Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) on Thursday criticized Republican attacks on the left after the fatal shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, saying they were “full of s—.”
“You have people like Nancy Mace, who constantly harass, you know, people that she finds inferior and wants them not to exist in this country or ever,” Omar told left-wing pundit Mehdi Hasan in an interview on his Zeteo platform Thursday.
“And, you know, you have people like Trump, who has incited violence against people like me. And so, you know, these people are full of s—, and it’s important for us to call them out while we feel anger and sadness,” she added.
Omar also said that the video and news of Kirk’s assassination were “really mortifying.”
“It was really mortifying to hear the news, to see the video. You know, all I could think about was his wife, his children, that image is going to live forever,” she told Hasan.
Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) decried Kirk’s death via a series of social media posts on Wednesday, placing blame on the left for a rise in political violence, despite statements from Democrats condemning the fatal shooting.
“If you have a different opinion from the left, they want to kill you. That is a fact, and that’s the way you all should report it,” Mace said previously.
On Wednesday night, President Trump said that he was “filled with grief and anger” at the fatal shooting of Kirk, and referred to Kirk as a “martyr for truth and freedom.”
The president, via a Wednesday night video posted online, also pledged to ““find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence.” He also blamed the “radical left” for the “rhetoric that is directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today.”
The Hill has reached out to the White House and Mace’s office for comment.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. wholesale inventories increased a bit less than initially thought in July, suggesting businesses were not rushing to rebuild inventory after stocks were depleted in the second quarter.
Stocks at wholesalers edged up 0.1%, instead of rising 0.2% as estimated last month, the Commerce Department’s Census Bureau said on Wednesday. Economists polled by Reuters had expected last month’s estimate would be unrevised.
Inventories, a key part of gross domestic product, gained 0.2% in June. They advanced 1.3% on a year-over-year basis in July. Wholesale stocks of motor vehicles dropped 1.6%. But stocks of apparel surged 1.9%, while those of prescription medication increased 1.8%. Grocery inventories increased 2.0%.
Inventories decreased at a $32.9 billion annualized rate in the second quarter, subtracting 3.29 percentage points from GDP. That was, however, more than offset by a record 4.95 percentage point contribution from a smaller trade deficit.
The economy grew at a 3.3% annualized rate last quarter after contracting at a 0.5% pace in the first quarter.
Sales at wholesalers jumped 1.4% in July after rising 0.7% in June. At July’s sales pace it would take wholesalers 1.28 months to clear shelves, down from 1.29 months in June.
(Reporting by Lucia Mutikani; Editing by Hugh Lawson)
Ione WellsSouth America correspondent in Brasília and
Vanessa BuschschlüterBBC News
EVARISTO SA/AFP via Getty Images
Jair Bolsonaro was found guilty of five charges
The former president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, has been sentenced to 27 years and three months in prison after being found guilty of plotting a military coup.
A panel of five Supreme Court justices handed down the sentence just hours after they had convicted the former leader.
They ruled he was guilty of leading a conspiracy aimed at keeping him in power after he lost the 2022 election to his left-wing rival, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
Four of the justices found him guilty while one voted to acquit him.
The Supreme Court panel also barred him from running for public office until 2033.
Bolsonaro, who was put under house arrest after being deemed a flight risk, did not attend this final phase of the trial in person.
But he has in the past said it was designed to prevent him from running in the 2026 presidential election – even though he had already been barred from public office on separate charges. He has also called it a “witch hunt”.
His words have previously been echoed by US President, Donald Trump, who imposed 50% tariffs on Brazilian goods, framing them as retaliation for Bolsonaro’s prosecution.
Reacting to the guilty verdict, Trump said he found it “very surprising” and compared it to his own experience: “That’s very much like they tried to do with me. But they didn’t get away with it at all.”
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that Brazil’s Supreme Court had “unjustly ruled to imprison former President Jair Bolsonaro” and threatened to “respond accordingly to this witch hunt”.
Brazil’s foreign ministry reacted swiftly, posting on X that “threats like the one made today by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in a statement that attacks a Brazilian authority and ignores the facts and the compelling evidence on record, will not intimidate our democracy”.
Bolsonaro, who is 70, now faces the prospect of spending the rest of his life in prison.
His lawyers are expected to argue that he should be kept under house arrest instead of being sent to jail.
They will also plead for a lower sentence.
