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Two Israeli Embassy staffers were killed in a shooting outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C. The massive bill for Donald Trump’s agenda faces a vote in the full House. And a gay rights activist is honored on what would have been his 100th birthday.

Here’s what to know today.

2 Israeli Embassy staff members fatally shot in Washington, D.C.

Two staff members of Israel’s Embassy in Washington, D.C. were fatally shot last night outside the district’s Capital Jewish Museum, officials said.

Metropolitan Police Chief Pamela Smith said at a press conference that the suspect, identified as Elias Rodriguez, of Chicago, shouted “Free, free Palestine” while in police custody and “implied” that he committed the shooting. He also told authorities where he discarded the weapon, Smith said.

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The man had been pacing back and forth outside the museum, which was hosting an event, when he approached a group of four people and opened fire using a handgun around 9 p.m., Smith said. He then entered the building and was detained by security.

The victims were exiting the museum when they were gunned down. A spokesperson for the Israeli Embassy in Washington described the victims as two embassy staff members. Yechiel Leiter, Israel’s ambassador to the U.S., said they were a couple on a night out and soon to be engaged. “The young man purchased a ring this week with the intention of proposing to his girlfriend next week in Jerusalem.”

President Donald Trump condemned the violence on social media, while Israeli President Isaac Herzog called the attack “a despicable act of hatred, of antisemitism.”

Read the full story here, and follow our live blog for updates.

House committee advances Trump’s agenda bill

The Republican-led House Rules Committee advanced a sweeping package for President Donald Trump’s agenda, teeing it up for a vote in the full chamber. The 8-4 committee vote along party lines capped a marathon meeting that started at 1 a.m. ET Wednesday and ended around 10:40 p.m.

On Wednesday evening, GOP lawmakers released a 42-page amendment to the multi-trillion-dollar legislation, which addressed major sticking points, including:

✔️ Medicaid changes: Work requirements for able-bodied adults, from age 18 to 64, were moved up to no later than the end of 2026, up from the beginning of 2029. Hard-liners in the conservative House Freedom Caucus pushed for the change so federal savings take effect sooner. Under the new language, states would be allowed to move the date to earlier if they choose to do so, meaning some Americans could potentially lose benefits before the 2028 election and possibly before midterms.

✔️ SALT cap: The new bill boosts the amount federal taxpayers can deduct in state and local taxes to $40,000 for individuals making less than $500,000 a year. The original bill had hiked the cap to $30,000, drawing opposition from Republicans who represent districts in high-tax blue states.

The revised bill also includes changes to clean energy tax breaks from former President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act and a trivial change to so-called “MAGA Accounts.” Read the full story here.

More politics news:

• What started as a friendly first meeting between Trump and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa at the Oval Office quickly devolved over Trump’s baseless claims of genocide against white people.

• A federal judge said the Trump administration “unquestionably” violated a previous court order when a deportation flight left Texas reportedly intended for South Sudan.

• The Pentagon has officially accepted a luxury megajet from Qatar to use as the new Air Force One for Trump. Now, the administration must get it ready for him as quickly as possible despite several issues.

• More than 200 crypto buyers who spent a collective $394 million on the $TRUMP token are having dinner with the president tonight. The price of admission: $55,000 to $37.7 million.

• Congress is closer to making Trump’s pledge to cut taxes on tips and overtime pay a reality. Here’s what it could look like in practice.

• Senate Republicans pushed forward with a vote to undo an electric vehicle mandate in California. But a bigger consequence at play, the 60-vote filibuster rule, could alter how the Senate operates.

Rapper Kid Cudi to testify in Diddy’s trial

Grammy award-winning rapper Kid Cudi is expected to delve into details about his romantic relationship with Casandra “Cassie” Ventura from more than a decade ago when he takes the stand in Sean “Diddy” Combs’ federal trial. His testimony, which may begin as soon as today, could prove to be pivotal for prosecutors as they try to bolster their charges that Combs engaged in racketeering and sex trafficking.

