Por el corresponsal jefe de Asuntos Globales de CNN, Matthew Chance

Flanqueada por picos nevados y relucientes, la larga carretera hacia Teherán atraviesa pintorescos valles de álamos de Tabriz y campos con brotes verdes de trigo.

Seguimos el estrecho río Qotur, marrón y crecido por el deshielo primaveral, mientras pasa junto a pastores que cuidan sus rebaños en las laderas.

A lo lejos, un imponente puente ferroviario de vigas de acero pintadas de blanco se extiende sobre el paisaje, aparentemente intacto por los ataques estadounidenses e israelíes que golpearon partes de Irán a comienzos de este año.

Pero en medio de negociaciones de paz estancadas y crecientes tensiones por el cierre continuado del estratégico estrecho de Ormuz, los temores de que la guerra pueda reanudarse impulsan la incertidumbre en el país. Durante el recorrido de CNN por Irán, ciudadanos comunes —a quienes Trump instó en su momento a “recuperar su país”— describieron la vida bajo bombardeos y bloqueos.

“No vayan allí, es demasiado peligroso ahora”, aconsejó una joven iraní que viajaba desde Estados Unidos a Teherán al enterarse de nuestro viaje por el noroeste del país.

“Tengo familia allí, por eso estoy tomando el riesgo”, explicó, pidiendo no ser identificada.

En la carretera, entre kioscos que venden pistachos y té, carteles negros lloran la muerte del ayatolá Ali Jamenei, líder supremo de Irán, muerto en un ataque aéreo en febrero, el primer día de la guerra.

“Su sombra ha pasado sobre nuestras cabezas”, dice un cartel en persa, citando un lamento popular.

Su hijo y sucesor, Mojtaba Jamenei, es ahora el “estandarte” de la nación, declara otro póster, aunque el joven, que según informes resultó herido en el mismo ataque, no ha sido visto ni escuchado en público desde que asumió el poder, reflejo de la incertidumbre en el país.

“Trump podría decidir volver a bombardear hoy”, comentó un hombre iraní.

“Tal vez no mientras esté en China, pero quién sabe. A Trump le gusta estar en el centro de atención”, agregó.

Mientras el presidente de EE.UU. Donald Trump realiza su visita de Estado a China, tanto Estados Unidos como Irán parecen buscar en Beijing una posible salida a su estancamiento. Se espera que Trump pida a China que presione a Irán hacia un compromiso, mientras el embajador iraní en China ha sugerido que el país comunista podría actuar como mediador entre Washington y Teherán.

Estados Unidos y China comparten interés en desbloquear el flujo de petróleo y gas por el golfo Pérsico. Además, podría ser un movimiento diplomático astuto para China mostrar que ayuda a solucionar problemas que afectaron a la economía global, contrastando su comportamiento con el de Washington.

Pero son los iraníes —una fuerza política vibrante incluso bajo un régimen estricto— quienes probablemente decidirán el futuro del país. Durante el largo trayecto a la capital se evidenciaron las diversas fuerzas en juego.

Se vieron multitudes de excursionistas, jóvenes y mayores, cargando a mano garrafas de aceite desde la frontera con Turquía. Un jubilado explicó que este producto esencial cuesta ahora seis veces más en Irán que en Turquía, en medio de una crisis de costo de vida que no muestra señales de ceder.

Aunque posiblemente agravados por el reciente bloqueo naval estadounidense, los problemas de costo de vida sustentaron protestas antigubernamentales a nivel nacional a finales del año pasado, que causaron una feroz represión. Miles murieron en la respuesta del Estado, según han admitido autoridades iraníes.

En un restaurante en ruta a Teherán, en un antiguo caravansar, se si

By Paula Reid, Alayna Treene, Casey Gannon, CNN

(CNN) — The Justice Department is discussing whether to settle President Donald Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service in the coming days, according to two sources familiar.

Among the options being discussed internally is whether a settlement would include a provision on the IRS dropping audits of the president and members of his family, as well as audits of the family’s businesses, the people said.