However, they will not be able to appeal against the verdict itself, as that would only have been possible if two out of the five justices had voted to acquit.
Bolsonaro was found guilty of five charges, all relating to his attempt to cling to power after he was beaten in the 2022 election.
But prosecutors said he had started to plot to stay in power long before, proposing a coup to military commanders and sowing unfounded doubts about the electoral system.
They also said that Bolsonaro knew of a plan to assassinate Lula and his vice-presidential running mate, as well as a Supreme Court Justice.
The justices found he had led a conspiracy and also convicted seven of his co-conspirators, including senior military officers. Among them are two former defence ministers, a former spy chief and former security minster.
While the plot failed to enlist enough support from the military to go ahead, it did culminate in the storming of government buildings by Bolsonaro’s supporters on 8 January 2023, the justices found.
Order was quickly restored and more than 1,500 people were arrested.
But, according to Alexandre de Moraes – the justice who oversaw the trial – Brazil had come close to descending into authoritarianism.
“We are slowly forgetting that Brazil almost returned to its 20-year dictatorship because a criminal organisation, comprised of a political group, doesn’t know how to lose elections,” he said before casting his guilty vote.
Brazil’s recent history and the decades it spent under military rule were also invoked by Justice Cármen Lúcia, who cast the decisive third “guilty” vote on Thursday.
She compared the attempted coup to a “virus”, which, if left to fester, can kill the society in which it has taken hold in.
The sole dissenting voice on the five-member panel was Luiz Fux, who argued in an 11-hour speech on Wednesday that the accusations against Jair Bolsonaro were unfounded and voted for him to be acquitted.
But on Thursday, Cármen Lúcia, the only woman on the panel, insisted that Brazil’s democratic order had been at risk and warned that “there was no immunity to authoritarianism”.
President Trump on Thursday attended a New York Yankees game in the Bronx on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, drawing a mix of cheers and jeers from the crowd.
The president sat in a private box for the game, where he was joined by Yankees team President Randy Levine. The crowd offered loud cheers as well as some boos when Trump’s face was shown on screens at the stadium during the national anthem.
Prior to the game, Trump visited with members of the team in the Yankees’ clubhouse. He shook hands with star outfielder Aaron Judge, manager Aaron Boone and others. Players wore hats with “FDNY” and “NYPD” emblazoned on them to honor first responders on 9/11.
Trump told the team he was friends with the late George Steinbrenner, who owned the team for nearly 40 years.
“You’re going to win. You’re going to go all the way,” Trump told the players and coaches.
The president quipped about hosting the Yankees’ arch-rival Boston Red Sox in the Oval Office earlier this year, after which the Red Sox went on a lengthy winning streak.
Earlier in the day, Trump attended a remembrance ceremony at the Pentagon to honor those killed in the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
Jonah FisherEnvironment correspondent, Hampshire and
Tom InghamClimate and Science Producer
Gwyndaf Hughes/BBC
Water from drought-hit Hampshire has been used to help fill this lake in Wiltshire
Southern Water has warned tanker companies to stop delivering its water to the Wiltshire estate of an American billionaire.
Some of it was recently used, entirely legally, to help fill a lake, despite a hosepipe ban being in place locally for domestic users.
Multiple water tankers have been filmed both day and night by local residents filling up from standpipes in part of neighbouring Hampshire where a drought order is in place.
The BBC has been told that those tankers went to Conholt Park, a 2,500 acre estate owned by Stephen Schwarzman – who is one of the world’s richest men and a financial backer of US President Donald Trump.
A spokesperson for Mr Schwarzman confirmed that a small proportion of the water transported had very recently been used to help fill a new lake but said the water has been “sourced through licenced providers responsible for the lawful and proper extraction and delivery”. They said an advanced irrigation system was how the lake would mainly be filled.
Despite the ongoing drought, the tankers are legally allowed to take the water in Hampshire under licence because construction work is not domestic and therefore not covered by current drought restrictions.
However, Tim McMahon, Southern Water’s managing director, said he was “appalled by this use of water” and that the company had imposed on immediate ban on tankers extracting from the standpipes.
Southern Water said it did not know exactly how much water had been taken but that there had been a spike in the last week with “significant” amounts taken but with other users also making use of the standpipes it was impossible to say who had taken more.
Jonah Fisher/BBC
Locals have been documenting the movement of tankers to the Conholt Park estate.
