The U.S. Treasury reports the national debt has passed the $40 trillion mark — months earlier than previously expected, mostly due to lost revenue from President Trump’s tariffs. And there’s no sign of deficit spending ending anytime soon, as the Pentagon seeks tens of billions of additional dollars to pay for the U.S. and Israeli war on Iran, and after the Trump administration in April asked Congress to boost war spending to $1.5 trillion. During his 2016 campaign, Donald Trump pledged to “completely eliminate” what was then a $19 trillion debt within eight years.

President Trump has announced what he’s calling the “most crushing economic operation ever” against Iran. In a social media post, Trump warned that countries that trade with Iran will also face “tremendous economic consequences,” adding, “This will be Economic Warfare and Isolation on an unprecedented scale.” Trump gave no details on whether the U.S. would impose any new sanctions, or which countries could be affected. In response, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Trump’s announcement is designed to distract from unprecedented U.S. national debt and surging interest costs.

Meanwhile, the Financial Times reports Iran could target U.S. military installations in Europe if the Trump administration escalates the nearly six-month-old war, with U.S. bases in Bulgaria and Cyprus among potential targets. U.S. casualties in the war against Iran are over 750 people wounded and 18 dead.

In Gaza, Israeli strikes killed 10 Palestinians in two separate attacks Wednesday — one at a police post in Gaza City and another at Nuseirat refugee camp. Israel’s continued attacks came as residents of Gaza City held a mass funeral for 50 Palestinians from three families killed by Israel whose bodies were only recently retrieved from under the rubble.

On Wednesday, Israel’s military admitted for the first time that its soldiers opened fire on a car carrying 5-year-old Palestinian Hind Rajab, killing her and her entire family, as well as Palestine Red Crescent Society medics dispatched to rescue them. Israel’s army fired more than 300 bullets in the attack in January 2024. In Gaza City, Hind Rajab’s grandmother rejected Israel’s claims that it had opened an investigation into the killing — the first criminal probe by Israel into the conduct of its troops in Gaza. Hind Rajab was named after her grandmother.

Hind Rajab: “We, as Hind Rajab’s family, do not trust the judiciary of the state of Israel. We hope that justice will be delivered for the entire world. We appeal to the international justice system as a whole.”

The Israeli military said it would also investigate the killing of 15 Palestinian paramedics whose bodies and crushed emergency vehicles were recovered from a mass grave in Rafah in March 2025. Ghada al-Attar, the widow of Anwar al-Attar, one of the 15 medics, spoke while holding the couple’s young daughter.

Ghada al-Attar: “The truth will not come, and the wound will keep bleeding. The pain is still the same. The loss grows day by day. Every time this girl gets older and asks me where her father is, and I can’t answer her, the wound grows deeper. He was the pillar and support of the family. He’s gone. The investigation won’t achieve anything.”

Israel said it would not investigate three other attacks on Gaza that killed aid workers from World Central Kitchen and Doctors Without Borders. And Israel made no mention of thousands of other incidents where Palestinian civilians were killed by Israeli forces.

The Palestinian Authority and Britain have criticized Israel’s move to advertise a tender for over 1,200 new homes in the occupied West Bank as part of its E1 settlement plan. The scheme would join thousands of settlement units in illegally annexed East Jerusalem to the West Bank’s Maale Adumim bloc, severing East Jerusalem entirely from the West Bank and effectively splitting the territory into two halves. Palestinians have long sought East Jerusalem as the capital of their future state.

This comes as Palestinian detainees claim that Israeli forces marked some of them with numbers on their foreheads during a raid in the occupied West Bank. One detainee said troops had assigned numbers to some of those held, apparently to keep track of them and manage the questioning.

In the United Kingdom, a jury has been discharged after reaching a single guilty verdict in the trial of eight Palestine Action activists who allegedly planned a raid to sabotage equipment at an Israeli-owned arms factory run by Elbit Systems. The jury spent more than 37 hours considering evidence but failed to reach verdicts on 14 of 15 charges relating to the direct action protest. Seven of the activists could face retrial. Last month, the jury acquitted one of the defendants of violent disorder over a lack of evidence.

A former Justice Department attorney has filed a complaint claiming that the Trump administration task force charged with investigating antisemitism pushed universities into massive settlements despite turning up little to no evidence of antisemitism on campus. Haley Van Erem, a former career attorney in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, said in her complaint that the government’s probes into schools like Harvard, Brown and Columbia were “an unlawful process designed to achieve predetermined political goals.” Brown University settled for $50 million. Columbia settled for $200 million. Harvard refused to settle, and a judge threw out a case against the university.