Cudi, whose real name is Scott Mescudi, will likely face questioning about allegations made in Ventura’s 2023 civil lawsuit that Combs blew up Mescudi’s car. Ventura said in testimony last week that after Combs found out about her and Mescudi’s relationship, Combs told her that “Scott’s car would be blown up” when she was out of the country. In her lawsuit, Ventura said she was terrified when Mescudi’s car “exploded in his driveway,” and “she began to fully comprehend what Mr. Combs was both willing and able to do to those he believed had slighted him.” Read the full story here.

Yesterday, a federal agent took to the stand to walk jurors through photos of items seized during a search of Combs’ Miami home last year. Here are more highlights from yesterday’s testimony.

Sign up for the “Diddy on Trial newsletter” to receive the latest news, including insights and analysis from our team inside the courtroom.

Read All About It

• Jim Irsay, the Indianapolis Colts’ owner for almost three decades, died in his sleep at the age of 65.

• Two people who allegedly assisted some of the inmates who escaped Orleans Parish jail last week have been arrested.

• Three men were sentenced to decades in prison for facilitating a drug-induced robbery scheme at New York City gay bars that ultimately killed two men.

• Columbia University’s acting president was booed again during a commencement ceremony when she acknowledged the absence of graduate student and pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil.

• Billions of “bourbon brood” cicadas are set to emerge for a famously noisy mating ritual. The emergence will mostly be centered in Kentucky and Tennessee (hence the nickname) but also appear in Illinois, North Carolina, Virginia and several other states.

Staff Pick: Honoring a trailblazing gay rights activist

I love when a story surprises me by filling in a critical gap in my timeline of history. In my mind, the gay rights movement burst into the American public consciousness after the 1969 Stonewall Riots in Greenwich Village. Wrong I was. And thanks to Evan Brechtel’s story about a ceremony honoring Frank Kameny, I now know the public fight for LGBTQ equality goes back over a full decade earlier and involves other brave and influential characters.

It was Kameny, a Harvard-educated astrophysicist who was fired from the Army for his sexuality in 1957, who first brought the fight for gay rights to the Supreme Court despite having no legal experience. Eventually, he took the fight public in the streets of major cities. Kameny also fought in a way that was revolutionary at the time: He didn’t deny he was gay. Instead, he challenged long-held social beliefs that there was something inherently wrong with same-sex attraction.

I encourage you to take a few minutes to get to know Frank Kameny, who was honored yesterday for his contributions to civil rights history on what would have been his 100th birthday. — Richie Duchon, deputy platforms editor

NBCU Academy: Soccer is improving teens’ grades in this small city

Within the smallest state is the one-square-mile city of Central Falls, Rhode Island. The working-class, majority-Latino community is home to a unique soccer program called Project Goal, which has helped improve students’ school attendance, behavior and grades.

Founded by friends and former soccer players Javier Centeno and Darius Shirzadi, Project Goal pairs 90 minutes of free tutoring with 90 minutes of soccer. “It just gives the students and the kids the opportunity for them to come here to play soccer, but also to have a better education, a better lifestyle,” said Centeno.

Watch how Project Goal is helping students succeed on and off the field.

NBCU Academy is a free, award-winning education program for developing new skills and advancing careers in journalism, media and tech.

NBC Select: Online Shopping, Simplified

75,000 cases of eye care products were voluntarily recalled after an FDA audit at BRS Analytical Service. Here’s a full list of the recalled eye lubricants, which help relieve dry and irritated eyes, and some options you can use instead. Plus, Dermstore’s summer sale is happening now, just in time for Memorial Day weekend, with deals on products like Supergoop sunscreen, CosRX moisturizer and more.

Sign up to The Selection newsletter for hands-on product reviews, expert shopping tips and a look at the best deals and sales each week.

Thanks for reading today’s Morning Rundown. Today’s newsletter was curated for you by Elizabeth Robinson. If you’re a fan, please send a link to your family and friends. They can sign up here.

SYDNEY — Flash flooding on Australia’s southeast coast has killed two people and cut off towns, isolating tens of thousands of residents, as officials warned Thursday that more downpours were expected over the next 24 hours.

Major flooding hit several rural towns in the Hunter and Mid North Coast regions of New South Wales, Australia‘s most populous state, with most of the Mid North Coast region facing further heavy rainfall through Thursday.

Police said the body of a 63-year-old man was found in a flooded home near Taree, more than 186 miles north of Sydney, while another body believed to be that of a missing man in his 30s had been discovered in floodwaters on the Mid North Coast.