The water firm, which serves more then two million customers, said it was first alerted by residents in Andover who had spotted the tankers coming and going from the standpipes.
Among them was Laurence Leask, an air conditioning inspector who told the BBC that he has been waking up at 03:00 BST to follow the tankers from the standpipes in Andover to the estate eight miles away, just over the border in Wiltshire, which is not subject to a drought order at present.
“We think there have been over 30 tankers a day, seven days a week,” he said.
“That’s a lot of water. I worked out that 30 tankers means a million litres a day, something like that.”
He said it had been going on for the past few months, prompting him to co-ordinate a network of neighbours who took it in turns to film and follow the tankers.
One of those, Trevor Marshall, said: “We think they might be using the water to fill the lake. He makes notes of the tankers passing his kitchen window and sends them to Laurence.
“At the same time we’re on a hosepipe ban – it’s incredibly outrageous.”
Reuters/Kevin Lamarque
Stephen Schwarzman is an ally of US president Trump
Mr Schwarzman is one of the world’s richest men, with an estimated worth of more than £30bn, having founded Blackstone, one of the biggest investment funds in the world.
He has been renovating the 2,500 acre, 17th century shooting estate since he bought it in 2022 for an estimated £80m.
That involves an extensive redevelopment and constructing a new lake.
A statement from Blackstone said: “The suggestion that the new owners of Conholt Park violated water regulations is false and misleading.
“They have taken extraordinary care to ensure the restoration of the property complies with all local laws and regulations. Most recently, as construction winds down (expected to be completed very soon) a proportion of transported water has been used in connection with irrigation and the lake.
“The water has been sourced through licenced providers responsible for the lawful and proper extraction and delivery. Water has been sourced from multiple locations, largely outside the region. Any suggestion that the owners violated local water regulations would be false and misleading.”
Southern Water said it would be “having robust conversations with those using this water and the companies working on their behalf”.
Managing director Tim McMahon said: “While this disappointing occurrence is highly unusual and rare, I would like to reassure customers that I am leading a thorough review into how this happened, and how we can tighten up both our internal monitoring processes and any legal loopholes so that this cannot happen again.”
Qatar, US discuss deterrence amid Netanyahu’s threats
In an exclusive interview with The Hill, Qatari Foreign Ministry spokesperson Majed al-Ansari raged against Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu and said Qatar is only looking to grow its security partnership with the U.S.
The comments come two days after Israel launched strikes targeting senior Hamas political officials in Doha, rocking a residential neighborhood in the Qatari capital.
Al-Ansari, who is also an adviser to Qatar’s prime minister, welcomed President Trump’s “condemnation and determination” to deter a future Israeli attack, speaking via Zoom from Doha.
“I think the whole world has a lot of cards it hasn’t played with Netanyahu, and I think there was a lot of reluctance internationally, including in the U.S., to take a lot of action in the hope that Prime Minister Netanyahu will sign a deal, will cease fire and will get his hostages out through diplomatic means,” al-Ansari said.
Qatar is in high-level discussions with the U.S. to reassess its security partnership, al-Ansari said, adding it “will take some time,” because it had never before considered Israel as a direct threat.
“This is an attack orchestrated by a megalomaniac who is leading a radical government in Israel. It has nothing to do with the United States,” al-Ansari said.
The explosions lasted for less than five minutes, al-Ansari said, and in that time, six people were killed — five Hamas members and a Qatari security official — and at least three others were wounded.
The strikes marked a major escalation of Israel’s war against Hamas and introduced a new level of volatility in a region fraught with conflict.
Some senior Republicans have broken with the president’s criticism of Israel’s strike, putting their support behind Netanyahu.
Al-Ansari pushed back and said GOP senators should “look into the facts and not be blinded by the smoke screen that Netanyahu offers.” “This is an attack on a sovereign state, on a residential neighborhood with six schools, a number of nurseries and residents who are all civilian,” he said, noting American students are also enrolled in schools nearby. “This is an attack that happened behind the United States. If your priority is the national security of the United States, is the foreign policy of the United States and the international standing of the United States, then you should question when your allies do things behind your back and attack sovereign countries where your army, your people, more than 10,000 servicemen and women operate.”
Welcome to The Hill’s Defense & National Security newsletter, I’m Colin Meyn — your guide to the latest developments at the Pentagon, on Capitol Hill and beyond.
