Top U.S. & World Headlines — April 7, 2026

AMY GOODMAN, CNN INTERNATIONAL NEWS ANCHOR, THE WALL STREET JOURNALIST, REPORTS, AND THE

WALL STREET NEWS ANCHOR, WELCOME TO DEMOCRACY NOW!, DEMOCRACYNOW.ORG, THE WAR AND PEACE REPORT, I'M AMY GOODMAN. President Trump's renewed his threats to civilians, saying, quote, "'Very little is off limits.'" Trump also claimed Iran, a country of more than 90 million people, could be, quote, "'taken out' in one night."

Where every bridge in Iran will be decimated by 12 o'clock tomorrow night, where every power plant in Iran will be out of business, burning, exploding and never to be used again—I mean, complete demolition—by 12 o'clock. And it'll happen over a period of four hours, if we wanted to.

Republican lawmakers defended the president's threats, while Democrats condemned them as unhinged. Arizona Congresswoman Yasmin Ansari, who is Iranian-American, called on Vice President J.D. Vance and Trump's Cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office. She also announced she'll introduce articles of impeachment against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, citing his, quote, "'reckless endangerment' of U.S. service members and repeated war crimes.'"

In Iran, state media reports U.S.-Israeli attacks targeted at least a dozen cities on Monday, killing at least 34 people, including six children. Among the targets was the Sharif University of Technology in Tehran, which was badly damaged by airstrikes. The university has been called the MIT of the Middle East. It's among at least 30 universities struck by the U.S. and Israel, according to Iran's

Ministry of Science and Technology. Meanwhile, Iran missiles and drones continue to target U.S. military bases and other infrastructure in the Gulf countries. In Kuwait, CBS News reports 15 U.S. service members were injured in an Iranian drone attack on the Ali al-Salem airbase. In Saudi Arabia, officials temporarily closed the King Fahd Causeway, the only bridge to

the island nation of Bahrain. It's one of eight major bridges Iran's threatened to blow up if the U.S.-Israeli coalition escalates its attacks. Bahrain is home to the headquarters of the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet, but the Pentagon has largely evacuated its naval base thereafter. It came under persistent fire from Iran.

On Monday, Iranian officials rejected a U.S. proposal for a 45-day ceasefire, saying it will only negotiate a permanent end to the war with guarantees it won't be attacked again. United Nations says the number of people displaced in Lebanon has grown to over 1.1 million, as Israeli forces continue to invade Lebanon's south while bombing Beirut and other sites across the country.

Hezbollah responded with waves of rocket attacks on northern Israel. Lebanon's health ministry reports one Israeli airstrike on Monday targeted a civilian car in southern Lebanon, killing four civilians, while another strike on the town of Haris killed two civilians. This follows a bloody Easter Sunday that saw Israel kill more than three dozen people, among them the Lebanese politician

Pierre Mouad. His wife and another woman killed in an Israeli attack on an apartment building east of Beirut. Mouad was an official in the Lebanese forces, a longtime adversary of Hezbollah. In the Gaza Strip, Israeli strikes killed at least 10 people and wounded several others Monday at a school housing displaced Palestinians in the Maghazi refugee camp. In a separate attack, an Israeli strike on Gaza City killed a Palestinian man on a bicycle

and wounded a child who just collected food from a soup kitchen.

This is an eyewitness to the drone strike. A youth on a bicycle, a young man in his 20s. He was on the bike, and two drones fell. God protected the people that were getting food. Innocent people. They are all innocent. The man on the bike is a civilian, a civilian youth.

We were surprised. Two drones tore him apart.

Meanwhile, the World Health Organization said Monday it's suspending evacuations from Gaza after a WHO contract worker was killed. The Palestinian Health Ministry condemned the attack, saying Israel continues to directly target health and humanitarian workers. The ministry reports 1,700 health care workers have been killed in Gaza since October 2023. The head of the International Monetary Fund's warning the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran will

lead to higher inflation while slowing the global economy, even if the conflict ends swiftly. IMF Director Kristalina Georgieva said Monday the war has already led to the worst ever disruption of global energy supplies and that poor, vulnerable nations with no energy reserves will be hit the hardest.

