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Two Israeli embassy employees were killed in a shooting Wednesday evening outside an event hosted by the American Jewish Committee at the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., just about a mile from the White House and U.S. Capitol.
“We are devastated that an unspeakable act of violence took place outside the venue,” AJC CEO Ted Deutch said in a statement. “At this moment, as we await more information from the police about exactly what transpired, our attention and our hearts are solely with those who were harmed and their families.”
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At about midnight local time, about three hours after the shooting, officials offered preliminary information about the attack, including details about the victims; the suspect, who has been detained; and ongoing investigations. There is no active threat, officials said.
Here’s what we know so far.
Who were the victims?
The shooting, which took place in the area of 3rd and F Street NW, killed a man and a woman, who have not yet been publicly identified. Others, including Israeli embassy employees, were injured.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem posted on X that the two who were killed were “Israeli Embassy staff,” and Yechiel Leiter, Israel’s ambassador to the U.S., said at the news briefing that the victims were a young couple about to be engaged who were attending the event as guests.
What do we know about the suspect?
Police believe the shooting was committed by a single suspect, identified as 30-year-old Elias Rodriguez from Chicago, D.C. police chief Pamela A. Smith said at the briefing.
The suspect was seen pacing back and forth outside the museum building before approaching a group of four people, producing a handgun and opening fire, according to Smith. After the shooting, the suspect then entered the museum and chanted “Free, free Palestine,” before being detained by event security. He is now in police custody.
Smith would not comment on Rodriguez’s motive amid ongoing investigation but said that Rodriguez was not on police’s radar before the attack.
How has Israel reacted?
Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon described the shooting as “a depraved act of antisemitic terrorism” in a post on X.
“We are confident that the U.S. authorities will take strong action against those responsible for this criminal act,” Danon added. “Israel will continue to act resolutely to protect its citizens and representatives—everywhere in the world.”
“The people of Israel are resilient people, the people of the United States of America are resilient people. Together we won’t be afraid,” Leiter said at the briefing. “Together, we’ll stand and we’re going to overcome the moral depravity of people who think that they’re going to achieve political gains through murder.”
How has the U.S. responded?
President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social: “These horrible D.C. killings, based obviously on antisemitism, must end, NOW! Hatred and Radicalism have no place in the USA. Condolences to the families of the victims. So sad that such things as this can happen! God Bless You ALL!”
Leiter said at the briefing that he had spoken on the phone with President Donald Trump who assured him “his Administration is going to do everything they can possibly do to fight and end antisemitism and the hatred that’s being directed and the demonization and delegitimization of the state of Israel.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi said she visited the scene of the shooting. “Praying for the victims of this violence as we work to learn more,” Bondi posted on X. Bondi said at the briefing that she had also spoken to Trump multiple times and that “his prayers are with all of us.”
Bondi added that local, state and federal agencies “will be doing everything in our power to keep all citizens safe, especially tonight, our Jewish community.”
“We will follow the facts, we will follow the law, and this defendant charged will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” Bondi said.
Steve Jensen, the assistant director in charge at the FBI’s Washington Field Office, said at the briefing that the FBI is looking into “ties to potential terrorism or motivation based on a bias-based crime or a hate crime.”
All homicides in D.C. are prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney for D.C., a role held since last week by Trump appointee former judge and Fox News host Jeanine Pirro.
Smith said the police had not received any intelligence prior to the shooting indicating any type of impending terrorist act or hate crime in D.C.
“We have a long history and a lot of practice in our city of working with Jewish organizations around safety and around protection, and we watch global events, national events and local events,” D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser said at the briefing. “Our organizations work directly with MPD and MPD responds with additional resources, so I know the chief will spend tonight and tomorrow, and we’ll be talking to all of our organizations, from schools to synagogues to other organizations.”
This is a developing story and will be updated.
A key House committee voted to advance President Donald Trump’s sweeping tax and spending bill late Wednesday evening, clearing a major hurdle after days of internal Republican infighting and setting the stage for a floor vote in the full House early Thursday.