Republican senators are urging President Trump to give them the green light to vote on a Russia sanctions package in the wake of Moscow’s incursion into Poland’s air space and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s seeming disinterest in ending the war with Ukraine. Senate Republicans have pushed for months for Trump to back the chamber’s bipartisan package that would punish nations that import Russian oil, gas and uranium, only …
Related video: Poland Airspace Violation Sparks NATO FRENZY Toward Russia – 12:30 Report The House on Wednesday voted to pass its version of the National Defense Authorization Act, with a bipartisan amendment to repeal the two laws authorizing the use of military force (AUMF) in Iraq. The legislation, which authorizes funding and sets policy for the U.S. military, passed 231 to 196. Four Republicans voted in opposition …
President Trump on Thursday brushed off Russian drones that flew into Poland’s airspace earlier this week as a possible mistake, while European leaders have described it as an intentional provocation by Moscow.
ICE detainees arriving at former prison in Tennessee
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainees recently started arriving at a former prison in Tennessee, prison firm CoreCivic told The Hill on Thursday. “We have begun receiving U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainees at our West Tennessee Detention Facility (WTDF) in response …
Upcoming things we’re watching in and around the defense world:
The Heritage Foundation hosts a discussion on “Taiwan’s Strategy for Peace, Prosperity, and Partnership with the United States.” 10:30 a.m.
Doug Matty, chief digital and AI officer at the Defense Department’s Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office, delivers remarks at the Billington Cybersecurity Summit. 9:05 a.m.
What We’re Reading
News we’ve flagged from other outlets:
Denials and Defiance Shape Venezuela’s Response to U.S. Threats on Drugs (Wall Street Journal)
ODNI expected to shrink counterintelligence, counterterror centers (Defense One)
Pentagon stages first ‘Top Drone’ school for operators to hone skills (Military Times)
Opinions in The Hill
Op-eds related to defense & national security submitted to The Hill:
Jim Cramer Reveals Why lululemon athletica inc. (LULU)’s Shares Fell By 18%
NataSnow/Shutterstock.com
lululemon athletica inc. (NASDAQ:LULU)’s shares were among the stunners on Thursday after they sank by 18.6%. The shares were hit hard after the firm’s second-quarter earnings report. The results saw lululemon athletica inc. (NASDAQ:LULU) struggle to manage the impact of tariffs on its business as the firm guided its fiscal full-year midpoint earnings per share at $12.87, which was nowhere near analyst estimates of $14.45 per share. Cramer discussed why lululemon athletica inc. (NASDAQ:LULU) has struggled, with high prices playing a role behind the firm’s woes:
“Well, I mean, when I saw Costco, when Lulu was battling with Costco, of a knockoff of Lulu, that was to me, that said something. Lulu, that’s not the way it works in this country. Costco comes after companies that charge too much. It comes after Tito’s and it comes after Lulus. And it always wins. And it won again last night. And that stock’s been stuck at 52 times earnings for long enough, it may be time for that one to move up.
While we acknowledge the potential of LULU as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that some AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns and have limited downside risk. If you are looking for an extremely cheap AI stock that is also a major beneficiary of Trump tariffs and onshoring, see our free report on the best short-term AI stock.
Shares in Warner Brothers Discovery and Paramount Skydance have surged following reports that Paramount Skydance is preparing an offer to buy the rival studio.
The reported bid would be for the entire Warner Brothers Discovery business, which includes news network CNN, HBO, and the film studio behind Barbie and Harry Potter.
The deal would mark further consolidation in the US media industry, which has been dramatically reshaped by the rise of streaming, and comes as media firms face scrutiny from President Donald Trump’s administration.
Warner Brothers Discovery declined to comment. Paramount Skydance did not respond to a request for comment.
The potential offer from Paramount Skydance was first reported in the Wall Street Journal.
It comes just weeks after the completion of Paramount Skydance’s own $8bn (£5.89bn) merger, in which David Ellison’s independent movie studio Skydance purchased Paramount, home of the CBS news network and hits such as Yellowstone.
Mr Ellison is also reportedly closing in on a plan to by The Free Press, a digital media outlet co-founded by Bari Weiss.
Warner Brothers Discovery shares closed up 29% on Thursday while Paramount Skydance closed up 16%.
The Wall Street Journal reported that a bid had not been submitted and the plan could fall apart.
David Ellison has been in the film business since dropping out of University of Southern California roughly two decades ago, eventually earning his own reputation in Hollywood as a producer on films such as Top Gun Maverick and World War Z.
