The briefing for Thursday, July 30.

The United States launched what it called 'a heavy wave' of strikes against Iran late Wednesday, killing at least three civilians including a two-year-old child on Qeshm island, according to Iranian state media. US Central Command said it hit dozens of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps targets in response to Tuesday's attempted Iranian ballistic missile attack on American forces in Jordan. The strikes targeted military command centers, missile facilities, and coastal defense sites across Iran. All Iranian missiles aimed at US forces were intercepted, Centcom reported.

The escalation came hours after the US and Saudi Arabia conducted their first publicly announced joint strikes against Iranian-backed militias in Iraq, killing at least 20 members of Iraq's Popular Mobilisation Forces. Saudi Arabia said it acted in self-defense after Iran-backed groups launched drones at its oil facilities. Meanwhile, Jordan's air defenses shot down five Iranian missiles on Thursday, marking the second consecutive day of interceptions. In Kuwait, an Iranian strike hit a Chinese firm's building, killing one worker.

The widening conflict poses mounting challenges for President Trump, who has vacillated between threatening military action and claiming diplomatic progress. Iran's deputy foreign minister said Tuesday his country has made no requests to restart negotiations in more than two weeks, contradicting administration claims that Tehran is eager to talk. The conflict has now drawn in nearly every country in the region, with even Egypt experiencing drone strikes at one of its ports. Trump faces growing political pressure as midterm elections approach, with oil prices surging and American troop casualties rising.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Thursday that an object which crashed into a field in eastern Poland was probably a Russian Kh-101 ballistic missile, marking a potential violation of NATO airspace. The unidentified object created a 10-meter-wide crater near the village of Tarnawa Kolonia, about 100 kilometers from the Ukrainian border, during a Russian attack on the city of Lviv. Poland detected the object around 3:40 AM and sent an F-16 fighter jet to intercept it before it disappeared from radar minutes later.

The incident occurred during massive Russian missile and drone strikes across Ukraine that killed at least eight civilians and wounded more than 50 others. Air raid sirens blared in the Polish cities of Lublin and Krasnystaw as the attacks stretched close to the border. Tusk said there was no immediate threat since the object landed in an unpopulated area, but Poland was prepared to shoot it down if it had continued its flight. Defense Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz said about 20 objects were detected close to Polish airspace overnight.

The cross-border incident comes as Ukraine faces critical shortages of Western-supplied anti-ballistic missile defenses. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with US President Donald Trump earlier this week to plead for swifter deliveries of Patriot air defense systems. The US-Iran war has drained stockpiles of interceptor missiles, complicating Ukraine's ability to defend against Russia's daily bombardment. While NATO member Poland has experienced several incidents of objects landing on its territory since Russia's 2022 invasion, this represents one of the most serious potential airspace violations to date.

The Federal Reserve kept its benchmark interest rate unchanged at around 3.6% on Wednesday, marking the fifth consecutive meeting without a change, though three officials dissented in favor of raising rates. The three regional Fed bank presidents who voted to hike—Beth Hammack of Cleveland, Neel Kashkari of Minneapolis, and Lorie Logan of Dallas—had previously signaled openness to tightening policy to combat persistent inflation. The unusual number of dissents underscores deep divisions within the central bank about how to handle inflation that has remained above the Fed's 2% target for more than five years.

Fed Chair Kevin Warsh characterized the internal debate as a 'good family fight,' emphasizing the central bank's commitment to combating inflation while acknowledging economic uncertainties. The Iran war has driven energy prices higher and created uncertainty about the economic outlook, while massive technology company investments in artificial intelligence have increased prices for computer chips and electricity. President Trump's tariffs on foreign goods are adding additional inflationary pressure, creating a difficult environment for policymakers.

The decision offers little immediate relief for consumers, with average credit card rates still near 20% and mortgage rates at their highest level since last August. Seema Shah, chief global strategist at Principal Asset Management, said the dissents 'send a clear message: The Fed is not yet convinced the inflation battle has been won.' The central bank faces a delicate balancing act as it tries to control prices without triggering a recession ahead of November's midterm elections.

