Marco Rubio defended spiking gas prices in the US. As we noted earlier, the average cost for a gallon of gasoline sits around $4.50 –the highest in four years.
The secretary of state said that other countries are suffering “big time” and the US is in a “very fortunate” position, despite the hike in fuel prices.
“We’ve been insulated to some degree,” Rubio added. “Even though that’s not welcome news to Americans that are paying more at the pump, no doubt about it … there are people that we’re predicting would be much higher at this point, but we’re not taking that for granted.”
Rubio also noted that if Iran had a nuclear weapon and decided to close the strait of Hormuz, he projected – without citing evidence – that gas prices would be around $8 or $9 a gallon.
“A nuclear armed Iran could do whatever the hell they want with the strait, and there’s nothing anyone would be able to do about it,” he said.
Rubio did not give a clear answer when probed about how much closer the US is in getting rid of Iran’s nuclear weapon capabilities.
“I think the president’s been clear that part of the negotiation process has to be not just the enrichment, but what happens to this material that’s buried deep somewhere that they have still have access to if they ever wanted to dig it out,” the secretary of state said. “I don’t want to endanger the negotiations, but suffice it to say the president and this entire team is aware of the centrality of that question, and that will have to be addressed one way or the other.”
Outside groups have spent over $8m targeting Indiana incumbents, per the AP.
In state senate district 23, Donald Trump has endorsed Paula Copenhaver against incumbent Spencer Deery. Although state filings show Deery has a massive fundraising lead, garnering $500,000 to Copenhaver’s $15,000, the ad-tracking firm AdImpact reports that outside groups have spent over $2 million in ads for Copenhaver.
Meanwhile, in state senate district 1, the Trump-endorsed challenger Trevor de Vries raised just over $30,000 as of the latest filings, while incumbent Dan Dernulc has raised over $200,000.
AdImpact shows outside groups spending more than $200,000 to help trump Dernulc.
Human rights activist Martin Luther King III sent a letter to Tennessee legislative leaders expressing “grave concern” about the plan to divide Memphis’ congressional representation, joining a slew of people pushing back against the special session called to redraw congressional maps after the supreme court ruling.
“This decision undermines the work that my father, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., carried out to help secure passage of the Voting Rights Act,” he wrote, adding that his father was assassinated in Memphis.
“Do not dismantle the only Congressional district that provides Black voters in Memphis a fair opportunity to have a voice in our democracy. Do not take this nation back to the days of Jim Crow,” he added.
As voters in Indiana head to the polls for the state’s primaries, Donald Trump flocked to social media to encourage his endorsed candidates and mock Republican state senators who rejected his effort to redraw the state’s congressional map in December, referring to them as “Republican in name only.”
“Good luck to those Great Indiana Senate Candidates who are running against people who couldn’t care less about our Country, or about keeping the Majority in Congress,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social.
“There are eight Great Patriots running against long seated RINOS — Let’s see how those RINOS do tonight!” he added.
The Palm Beach International Airport in Florida will officially be renamed after Donald Trump, roughly a month after the state’s governor Ron DeSantis signed a bill into law approving the name change.
Palm Beach County commissioners approved the transition on Tuesday, officially renaming the facility the Donald J Trump International Airport.
Trump’s son, Eric Trump, shared the airport’s logo via social media, saying “there is no person more deserving of this incredible honor” than his father.
The airport’s logo features a gold eagle holding two olive branches.
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Marco Rubio defended spiking gas prices in the US. As we noted earlier, the average cost for a gallon of gasoline sits around $4.50 –the highest in four years – amid the ongoing conflict in Iran. The secretary of state said that other countries are suffering “big time” and the US is in a “very fortunate” position, despite the hike in fuel prices.“We’ve been insulated to some degree,” Rubio added. “Even though that’s not welcome news to Americans that are paying more at the pump.
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Earlier, Donald Trump declined to say what Iran would have to do to constitute a violation of the ceasefire, amid rising tensions after both sides exchanged fire in the strait of Hormuz yesterday. “Well, you’ll find out because I’ll let you know,” the president said. “They know what to do, or what not to do more importantly.” During a Pentagon press conference, Trump’s defense secretary Pete Hegseth insisted that the Project Freedom has allowed the US to gain control of the strait of Hormuz, despite Iran claiming it has actually strengthened its control of the waterway, and thousands of cargo ships remain stranded in the strait.
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In Nashville, protests took place outside the Tennessee state capitol as the Republican-controlled legislature holds a special session to consider re-drawing congressional maps ahead of the midterm elections. Demonstrators shouted “hands off Memphis” and held up signs that read “protect Black votes”, as the Republican controlled assembly eyes a map that could see the dissolution of the only Democratic district in the state.
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The US education department is investigating one of the country’s largest women’s colleges over its admittance of transgender women in another escalation of the Trump administration’s attacks on trans people. The department’s office of civil rights announced the investigation on Monday in a press release, saying the Massachusetts college could be violating federal law by “allowing biological males into women’s intimate spaces”, including dorms, bathrooms, locker rooms and sports teams.
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The two Senate committees responsible for drafting the reconciliation package to fund parts of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have released the text of the legislation. The Senate judiciary committee and the homeland security committee have allocated more than $70bn for immigration enforcement as part of the package, for the remainder of Donald Trump’s second term in office. The package also includes $1bn for the Secret Service, related to “security adjustments and upgrades” for Trump’s White House ballroom project.
On his upcoming meeting with Pope Leo XIV, Rubio said that the trip had been “planned before” the rift between the Trump administration and the Vatican. The president continued to chide the pontiff earlier this week for his condemnation of the war in Iran.
In the briefing room today, Rubio downplayed any tension ahead of his visit to Rome.