In Ukraine, a Russian assault on Kyiv overnight killed at least 13 people and injured 40 others, as missiles struck residences, warehouses, a school and a children’s hospital. Russia’s attacks followed a wave of Ukrainian strikes a day earlier, with Moscow’s mayor reporting over 600 drones attacked Russia’s capital region.

Elsewhere, the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia ⁠nuclear power ⁠station lost ​its only external power line, ⁠forcing crews to activate emergency diesel generators. It’s at least the 27th time since 2022 the plant has had to rely on backup systems to prevent a nuclear meltdown.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has sacked a senior adviser over an alleged money laundering scheme. Her firing comes amid a growing corruption scandal plaguing Zelensky’s administration. This week, Ukraine’s popular former Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov called for presidential elections, which have been suspended while Ukraine remains under martial law.

Mykhailo Fedorov: “Democracy cannot be held hostage by Russia. We must find a lawful, safe and realistic mechanism that would allow Ukraine to restore a fully functioning democratic process, even under conditions of a long war.”

A former adviser to infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci has pleaded guilty to conspiring to evade public records laws and conceal government documents related to the COVID-19 pandemic. David Morens worked under Dr. Fauci as a senior official at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. He now faces up to five years in prison. His guilty plea comes after Dr. Fauci appeared before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee last month, chaired by Republican Senator Rand Paul. During the combative hearing, Fauci invoked the Fifth Amendment more than 100 times, declining to answer questions about his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and the origins of the coronavirus. Before leaving office, President Biden had issued a preemptive pardon for Fauci.

The drug makers Moderna and Merck report a new experimental vaccine treatment shows promising signs of preventing skin cancer from returning or spreading in high-risk melanoma patients. The first-of-its-kind therapy could herald a powerful new approach for treating other cancers. It relies on the same mRNA technology that led to the rapid development of lifesaving vaccines during the COVID pandemic. This comes after the Trump administration slashed a half-billion dollars’ worth of contracts and grants for mRNA vaccine development projects targeting respiratory viruses.

President Trump has nominated Dr. Heidi Overton to become the next commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Overton is an abortion opponent who celebrated the overturning of Roe v. Wade as a “huge victory.” Last week, she joined a signing ceremony for Trump’s executive order slashing the childhood vaccine schedule. Women’s health groups warn Overton could seek to further restrict access to medications used in abortions, including mifepristone.

Minnesota’s top prosecutor has sued Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott, seeking to force him to extradite an ICE agent to stand trial in Minnesota on felony assault charges — and for falsely reporting a crime during an immigration raid in Minneapolis in January. Prosecutors allege 52-year-old Christian Castro shot Venezuelan immigrant Julio Sosa-Celis in the leg through the door of a home, then lied by claiming the assault was in self-defense. Castro was arrested in Texas in May, but Governor Abbott has since refused to sign off on his extradition. Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison announced the lawsuit on Tuesday.

Attorney General Keith Ellison: “Christian Castro has been charged with breaking the law in Minnesota. He must face justice in Minnesota. Governor Abbott should have granted Governor Walz’s extradition requests long ago, and is required to do so now.”

President Trump led reporters on a bizarre 40-minute tour of the White House on Wednesday, showing off renovations while announcing plans to build an elaborate granite and marble helipad. According to President Trump, the manufacturer of the Marine One fleet, a company called Sikorsky, donated the funds for the new helipad. Trump also touted a donation of $1 million from ScottsMiracle-Gro, saying they contributed to this campaign. He expounded on the grass at length, saying, “You know, grass has a life like humans have a life.”

The Committee to Protect Journalists is calling on the Mexican government to protect media workers while holding their assassins accountable, after five journalists were killed in Mexico in just two months. The CPJ is calling it the worst wave of violence it has documented in Mexico for over a decade. This is Jan-Albert Hootsen, Mexico correspondent for the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Jan-Albert Hootsen: “What’s particularly concerning is that the Mexican government does not appear to have a cohesive answer to this wave of violence. Instead, it’s pointing at the number of general homicides dropping. CPJ urges the Mexican government to federalize the cases of murdered journalists this year, as well as strengthen protective measures, particularly for journalists in high-risk areas.”