The European Union announced Thursday it would provide 10 billion euros ($11.4 billion) in public funding for companies to build seven AI gigafactories, aiming to close the artificial intelligence gap with the United States and China. The European Commission said it hopes the public investment will attract an additional 20 billion euros in private financing. Each gigafactory must have at least 100,000 cutting-edge AI chips, making them roughly four times more powerful than current EU data centers.

The initiative reflects growing urgency in Brussels around 'tech sovereignty' as European leaders worry about dependence on foreign technology providers. US President Donald Trump has criticized EU tech regulations, while China has restricted supply of minerals critical to the sector. Europe currently lags far behind the US and China in crucial areas for AI development, according to a 2025 Federal Reserve assessment. The EU's current computing power, delivered by 19 AI data centers from Finland to Spain, will more than double when the seven gigafactories come online.

European Commission executive vice president Henna Virkkunen called access to large-scale computing power 'a strategic necessity for Europe as AI development accelerates.' However, Europe faces significant challenges including lack of domestic component manufacturing and electricity costs that can run double or triple those in the US and China. A Commission report presented to Parliament in June warned that European businesses and authorities 'will continue to rely on US AI providers to the detriment of European service providers,' exposing data to foreign access and carrying risks to operational autonomy.

A planned Senate Judiciary Committee vote to advance Todd Blanche's nomination for attorney general appeared in doubt Wednesday as Republican Senator John Cornyn demanded written assurances about President Trump's IRS settlement. Cornyn, a crucial swing vote, canceled a scheduled meeting with Blanche and said the Justice Department has not adequately addressed his concerns in writing about a settlement that afforded Trump and his family protection from tax audits. Another Republican on the committee, Thom Tillis of North Carolina, has backed Cornyn's position, and just one Republican holdout could derail the nomination.

At the center of the dispute is the settlement of Trump's $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS, which included dropping tax claims against the president and a now-abandoned plan to create a $1.776 billion 'Anti-Weaponization Fund' to compensate people who believe they were wronged by the Justice Department. The Justice Department said in June it was no longer moving forward with the fund amid bipartisan outrage, but the audit immunity agreement remains in place. Cornyn and Tillis have been pressing for further confirmation that the fund is truly dead, especially after Trump expressed continued support for the idea.

Cornyn told reporters the Justice Department 'knows what they need to do but they simply refuse to do it,' adding that officials have not provided adequate written clarification on the scope of the tax immunity deal. A person familiar with the matter said the Justice Department provided Cornyn's office with a written proposal seeking to address his concerns, though details were not disclosed. The Thursday committee vote could be delayed if Blanche doesn't secure Cornyn's support, complicating the acting attorney general's path to permanent confirmation.

A federal appeals panel on Tuesday refused to block President Trump's executive order seeking to restrict mail voting, though the decision noted that implementing such sweeping changes before November's midterm elections 'may not prove feasible.' The three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia upheld a lower court ruling that said Democrats and voting rights groups challenging the order must wait until the Trump administration issues formal regulations before seeking an injunction. The administration began releasing those directives days after the May ruling.

The unsigned decision from the panel—which included two judges appointed by former President Barack Obama and one by Trump—acknowledged the constitutional concerns about the order. It stated that the action 'would involve the President, whom the Constitution vests with no express authority over the conduct of elections, undertaking a substantial and unfunded overhaul of election procedures' on the threshold of the November election. The order seeks to create a national voter list to guide the Postal Service in deciding who receives mail ballots.

In a separate case, a federal judge in Massachusetts blocked the executive order from taking effect for this year's elections, a ruling upheld Saturday by a Boston-based appeals court. The Trump administration appealed that decision to the US Supreme Court on Monday. Meanwhile, election officials in Kansas and Michigan are urging voters who want to cast ballots early to avoid the mail and drop them off in person, citing concerns about Postal Service delivery times after tens of thousands of ballots in California and hundreds in Wisconsin arrived too late to be counted in earlier 2026 elections.