The Pentagon said Wednesday that boot camps for all the military services are once again requiring the flu vaccination for all recruits after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made the shot optional for the military at the end of April.

The development, confirmed to The Associated Press by a Pentagon official, comes amid a growing, weekslong, flu outbreak at the U.S. Air Force’s boot camp at Lackland Air Force Base that has sickened nearly 300 people. However, the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss details not cleared for public release, maintained that the permission to mandate the vaccinations was unrelated to the outbreak.

When Hegseth first announced the repeal of the flu vaccine mandate in April, citing “medical autonomy” and religious freedom, he allowed the services to ask for exceptions — or permission to keep the vaccine mandatory — within 15 days of the rollout.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) says New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is going to have to smooth things over with congressional Democrats after backing several progressive candidates who ousted incumbents during Tuesday’s primary elections.

Asked if Mamdani’s endorsements were making him “enemies” with Democrats in Washington, D.C., Jeffries told CNN that he and Mamdani “strongly” disagreed over his primary picks ahead of Election Day.

Now, according to Jeffries, the mayor has serious “work to do in terms of the conversations that he’s going to have with members of Congress moving forward.”

China has a right to target people outside of its borders who contravene its new law on ethnic unity, a senior official said on Wednesday, adding that this was in line with international practice, and was legal and ‌necessary.

China passed the law in March to create a "shared" national identity among the country's 55 ethnic minority groups, which include Tibetans and Uyghurs, some of whom chafe under Chinese rule and have over the years often staged protests, some of them violent.

The new law, which goes into effect on July 1, includes a clause saying people and groups beyond ⁠the borders of the People's Republic of China can be held legally accountable for undermining "ethnic unity and progress or inciting ethnic separatism".

Judge vacates administrations policies, finding actions of ICE and another government arm ‘arbitrary and capricious’

A federal ⁠judge in California vacated the ⁠Trump administration’s ​nationwide policies expanding arrests at immigration courthouses and the duration for detaining noncitizens in short-term facilities, finding the actions of US Immigration ⁠and Customs Enforcement and another government arm “arbitrary and capricious”.

US district judge P Casey Pitts of the northern district of California on Tuesday vacated ICE’s ⁠policies that had rescinded previous strictures on arrests at immigration courthouses and allowed detainees to ​be held in short-term cells for up ‌to 72 hours. He ‌did the same for a similar policy undertaken by the US Department of Justice’s ‌executive office for immigration review that removed limits on courthouse arrests.

The 71-page ruling, issued in a case brought by an asylum seeker arrested upon departing a routine hearing at a San Francisco immigration court, struck down key parts of the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement policies. Judge Pitts, appointed by Joe Biden, in effect reinstated Biden-era policies ‌that limited arrests at immigration courthouses to narrow circumstances and capped detentions in short-term facilities to 12 hours.

China’s LineShine debuts at number one in Top500 – a list sometimes viewed as a national measure of global tech prowess

A supercomputer in China now outranks its US counterparts as the world’s most powerful. It is the first time since 2017 that a Chinese computer has topped a list sometimes viewed as a measure of a nation’s technological prowess.

The LineShine computer in Shenzhen displaced top-ranked US computer El Capitan in the Top500 rankings released on Tuesday. It was LineShine’s debut on the list.

China’s LineShine differs from other high-performance computers in that it runs entirely on conventional computer chips (CPUs), instead of the graphics processors (GPUs), commonly used for AI. It requires about 42.2 megawatts of electricity to operate, according to the list.

A young south-eastern Louisiana man recently became the first person in his region to be functionally cured of sickle cell disease, clearing the way for him to continue pursuing his dream of a career as a commercial pilot, according to his medical team.

Daniel Cressy’s successful completion of curative gene therapy at Manning Family Children’s hospital in New Orleans on Monday generated a measure of optimism within his state, which produces more cases of sickle cell disease per capita than any other in the US, according to the medical center.

A statement attributed to Cressy, 23, said his story embodied “overcoming what seemed impossible” – and hoped it would be “inspirational for a lot of people”.

Donald Trump may be the head of the Republican Party, but when it comes to the Senate, Majority Leader John Thune is still in charge.

Trump, who will attend lunch with Senate Republicans at the US Capitol on Wednesday, is growing tired of hearing “no” from the Senate leader as he pushes certain controversial priorities, according to people familiar with his thinking.

But Thune is sitting on as much support as any leader could with less than five months until the midterms, and is surrounded by some emboldened colleagues who are more willing than they have been in years to take on the Republican administration.

Outside Rep. Adriano Espaillat’s primary night party, four men on the sidewalk were dressed in full neon sequins, trying to get the party started. Inside, the bar had barely opened.

Espaillat spent 20 years trying to get to Washington and another 10 years in Congress. He arrived to give his concession speech and left in under 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, the real party was going on about three miles away. That’s where Zohran Mamdani was completing his victory lap of three celebrations with candidates who likely would not have gotten near Congress without his endorsements, just a year after he stunned the political world by beating Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic mayoral primary.

A new data investigation says the paper of record increasingly framed transgender rights as a debate instead of a lived reality.

A new data investigation argues that The New York Times sharply changed the way it covers transgender people beginning in 2022, moving from rights-based framing toward more skeptical, conflict-driven coverage that elevated opponents of transgender rights and gave less prominence to transgender people themselves.

As The Advocate reported in May, an Assigned Media analysis found that the Times produced more transgender-related coverage than any other outlet examined but was the least likely to quote transgender people or trans advocacy organizations in stories primarily focused on transgender issues.

The report reviewed coverage from January 1 to April 25 across 10 major news outlets. Assigned Media found that the Times published 60 news stories centered mainly on transgender issues during that period, but only 12 included quotes from transgender people or representatives of transgender advocacy organizations, a rate of 20 percent.

The Senate on Tuesday voted to block U.S. military action in Iran for the first time as the war approaches its fourth month.

The war powers resolution passed by a vote of 50–48. Sen. John Fetterman, again, was the lone Democrat to vote in the negative.

Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Dave McCormick, who was in his home state for a visit by President Trump to a Mack truck plant in the Lehigh Valley, was absent.

Four Republicans — Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana — supported the measure.