Congress delivered a rare bipartisan rebuke to the president over his war in Iran, a fragile Israel-Lebanon ceasefire took shape in Washington, and the Knicks finally opened the NBA Finals with a statement win — but the day's most resonant thread was institutional resistance, from Capitol Hill to Mitch McConnell's chamber.
The House voted 215–208 to force President Trump to seek congressional approval or withdraw US forces from Iran, with four Republicans joining Democrats in a rare rebuke. The vote came after GOP leaders cancelled an earlier attempt, fearing defeat, and the resolution now heads to the Senate where a similar measure advanced last month.
Senator Mitch McConnell issued a sharply worded statement suggesting that Donald Trump's acting director of national intelligence, Bill Pulte, lacks the statutory national security experience required for the job and would not earn his vote in a permanent capacity. McConnell, who was the lone Republican to oppose Tulsi Gabbard's confirmation as DNI, framed the statement as a defense of the Senate's constitutional duty to withhold consent from unqualified nominees.
The New York Knicks opened the NBA Finals with a 105–95 victory over the San Antonio Spurs in Game 1, powered by Jalen Brunson's 30 points despite apparent injuries. The Knicks overcame multiple deficits, with Brunson calling it 'not really my night for most of the night,' while the Spurs' Victor Wembanyama finished with 26 points but struggled from the field. The teams meet again Friday for Game 2.
Incumbent Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass advanced to November's general election after failing to clear 50% in Tuesday's primary, but her opponent remains undecided as mail-in ballots are counted. Former reality TV star Spencer Pratt held a narrow lead over progressive council member Nithya Raman for the second spot, with the final result potentially taking days or weeks. The winner will face the city's homelessness crisis, Hollywood's production exodus, and the aftermath of last year's deadly wildfires.
The House voted 218–204 to advance sweeping new sanctions on Russia's oil and gas sector and additional aid to Ukraine, with six Republicans crossing party lines to join Democrats. The legislation, which faces a difficult path in the Senate and a likely White House veto, seeks to crack down on Kremlin energy revenues and entities helping Moscow evade sanctions, particularly in China and Central Asia.
The US military killed two men in a strike on a boat accused of drug smuggling in the eastern Pacific, bringing the total killed in such attacks since September to at least 207. The administration provided no evidence that the vessel was trafficking drugs, and critics continue to question the legality and effectiveness of the strikes, noting that fentanyl is largely smuggled over land from Mexico. The Pentagon's inspector general is now reviewing whether the military followed proper targeting frameworks.
Israel and Lebanon agreed to a conditional ceasefire requiring Hezbollah to halt fire and evacuate its operatives from southern Lebanon, though the militia has not accepted the terms. The deal, announced after talks in Washington, creates 'pilot zones' under exclusive Lebanese army control, but Tehran insists the Lebanon and Iran conflicts are linked and has threatened to suspend US peace talks over Israel's offensive.
Australia's Labor government passed its controversial tax reform package through the lower house after crossbench independents split on amendments, with Monique Ryan and Helen Haines supporting the bill while others opposed. The legislation, covering capital gains tax, negative gearing, and instant deductions, now faces its real battle in the Senate, where the government lacks a guaranteed majority.
China has banned four New Zealand lawmakers from entering for one year after they visited Taiwan last month, a move Wellington condemned as unjustified retaliation.
Germany's defense minister accused Russia of orchestrating a 'bitter defeat' in Berlin's bid for a UN Security Council seat, saying Moscow had stirred sentiment against Germany over its support for Ukraine.
House Democrats pressed Secretary of State Marco Rubio on the lack of progress toward implementing Trump's 20-point Gaza plan, prompting Rubio to distance himself from Prime Minister Netanyahu's approach to the conflict.
UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer accused right-wing figures of exploiting the killing of Henry Nowak for political gain, as tensions flared over the tragedy.
Google released Gemma 4 12B, a unified encoder-free multimodal model that handles text, images, and video in a single architecture.
Elixir v1.20 introduces gradual typing to the language, letting developers add optional type annotations without breaking the dynamic core.
Andrew Gallant (burntsushi) wrote a harrowing account of being diagnosed with anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis, a rare autoimmune brain condition.
Blackmagic unveiled DaVinci Resolve 21, the latest major update to its popular video editing and color grading suite.
Simon Willison argues that Uber's reported $1,500 monthly cap on AI coding agents per employee is a useful market signal for AI tool pricing.
Ted Chiang pushes back against the idea that large language models are conscious, arguing that intelligence without subjective experience is still just machinery.
Espressif announced the ESP32-S31, a new Wi-Fi 6 and BLE 5.3 SoC with expanded memory and security features for IoT devices.
Let's Encrypt outlined its roadmap for rolling out post-quantum certificates, preparing TLS infrastructure for future cryptanalytic threats.
The Trump administration is dismantling a critical ocean observing system that monitors the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, alarming climate scientists.
Mathematicians are raising alarms that AI tools are rapidly encroaching on proof generation and peer review, potentially degrading the rigor of the field.
Gooey is a new GPU-accelerated UI framework written in Zig, aiming for immediate-mode rendering performance with retained-mode ergonomics.
A short essay reframes the classic sci-fi story 'They're Made Out of Meat' for the LLM era, replacing meat with neural network weights.
A developer spent $1,500 testing whether LLMs could autonomously hack a deliberately vulnerable application, documenting the capabilities and costs.
A profile of a professional reader who finishes a book every two days, examining what close reading looks like as a full-time job.
Anthropic detailed its product-level containment strategies for Claude, from prompt-level defenses to infrastructure isolation across consumer and enterprise tiers.