Welcome to the beat, everyone. I'm Ari Melbert. We're reporting on several major developments. On the home front inside the United States tonight, this news breaking late in the day. Democratic Congressman Eric Swalwell announces he's not only discontinued his campaign, but is resigning from Congress following several credible allegations of sexual assault. We have more on that this hour.

We're also following what can only be described as a feud between President Trump and the

Pope, backlash for a bizarre and some say blasphemous post, where Donald Trump compared

himself to Jesus, a president who's often described as not backing down,

has already deleted the odd post. We're going to get into that. And a major defeat for a strong

man who has pushed the limits of autocracy abroad. We have the report on that and why it is also

a blow to Putin and Trump. Andrew Weissman is here

as well as we look at safeguarding legal protections going into the midterms where the Republicans

are increasingly acting like they're bracing for a route. So we're really following a lot of

major stories, one of those nights where you could start any number of places, but with Donald Trump continuing and in some ways escalating aspects of the war with Iran, we begin there. The United States has begun a Trump-led blockade of the Iranian ports. This is around the Strait of Ramos. This comes after the peace talks did not deliver peace or a breakthrough. Vice President Vance, of course, had led those talks over the weekend for the United States side. Those talks were seen by Donald Trump as a potential off-ramp when he didn't get what he wanted after his threats, if you remember all that last week, and there was a ceasefire to lead to the talks. Well, now we have more than 15

U.S. warships in place. They are operating to prevent ships from leaving or entering. We are

kind of doing a version of what Iran is doing, a point that has been observed by many experts

wondering where exactly this all leads. Indeed, you don't have to have

a satirical website like The Onion or wait for the late night comics to get a hold of this tonight

because mainstream outlets and foreign policy experts are already calling it something that

might have occurred to you as someone who follows the news or this war. They're calling it Trump's

blockade of a blockade because the issue that had spiked prices and caused so much pain for the U.S.

putting pressure on Trump's policy was that Iran was already blockading most ships from moving

through this same body of water, this strait. The U.S. now doing it, remember, it's not exactly

our backyard. And given the history and us choosing to bomb Iran, this does play out as an escalation

because the U.S. is stepping up to block everything there. Trump wants other countries to join in.

But the president who started this war without allies apparently will be

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