One of the people familiar said that the possibility is one of many options under consideration, and that no firm decisions have been made. It remains unclear if a monetary settlement is being considered. If it is, it could result in the Trump Justice Department making a payment to the president himself — raising unprecedented ethical questions.

“The IRS wrongly allowed a rogue, politically-motivated employee to leak private and confidential information about President Trump, his family, and the Trump Organization to the New York Times, ProPublica and other left-wing news outlets, which was then illegally released to millions of people,” a spokesman for Trump’s legal team told CNN in a statement. “President Trump continues to hold those who wrong America and Americans accountable.”

CNN reached out the IRS, which referred to the Justice Department for comment. The Justice Department declined to comment. The New York Times was first to report the potential term being floated in the settlement talks.

Trump sued the US Internal Revenue Service and Treasury Department in January for at least $10 billion, accusing the agency of an unauthorized leak of his tax returns during his first administration.

The suit was filed in federal court in Florida. Trump, who filed the suit alongside his sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, is suing personally, not in his official capacity as president.

The lawsuit alleged that the government failed to protect Trump and the Trump Organization’s confidential tax information, which was leaked to the press by Charles Littlejohn, a former IRS contractor.

Littlejohn, who worked as a government contractor at Booz Allen Hamilton, illegally obtained and disclosed Trump’s tax returns to publications like the New York Times and ProPublica, the suit alleged. He has since been sentenced to five years in prison.

The outside settlement talks come as the lawsuit has had a skeptical reception in court.

A federal judge last month questioned the constitutionality of Trump’s lawsuit, ordering a hearing to determine whether the president can sue federal agencies that he oversees.

Florida District Judge Kathleen M. Williams said it is unclear whether Trump and the agencies are “sufficiently adverse to each other” and ordered both sides to provide more information on the relationship.

“Although President Trump avers that he is bringing this lawsuit in his personal capacity, he is the sitting president and his named adversaries are entities whose decisions are subject to his direction,” Williams, an Obama appointee, said at the time.

A series of settlements

The Justice Department’s settlement talks come as it has already settled other lawsuits brought by Trump allies.

In April, the Justice Department settled a lawsuit brought by former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, who sued the DOJ and FBI over flawed government surveillance he faced due to his Russian contacts in 2016, Read more

By Sarah Ferris, CNN

(CNN) — A small bloc of GOP lawmakers defied their leadership — and President Donald Trump — by forcing the House to soon take up a major bill to deliver US military support to Ukraine while imposing steep sanctions on Russia.

The GOP-led House is now on track to vote in early June on Congress’ first major pro-Ukraine measure of Trump’s second term, in a rebuke of his handling of the conflict there.

With Trump’s foreign policy focus squarely on Iran in recent months, Russia’s brutal war in Ukraine has continued with little US involvement. Trump has made no tangible progress in his vow to quickly end the conflict upon taking office. And in one recent instance, the president aggravated some members of his party by loosening restrictions on Russian oil to lessen the global price impact of the US war in Iran.

The vote on new Russian sanctions, expected shortly after the House’s Memorial Day recess, is likely to be a major headache for Speaker Mike Johnson and his leadership team in an already difficult political environment where vulnerable lawmakers are eager for the party to address prices at home, rather than weigh in on another global conflict.

It’s not yet clear, however, if GOP leaders will whip against the bill nor whether the White House will attempt to quash the effort, which comes as party leaders are separately attempting to pass a major immigration funding package with little room for error on the floor.

Multiple GOP and Democratic sources predicted the Ukraine bill would pass in the House, but added its fate is uncertain in the Senate. (Several Republicans there have been vocal Ukraine supporters in the past, but it’s not clear if there are enough senators to reach the critical 60-vote threshold.) If Congress does pass the measure, it would stand as lawmakers’ first big move on the Russia-Ukraine war since a contentious supplemental funding bill dating to Joe Biden’s presidency.

But even if the bill fails, GOP supporters say it would send a powerful message to Trump and their party leaders.