The breakthrough came after frenzied, late-night negotiations that yielded just enough concessions to bring key GOP holdouts on the House Rules Committee back on board, despite deep divisions over the bill’s cost and proposed changes to Medicaid. In the end, all but one Republican voted the bill out of committee—Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, who skipped the vote—ending the committee’s debate that began more than 22 hours ago.
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Clearing the Rules Committee marks a major win for Trump, who has been lobbying aggressively for the Congress to pass his “One Big, Beautiful Bill” to cement a host of conservative priorities central to his second-term agenda. Trump had grown increasingly impatient with Republican holdouts, labeling some of them as “grandstanders” who should leave the party.
The White House and Republican leaders ultimately decided to revise the bill late Wednesday to address concerns from members of the House Freedom Caucus, who were demanding faster, larger spending cuts and energy tax-credit phaseouts. Trump had invited House Speaker Mike Johnson and key holdouts to meet at the White House to bridge their differences. Several of those holdouts emerged from that meeting saying it helped them get on the same page as Trump.
A review of the amendments shows that the revised bill would accelerate new Medicaid work requirements to December 2026; end many tax credits for wind energy, solar energy, and battery storage by 2028; nix a tax on gun silencers; formally lock in a $40,000 cap on the state and local tax (SALT) deduction; and provide $12 billion in funding to reimburse states for assisting with border security since January 2021.
The bill now heads for a vote in the full House, where Speaker Johnson is operating under very tight margins: House Republicans have one of the thinnest majorities in history at 220-212, meaning Johnson can only afford to lose three members of his caucus if all Democrats are opposed.
Trump and congressional leaders have set July 4 as the deadline for final approval of the legislation, with the Speaker insisting the House must pass the bill before Memorial Day, which is Monday. Some of the holdouts had taken issue with the timeline, saying they won’t be rushed into a deal without concessions.
Trump’s legislation, at more than 1,100 pages, would permanently extend his 2017 tax cuts set to expire at the end of this year while introducing new policies like tax exemptions for tips and overtime wages. It also boosts spending on defense and border security, while reducing spending on Medicaid and food stamps. The measure would also roll back green energy tax credits from the Biden Administration, including the $7,500 electric vehicle tax credit incentive.
Nonpartisan research groups studying the proposal have estimated that it would add more than $2.5 trillion to the federal debt over the next ten years. A senior White House official refuted those projections to TIME, claiming that the legislation would actually reduce the nation’s debt by generating an additional $2.6 trillion in revenue over the next ten years through increased economic growth.
Some hardline conservatives were previously not convinced the legislation cuts spending enough, complaining that the bill should halt clean-energy tax breaks sooner than proposed, and that new work requirements for some Medicaid recipients should start earlier than 2029.
Democrats have warned that the measure would force millions of low-income Americans off Medicaid and food assistance programs, to fund tax cuts for the wealthy. “The structure of this bill is such that low- and middle-income households bear the brunt, while the wealthy reap significant benefits,” says Daniel Hornung, the former Deputy Director of the National Economic Council under President Joe Biden.
An analysis from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released Tuesday shows that the wealthiest households are expected to gain from the bill, while the lowest-income households would lose out on resources because of the spending cuts. A separate CBO report estimated that the proposed changes to Medicaid could leave 7.6 million Americans without insurance.
“President Trump promised to lower the high cost of living in America. He has failed,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said in a statement on Wednesday. “Costs aren’t going down, they are going up. The GOP Tax Scam will make life more expensive for everyday Americans and it’s his toxic legislation that represents the ultimate betrayal.”
(NewsNation) — The father of imprisoned rapper Tory Lanez, who was convicted in the shooting of Megan Thee Stallion, says his son is being transferred to another facility after being stabbed 14 times in prison.
“He is being moved right now as we speak, and we have concerns,” Sonstar Peterson said Wednesday on NewsNation’s “CUOMO.” “He has just been discharged not many days ago from the hospital, and he was discharged with 14 stab wounds.”
