Democrats

The US House of Representatives delivered a stunning rebuke to Donald Trump over his war on Iran on Wednesday, as representatives backed a move to force him to seek approval from Congress or withdraw US forces.

The House voted 215 to 208 in favor of the war powers resolution, as four Republicans voted with Democrats. The dissident Republicans were Thomas Massie of Kentucky, Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, Warren Davidson of Ohio and Tom Barrett of Michigan.

“Following repeated attempts to get sycophants in the Republican-controlled House to join us, House Democrats successfully passed our war powers resolution today to stand up for the American people and hold Donald Trump accountable,” the top three House Democrats – Hakeem Jeffries of New York, Katherine Clark of Massachusetts and Pete Aguilar of California – said in a joint statement. “It is now time for Senate Republicans to do the right thing.”

Knocking on strangers’ doors on a warm May afternoon in Trenton, New Jersey, Adam Hamawy did not seem fazed when more than a few went unanswered.

It’s his first time running for office, but this is an area where he has experience. After returning from a medical mission in Gaza in 2024, Hamawy went to Washington to describe the crisis – which he viewed as a US-funded genocide – to lawmakers, only to encounter “too many doors that were closed, that didn’t even want to listen”.

One of the few representatives on Capitol Hill who met with him was his own: Bonnie Watson Coleman, who has served New Jersey’s 12th congressional district for more than a decade.

When she announced her retirement in November 2025, after six terms, Hamawy decided it was no longer enough to seek the attention of those elected to serve in Washington – and launched his campaign to join them.

In six months, Hamawy has gone from a political nobody to, deemed by most measures, the frontrunner in a crowded race, endorsed by prominent progressive and Democratic figures including Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar and Tammy Duckworth. His work history has driven him to call for Medicare for All, advocating for sanctions and an arms embargo on Israel, and the abolition of ICE – and to say openly he cannot support the Democratic leaders Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer.

Fortunately for all of us, an unlikely and unruly coalition has emerged to resist the AI takeover by taking aim at the industry’s core infrastructure. In 2025, about 48 datacenter projects worth an estimated $156bn were blocked or stalled by local opposition. By all measures, 2026 is shaping up to be an even bigger year for the AI resistance.

From rural North Carolina to suburban Virginia to the foothills and farmlands of New Mexico and Oregon, ordinary people are coming together across partisan divides to say no to a status quo that allows tech lobbyists to ram through datacenter deals at a breathtaking clip, often behind a veil of secrecy enforced by NDAs. In deep red Indiana, more than 10 counties have enacted moratoriums or temporary bans on new AI datacenters; the Seminole Nation in Oklahoma recently passed a moratorium for their territory; and across New Jersey, project after project has been cancelled due to local fury about the raw deals on offer.

Democratic state representatives in Minnesota staged an overnight sit-in in their house chamber on Thursday after the Republican speaker failed to put a gun violence prevention bill up for a vote.

Samantha Sencer-Mura, a Democratic representative from Minneapolis, first announced the plan on Wednesday from the floor of the state’s house of representatives, giving the speaker, Lisa Demuth, a candidate for governor, 24 hours to give the bill a vote before the sit-in would start.

The sit-in began around 9pm local time. Lawmakers intend to stay until the house comes back in session, which is set for Saturday at noon.

The Minnesota senate, controlled by Democrats, narrowly passed the gun violence prevention omnibus earlier this month. The house, where there is a 67-67 vote tie and a Republican speaker in charge, has so far not taken up the bill.

The push for new gun laws came after a school shooting at Annunciation Catholic church last August, where two students were killed and others injured during a school-wide mass. Minnesota also saw the killings of state lawmaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, and the shootings of state lawmaker John Hoffman and his wife, last summer.

Democrats tore into government’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein abuse scandal on Tuesday – revealing new details of the scale of his international sex-trafficking ring, and warning Donald Trump not to grant a presidential pardon to the late sex offender’s sidekick Ghislaine Maxwell.

Several survivors of Epstein’s abuse also gave tearful testimony at a congressional field hearing in Florida of their experiences as teenagers in his orbit. Some spoke of being retraumatized after they were “outed” by the justice department’s failure to redact their names from the so-called Epstein files.

Democratic members of the US House oversight committee said they held Tuesday’s event in Palm Beach, where the president lives, and where Epstein had a residence, because it was “the scene of the crime”.

“We’re here because so much of this investigation brings us back to this location,” the California Democrat Robert Garcia, ranking member of the oversight committee, told a press conference after the hearing.

“We know that the crimes of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, the horrible things that happened to so many women and girls, totaling 1,200 could have been stopped and halted.”

Garcia began the hearing by unveiling a new report called The Price of Non-Prosecution that he said revealed how Epstein was able to build a substantial and lucrative international sex-trafficking ring following his infamous “sweetheart deal” with Florida prosecutors in 2008.

Ocasio-Cortez said that instead of aiming for higher office, “I get to wake up every day and say, ‘How am I going to meet the moment?’

“And conditions change radically all the time. So I make my response less to an attachment to some positional title or position and working backwards from there.”

She added: “I make decisions by waking up in the morning, looking out the window and observing the conditions of this country. And saying what move or what decision can I make today that is going to get us closer to that future, stronger, faster, better than yesterday.”