The Daily Brief
Today
Good morning. Six months into the war with Iran, traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has fallen from hundreds of vessels a day to a handful and sent prices sharply higher S7; the threat of sanctions triggered panic buying for food and fuel this week S1.
A senior Democratic senator is calling for a criminal investigation into Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. after newly obtained records indicate he lied about a Samoa trip during Senate confirmation hearings last year, the latest fallout from Guardian reporting on the administration's health leadership S12. The Department of Justice meanwhile issued a legal opinion seeking to force taxpayers to fund religious proselytizing S14, part of what The Progressive calls an unholy war on the First Amendment waged through Christian nationalism S8.
In Florida, an ICE agent was arrested after an argument escalated outside an Orlando apartment building, police said S6 — the same state where a former Venezuelan National Guard lieutenant colonel was deported this week, interrupting a lawsuit accusing him of ordering violent raids and torture S13.
Three Stars and Stripes staffers — publisher Max Lederer, editor-in-chief Erik Slavin, and reporter Lara Korte — sued the Pentagon in federal court Thursday to prevent last week's firings by the Department of Defense at the military-focused newspaper S10. Even Wyoming's Republican governor Mark Gordon sounded the alarm on the administration's "aggressive" and "irregular" elections monitoring by DOJ S16, while a Florida jury found the DeSantis administration diverted $10 million marked for poor children to GOP coffers S21.