“I cannot understand why anyone would think that it’s a good idea for Iran to ever have a nuclear weapon,” the secretary of state said, despite the fact that Leo has never said that Iran should have nuclear weapons, but has repeatedly opposed the war on the country and the subsequent escalation of the conflict in Lebanon and the wider Middle East, calling for ceasefires and dialogue.
“The trip is really not tied to anything other than the fact that it would be normal for us to engage with them, and other secretary states have done that in the past,” Rubio added.
Marco Rubio defended spiking gas prices in the US. As we noted earlier, the average cost for a gallon of gasoline sits around $4.50 –the highest in four years.
The secretary of state said that other countries are suffering “big time” and the US is in a “very fortunate” position, despite the hike in fuel prices.
“We’ve been insulated to some degree,” Rubio added. “Even though that’s not welcome news to Americans that are paying more at the pump, no doubt about it … there are people that we’re predicting would be much higher at this point, but we’re not taking that for granted.”
Rubio also noted that if Iran had a nuclear weapon and decided to close the strait of Hormuz, he projected – without citing evidence – that gas prices would be around $8 or $9 a gallon.
“A nuclear armed Iran could do whatever the hell they want with the strait, and there’s nothing anyone would be able to do about it,” he said.
Rubio did not give a clear answer when probed about how much closer the US is in getting rid of Iran’s nuclear weapon capabilities.
“I think the president’s been clear that part of the negotiation process has to be not just the enrichment, but what happens to this material that’s buried deep somewhere that they have still have access to if they ever wanted to dig it out,” the secretary of state said. “I don’t want to endanger the negotiations, but suffice it to say the president and this entire team is aware of the centrality of that question, and that will have to be addressed one way or the other.”
In response to a question about pushback from US lawmakers who say that the blockade in the strait of Hormuz is an act of war, Rubio insisted that Iran is trying to make shutting down the waterway a “new normal”.
“Under no circumstances can we ever allow them to normalize the fact that they get to blow up commercial ships and put mines in the water,” he added. “So the response to that is, we’re going to blockade your ships.”
Rubio said there the Iranian regime is disingenuous when it repeats claims that it has no intent to develop a nuclear weapon.
“They just don’t mean it,” the secretary of state said. “They innovate and try to innovate long range delivery missiles that now, in some cases, are capable of reaching much of Europe. They build these large underground centrifuges to for enrichment activity. There are many, there are countries in the world that are involved in the enrichment business, but these guys do it in mountains and in caves and in hiding.”
Marco Rubio kicked off his press conference noting that the aim of Project Freedom is to rescue almost “23,000 civilians from 87 different countries that are trapped inside of the Gulf and left for dead” by the Iranian regime. The secretary of state underscored that it is a “defensive operation” and “there’s no shooting unless we’re shot at first”.
The significant amount of oil that travels through the strait of Hormuz, along with large volumes of fuel and fertilizer that operate through the passage is in jepoardy, according to Rubio. “The Iranian regime cannot be allowed to dictate who uses this vital waterway,” he told reporters. “Our preference is for these straits to be opened to the way they’re supposed to be open, back to the way it was. Anyone can use it. No mines in the water, nobody paying tolls. That’s what we have to get back to, and that’s the goal here.”
In a short while, we’re expecting to hear from secretary of state Marco Rubio, who will address reporters for a White House press briefing.
This comes a day before Rubio is set to travel to Rome, Italy to meet with Pope Leo XIV and other Vatican officials.
On social media, the White House posted a racist AI image of Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader, to acknowledge Cinco de Mayo.
The post includes a fake picture the two Democratic leaders wearing sombreros and holding margaritas with a sign that reads “I love illegal immigrants”, while they sit in front of a border checkpoint. The White House published the image on a day meant to celebrate the Mexico’s victory over France at the Battle of Puebla in 1862.
In response Schumer replied to the White House’s image on X, with a widely circulated picture of Donald Trump with Jeffrey Epstein –however the top Senate Democrat doctored the image to show the president and the late sex-offender wearing sombreros.
Trump, no stranger to publishing AI imagery and videos online, previously shared a fake video of Jeffries wearing a sombrero alongside Schumer as he spoke about how the Democratic party is failing.
The US education department is investigating one of the country’s largest women’s colleges over its admittance of transgender women in another escalation of the Trump administration’s attacks on trans people.
The department’s office of civil rights announced the investigation on Monday in a press release, saying the Massachusetts college could be violating federal law by “allowing biological males into women’s intimate spaces”, including dorms, bathrooms, locker rooms and sports teams.
Title IX, the federal law that seeks to prevent sex-based discrimination in education and extracurriculars, includes an exemption for all-male or all-female colleges. But, the department said, that applies only to “biological sex difference, not subjective gender identity”. Admitting transgender students would mean the college no longer qualifies as single sex.
“An all-women’s college loses all meaning if it is admitting biological males,” assistant secretary for civil rights, Kimberly Richey, said in a statement. “Allowing biological males into spaces designed for women raises serious concerns about privacy, fairness, and compliance under federal law. The Trump administration will continue to uphold the law and fight to restore common sense.”
Smith’s admission policy allows for “any applicants who self-identify as women”, including “cis, trans and nonbinary women”, according to the college’s website. The college opened in 1875 and counts among its alumni multiple first ladies, elected officials and civic leaders.
We have more pictures coming through of protests outside the Tennessee capitol as Republican state lawmakers weigh new congressional maps.
In Nashville, protests continue outside the Tennessee state capitol as the legislature holds a special session to consider re-drawing congressional maps ahead of the midterm elections. Demonstrators shouted “hands off Memphis” and held up signs that read “protect Black votes”, as the Republican controlled assembly eyes a map that could see the dissolution of the only Democratic district in the state.