Peterson said prison officials are moving his son as part of standard protocol following the attack, which collapsed Lanez’s lungs. He said that his son was the victim in the prison incident and “never provoked” the attack.
“He is someone who is liked. He’s not someone who is a troublemaker,” Peterson said, adding that correctional officers told him they were surprised Lanez was involved in any incident.
Tory Lanez team claims video proves he didn’t shoot Megan Thee Stallion
The transfer comes as a sworn affidavit has emerged that could undermine the prosecution’s case. A bodyguard, who was hired to accompany witness Kelsey Harris during the trial, claims he overheard Harris confess to firing the gun herself.
According to the affidavit, Harris told her boyfriend she shot the gun three times in the air before Lanez ran up to her, grabbed her arm, pushed it down, and she fired twice more into the ground.
The guard claims he overheard Harris saying to her boyfriend, “How can I not tell on myself?” and “How am I protected if I tell certain things?”
Lanez’s team says the Nest camera audio footage captures what sounds like three gunshots, followed by a pause, then two more shots, corroborating the bodyguard’s testimony.
Lanez was convicted in 2022 and sentenced to 10 years in prison for shooting Megan Thee Stallion after a party at Kylie Jenner’s Hollywood Hills home in July 2020. The conviction was based largely on testimony from Megan Thee Stallion and Harris, as well as DNA evidence.
However, the DNA evidence showed only a 0.01% chance that genetic material on the weapon belonged to Lanez, with multiple other people’s DNA found on the gun.
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., has separately called for California Gov. Gavin Newsom to pardon Lanez, citing what she calls new evidence proving his innocence.
(NewsNation) — President Trump’s claim that white Afrikaners are under attack is just one issue South Africa must address as it seeks to strengthen ties with the United States, a State Department spokesperson tells “Elizabeth Vargas Reports.”
Also problematic are the South African government’s support of terror sponsor Iran and the way it has accused Israel of genocide in that country’s war against Hamas in Gaza, Tammy Bruce said.
“South African citizens deserve better. Certainly, the world deserves better, and these kinds of rogue attitudes have to be called out,” she said. “And for President Trump to do it in the White House gives it a legitimacy that is important and serious and hopefully will be taken to heart.”
Trump ambushed South African President Cyril Ramaphosa on Wednesday during an Oval Office meeting with cameras rolling, saying the African nation is allowing widespread violence against white farmers, the minority Afrikaners who descended from European settlers. Ramaphosa took a collegial and nonconfrontational tone as he responded to Trump’s concerns.
Observers say homicides are a major problem in South Africa but that statistics do not support the idea of massacres on farms against white occupants.
“I take President Trump at his word. He’s been very clear about his opinion about the violence in South Africa,” Bruce said.
Ramaphosa visited the White House this week in hopes of resetting relations with the United States while facing looming tariffs on goods his country exports here. Trump used the opportunity to highlight what he says is the plight of Afrikaners. Besides violence, the White House condemns a new South African law Ramaphosa signed allowing the government to seize property without compensation.
“That clearly has got to be confronted and stopped,” Bruce said.
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and the White House are betting that the bill full of President Trump’s priorities is so big — and so “beautiful,” at least in the eyes of the president — that it cannot fail.
House GOP leaders are charging ahead with plans to vote on the legislation, officially titled the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, as soon as Wednesday night, even as hard-line conservatives continue to withhold support over concerns about deficit spending — a posture that could result in an embarrassing setback if holdouts sink the package.
The White House is pushing for the House to hold a vote on the legislation Wednesday evening, an administration official told The Hill.
The long impasse has forced House Rules Committee members into a purgatorial cycle: They’ve been debating the package for more than 15 hours, but they can’t wrap up because there’s no final bill to vote on as lawmakers haggle over last-minute tweaks.
