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In a dramatic afternoon turnaround, the Senate flipped its earlier position on the Iran war powers resolution, with Trump announcing the chamber "changed its vote on Iran from 50-48 against, to 50-47 for." The reversal followed a heated closed-door GOP lunch and last-minute White House briefings that peeled away the senators who had rebuked the president just two days earlier.
President Trump abruptly canceled the signing of the bipartisan 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act moments before a Capitol Hill ceremony, vowing to hold it hostage until the Senate moves his SAVE America Act voter-ID bill. The maneuver sent the GOP lunch into a meltdown one source described as a "cluster f*ck," with Majority Leader John Thune pleading with Trump not to veto the housing measure that passed overwhelmingly.
Louisiana's Bill Cassidy, who had shouted down Trump over Iran during the lunch, flipped his war powers vote after administration officials brought him to the Situation Room for a briefing from Vice President JD Vance and Special Envoy Steve Witkoff. Rand Paul, for his part, switched to "present," saying his vote was meant "to give the President more space and leverage to negotiate a lasting peace."
The flash manufacturing PMI jumped to 55.7 in June, its strongest reading since May 2022, as business activity accelerated for a third straight month on surging demand and output. The catch: payrolls contracted for a second consecutive month, with manufacturers cutting jobs at the fastest pace since the pandemic lockdowns as companies scrambled to offset rising input costs.
The foreign ministries of Iran and Oman announced a joint "Strait of Hormuz Committee" to oversee the future management of shipping through the chokepoint, including the services provided and the fees charged for them. The move follows Iran's earlier Persian Gulf Strait Authority and mandatory vessel-insurance rules, and it directly collides with Rubio's insistence that "no country is allowed to charge tolls or fees on an international waterway."
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz hosted the leaders of France, Italy, Poland, and the UK — the informal European Group of Five — in Berlin, declaring that Europe wants to strengthen its own pillar within NATO. The summit brought Macron, Meloni, Tusk, and Starmer to the table as Trump's troop drawdown and pressure campaign expose Western Europe's widening defense gap.
Speaking to a Paris gathering of Iranian opposition groups, retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg said Tehran's rulers are weaker than they have been in decades and urged dissidents to seize the moment. "The window is open wider than at any moment in a generation, and windows do not stay open forever," he said, adding that the theocratic regime "will not leave voluntarily. You must force it."
Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array in Chile, astronomers got a close-up of comet C/2014 UN271 and found it spewing jets of carbon monoxide gas. The icy behemoth is roughly 85 miles across — more than ten times larger than any other known comet — giving scientists a rare look at how a giant from the outer solar system behaves as it warms.
University of Central Florida students and faculty are excavating the DeSoto site at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, uncovering a way of life dating to the Malabar II Period, roughly 900 to 1565 A.D. Among the finds: pottery sherds, the remains of turtles, shark, and black drum, and tools like conch-shell hammers and shark-tooth knives used to prepare food — all in the shadow of America's rocket launch pads.
The International Maritime Organization temporarily suspended its vessel-evacuation operation after a ship was attacked off the coast of Oman, with Secretary-General Arsenio Dominguez saying the pause is to confirm safety guarantees still hold for ships in the region. Oddly, the targeted vessel had already cleared the Strait of Hormuz and wasn't even part of the IMO's evacuation framework — underscoring how jittery the world's most important shipping lane has become.
