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Pam Bondi may think that being fired as attorney general gets her out of a congressional subpoena, but the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform disagrees.After missing her scheduled deposition April 14, Bondi will now testify before the committee on May 29, the committee announced Wednesday. At the same time, Democrats on the committee announced that they have filed contempt of Congress charges against Bondi, saying that she has “illegally defied our committee, skipped her deposition, and has refused to cooperate.”“Bondi has extensive personal knowledge about the Trump Administration’s handling of the Epstein files, and regardless of her job title, her testimony and cooperation are crucial,” the committee’s ranking member, Representative Robert Garcia, said in a statement. The Republican majority on the committee called the charges “theater and completely unnecessary” in a post on X, but stuck by its order to Bondi to testify.“They were happy giving the Clintons a free pass for months,” the committee said, although President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have already testified before the committee. “We have secured Bondi’s appearance for May 29. Today, we’re marking up legislation to tackle fraud at the federal level and all Democrats can talk about is Epstein.”Earlier this month, after President Trump fired Bondi, a spokesperson for the committee said Bondi would not appear for her April 14 deposition “since she is no longer Attorney General and was subpoenaed in her capacity as Attorney General.”Until Wednesday, Republican Oversight Chair James Comer had drawn the ire of the committee’s Democrats for remaining silent on whether Bondi would testify, as well as for making drastic changes to the hearing process. It seems that he either was putting off the announcement until the last minute or was forced to announce a date after Democrats filed charges.In either case, Bondi has a lot to answer for considering how the DOJ mishandled its files on Jeffrey Epstein on her watch. The DOJ’s Inspector General’s Office and the Government Accountability Office are both investigating the department’s rollout of the files. On Monday, journalist Katie Phang sued the DOJ for a “brazen, shocking, and ongoing violation” of the Epstein Files Transparency Act by failing to publish all of the government’s files on the convicted sex offender.

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court ruled 6–3 to render the Voting Rights Act obsolete.Louisiana v. Callais was first brought to the court in 2025 by a group of white voters, who argued that a congressional map drawn to create a Black-majority district in Louisiana was unconstitutional. The conservative judges ruled that while Section 2 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act outlaws race-based gerrymandering, Louisiana’s map did not fit the bill, and in fact unnecessarily employed racial statistics when drawing borders.Justices Elena Kagan, Ketanji Brown Jackson, and Sonia Sotomayor all dissented. In a scathing 48-page opinion, Kagan, joined by her fellow liberal justices, warned the ruling “demolishes the foundational right Congress granted of racial equality in electoral opportunity.”“The Voting Rights Act is—or, now more accurately, was—‘one of the most consequential, efficacious, and amply justified exercises of federal legislative power in our Nation’s history,’” Kagan wrote. “It was born of the literal blood of Union soldiers and civil rights marchers. It ushered in awe-inspiring change, bringing this Nation closer to fulfilling the ideals of democracy and racial equality. And it has been repeatedly, and overwhelmingly, reauthorized by the people’s representatives in Congress. Only they have the right to say it is no longer needed—not the Members of this Court.”Kagan noted the ruling functionally eliminates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, and allows legislators to wipe out minority districts whenever they feel like it.“Under the Court’s new view of Section 2, a State can, without legal consequence, systematically dilute minority citizens’ voting power,” Kagan wrote. “Of course, the majority does not announce today’s holding that way. Its opinion is understated, even antiseptic. The majority claims only to be ‘updat[ing]’ our Section 2 law, as though through a few technical tweaks.… But in fact, those ‘updates’ eviscerate the law.”Kagan continued: “A plaintiff will have to show—contrary to Section 2’s clear text and design—that the legislators were ‘motivated by a discriminatory purpose.’ That, as Section 2’s drafters knew, is well-nigh impossible.”She concluded: “I dissent because Congress elected otherwise. I dissent because the Court betrays its duty to faithfully implement the great statute Congress wrote. I dissent because the Court’s decision will set back the foundational right Congress granted of racial equality in electoral opportunity. I dissent.”

The Supreme Court’s six-to-three Republican-appointed majority issued a staggering ruling on Wednesday essentially killing the remaining protections of the Voting Rights Act, dealing a death blow to the country’s most important civil rights law. The majority opinion by Justice Samuel Alito in Louisiana v. Callais strikes down the creation of a second majority-Black congressional district […]

President Donald Trump demanded that late-night host Jimmy Kimmel be fired in a Truth Social post on Monday.

Assistant Secretary of Defense Jules Hurst finally revealed the Pentagon’s estimated price tag for the U.S. military onslaught in Iran—and it’s a doozy. “We’re spending about $25 billion on Operation Epic Fury,” Hurst said during a hearing before the House Armed Services Committee Wednesday. “Most of that is in munitions, there’s part of that obviously is [Operations and Maintenance] and equipment replacement.” under questioning from Rep. Smith, a DoD official estimates the cost of the Iran war so far is $25 billion pic.twitter.com/aDzsLXIkpB— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 29, 2026Hurst confirmed the Pentagon planned to develop a supplemental funding request through the White House once they had made a “full assessment of the cost of the conflict.” The Department of Defense has previously asked the White House for $200 billion for the war.Washington state Democrat and Ranking Member Adam Smith, who’d asked the Pentagon representatives to eventually provide an estimate, appeared surprised to get such an immediate response. “I’m glad you’ve answered that question because we’ve been asking for a hell of a long time and no one’s given us that number,” he said.As Trump’s military campaign in Iran has neared the 60-day mark, the Pentagon has neglected to deliver real cost estimates since it claimed to have spent more than $11.3 billion in the first six days alone. Every dollar spent on Trump’s war has come from American taxpayers, and was spent without congressional approval. The American Center for Progress previously estimated that the war had reached a $25 billion price tag at the end of March. For context, the group estimated that with that amount of money, the U.S. government could for one entire year pay for Medicare coverage for 3,106,000 people, or provide 29,614,000 children with free school lunches, or shelter 3,147,000 people in Section 8 housing.Instead, Trump chose to spend it on weapons, all while telling Americans there wasn’t enough money for childcare, Medicaid, or Medicare. For the amount of money the Pentagon has spent on this war, the government could have provided 1,780,000 children with free childcare for a year.In the words of Dwight D. Eisenhower: “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”

The ruling paves the way for Republicans to redraw congressional maps in their favor and weaken the political power of Black communities across the US.