The strategy, to be sure, is a gamble: A failed vote would deal a blow to Johnson and Trump and risks sapping the wind from their sails heading into a long Memorial Day recess. The Speaker and a smattering of other Republican leaders, nonetheless, look ready to ante up, repeating the same message throughout the week: “Failure is not an option.”
“We have to get this done,” Johnson said Tuesday. “I told President Trump on the campaign trail that I believed he could be the most consequential president of the modern era and arguably, maybe one of the most in all of U.S. history, maybe top two or three. I think this is the way we deliver that.”
The conservative holdouts have voiced a series of demands as a condition of winning their support, namely speeding up elimination of the green energy tax credits Democrats enacted in 2022 and further limiting size and scope of Medicaid spending. Adding to the pressure for the hard-liners is that blue-state moderates on the other ideological end of the conference secured a deal on raising the state and local tax (SALT) deduction cap on Tuesday — marking a major breakthrough for leaders to secure support for the bill but making an expensive policy that conservatives say should be offset with more cuts.
While the White House and GOP lawmakers have agreed to move up the start date for new Medicaid work requirements for able-bodied adults from 2029 to December 2026, hard-liners are eyeing even bigger reforms that may make other Republicans balk, such as further limiting the provider tax mechanism that states use to extract more federal matching dollars.
The changes will be laid out in a manager’s amendment, which lawmakers are waiting for Johnson to release.
But by packaging the controversial proposals with an enormous list of provisions supported by the conservatives — including broad tax cuts, enhanced oil production and tougher immigration rules — Trump and GOP leaders are all but daring the budget hard-liners to vote against the massive package over concerns with a sliver of it.
Even if the vote fails, it could be a strategic move by identifying those willing to defy the president to leadership — and to the public — as leaders work to lock in support.
On Tuesday, Trump warned that he would deem any GOP lawmaker who opposed the package “a fool,” suggesting he would back primary opponents in those cases. And on Wednesday, the White House issued a formal statement amplifying the warning.
“President Trump is committed to keeping his promises, and failure to pass this bill would be the ultimate betrayal,” the White House wrote in a statement of administration policy.
Trump was expected to deliver that message Wednesday afternoon, when he huddled with Johnson, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) and members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus at the White House to firm up an agreement to unlock support for the package and get it over the finish line by Memorial Day.
There were, however, some logistical disagreements.
Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.), the chair of the Freedom Caucus, told reporters Wednesday that the group was working with the White House on a deal that, if included in the bill, would win over its support — a significant development that could set the stage for GOP success.
A White House official, however, rejected that characterization, telling The Hill the Freedom Caucus did not secure a deal but instead received a menu of policy options the Trump administration would not oppose if they could garner enough support in the House to pass.
The right flank’s push for additional changes is sparking frustrations among centrist Republicans, who see the campaign as a disingenuous effort since the Trump agenda bill already hits the minimum amount of cuts demanded in the budget resolution. All 11 committees surpassed their targets, according to statistics from the Congressional Budget Office, leading many moderates to believe the matter should be a done deal.
“Don’t move the goal post,” Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) said last week. “If you move the goal post that would be very damaging because we’ve all played by good faith to make this happen.”
One of the GOP critics, Rep. Thomas Massie (Ky.), meanwhile, has said the GOP bill is not too big to fail, but too big to pass because it will inflate deficit spending in the name of reining it in.
Trump singled out Massie during his trip to the Capitol, calling him a “grandstander.” But Massie dismissed the criticism, saying no amount of pressure — from the president or anyone else — will convince him to support the bill.
“It’s not consequential to my vote,” Massie said. “Whether he endorses me or attacks me, it doesn’t change the facts of what’s in the bill.”
Democrats, meanwhile, agree that the legislation is gigantic, but they decry what they see as ugly effects that threaten the well-being of low-income individuals.
Millions are projected to lose health insurance as a result of reforms to Medicaid. And for the first time, it requires states to share some of the cost of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, risking that states reduce the number of those eligible to receive benefits.