California Rep. Kevin Kiley, an independent who frequently votes with the GOP, was the final signature needed on a discharge petition — a procedural tool used to circumvent leadership – to force the vote. He signed on after an intense lobbying effort by his colleagues.

“I’ve been looking at it for quite a while now. I’ve had lots of conversations with folks here, folks in my district and I think the time is right now, given the recent gains you’ve seen by Ukraine, the weakening of Russia’s position – but then also the fact that the ceasefire fell apart and we have renewed hostilities,” Kiley said Wednesday afternoon.

“For diplomacy to work here, we need additional leverage. Congress has the ability to provide that leverage, and this is the way,” he continued.

Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, a GOP centrist and co-chair of the Congressional Ukraine Caucus, spent months working with Rep. Greg Meeks, a Democrat from New York, to land the necessary 218 signatures to fast-track the bill to the floor without Johnson’s approval.

“A message to our Ukrainian friends: Help is on the way,” Fitzpatrick told CNN on Wednesday, just after Kiley formally signed on.

The measure includes strict sanctions on Russian leaders and institutions, including top banks, oil and mining companies. It also includes 500% tariffs on all Russian goods imported to the US and a ban on imported Russian crude oil.

There’s also new military support for Ukraine, including authorizing $8 billion for arms sales, and an extension of the Biden-era military lend-lease program.

Top lawmakers have agreed to send

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By Harmeet Kaur, CNN

(CNN) — Virginia’s Supreme Court dealt a blow to Democrats last week in the tit-for-tat redistricting war playing out ahead of the midterms.

In a 4-3 ruling, justices nullified a new congressional map that could have given the Democrats four additional seats in the House of Representatives. Their argument centered on whether state lawmakers had followed proper procedure when they put a constitutional amendment on the ballot to allow for the redistricting. The procedural question hinged on a linguistic technicality: What constitutes an “election”?

Traditionally — and in Virginia’s case, under the requirements of the state constitution — states have redrawn their congressional districts every 10 years, when a new census comes out and the 435 members of the House are reapportioned according to the states’ new shares of the population. But President Donald Trump, facing dismal polls and the risk of losing his party’s already tenuous House majority, has urged Republican-controlled states to launch an aggressive mid-decade round of redistricting, in the hopes of gerrymandering Democratic seats off the map.

Democratic-controlled states like California and Virginia have set out to draw gerrymanders of their own, aiming to wipe out Republican seats. Virginia voters, in a referendum last month, agreed to amend the state constitution to “temporarily adopt new congressional districts to restore fairness in the upcoming elections,” then to revert to the old rules after 2030.

That vote was meant to be the final part of the multistep process for amending the Virginia constitution. Before an amendment can go to a public referendum, it needs to be approved by the state legislature on two separate occasions: once before “the next general election,” and again after that election, under the newly chosen legislature.

The previous Virginia legislature passed the amendment on October 31, 2025. Election Day followed on November 4. The newly elected legislature then re-passed the amendment on January 16, 2026, to send it to the voters on April 21.

But four Virginia Supreme Court judges, three of them confirmed under Republican-controlled legislatures, ruled that the April voting was invalid. Although two successive legislatures had approved the amendment, the court argued that the first vote, back in October, had come too late — rather than voting before the election, as the constitutional timetable required, the legislature had voted after the 2025 general election was already happening.

In doing so, the court defined the “election” as having come into existence when early voting commenced on September 19, and not as merely taking place on Election Day. By the time Virginia’s General Assembly approved the amendment on October 31, the court argued, more than 1.3 million Virginians had already cast their ballots and therefore could not use their votes to express their approval or disapproval of the proposal.

“The definition of ‘election’ has always broadly denoted the ‘act of choosing,’” Justice D. Arthur Kelsey wrote in the majority opinion.

Citing early dictionaries from lexicographers Samuel Johnson and Noah Webster, as well as legal dictionaries such as Black’s Law Dictionary, Kelsey devoted several pages of the opinion to parsing the meaning of an “election.” He argued that average citizens who cast their ballots early would likely understand themselves to be voting in the election. “This lexical sense of the noun ‘election’ must be distinguished from the noun