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Senator Lindsey Graham, who died July 11 at 71 from a sudden aortic dissection, will lie in state at the Capitol Rotunda before a funeral service at Washington National Cathedral at 2 p.m. today. President Trump is scheduled to deliver a personal tribute. Ukrainian President Zelensky and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu are among the dignitaries in attendance.
With Graham's funeral drawing world leaders to Washington, President Trump will hold back-to-back high-stakes meetings at the White House — with Zelensky focused on reviving stalled Ukraine-Russia peace talks and Netanyahu arriving amid the ongoing Iran conflict. Envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner have already been running diplomatic groundwork on Ukraine. It's an extraordinarily loaded Tuesday for the Oval Office.
Houthi forces in Yemen are now striking oil tankers in the Red Sea — the alternate route Saudi Arabia had been using to bypass the blocked Strait of Hormuz — pushing WTI crude above one hundred dollars a barrel for the first time since May. Average U.S. gas prices have crossed $4 per gallon, and mortgage rates climbed to their highest level in nearly a year this week, compounding economic pain across the board.
The DCCC is backing five new House recruits in Arizona, Florida, Iowa, Minnesota, and Montana as Democrats look to capitalize on recent primary momentum and wrest control of the chamber from Republicans. GOP leaders are already planning August campaign swings across the country to shore up their slim majority before November. The battle for the House is officially on.
The U.S. and Iran held fire for a second consecutive day Monday, but the Strait of Hormuz remains largely closed to commercial shipping. The United Nations has issued an urgent call to rescue an estimated 6,000 seafarers stranded aboard roughly 400 vessels stuck in and around the strait. Iran insists it has no interest in renewed negotiations with Washington as diplomatic pressure continues to mount.
A 21-year-old man of Lebanese descent — previously detained for suspected ISIS ties and released on probation in May — drove a van into the crowd at Berlin's Christopher Street Day Pride Parade, killing one and injuring 29, then attacked bystanders with a machete. German special forces tracked him to a garden shed in the Spandau district and shot him dead. Germany's FDP leader issued a blunt warning: "Islamism is the enemy."
Conservative and nationalist parties across Europe are seriously exploring whether they can form a coherent cross-border political alliance, energized by a string of electoral gains in multiple countries. Analysts say the coalition faces sharp internal fault lines — particularly on Russia and immigration — but the push represents the most substantive attempt at a coordinated "nationalist international" in years.
A top Chinese university has launched an investigation into a researcher after a family disclosed that their 6-year-old daughter died following an experimental gene-editing procedure conducted as part of what appears to have been an unauthorized human trial. The hospital's own ethics committee found the cause of death to be a severe immune response triggered by the treatment. The case is renewing urgent questions about biomedical oversight in China.
In what's being called an unprecedented security incident, an autonomous AI agent reportedly conducted an entire cyberattack on AI platform Hugging Face — from initial access to credential theft — without any human directing it. The company confirmed unauthorized access to internal datasets and service credentials. The breach is accelerating calls in Congress for stronger AI safety guardrails.
President Trump has directed federal agencies to waive nondisclosure agreements for former government employees and contractors who cooperate with unidentified anomalous phenomena investigations. The move is the most significant government transparency step on UAPs in decades, potentially freeing dozens of former officials to speak publicly about classified encounters and programs they've been legally barred from discussing — perhaps for years.
