More than 20 members of Congress are demanding answers from the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and homeland security officials after the Guardian revealed the VA is compiling a report on all non-US citizens “employed by or affiliated with” the government agency that will then be shared with other federal agencies, including immigration authorities.

Protesters briefly interrupted the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, during a Capitol Hill hearing on Thursday, evoking a quote from the film The Exorcist.

As Noem delivered her opening remarks before the House committee on homeland security, two protesters disrupted the session, with one yelling: “Stop ICE raids! The power of Christ compels you! End deportations, the power of Christ compels you!”

President Donald Trump’s launch of a nationwide “affordability tour” this week may look to some like an admission that Americans are struggling under the weight of the administration’s tariffs and rising utility and grocery costs—but Trump assured one reporter on Tuesday that he would acknowledge no such thing.

US forces have seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, in a major escalation of Donald Trump’s four-month pressure campaign against the South American country’s dictator, Nicolás Maduro.

A new US National Security Strategy and a series of comments from US officials, presidential proxies and Trump himself, have culminated in what could be one of the most profound crises for Atlanticism, the security doctrine that has sustained peace and democracy in Europe since the end of the second world war.

Where Trump’s point of departure was once the failure of Europe to contribute sufficiently to its own security, he has now embraced a more alarming vision.

Coloured both by racism and a staggering contempt for Europe’s political institutions and leaders, he has warned of the risk of civilisational collapse on a continent he barely knows, and that he has viewed more often from the window of an armoured sedan.

A senior Democratic senator is calling for an investigation into potential insider trading by fossil-fuel billionaires close to the Trump administration, after a Guardian investigation raised questions about an unusual share buying spree.

Republican lawmakers have unveiled a bill to authorize $901 billion in military spending for the next fiscal year. House Speaker Mike Johnson says the National Defense Authorization Act would “ensure our military forces remain the most lethal in the world.”

Republicans keep saying they are about to release a healthcare plan. But they never release anything remotely adequate to meet the American people’s needs. That’s because they don’t want to say their real plan out loud: Take healthcare away from as many Americans as possible, all to give giant tax cuts to billionaires.

This week, the Senate is scheduled to vote on healthcare

Former Honduras president Juan Orlando Hernández recently thanked God and Donald Trump – in that order – for being pardoned by the latter of a drug trafficking conviction won by federal US prosecutors less than two years earlier.

The US House speaker, Mike Johnson, has developed a go-to response when asked about something controversial Donald Trump or members of his administration said or did.

It’s some version of “I don’t know anything about that.”

A coalition of more than 230 environmental groups has demanded a national moratorium on new datacenters in the US, the latest salvo in a growing backlash to a booming artificial intelligence industry that has been blamed for escalating electricity bills and worsening the climate crisis.

A CDC panel voted on Friday to recommend the hepatitis B vaccine only to the babies of mothers who test positive for the virus, and to suggest that, for all other babies, doctors and parents should have a conversation about the risks and benefits of the shot, a process known as “shared clinical decision-making.”

That goes against what the federal government has recommended for nearly 35 years and against the guidance of medical organizations…