Samoudi showed signs of torture and severe malnutrition, and says he lost half his body weight due to systematic starvation. In 2022, Ali al-Samoudi was shot in the shoulder by the Israeli sniper that killed Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in Jenin.

Here in New York, students and alumni of Columbia University held a demonstration honoring the second anniversary of campus protests demanding administrators divest from companies linked to Israel. The protests saw students take over a Columbia building and rename it “Hind’s Hall” in honor of Hind Rajab, a 6-year-old girl murdered by Israeli soldiers in Gaza. This is Maryam Alwan, an alumna of Columbia arrested two years ago in the police raid that ended the student occupation.

Maryam Alwan: “We wanted to do it on the anniversary of the occupation of Hind’s Hall in order to show that the movement persists and that we retain the institutional memory of the violence that happened that day, of the way that the student body came together to demand divestment at that time. It still echoes today. Even though there has been repression, there has been a massive crackdown on freedom of speech at Columbia, we are here to show that we won’t be silenced and that we still remember everything that happened.”

House lawmakers on Thursday voted to reopen most of the Department of Homeland Security, ending a record 76-day partial shutdown and the agency’s longest in U.S. history. The approved budget bill signed into law by Trump excludes funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE, but reopens key parts of DHS, including the Transportation Security Administration.

In Texas, Meenu Batra, a longtime court interpreter and the only licensed Punjabi, Hindi and Urdu interpreter in the state, has been released from an ICE jail after nearly two months of detention. A judge’s order mandating Batra’s release stated the Trump administration had failed to explain why she’d been jailed in the first place and denied her due process. Batra has lived in the U.S. for over 35 years after leaving India.

President Trump has withdrawn his nomination for Casey Means to become the next U.S. surgeon general. Means is a wellness “influencer,” author, entrepreneur and anti-vaccine activist, who, along with her brother Calley Means, is a key figure in the “Make America Healthy Again” movement led by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. In her place, President Trump has nominated Nicole Saphier to become surgeon general. Saphier is a radiologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering in New Jersey and a frequent contributor to Fox News.

Maine Governor Janet Mills has officially suspended her campaign for the U.S. Senate. Mills had been competing for the Democratic nomination in June’s primary, with the backing of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and other top Democrats. But Mills quit on Thursday after several polls projected she was losing badly to Graham Platner, a progressive populist who’s backed by labor unions and Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. The winner of the Democratic primary will challenge incumbent Republican Senator Susan Collins in November’s election, which will determine the balance of power in the Senate. This is Graham Platner speaking with MS NOW on Thursday.

Graham Platner: “I also think, and I’ll just be upfront, I don’t believe a single U.S. Democratic senator should vote for a nominee out of the Trump administration moving forward. I think we need to use all of the power we have around funding and the power of the purse to stop paying for these kinds of stupid wars, stop paying for agencies like ICE, stop paying for the things that the Trump administration is doing that are materially hurting our democracy and hurting working people.”

The Congressional Progressive Caucus has unveiled its new affordability agenda to fight the skyrocketing cost-of-living crisis facing millions of people in the United States. The legislative package proposes policies for cheaper prescription medication, groceries, housing, utility bills, gas and childcare. It would also ban companies from using personal data and AI to set prices, guarantee full-time workers paid vacation time, increase overtime wages and abolish super PACs. This is Congressmember Greg Casar of Texas, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

Rep. Greg Casar: “Donald Trump calls affordability a hoax, says surging gas prices are, quote, 'a small price to pay,' and says we don’t have the money for healthcare and childcare because he needs it for war. Every single day, Republicans in the building behind us make their rich friends richer and richer by making it harder for working people to get by. And today, we say with one voice, 'We do not have to live like this.'”

A new investigation by ProPublica has found the Trump administration is advancing a proposed rule change to SSI, the Supplemental Security Income program, that could slash or terminate benefits for an estimated 400,000 disabled adults, including people with Down syndrome and dementia. The proposal specifically targets people with disabilities living with their parents or family members who receive food assistance through SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. The efforts were initiated last year by top White House officials and the so-called — and now defunct — Department of Government Efficiency, DOGE, led by billionaire Elon Musk.

Here in New York, Mayor Zohran Mamdani declined to meet privately with King Charles III on Wednesday as he joined the British monarch at a wreath-laying ceremony honoring 9/11 victims. Mamdani was asked by reporters what it would take for him to agree to a private meeting with the king.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani: “If I was to speak to the king separately from that, I would probably encourage him to return the Koh-i-Noor diamond.”

The 105-carat diamond was taken by the British from India in the 19th century and is currently housed in the Tower of London, placed on the crown made for Queen Mother Elizabeth.

Meanwhile, the White House posted a photo of President Trump and King Charles III with the caption “two Kings” during the monarch’s visit this week. Since Trump’s return to office, protests have erupted nationwide under the slogan “No Kings.”

The antiwar and solidarity activist John Miller has died at the age of 70 from heart failure. In 1991, he co-founded the East Timor Action Network, which worked to support self-determination for East Timor and an end to U.S. support for Indonesia’s occupation. On Thursday, the government of Timor-Leste released a statement calling John “a long-time friend of the Timorese people” and stating that “his voice in defense of the Timorese people, as well as his warm friendship and continued support in their struggle, will never be forgotten.”