“We’re bracing for more bad news in the next 24 hours. This natural disaster has been terrible for this community,” New South Wales Premier Chris Minns said during a media briefing.

“There’s 140 flood warnings, 50,000 people are in the range where they have been asked to prepare to evacuate and could be isolated, and there’s been 9,500 properties in the direct vicinity. So, we’re far from out of the woods here.”

Two men and one woman have been reported missing in separate incidents, authorities said earlier.

More than 100 schools were closed on Thursday, while thousands of properties remained without power.

Cundletown in the Mid North Coast has been entirely cut off by floods, said Nicole Sammut, a nurse caring for 67 elderly residents at an aged care home, which is also being used as a shelter by emergency teams.

“I came to work on Tuesday and haven’t left,” Sammut told Reuters.

“We are up on a hill but behind us is all water. We are isolated. I’ve never seen the water this high.”

The Manning River in nearby Taree had exceeded a 100-year-old flood record, emergency authorities said.

Sherinah Peck was evacuated at 2 a.m. on Wednesday (12 p.m. Tuesday ET) from her farmhouse on the river, but her belongings were swept away, with some furniture later washing up on the coast.

As she searched Old Bar beach on Thursday, strewn with debris and dead and lost livestock, for a treasured bicycle that belonged to her late mother, Peck was knocked over by a cow and injured, she said.

“The cow was distressed — a wave came. I had to scramble up the sand,” she told Reuters.

A slow-moving coastal trough has dumped about four months of rain over the past two days, cutting off entire towns and stranding residents on roofs and the second floors of their homes, as rescuers struggle to access the area by boat or air.

Minns apologized to people who had to wait for several hours for rescue crews, but assured that efforts had been ramped up with 2,500 emergency services personnel being deployed.

Twenty-two people had been rescued by helicopter, including 18 winched from flooded homes and roads, and four rescued from a bridge, NSW Police said. The helicopters have been directing more boat rescues.

Australia‘s Bureau of Meteorology forecast that some areas could receive up to 8 inches of rain through Friday, triggering life-threatening flash flooding, before the weather system is expected to weaken and track south toward Sydney.

SCARBOROUGH, Maine — An unusual May nor’easter is set to wallop New England on Thursday, providing a soaking before the Memorial Day holiday weekend with weather more commonly associated with fall and winter.

Nor’easters usually arrive in the end of fall and winter and bring high winds, rough seas and precipitation in the form of rain or snow. This week’s nor’easter could bring wind gusts over 40 mph and up to 2 inches of rain in some areas. Snow is even possible at high elevations.

The storm has New Englanders preparing for a messy couple of days during a time of year usually reserved for sunshine and cookouts.

What is a nor’easter?

A nor’easter is an East Coast storm that is so named because winds over the coastal area are typically from the northeast, according to the National Weather Service. The storms can happen at any time of the year, but they are at their most frequent and strongest between September and April, according to the service.

The storms have caused billions of dollars in damage in the past. They usually reach the height of their strength in New England and eastern Canada. The storms often disrupt traffic and power grids and can cause severe damage to homes and businesses.

“We have a stronger jet stream, which is helping intensify a low pressure system that just happens to be coming up the coast. And so that’s how it got the nor’easter name,” said Kyle Pederson, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Boston.

Who will get rain and snow

The heaviest rain is likely to fall in Rhode Island and southern and eastern Massachusetts, Pederson said. Localized nuisance flooding and difficult driving conditions are possible Thursday, and catastrophic flooding is not expected.

The storm is then expected to pass, leaving light rain and patchy drizzle, on Friday.

“It’s just really a nice dose of rain for the region — not expecting much for flooding,” Pederson said.

Snow is expected to be confined to mountainous areas, but accumulations there are possible.

Why nor’easters are rare in May

Nor’easters are usually winter weather events, and it is unusual to see them in May. They typically form when there are large temperature differences from west to east during winter when there is cold air over land and the oceans are relatively warm.

But right now there is a traffic jam in the atmosphere because of an area of high pressure in the Canadian Arctic that is allowing unusually cold air to funnel down over the Northeast. The low pressure system off the East Coast is being fueled by a jet stream that is unusually south at the moment.

