The Trump administration on Tuesday postponed classified briefings for Senate and House members as lawmakers look for more answers about President Donald Trump’s directed strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities over the weekend and his announcement on Monday that the two countries had reached a ceasefire agreement.

The Senate briefing has been rescheduled for Thursday so that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio can attend, according to multiple people with knowledge of the scheduling change who would only discuss it on the condition of anonymity. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said on social media that the House briefing will now be held on Friday, “details to follow.”

Trump proclaimed on social media that Israel and Iran had agreed that there will be an “Official END” of their conflict. That tentative truce briefly faltered Tuesday when Israel accused Iran of launching missiles into its airspace, but Trump later declared it was “in effect!”

The separate briefings for the House and Senate were to be led by CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, along with Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and deputy secretaries of state Christopher Landau and Steve Feinberg.

Democrats in Congress, along with some Republicans, have many questions about Trump’s unilateral decision to launch military action, arguing he should have gone to Congress for approval — or at least provided more justification for the attacks. Congress has not received any new intelligence since Gabbard told lawmakers in March that the U.S. believed Iran was not building a new nuclear weapon, according to two people familiar with the intelligence. The people insisted on anonymity to share what Congress has been told.

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said it is “outrageous” that the administration postponed the briefings.

House defers nascent impeachment attempt

The U.S. House voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to set aside an effort to impeach President Donald Trump on a sole charge of abuse of power after Trump launched military strikes on Iran without first seeking authorization from Congress

The sudden action forced by a lone Democrat, Rep. Al Green of Texas, brought little debate and split his party. Most Democrats joined the Republican majority to table the measure, for now. But dozens of Democrats backed Green’s effort. The tally was 344-79.

“I take no delight in what I’m doing,” Green said ahead of the vote.

“I do this because no one person should have the power to take over 300 million people to war without consulting with the Congress of the United States of America,” he said. “I do this because I understand that the Constitution is going to be meaningful or it’s going to be meaningless.”

Trump earlier Tuesday lashed out in vulgar terms against another Democrat, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, for having suggested his military action against Iran was an impeachable offense.

Appeals court orders return of detainee

A federal appeals court in New York on Tuesday ordered the Trump administration to facilitate the return of a man who was deported to El Salvador roughly 30 minutes after the court suspended an order to remove him from the U.S.

The ruling in Jordin Alexander Melgar-Salmeron’s case marks at least the fourth time this year that President Donald Trump’s administration has been ordered to facilitate the return of somebody mistakenly deported.

The government said “a confluence of administrative errors” led to Melgar-Salmeron’s deportation on May 8, according to the decision by a three-judge panel from the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The panel said administration officials must facilitate his return to the U.S. “as soon as possible.” The judges gave them a week to identify his current physical location and custodial status and to specify what steps they will take to facilitate his return.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whose mistaken deportation in March became a flashpoint in Trump’s immigration crackdown, was returned from El Salvador this month to face human smuggling charges in Tennessee.

Judge defies high court deportation ruling

President Donald Trump’s administration asked the Supreme Court on Tuesday to clear the way for the deportation of several immigrants to South Sudan, a war-ravaged country where they have no ties.

The motion comes a day after the justices allowed immigration officials to restart quick deportations to third countries, halting a lower-court order that had allowed migrants to challenge removals to countries where they could be in danger.

But Judge Brian Murphy in Boston found the deportation flight diverted to Djibouti in May couldn’t immediately resume its path to South Sudan. While he acknowledged the Supreme Court decision pausing his broader order, he said his ruling on that flight remained in place. The migrants must still get a chance to argue in court that they’d be in danger of torture if sent there, he found.

The Trump administration pushed back in a court filing, calling the judge’s finding “a lawless act of defiance that, once again, disrupts sensitive diplomatic relations and slams the brakes on the Executive’s lawful efforts to effectuate third-country removals.”

Attorneys for the migrants say they could face “imprisonment, torture and even death” if sent to South Sudan, the world’s newest and one of its poorest countries. South Sudan has endured waves of violence since gaining independence from Sudan in 2011, and escalating political tensions in the African nation have threatened to devolve into another civil war.

Judge orders funding for charging stations

A federal judge Tuesday ordered the Trump administration to release billions of dollars in funding for the build out of electric vehicle chargers in more than a dozen states.

U.S. District Judge Tana Lin in Washington state partially granted a preliminary injunction that sought to free up the money approved under then-President Joe Biden that the Trump administration withheld earlier this year. Sixteen states and the District of Columbia sued over the move, arguing that the administration did not have the authority to block the congressionally approved funds. The program was set to allocate $5 billion over five years to various states, of which an estimated $3.3 billion had already been made available.

Lin ordered that funding be released in 14 of the states, including in Arizona, California and New York. But she denied granting the preliminary injunction for D.C., Minnesota and Vermont, saying that they did not provide enough evidence that they would face “irreparable harm” if the money wasn’t immediately freed up.

Lin said the Trump administration overstepped its constitutional authority when it froze the funding previously approved by Congress in 2021 as part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.

DOGE’s ‘Big Balls,’ 19, resigns from gov’t

Edward Coristine, the 19-year-old high-profile operative for the Department of Government Efficiency, resigned Monday, according to a White House official.

Coristine, known by the online pseudonym “Big Balls,” was a key player on Elon Musk’s team that spearheaded a widespread effort to slash the federal bureaucracy. To critics and many government employees, he became a symbol of DOGE’s flaws: Its technologists were young and inexperienced but brash, with a dubious background for the outsize positions of power they occupied.

He graduated from high school in Rye, N.Y., last year and was enrolled as an engineering student at Northeastern University when he was hired by DOGE. He had previously interned at a data security firm, but was fired after an investigation into the leaking of internal information. He had also briefly interned at Neuralink, the Musk company that is developing brain implants.

He appeared in a Fox News segment that aired in May on Musk and his team. The host, Jesse Watters, asked, “Who is Big Balls?” Musk said, “That should be obvious,” as Coristine raised his hand.

The moniker even got a mention on “Saturday Night Live.”

Since February, Coristine had moved between overseeing a long list of government agencies and working on projects of interest to Musk.

— From news services