First Thing: Briefing on Iran strikes divides senators as Trump pours fuel on tensions

A partisan split was revealed as the president claimed the Democrats leaked a draft Pentagon report on the strikes’ impact. Plus, an exclusive interview with Kneecap on Palestine, protest and provocation

Good morning.

A delayed, behind-closed-doors intelligence briefing on the US bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities has divided senators down party lines, while Donald Trump ignited a fresh debate by claiming the Democrats had leaked a Pentagon assessment that found last weekend’s strikes had been limited in their success.

Senators were briefed after a delay that led Democrats to accuse Trump of blocking congressional oversight on the strikes he had authorized without members’ approval.

Even as senators were being briefed, Trump escalated tensions by making a Truth Social post accusing Democrats of leaking the Pentagon report that suggested last weekend’s strikes had only delayed Iran’s nuclear program by months – contradicting the president’s insistence that it was “obliterated”.

What did the defense secretary say? Pete Hegseth maintained that the strikes, which Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has sought to downplay, had decimated Tehran’s nuclear program – an assessment largely based on AI modeling.

Trump ratchets up pressure on Republicans to vote for his ‘big, beautiful bill’

Donald Trump gathered congressional leaders and cabinet secretaries at the White House on Thursday to try to mobilize support for his controversial tax-and-spending bill that could struggle to pass through the Senate.

With the Senate majority leader, John Thune, mulling an initial vote on the bill on Friday, it is unclear whether Republicans have enough votes to push it through Congress’s upper chamber. Trump wants the legislation ready to be signed off by 4 July.

Democrats have labelled the bill the “big, ugly betrayal”. Why are they so opposed? Because it would slash Medicaid by the largest amount since its creation and cost an estimated 16 million people their insurance. The bill also cuts funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap), which helps low-income Americans buy food.

RFK Jr’s new vaccine panel votes against preservative in flu shots in shock move

The health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr’s vaccine panel has voted against seasonal influenza vaccines containing a specific preservative in a shock move that could threaten future vaccine availability.

Kennedy, a vaccine skeptic, fired all 17 former members of the previous federal vaccine panel in June and appointed eight new members who are all ideologically allied with him. He has urged against the use of thimerosal despite a lack of evidence of real-world harm.

Experts said the decision by the panel – five of whom voted for the restriction, while one abstained and one voted against – was not backed by the science. “There is a very big difference between what was shared at the meeting versus what is reality,” said Dr Sean O’Leary, the chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Infectious Diseases. “The science on thimerosal is settled, and the rhetoric being used to suggest otherwise is misleading and harmful.”

What impact could the restriction have? Dr Cody Meissner, the panel member who was the only “no” vote, said he was concerned that people may miss out on an influenza vaccine if the only available version contained thimerosal, stressing that the risk from flu “is so much greater than the nonexistent – as far as we know – risk from thimerosal”.

In other news …

Japan has reportedly executed a man labelled the “Twitter killer” who murdered nine people he met on the site, in the country’s first instance of the death penalty since 2022.

Undocumented pregnant women in the Dominican Republic are dying because they are avoiding going to hospital in fear of deportation.

Activists and a Native American tribe have protested against the creation of an outdoor migrant detention camp in the Florida Everglades nicknamed “Alligator Alcatraz” by state officials.

A US citizen was arrested during an immigration raid in downtown Los Angeles this week.

Stat of the day: up to 35,000 Ukrainian missing children thought to be held by Russia

Up to 35,000 Ukrainian children are missing, experts have estimated, saying they believe them to be held in Russia and the territories it occupies. They fear many have been sent to military camps, foster care, or adopted by Russian families. Nathaniel Raymond, the executive director of Yale’s Humanitarian Research Lab, which has been investigating the abductions, says: “This is likely the largest child abduction in war since world war two – comparable to the Germanification of Polish children by the Nazis.”

Don’t miss this: ‘We just want to stop people being murdered’ – Kneecap on Palestine, protest and provocation

As Irish rap group Kneecap prepare to perform at Glastonbury this weekend, they discuss the popularity of their pro-Palestine stance, their music’s satirical character, and what they see as misplaced attention on themselves instead of on Gaza. “They don’t want us coming to the American festivals, because they don’t want videos of young Americans chanting ‘free Palestine’ [even though] that is the actual belief in America,” member Mo Chara said.

Climate check: campaigners call for storms to be named after oil and gas companies

Campaigners have called for storms to be named after fossil fuel companies, after the UK’s weather forecasting service launched a storm naming competition. They recommended doing so to remind the public of the connection between burning fossil fuels and more frequent and severe extreme weather.

Last Thing: ‘I won a Timothée Chalamet lookalike contest’

When Miles Mitchell saw a flyer advertising a Timothée Chalamet lookalike contest in New York, he thought it was a joke. But he’d gone viral in the past because people thought he looked like the actor – so he decided to give it a go. He describes how winning this bizarre competition changed his life – and how soon Chalamet was the one asking him for photos.

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