Transcript
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Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Dan Ronan. The White House is facing headwinds on several fronts. Fuel prices are soaring. Gasoline is $4.09 a gallon. Diesel is more than $5.53 a gallon. This week, President Trump fired his attorney general, Pam Bondi, and the Supreme Court expressed skepticism over a White House plan to outlaw birthright citizenship. NPR senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro says this might be a def defining week for the president leading up to the midterm elections.
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I mean, he's had a lot of tough weeks lately, especially with the war and gas prices tied together. But this week has really stood out. And maybe the one that we look back on, if Democrats win the House and say, you know, that may be a place where everything kind of went south. He suffered some real embarrassments in the courts, on his ballroom, on public media funding, and at the Supreme Court, where even the three justices he appointed sounded very skeptical of his case on birthright citizenship. And he was in the audience to hear it.
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A French cargo ship has become the first Western tanker to pass through the Strait of Hormuz since the start of the war in Iran. NPR's Eleanor Beardsley reports. A fifth of the world's oil used to pass through the strait. Now it has been nearly entirely choked off.
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The Iranian government has said no ships linked to Israel or the US Will be allowed to pass. The ship had remained idle in the Gulf since early March, like many other non Iranian vessels after the war stopped nearly all commercial traffic. The Maltese flagged vessel belongs to shipping and logistics giant CMA cgm, the world's third largest container shipping conglomerate. Ship tracking data showed the vessel navigated the approved corridor along the Omani coast. CMA cgm, which is majority owned by a Franco Lebanese billionaire family, is understood to have coordinated the transit with Iranian maritime authorities. Eleanor Beardsley, NPR News, Paris.
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President Trump says there's a new White House fraud task force that will focus the mostly on Democratic led states. The White House says it's inspired by fraud in Minnesota in the state run social services programs. NPR's Daniel Kurtzleben reports.
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Trump called Vice President J.D. vance, who's leading the task force, the fraud czar. He added that while the task force will look for fraud nationwide, it would focus primarily in blue states led by, in Trump's words, crooked Democrat politicians. Trump then listed California, Illinois, Minnesota, Maine and New York as examples. He also explicitly called out Minnesota for having a large Somali population. Trump created the task force in mid March. He has made combatting fraud a central part of his political message ahead of November's midterms. Danielle Kurtzleben, NPR News, the White House