His father, an ally of Trump, this week briefly overtook Elon Musk as the world’s richest person, worth more than $380bn, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires index. Trump earlier this year floated his name as a potential TikTok buyer.
The Paramount takeover plunged his son into politics as well.
The deal faced a lengthy approval process due to a row over Trump’s legal battle with CBS over a Kamala Harris interview he alleged had been edited to favour the Democratic Party.
Paramount eventually agreed to pay $16m to settle the dispute. The money will go to a future presidential library.
The settlement did not include a statement of apology or regret.
Democrats have called the payment a “bribe” – an accusation that Paramount has denied – and demanded documents about the negotiations from the firm.
Announcing the approval of the deal, the government said Skydance had committed to ensure its programming would “embody a diversity of viewpoints”, end Paramount’s diversity programmes, and appoint an ombudsman to review complaints of bias.
Ahead of the approval, Paramount said the Late Show with Stephen Colbert would end its run in May 2026. The move drew questions from Democrats about whether the cancellation was due to political reasons, which the firm denied.
Paramount in July also announced a five-year deal to air the satirical adult cartoon series South Park on its streaming network, poaching the show from HBO.
Warner Brothers Discovery is the product of a 2022 merger. Since the deal, it has struggled with debt and has made significant job cuts.
The company said earlier this year it planned to split the business, dividing its streaming brands from its more traditional cable television business.
MAHA report disappoints with ‘missed opportunities’
The second report by the Make America Healthy Again commission left supporters of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy dissatisfied with its lack of significant reforms or policies.
Kennedy called the strategy “the most sweeping reform agenda in modern history—realigning our food and health systems, driving education, and unleashing science to protect America’s children and families,” saying it would end “corporate capture of public health.”
But the strategy also relies on voluntary support of industries, sidestepping mandated oversight and regulations.
“The report is disappointing, and its most glaring omission is regulation,” Priya Fielding-Singh, director of policy and programs at the George Washington University Global Food Institute, told The Hill.
“While the commission’s first report directly called out sugar and ultra-processed foods, this one mentions each only once,” Fielding-Singh noted. “For ultra-processed foods, the most it offers is that government agencies will ‘continue to try’ to define them, which isn’t the serious step many of us were hoping for to keep them out of schools or children’s diets.”
Stakeholders were also left wanting more when it came to action on pesticides. The report called for raising public awareness of the Environmental Protection Agency’s “robust” pesticide review procedures and developing “more targeted and precise pesticide applications.”
David Murphy, a former finance director for Kennedy’s presidential campaign last year, called the report a “major missed opportunity for the Trump administration.”
Murphy said it was “a clear sign that Big Ag, Bayer, and the pesticide industry are firmly embedded in the White House and intentionally short-circuiting Trump’s campaign promise to the millions of MAHA voters who helped him return to power.”
Welcome to The Hill’s Health Care newsletter, we’re Nathaniel Weixel, Joseph Choi and Alejandra O’Connell-Domenech — every week we follow the latest moves on how Washington impacts your health.
New Jersey is the latest state to rebuff efforts from the federal government to limit access to updated COVID-19 vaccines. The New Jersey Department of Health issued an executive order Thursday allowing anyone 6 months and older to receive a COVID-19 vaccine for the upcoming respiratory illness season. The department is also allowing pharmacists in the state to administer COVID-19 immunizations without a prescription to anyone …
Toxic “forever chemicals” are altering human liver function at a fundamental level by triggering both fat accumulation and cancer-linked cell damage, a new study has found. Several of these compounds, also known as perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), interrupt liver cell signaling and immune functions but do so via unique mechanisms, scientists observed in the study, published in Environment International. …
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.), House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.) and other high-ranking Democrats say any government funding package to keep federal departments operating past Sept. 30 must include major concessions from Republicans to repair what they say is fast becoming a national health care crisis.
Greg Murphy urges Congress to extend Medicare coverage for telehealth
Rep. Greg Murphy (R-N.C.) Thursday called on federal lawmakers to reauthorize Medicare coverage for telehealth services, which is set to expire at the end of September. “We are still working on reauthorizing it, but it needs to be permanent and done,” Murphy said during The Hill’s event “Smarter Benefits: Redefining the Employer Role,” sponsored by Takeda. President Trump signed a bill in March funding the federal …