LINA GEORGIEVA, Author, The War on Energy, The New York Times, New York Times, New York

Times, New York Times, New York Times, New York Times, New York Times, New York Times, New York Times, New York Times, New York Times, New York Times, New York Times, New York Times, small upgrade of our growth projections. Instead, all roads now lead to higher prices and slower growth.

Meanwhile, dropsite news reports the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran has prompted Gulf nation sovereign wealth funds to undertake a sweeping review of U.S. investments. Those include funding for U.S. artificial intelligence data centers and the merger of U.S. media giants Paramount and Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery. More than a fifth of pledges for the blockbuster $111 billion deal come from wealth funds connected to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

Dropsite News reports the deal remains likely to go through, but that could change if the war drags on for weeks or months and if Gulf oil and gas assets come under even greater attack. In Turkey, one attacker was killed and two others are wounded in a gunfight with police near a building housing the Israeli consulate in Istanbul. Turkey's interior minister said the three attackers had links to an organization that,

quote, "'exploits religion,' unquote. There had been no Israeli diplomatic staff at the consulate for two-and-a-half years since October 2023." The Trump administration's terminated civil rights settlements that previous administrations reached with five school districts and a college to protect transgender students, a move unprecedented in U.S. history.

The Delaware Valley School District, which reached its original settlement with the Obama administration in 2015, received notice of the termination in February, and has since voted to roll back its anti-discrimination protections for transgender students. Shuali Patel, senior director of education justice at the National Women's Law Center, said, quote, "'There's absolutely no basis for what the Department of Education is doing, and it's unimaginably cruel," unquote. Meanwhile, in Iowa, the state can now restrict teachers from discussing LGBTQ+, plus topics

with students in kindergarten through sixth grade, and can ban certain books in school libraries and classrooms, after the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals vacated a lower court's temporary block on a 2023 state law. A pair of Democratic lawmakers is calling President Trump to immediately end his oil blockade of Cuba. Democratic Congressmembers Pramila Jayapal of Washington and Jonathan Jackson of Illinois concluded a five-day congressional delegation to Cuba, during which they met with Cuban

President Miguel Diaz-Canel, Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez and members of the Cuban Parliament. Congressmembers Jayapal and Jackson said they witnessed premature babies and incubators at risk because their ventilators could not function without electricity, and reported that food production on the island has dropped to just 10 percent of the population's needs. In January, President Trump signed an executive order threatening tariffs on any country supplying

oil to Cuba, intensifying the six-decade-old U.S. embargo. But Trump made an exception for a Russian ship that reached the island last week, carrying over 700,000 barrels of crude oil. It was the first petroleum shipment in three months to dock in Cuba.

This is Congressmember Jayapal. The moment is here for us to have a real negotiation between our two countries and to reverse failed U.S. policy of decades, a Cold War-era remnant that no longer serves the American people or the Cuban people.

Vice President J.D. Vance is in Budapest today for meetings with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán days before Hungary's April 12th parliamentary elections. It's the toughest electoral test Orbán and his far-right, ultranationalist movement have faced in years. Orbán's party is trailing in polls behind the center-right opposition party. Secretary of State Marco Rubio also traveled to Budapest in February, where he told Orban,

quote, "'President Trump's deeply committed to your success, because your success is our success,' unquote. Over the weekend, Orban convened an emergency National Defense Council meeting after Serbian authorities said two backpacks containing U.S.-made plastic explosives were discovered near the TurkStream pipeline in northern Serbia, which transports Russian gas to Hungary. Opposition leaders accused Orbán of staging a false flag operation with Serbian and Russian assistance aimed at influencing the outcome of next week's election.

And the U.S. Supreme Court has cleared the way for the Justice Department to dismiss the criminal case against Steve Bannon, President Trump's former chief White House strategist. The justices set aside a lower court decision that held Bannon's conviction on two counts of contempt of Congress, paving the way for the district court to dismiss the case. Bannon was convicted after he refused to comply with a subpoena from the House Select Committee investigating the January 6th attack on the Capitol, which required him to provide documents

and testimony. He served four months in prison. And those are some of the headlines. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman in New York, joined by Democracy Now!'s Juan González in Chicago.

Hi, Juan.

Hi, Amy.

And welcome to all of our listeners and viewers across the country and around the world.

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