“It really is a kind of a winter-type setup that you rarely see this late,” said Judah Cohen, seasonal forecast director at the private firm Atmospheric and Environmental Research.

If this type of pattern in the atmosphere happened two months earlier, he said, “we’d be talking about a crippling snowstorm in the Northeastern U.S., not just a wet start to Memorial Day weekend.”

NEW ORLEANS — The Archdiocese of New Orleans agreed to pay nearly $180 million to victims of clergy sexual abuse under a settlement announced Wednesday, the latest in a string of settlements by the Catholic Church.

The archdiocese, its parishes and several insurers will pay $179.2 million into a trust to benefit survivors, according to a statement by the committee that negotiated the agreement. The money will be distributed after the church emerges from bankruptcy, it said.

But many of the survivors were not on board, their lawyers said.

“This proposed settlement was made in a secret backroom deal that the Archdiocese, the creditors committees and the mediators knew the overwhelming majority of victim-survivors would never agree to and will undoubtedly vote down,” attorneys Soren Gisleson, Johnny Denenea and Richard Trahant said in a statement to The Associated Press. “It makes no sense and is a continuation of the lifetime of abuse the Archdiocese has inflicted on these folks.”

The agreement, which would settle a lawsuit filed in 2020, requires approval from the survivors as well as the bankruptcy court and other Archdiocese creditors.

Aaron Hebert, who says he was abused by a priest in the 1960s as an eighth grader, called the deal “an insult and a slap to the face.”

“The Archdiocese of New Orleans and Archbishop (Gregory) Aymond are throwing this offer out to prevent victims and survivors from taking their claims to state court,” Hebert said.

The committee’s statement said the deal also includes what it called “unprecedented” provisions and procedures to safeguard against future abuse and provide services to survivors, including a survivors’ bill of rights and changes to the Archdiocese’s process for handling abuse claims.

“I am grateful to God for all who have worked to reach this agreement and that we may look to the future towards a path to healing for survivors and for our local church,” Aymond said in a statement.

The suit involves more than 500 people who say they were abused by clergy. The case produced a trove of church records said to document years of abuse claims and a pattern of leaders transferring clergy without reporting their alleged crimes to law enforcement.

In 2018 the archdiocese released a list identifying more than 50 clergy members who were removed from the ministry over the years due to “credible accusations” of sexual abuse.

WASHINGTON — After a marathon hearing, the GOP-led House Rules Committee advanced a sweeping package for President Donald Trump’s agenda Wednesday night, teeing it up for a vote in the full chamber.

Members of the committee met starting at 1 a.m. ET Wednesday and adjourned around 10:40 p.m. ET before they voted for the legislation along party lines, 8-4.

The vote came shortly after Republicans released a set of revisions to their massive bill, a product of last-minute negotiations to placate various factions of the party, including conservative hard-liners and blue-state Republicans, that were threatening to sink the measure.

The 42-page amendment to the multitrillion-dollar legislation includes moving up the enforcement of work requirements for eligible Medicaid recipients by two years, to the end of 2026, phasing out clean energy tax credits earlier and expanding the federal deduction for state and local taxes to $40,000 for people earning less than $500,000 annually.

It’s unclear exactly when the House will take up the package for a vote. Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., navigating a narrow three-seat majority in the chamber, had said he hoped to hold the vote Wednesday night or Thursday morning.

Here are some of the biggest changes GOP leaders made to Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” Wednesday.

Medicaid changes

In a win for conservative hard-liners in the House Freedom Caucus, the agreement speeds up the timeline when work requirements would kick in for able-bodied adults ages 18 to 64 to be able to receive Medicaid benefits.

The original legislation, adopted by the House Energy and Commerce Committee, called for work requirements to start at the beginning of 2029. But anti-spending hawks, led by Freedom Caucus Chair Andy Harris, R-Md., pushed to have them begin “not later than Dec. 31, 2026,” so savings would take effect sooner.

The new language would also allow states to move the date to earlier if they chose to do so.

Shifting the start date sooner would mean millions of people could lose Medicaid benefits before the 2028 presidential election, and some could possibly lose them before the 2026 midterm election. That could be a political liability for Republicans up and down the ballot, though Trump and congressional GOP leaders say they are simply rooting out “fraud, waste and abuse.”

In another significant shift, states that declined the Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act would get higher payments as an incentive to encourage them not to expand the program.

Clean energy credits

The Freedom Caucus notched another victory in its eleventh-hour negotiations: more quickly phasing out clean energy tax breaks from former President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act.

The measure would cut off production and investment tax credits for any facility if the construction began 60 days after the bill was enacted, or after 2028.

The revised bill would also unwind credits for wind and solar leasing arrangements for properties.

“We worked with the White House to get some important revisions to expedite the phase out,” Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., told reporters. “Look, President Trump doesn’t want these, either, and so we worked with them to get really tight language to limit dramatically any new projects from starting.”

Boosting the SALT cap

Republicans who represent districts in high-tax blue states said their top priority in the package was raising the SALT cap, the amount federal taxpayers can deduct in state and local taxes.

The original legislation, passed out of the Ways and Means Committee, hiked the SALT cap to $30,000, up from the current $10,000 cap imposed in Trump’s 2017 tax cut law. But members of the SALT Caucus slammed that increase as insufficient.

The new bill would boost the SALT cap to $40,000 for people making less than $500,000 a year. Both the cap and the income level would increase by 1% annually for 10 years.

“This is the No. 1 federal issue for my constituents. If I do a bad deal, I would expect my constituents to throw me out. If I did a deal at $30,000, my own mother wouldn’t vote for me,” Rep. Nick LaLota, R-N.Y., said this week in the middle of the negotiations.

“Now is the time to make it right what we got wrong in 2017; now is the time to deliver on promises that we’ve made,” he added.

‘MAGA Accounts’ renamed to ‘Trump Accounts’

In a more trivial change to the bill, Republicans are renaming their tax-preferred savings accounts that parents could set up for children from “MAGA Accounts” to “Trump Accounts.”

The first line of the manager’s amendment reads, “Page 10, in the item relating to section 110115, strike ‘MAGA’ and insert ‘Trump’.”

Tyrese Haliburton tied the game with a long jumper that bounced high off the back of the rim and in as time expired in regulation, then the Indiana Pacers went on to finish off their stunning rally by beating the New York Knicks 138-135 on Wednesday night in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference finals.

The Knicks led by 14 points with under three minutes remaining in regulation, but Aaron Nesmith brought the Pacers back with a flurry of late 3-pointers.

Haliburton then hoped he had won it with another. With the Pacers down two and time running down, he started to lose control of his dribble, regained it and dribbled back out toward the 3-point line. He fired up his jumper and when it finally fell in, he raced toward the sideline and made a choke signal to the crowd, like Pacers Hall of Famer Reggie Miller did to Spike Lee while leading a Pacers comeback in a playoff game in 1994.

Replay confirmed that Haliburton’s toe was on the line and it was a 2-pointer that tied it at 125. Andrew Nembhard eventually made the go-ahead basket with 26 seconds remaining in OT.

Game 2 is Friday night.

Haliburton had 31 points and 11 assists. Nesmith finished with 30 points, going 8 for 9 from 3-point range.

It was a thrilling start to the ninth playoff matchup between these fierce rivals from the 1990s — but a deflating finish for the Knicks in their first Eastern Conference finals game since 2000.

Jalen Brunson scored 43 points and Karl-Anthony Towns had 35 points and 12 rebounds. But the Knicks couldn’t protect the big lead they built while Brunson was on the bench in foul trouble in the fourth quarter and had a collapse unlike any other in the postseason.

Teams leading by at least 14 points in the final 2:45 of the fourth quarter had been 994-0 since play-by-play began being kept in 1997-98.

The Pacers beat the Knicks in Game 7 of the East semifinals at Madison Square Garden last year, routing a team that had been decimated by injuries.

This was an entirely different way to win, with the Pacers looking all but out of the game after the Knicks’ 14-0 run with Brunson on the bench pushed New York’s two-point lead to 108-92.

Even after Nesmith started to get hot, the Knicks seemed safe when Brunson’s 3-pointer made it 119-105 with 2:51 to go. But Nesmith would later hit consecutive 3s and both free throws when the Knicks fouled him intentionally so he couldn’t try to tie it with another, giving Indiana the chance to tie on Haliburton’s shot.

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